On November 6th and 7th, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) hosted the annual Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (BSSR) Festival, organized by the Office of BSSR (OBSSR) and the NIH BSSR Coordinating Committee (BBSR-CC). The festival highlights a diverse range of BSSR projects from across the Institutes and Centers (ICs). According to the festival organizers, the festival strives to: (1) “Highlight the latest NIH-funded BSSR and its impact on human health and well-being,” (2) “Present exciting research results, emerging scientific areas, and health innovations in BSSR,” and (3) “Leverage and enhance the synergy of NIH resources and Expertise to advance NIH’s mission.”
[Meeting Agenda | Speaker Bios | Day 1 Videocast | Day 2 Videocast]
Day 1
Opening remarks from Tara A. Schwetz, PhD, (NIH Deputy Director for Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives) and Jane M. Simoni, PhD, (OBSSR Director) provided an introduction to the BSSR efforts ongoing across NIH. In her remarks, Dr. Simoni highlighted three important documents that inform OBSSR’s work: (1) the NIH Strategic Plan, updated in 2020 to expand “biomedical research” to include “biomedical and behavior research”; (2) the Office of Science and Technology Policy’s (OSTP) Blueprint for the Use of Social and Behavioral Science to Advance Evidence-Based Policymaking; and (3) the NIH Council of Councils’ report on the Integration of BSSR at the NIH. FABBS regularly references all three documents in our comments on ICs’ strategic plans.
The festival’s keynote panel, Artificial Intelligence (AI) in BSSR, featured the work of Sandro Galea, MD, DrPH, and Karandeep Singh, MD. Dr. Galea, Dean of Boston University School of Public Health, highlighted AI’s potential to predict outcomes within public health contexts in his talk, “AI and the Health of the Public.” He posed a fundamental question: Will AI widen or narrow health gaps? Following this, Dr. Singh, the inaugural Chief Health AI Officer at UC San Diego Health, drew attention to the tradeoffs and complexities involved in AI models in his presentation, “Tackling the Health AI Paradox.”
Session 1 of the festival, Leveraging Novel Technologies and Methodologies for Advancing BSSR, began with a presentation by William Warren, PhD titled “Using VR to Understand the Collective Motion of Human Crowds.” Dr. Warren – a member of both the Psychonomic Society and the Vision Sciences Society (VSS) – reviewed the work done by his Virtual Environment Navigation Lab (VENLab) to improve pedestrian navigation and mobility for individuals with vision impairments. Next, clinical neuropsychologist Negar Fani, PhD, gave a talk titled “Taking a Load off the Brain: Mechanisms and Applications of Vibration-augmented Mindfulness.” Dr. Fani introduced a new device that reduces stress and improves well-being through vibro-acoustic feedback: as the individual engages in breath-focused mindfulness, the device allows them to “feel” their breath as vibration. In the third presentation, “Social Network Analysis: The Hope Found in Homophily,” Brenda Heaton, PhD, highlighted the potential of this method to help researchers better understand the social dynamics involved in health outcomes and inequities.
Session 2, BSSR Interventions to Address Adversity, kicked off with Justin Parent’s, PhD, presentation “Epigenomic Mechanisms of Risk & Resilience: The Role of Parenting.” Dr. Parent– a member of both the American Psychological Association (APA) and the Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) – discussed how early adversity contributes to health and aging disparities, and the role that parenting styles play in mitigating the effects of early adversity. Attendees next heard from Sannisha Dale, PhD, a clinical psychologist and founder and director of the Strengthening Health through Innovation and Engagement (SHINE) Research Program. Dr. Dale shared insights from the Striving Towards EmPowerment and Medication Adherence (STEP-AD) initiative, which focuses on health inequities faced by Black women living with HIV in the United States.
Day 2
Dr. Simoni opened the day with a fireside chat with Nora Volkow, MD. Dr. Volkow, a research psychiatrist, has been the Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse since 2003. She has been instrumental in developing our understanding of the neurobiology of drug addiction. Drs. Simoni and Volkow discussed the importance of science communication, including listening to and engaging with the public. They also spoke to the connection between the biology of addiction and its behavioral presentation. Dr. Volkow emphasized the importance of social and behavioral factors to understanding and treating drug addiction, and the role that BSSR can play in optimizing treatment approaches.
Session 3 of the festival, BSSR Approaches Examining Social Determinants of Health, began with a presentation from April Carcone, PhD, entitled “Translational Interventions and Implementation Science to Address Disparities in Minority Youth with Type 1 Diabetes.” Dr. Carcone, a member of the Society for Behavioral Medicine (SBM), reviewed research in which a brief, culturally tailored eHealth intervention improved health outcomes for Black adolescents with Type 1 diabetes. Next, Claudia Buss, PhD, presented on the “Intergenerational Transmission of Maternal Childhood Maltreatment.” Dr. Buss is a member both the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research (ABMR) and Flux. She has found that a mother’s childhood trauma may affect fetal neurodevelopmental trajectories through multiple pathways. The third panelist, Vaness Volpe, PhD, is a member of SBM, the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI), and the Society for Research on Adolescence (SRA). In her talk, “Building Blocks for Better Interventions: Considering Context and Culturally Relevant Coping for Black Women Who Struggle with Emotional Eating,” Dr. Volpe’s research has found that while the Superwoman schema can be an adaptive coping strategy for Black women, it may have some negative effects on emotional eating.
Following Session 3 was a second keynote panel on Gender, Power, and Health. Panelists included Derek Griffith, PhD, who spoke on “Advancing the Science of Gender, Power, and Health” and Anita Raj, PhD, who presented on “Measuring Empowerment for Health and Development—The EMERGE Framework.” Dr. Griffith brought attention to the paradox that while biomedical research has historically prioritized males as the biological norm, men have not been treated as a group in need of its own tailored health care. Dr. Raj reported on the EMERGE framework, which was initiated in India in 2016. The framework aims to advance gender equity and women’s empowerment through strengthening gender data.
Session 4, the last of the festival, focused on BSSR Advancing Health Equity. Panelist Pei-Jung Lin, PhD, discussed her work in “Deciphering Medicare Costs of Dementia Across the Disease Course.” Dr. Lin’s research has found significant healthcare disparities in dementia management across racial and ethnic groups, and she highlighted the importance of data equity. Following this, Joy Wan, MD, presented on “Locus of Control and Mental Health in Pediatric Eczema.” Dr. Wan explored the relationship between locus of control (LOC) and eczema, finding that “moderate/severe eczema was associated with higher odds of emotional and behavioral problems among children with external LOC but not those with internal LOC.” Finally, Jennifer Lyn Shaw, PhD, gave a presentation, “Jumpstarting Culturally Centered Advance Care Planning with Alaska Native and American Indian People in Primary Care,” in which she reviewed her research team’s attempt to bring a specific form of health care to a vulnerable population.
FABBS appreciated the opportunity to attend the festival in person and we were delighted to see many of our members demonstrate the importance of BSSR to public health.
