In-House Projects

Neuropsychology Collaboration: Discrimination and Executive Function

Lead Project Coordinator: Luke Keating, M.A.

Longitudional Student Coordinator: Aldona Chorpeza, B.A

Our team works on studies aiming to understand the effects of racial discrimination on cognitive functioning. We are also interested in the effect of cognitive functioning on the relationship between discrimination and important mental and physical health outcomes such as depression and health behaviors (e.g., eating, drinking, smoking). Research suggests that experiencing racial discrimination is mentally demanding and requires energy and cognitive resources to process. Cognitive capacity is limited, so a “cognitive burden” of discrimination leaves fewer mental or cognitive resources available for use in stress recovery, managing emotions, motivation and decision making, and making healthy choices, leading to poorer mental and physical health outcomes.

We are currently working on two primary projects:

A systematic literature review of all papers on discrimination and cognitive functioning: This project aims to gather, review, and write a paper integrating the findings of all papers testing the relationship between discrimination and cognitive function. Primary responsibilities include reading and screening papers for eligibility.
A longitudinal study examining how discrimination changes cognitive functioning over time: This project will primarily involve data cleaning, analysis, and writing using data collected as part of a longitudinal study of discrimination and health.

Pharmacy and Psychology: Interprofessional Collaboration to Promote Patient Care

Faculty Leaders: Christine Chim, PharmD, BCAP, and Dr. Elizabeth Brondolo, PhD.

This is a interprofessional training program in which PharmD students working under the direction of Dr. Christine Chim, present cases from their ambulatory care clinical pharmacy program at Northwell Health. Together, the PharmD students and Psychology student CHIRP Fellows examine how Social Determinants of health influence medication adherence and clinical care.

Many well-known medical organizations (e.g. the American Medical Association) have released anti-racism statements in response to widely disseminated evidence of structural racism. Effective statements must be comprehensible to the varied audiences they are intended to serve. We examined the reading and difficulty levels of anti-racism statements from 10 medical organizations. Data indicated that all statements had Flesch-Kincaid reading levels above college level. The difficulty level of these statements may reduce their effectiveness. The next step of this project is to test whether the poor readability has an effect on the comprehensibility of the statements and commitment to their values. We used ChatGPT by OpenAI's to generate statements with easier readability levels relative to statements questions. We are developing studies to compare the effects of statements written with different level of complexity. We will test the new statements in an experiemental research design.

ANTI-RACISM STATEMENTS FROM MEDICAL AND HEALTH ORGANIZATIONS: ANALYSIS OF READABILITY

Project coordinators: Patrick Dawid, B.A., and

Rebecca Seavey B.A.

Pedagogical Science

Project Coordinators: Luke Keating, M.A., and Nicole Benjamin, B.A.