Christine Schwartz awarded NIH-funded R03 & Olayinka Shiyanbola awarded NIH-funded R01

Congratulations to Christine Schwartz for her NIH-funded R03 “The Divorce Decline and Relationship Stability: 1970-2019.” Christine Schwartz is a Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Sociology and was recently named the Associate Director of CDHA.

“The Divorce Decline and Relationship Stability: 1970-2019 is an NIH-funded R03 on trends in divorce and relationship dissolution in the United States,” Schwartz shared. “We use data from the National Survey of Family Growth and the Health and Retirement Study that, when combined, support population-representative estimates of trends in divorce, marital dissolution, and co-residential union dissolution for a wide age range of individuals. We examine how changes in selection into marriage and population composition have contributed to divorce trends. Results from this research will inform how to interpret the observed divorce decline since the late 1970s and have implications for understanding shifts in children’s family stability, the living arrangements of older adults, increasing socioeconomic differences in family demographic patterns, and their potential effects on health and well-being.”

Congratulations also to Olayinka Shiyanbola for her NIH-funded R01 “A Multiphase Optimization to Enhance Diabetes Management Interventions for Black & Hispanic Patients with Uncontrolled Diabetes.” Shiyanbola is an Associate Professor in the School of Pharmacy and the Director of Graduate Studies in Health Services Research in Pharmacy. She is an appointed member of the NASEM Roundtable on Health Literacy and a 2022-2023 CDHA Pilot Awardee. Shiyanbola leads the Shiyanbola Research Group at the UW-Madison School of Pharmacy, aimed at producing interventions that improve the health of patients and advance health equity in diverse underserved communities.

Shiyanbola shared a summary of the project funded with this 5-year award: “Poor diabetes self-management including lower medication adherence, negative social determinants of health factors such as food insecurity, and health misperceptions such as negative beliefs about diabetes and medicines, place Black and Hispanic adults at disproportionately greater risk for severe diabetes-related harms and death compared to other racial/ethnic groups in the US. Despite the availability of effective interventions for diabetes management that address poor medication adherence, optimize medication therapy, and address social determinants of health barriers and health misperceptions, there is a gap in understanding whether combining these interventions will maximize their effectiveness and cost-effectiveness for Black and Hispanic adults with uncontrolled diabetes, contributing to improvements in glycemic levels and medication adherence when added to usual care. This innovative factorial randomized mixed method trial evaluates the benefits of pharmacist-delivered medication therapy management and/or a community health worker addressing social determinants of health barriers to diabetes medication adherence, and health misperceptions, as well as qualitatively exploring intervention components/combinations’ acceptability based on participant experiences, which supports identification of an optimized intervention package with profound public health implications for Black and Hispanic adults with diabetes.”