Health Experts Database

Dr. Audette initiated the Broadening Experience at URI, which allows students to broaden their view of physical therapy locally, nationally and internationally through two-week non-clinical experiences. Every year as part of this program, she travels with students to the highlands of Guatemala to work at a center for children with disabilities. She has done physical therapy related work in China, Haiti, Suriname and Guatemala.

Dr. Martins’ research is with vulnerable populations in the community, and includes a descriptive phenomenological study of the homeless person’s health care experiences, analysis of food insufficiency and hunger with homeless families, strategies used to survive in the lives of woman facing adversity, and methods to increase nursing students’ knowledge and appreciation with older adults in the community and with the prison population.

Dr. Leveillee’s research focuses on psychiatric mental health nursing, eating disorders, women’s issues and and client-nurse relationships.

Dr. Lavin’s research focuses on medical surgical nursinge, ducational issues in the clinical area, oncology nursing, pain management, spirituality, mentoring and health-care in the primary care setting.

Dr. Boatright-Horowitz focuses on the teachings of anti-racism and public perceptions of domestic violence. She also researches the importance of different aspects of traditions and cultures in primate learning and cognition.

Dr. Slitt’s research interests focus on how expression of drug transporters affects chemical disposition and toxicity; how nutrition and intake of dietary antioxidants affects the expression of drug transporters; how liver disease (i.e. diabetes, cholestasis and ethanol cirrohsis) affects transporter expression and chemical disposition; and how transporter expression affects cholesterol transport and susceptibility to gallstone formation.

Dr. Rogala’s research interests include oral chemotherapy, supportive care, and palliative care in cancer.

Dr. Robbins’ research interests focus on health promotion, disease prevention and decision-making, particularly for planned change at both the individual level and on a population basis. His current efforts are centered on the Transtheoretical model to better understand decision-making and behavior change in organ donation and transplantation, blood donation, advanced care planning and multiple health behavior change.

Dr. Bueno De Mesquita’s main research focuses include violence prevention and school-based mental health services. He also researches social emotional development, problem-based learning, cultural diversity, self-efficacy and inquiry science education.

Dr. Bratberg’s research focuses on opioid safety, overdose prevention, infectious diseases, public health, emergency preparedness, bioterrorism, pharmacy professionalism, technology in teaching, team-based learning and pharmacy advocacy.

Dr. Buchanan has years of experience collaborating on HIV/AIDS research, working closely with colleagues both domestically and internationally to develop and apply causal methodology to improve treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS. Her research focuses on causal inference, generalizability, HIV/AIDS, substance use disorder treatment and prevention, randomized trials, observational studies, survival analysis, longitudinal analysis and network science.

Dr. Chen’s research focuses on developing novel laser-based approaches to facilitate transdermal drug/vaccine delivery, improving vaccine/adjuvant safety and fabricating the right formulation and device for such purposes.

Dr. Larrat, Dean of the URI College of Pharmacy, specializes in drug benefit design issues, formulary compliance strategies, pharmacoeconomic evaluation, decision analysis, outcomes assessment, health policy and drug utilization management.

Dr. Branch focuses on adult learning and development in relationships among diverse students in collegiate settings. Her research also includes assessment in higher education persistence, educational attainment, and environmental theory and assessment in higher education. Dr. Branch has expertise in qualitative inquiry, including using photography as a visual research method.

Dr. Caffrey applies advanced epidemiologic and pharmacoepidemiologic methods to the study of infections caused by dangerous bacterial pathogens. There is a critical need for active comparator trials and comparative effectiveness research in light of present day efforts to increase antimicrobial drug development and extend the life of the current antimicrobial pipeline as multi-drug resistance increases. As such, the objective of her research program is to quantify the benefits and harms of antibiotics in real-world clinical practice. Her research focuses on pharmacoepidemiologic methods, confounding by indication, infectious disease epidemiology, infectious disease pharmacoepidemiology, drug utilization and drug safety.

Professor Hames’ research interests lie in issues surrounding death and bereavement, specifically as they relate to children and nursing education. Her research focuses on thanatology, grief and loss in children and adolescents and death education.

Dr. King’s research focuses on metabolism and enzymology of endo- and xenobiotics (including medications, hormones, neurotransmitters, dietary substances); variation in metabolism caused by disease state, age, genetic polymorphisms and presence of inhibitor/activators/suppressors; protein structure bioinformatics; and drug design.

Dr. Seeram’s research group, the Bioactive Botanical Research Laboratory, investigates plant foods and natural products for therapeutic and preventive effects against chronic human diseases. The research focuses on bioassay-guided discovery of natural products from medicinal plants including medicinal foods targeting neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, diabetes and inflammation; investigation of bioavailability, metabolism, tissue disposition and mechanisms of action of bioactive food components.

Dr. Bertin’s research focuses on marine natural products chemistry, biosynthesis and metabolomics.

Dr. Cohen’s research focuses on patients with diabetes and other cardiovascular risk factors, such as hyperlipidemia and hypertension. Didactic responsibilities include self-care lectures on nutrition supplementation, ear care, diabetes and foot care. Other didactic responsibilities include hypertension, men’s health and endocrine conditions.

Dr. Greaney’s future research efforts are focused on promoting physical activity, healthy eating and other healthful behaviors using participatory research methods and ecological models. Her research program aims to identify personal, social and environmental factors associated with physical activity and other healthy behaviors, as well as identify sociodemographic, behavioral and health-related factors associated with intervention engagement.

Dr. Kisler’s research primarily focuses on sexual aggression, women’s sexual, psychological, and relational health, and couple and family therapy training. She is also focused on the use of technology (sexting, texting, social media) on psychological, sexual and relational health.

Dr. Cho’s research focuses on cancer treatment; DNA damage, repair, replication and mutation; DNA-adduct; molecular toxicology; structural biology; and chemical biology. His main objective is to identify, characterize, and understand the structural and conformational aspects of the key molecular players that are involved in adverse outcomes such as adduct structures, polymerases, and repair proteins.

Dr. Harlow’s research focuses on increasing interest, participation, performance and diversity in quantitative science; multivariate statistics, structural equation modeling, methodology, meaning in life, and women’s health.

Dr. LaPlante’s foremost research expertise is in the treatment, outcomes, prevention, virulence inhibition (biofilm and toxin) and decolonization of multiple drug resistant bacteria, specifically Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Her research program has recently expanded to include an antimicrobial research outcomes component, which focuses on antimicrobial stewardship and comparative effectiveness research using the National Veterans Affairs database and statewide initiatives.

Ms. Rakovic’s research focuses on school-age children and their speech and language disorders, including autism and illiteracy.

Professor Stout’s research focuses on med-surg nursing, pain management, and educational issues in clinical areas.

Dr. Vyas’ research focuses on treatment patterns, quality of care, pharmacoepidemiology, secondary and claims databases, and systematic review and meta-analyses.

Dr. Xu’s research focuses on strategies that lead to increased physical activity participation in different age groups, and beneficial effects of physical exercise. Dr. Xu also studies the factors associated with physical activity opportunities and behavioral choices of physical activity. Her research encompasses the fields of physical activity assessment and lifetime physical activity.

Dr. Blanpied specializes in biomechanics and musculoskeletal therapeutics. His research focuses on synthesizing evidence for conservative management of neck pain and the use of ultrasound imaging to identify myofascial trigger points.

Dr. Manfredi researches the effects of aerobic and strength training on skeletal muscle morphology in older adults; metabolic related diseases and skeletal muscle mitochondria in older adults; and aging heart and skeletal muscle morphology.

A certified health fitness specialist and strength and conditioning specialist, Armstrong’s research interests include strength and conditioning, biomechanics, and youth physical activity.

Dr. Kim studies early childhood preservice teacher education and early childhood policy and practice. She is particularly interested in preservice teacher psychological factors such as motivation, teaching efficacy and passion related to their perspectives on educational policy and practice. Dr. Kim focuses on teaching and learning in urban settings, family-school-community partnerships, pre-k and Kindergarten.

Dr. Greene performs dietary assessments, focusing on behavior change for chronic disease risk reduction, prevention of unwanted weight gain and dietary applications of the Transtheoretical (Stages of Change) Model.

Dr. Lofgren’s specializes in lipid and lipoprotein metabolism, obesity and cardiovascular disease.

Dr. Rowley’s research focuses on marine natural products chemistry, antibiotics drug discovery and marine microbial chemical ecology.

Ms.Figueroa specializes in dysphagia, including Modified Barium Swallow examinations and varying adult neurogenic pathologies including aphasia, apraxia, dysarthria and acquired cognitive impairments.

Dr. Schwartz-Barcott’s research focuses on pain, anxiety and other central phenomena experienced by patients across nursing care settings, community health, inductive approaches to theory development and sociocultural influences in health and illness.

Dr. Zawia’s research focuses on environmental risk factors for Alzheimer’s disease, pinpointing potential biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease, and developing drugs for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.

Dr. Chichester’s teaching and research interests are in pharmacology, connective tissue metabolism, connective tissue pharmacology, collagen degradation in osteoarthritis and alterations in drug metabolism in septic shock.

Dr. Willis has established national and international reputations in cognitive developmental neuropsychology, professional decision making in psychology, and professional practice issues in school psychology.

Dr. Coppa’s research interests are in the area of alternative health modalities, specifically therapeutic touch. She is a “Qualified Therapeutic Touch Practitioner and Teacher,” certified by the Nurse Healer’s Professional Associates Organization. She has also focused her research on alternative health care therapies, pain, wound healing and health care of vulnerable populations.

Her areas of interest are energy and macronutrient metabolism, metabolic regulation and energy balance, body weight regulation and management, nutrition and physical activity and chronic disease prevention.

Dr. Feret’s research and practice interests include delivery and assessment of experiential education, a pharmacist’s role in emergency preparedness, and self care.

Dr. Leedahl’s research is focused on improving overall health and quality of life for older adults at multiple levels (societal, community, family, individual). Her research fits within three themes: enhancing social integration and health for older adults; improving community and social engagement of older adults; strengthening health and social services. Dr. Leedahl’s research projects involve developing and evaluating public programs, interventions and services for addressing social and health needs of older adults. One of her recent interdisciplinary projects combines her research, teaching and service efforts to bring together college students and older adults.

Dr. Sabik’s specializes in areas of psychology, gender studies and public health, examines whether negative self-perceptions are linked to higher levels of stress and poor health, and delves into how self-perceptions and identity “get under the skin” to affect individuals’ health and psychological-well being. Her two primary lines of research examine how perceptions of gender, age, ethnicity and other social and identity factors influence the health and well-being among older women; and explore potential biological pathways linking social and individual perceptions to health outcomes.

Professor Palmer’s research interest is in demonstrating optimal maternal child health outcomes using physiological care in the extended postpartum period and demonstrating optimal outcomes for maternal child health utilizing the midwifery model of care.

Dr. Sparks focuses on the impact of systematic integration of client feedback in couples and family therapy. Her main areas of focus include patterns of the alliance in couples and family therapy, use of client feedback in community-based systems of care for at-risk families, incorporation of outcome management in clinical training and teaching curricula.

Dr. Kusz’ research focuses on examining the cultural politics of sports and media spectacles involving sport and sport celebrities. He seeks to make visible ways in which sporting media spectacles, sports-related films, sporting celebrities and sporting cultures operate as often overlooked and under-theorized political terrains that often play key roles in contemporary debates about race, gender and nationalism. In particular, he researches the role sports media narratives play in re-centering white masculinity and masking white privilege in post-civil rights America.

Dr. Spillane’s research examines substance use, with a specific focus on underserved populations and health disparities. Her work primarily focuses on indigenous populations in North America, including American Indians in the United States and First Nations in Canada. Dr. Spillane’s work helps facilitate the development and/or adaptation of treatment and prevention programs to reduce the harm associated with substance use in native communities. She also has interest in applying positive psychology to addictive behaviors.

Dr. Harris’ research focuses on the psychology of diversity and multiculturalism, including race/ethnicity, gender, social class and sexual orientation. Her current research relates to eating disorders and disturbances, violence as a health issue, and cultural variation in health behavior.

Dr. Wen’s research focuses on drug utilization and clinical outcomes, drug safety, drug compliance, outcomes measurement, pharmacoepidemiology, pharmacoeconomics, health education, meta-analyses, and methodologies for observational studies.

Dr. Deng’s research focuses on bile acids and cholesterol homeostasis; drug transporters, toxicology and delivery; and biological and pharmaceutical therapy development. The long-term objective of his research program is to understand how cholesterol metabolism and bile acid homeostasis are regulated in physiological as well as pathological conditions.

Dr. Ward-Ritacco’s research focuses on the independent and interactive effects of physical activity, nutrition, and body composition on quality of life, with particular interest in physical function and feelings of energy and fatigue. She also has research experience investigating the role of dietary supplementation on resting metabolic rate and cognitive performance.

Dr. Agostinucci specializes in peripheral nervous system physiology and its role in the regulation of spinal motor neuron excitability and muscle activity, as it relates to physical therapy treatment. His emphasis is on pathophysiological mechanisms that cause movement disorders resulting from nervous system diseases, and sports concussion and injury. He is focusing his research on examining the role circumferential pressure has on the regulation of muscle tone and motor control. His experiments have shown that circumferential pressure affects spinal motor neurons in people following stroke and traumatic spinal cord injuries.

Dr. Quilliam’s research focuses on improving the safety of medications in vulnerable populations, particularly older adults. Key topics of research include pharmacoepidemiology, medication safety, older adults, and technology to improve healthcare.

Dr. Xiao’s research focuses on family financial wellbeing, consumer financial capability, consumer financial behavior, money and happiness, sustainable consumer behavior, financial development of young adults and Chinese consumer behavior.

Dr. McCurdy’s research focuses on promoting optimal child and family development among vulnerable families. Her research investigates the effectiveness of child abuse prevention programs and parental decisions to engage in home visiting programs. More recently, she has investigated the correlation between family food behaviors and child obesity among low-income families.

Dr. Paiva’s research In behavioral statistics includes measure development analyses (principal components analysis, structural modeling), cross-sectional analyses, longitudinal methods and cluster-randomized designs. Particular interests include applied undergraduate and graduate student training in statistics and research methodology. In health psychology, her focus has been on health behavior change and applications of the transtheoretical model to health-related behaviors, with particular interest in substance abuse prevention, alcohol harm reduction, HPV vaccine adherence, blood donation and distracted driving behaviors.

Dr. Adams is a licensed practitioner in family psychology, and investigates factors in the therapy process that lead to more successful outcomes for couples and families. He focuses on two related areas that inform this research: understanding how some couples sustain high degrees of happiness throughout their relationship, while others end up divorcing; and the impact of adolescent substance abuse on families. Dr. Adams is actively investigating the skills needed to be an effective teacher of family clinicians, and the role of supervision in developing the skills of emerging professionals.

Professor Fuvich’s areas of interest for future research include the application of the self-efficacy theory with nursing students in both the clinical and classroom setting. She is also interested in the use of simulation and computer mediated learning with nursing students across the curriculum.

Dr. Oaks focuses on maternal and child nutrition within the United States and internationally, with the goals of reducing adverse birth outcomes in high-risk populations and determining the long-term effects of prenatal and early childhood nutrition.

Dr. Bourbonniere’s research focuses on health services, continuity of care for frail older adults and outcomes of care delivered by GNPs.

Dr. Jacobson’s research focuses on innovative collaborative practice agreements, expanding pharmacist-directed patient care, preventing and detecting medication-related problems, interprofessional education, and cultural competence and diversity.

Dr. Kovarsky’s research has focused primarily on the analysis of clinical discourse from an ethnographic perspective. Much of his work has been funded by the United States Department of Education.

Dr. Florin’s research examines community change, particularly planned change, which is designed as part of community-wide prevention or health promotion programming. He is focused on how changes in community conditions, institutions and process are brought about and the effects of such changes on individual and collective well being. His most recent efforts are centered around three federally funded evaluations of community level alcohol and other drug abuse prevention programs.

Dr. Cadely’s primary research area addresses adolescent romantic relationships. Most recently, he has focused on the change in dating aggression from adolescence to young adulthood and factors that can contribute to adolescent dating aggression. He also has conducted studies that evaluate the effectiveness of lessons designed to teach adolescents about characteristics of healthy romantic relationships. Dr. Cadely’s secondary research interest involves examining predictors of identity formation and the influence of identity formation on adolescent development.

Dr. Walls specializes in contemporary self-experimentation, intensive longitudinal data and the developmental aspects of health behavior.

Dr. Shen’s research is mainly focused on the development of novel drug delivery systems to improve bioavailability and reduce side effects of a variety of therapeutics, with particular interests in sustained and/or targeted brain and ophthalmic drug delivery, as well as oral drug delivery; formulation development and manufacturing of advanced drug delivery systems (such as liposomes and nanocarriers); and in vitro and in vivoperformance testing, as well as the development of in vitro-in vivo correlation (IVIVC) for complex dosage forms (such as microspheres, implants and nanoparticles).

Dr. Barbour specializes in cardiovascular pharmacotherapy. Her research focuses on clinical studies of patients with cardiovascular disease, in addition to collaborating on pharmacoepidemiologic studies of cardiovascular drug use.

Dr. Charpentier’s research interests include oral cancer therapy, oncology, supportive and palliative care, and diabetes.

Dr. Roush’s research focuses on professional issues and disability studies including incorporation of a social model of disability into the work of health care providers, perceptions of sexual boundaries in physical therapy clinical practice, empathy in physical therapy students, accommodating allied health students with disabilities, and physical therapy patient satisfaction.

Dr. Riebe’s research centers around physical activity interventions for a variety of populations, including apparently healthy adults and those with common chronic diseases, older adults and individuals who are overweight or obese.

Dr. Clark, professor and director of both the URI gerontology department and the Rhode Island Geriatric Education Center, focuses on interprofessional education, health promotion with older adults, ethical issues in geriatric care, comparative health care policy, narrative gerontology, and aging and disability.

An interest in maternal-child health and evidence based care practices. A specific focus on birth practices such as the management of the umbilical cord in term and preterm infants.

Ms. Larson’s research focuses on implementing and evaluating new strategies in the classroom to enhance student learning, including collaborative testing in large general education courses.

Dr. Van Nostrand has been working in Alzheimer’s disease (AD)research for more than 30 years, He was the first to purify and characterize amyloid precursor protein (APP), the progenitor of amyloid-beta (A-beta).  Van Nostrand’s research focuses on vascular-mediated aspects of cognitive impairment and dementia, which are key elements of AD and related disorders. Current studies include the causes of abnormal accumulation of A-beta in AD and a related condition called cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA). Van Nostrand has also developed transgenic animal models of disease which has helped to provide key insights into disease processes.

Dr. Laforge’s area of focus is behavioral epidemiology with specific emphasis in harm reduction approaches to substance abuse, biostatistical methods, survey research and cancer epidemiology. He also has interest in health behaviors from college student drinking and alcohol harm reduction in the general public.

Dr. Blissmer’s research focuses on delivering theoretically based interventions to promote a healthy lifestyle and analysis of the psychosocial outcomes of those interventions. This research involves collaboration with faculty in Psychology and Nutrition and has included populations ranging from adolescents to older adults. He has also focused on continuing to evolve the emerging field of multiple behavior change, physical activity promotion, health behavior theory, psychosocial outcomes of PA engagement.

Dr. Adams’ teaching, research and clinical interests are focused in the area of physical and mental health promotion. She has done extensive research in the area of childhood asthma, exploring cultural factors that influence children’s asthma management. Her research interests also include examining the impact of sleep deprivation on college students’ academic, psychological and social functioning.

Professor McLinden stresses integrated clinical experience, facilitating “real life” scenarios for students. He has done extensive research on ergonomic handle design for tools, and the effects of cryotherapy and exercise on the body. His studies have enhanced his teachings in musculoskeletal and professional issues courses.

Professor Cloud’s research focuses on health promotion, health disparities and cultural diversity.

Dr. MacDonnell focuses on the pedagogy of interprofessional education, medication therapy management, and diseases of the eyes and skin.

Dr. Meenach’s research focuses on the development and implementation of drug delivery vehicles capable of penetrating physiological barriers, including penetration into tumors, circumventing the mucus barrier of the lung and crossing the blood-brain barrier. Her work crosses into many disciplines including engineering, biology and pharmaceutics, with the goal of using particle engineering techniques to rationally design systems that provide superior efficacy in treating a wide variety of diseases. Professor Meenach also seeks to develop in vitro analytical cell culture techniques that allow for the evaluation of specialized therapeutic devices. This goes beyond the “typical” two-dimensional cell culture usually completed in labs, allowing for a more representative picture of the properties of our materials prior to performing expensive, time-consuming, and potentially unnecessary animal experiments.

Dr. Kogut specializes in managed care pharmacy, pharmacoeconomics, quality in medication use, technologies for improving medication use, and off-label prescribing.

Dr. DiTomasso’s areas of specialty include antepartum, labor & delivery, post-partum, lactation, and newborn care. He research focuses on breastfeeding, infant weight loss and growth.

Dr. Mahler’s research focuses on motor speech disorders and cognitive-linguistic abilities in adults with neurological diagnoses, including Parkinson’s disease, brain injury, Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, Down syndrome and cerebral palsy. She investigates how principles of motor learning can drive activity-dependent changes in neural plasticity with long-term benefits that improve functional communication. She also evaluates the impact of deep brain stimulation on speech and swallowing abilities in people with Parkinson disease and essential tremor, and on the role of cognition in diet and exercise for older obese women.

Dr. Hulme’s expertise and teaching is in the area of geriatrics, neurological physical therapy and women’s health. Her research focuses on student readiness for teamwork in professional practice after IPE experiences, and innovative models for interprofessional education.

Dr. Kovoor’s research focuses on molecular mechanisms underlying the pharmacotherapy of schizophrenia and Parkinson’s disease; and signaling mechanisms and regulation of seven pass transmembrane G protein coupled receptors.