Jump ARCHES Awarded Proposals in the Social & Behavioral Sciences

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The Jump Applied Research for Community Health through Engineering and Simulation (Jump ARCHES) program is a partnership between OSF HealthCare and the University of Illinois (U of I), Urbana-Champaign, and its College of Medicine in Peoria. The program supports research involving clinicians, engineers, and social scientists to develop technologies and devices that could revolutionize medical training and health care delivery.

Social and behavioral disparities proposals awarded funding for Fall 2020 cycle

The Fall 2020 Jump ARCHES request for proposals concerned six unique focus areas: digital health, social and behavioral disparities, autism, neurological sciences, COVID-19, and simulation and education. This was the first Jump ARCHES request for proposals that specifically concerned social and behavioral disparities to mitigate the impact of age, location, and social barriers in delivering quality health care to vulnerable populations. Emphasis was given to proposals that addressed racism, social justice, social and implicit biases, health equity, and access to care.

Remote State Anxiety Detection And Monitoring Using Multimodal Wearable Sensors
Investigators: Manuel E. Hernandez, PhD, UIUC; Elizabeth Hsiao-Wecksler, PhD, UIUC; Richard Sowers, PhD, UIUC; Brent Roberts, PhD, UIUC; Susan Caldecott-Johnson, MD, UICOMP, OSF HealthCare Children’s Hospital of Illinois; Jean Clore, PhD, UICOMP
In frontline health care workers, recent evidence suggests increased depression, anxiety, insomnia, and distress due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Even without COVID-19, physician trainees face mental health challenges as they provide care and learn clinical best practices. This project will integrate data from a suite of wearable sensors to quantify symptoms of stress and anxiety in physician trainees. The idea is to use information gleaned from sensors to monitor and potentially improve wellbeing before mental health disorders develop.

Early Detection Of Developmental Disorders Via A Remote Sensing Platform
Investigators: Nancy McElwain, PhD, UIUC; Susan Caldecott-Johnson, MD, UICOMP, OSF HealthCare Children’s Hospital of Illinois; Mark Hasegawa-Johnson, PhD, UIUC; Siraj Siddiqi, MD, OSF HealthCare; Romit Roy Choudhury, PhD, UIUC
Child mental, behavioral, and developmental disorders often go undiagnosed and untreated, thus increasing the risk of spiraling disturbance well beyond childhood. This project will provide “proof of concept” for continuous, unobtrusive, large-scale, and automated monitoring of young children’s functioning within the home environment, using wearable sensors. In doing so, a long-term objective is to detect potential developmental disorders or delays before such problems become clinically significant.

Soft And Dexterous Service Robot Configurations To Support Healthcare At Home For Older Adults
Investigators: Girish Krishnan, PhD, UIUC; Wendy Rogers, PhD, UIUC; Ryan Riech, MD, MPH, OSF HealthCare
An increasing number of older adults live independently but have health care conditions that must be managed – both chronic and acute. The goal of this project is to investigate the effectiveness of soft robotic configurations in offering effective telehealth solutions and understanding the social and behavioral aspects of how a robot builds trust with its user.

Optimal Deployment Of Cancer Prevention Through Digital Health Workers
Investigators: Sarah de Ramirez, MD, OSF HealthCare, UICOMP; Hyojung Kang, PhD, UIUC; Lavanya Marla, PhD, UIUC; Roopa Foulger, OSF HealthCare; Mackenzie McGee, MD, OSF HealthCare; Abby Lotz, OSF HealthCare; Melinda Cooling, APRN, OSF HealthCare
This project proposes to develop a Digital Health Worker (DHW) program to use multiple varying digital modalities to decrease the socioeconomic and racial disparities in cancer screening and mortality, specifically with breast cancer. Through the use of data science, this project will explore the most effective ways to deploy digital interventions for the promotion of cancer screening among populations with historically low screening rates and high mortality rates. Data analysis will also help optimize the DHW program to maximize screening rates, and provide an understanding of how to apply these practices to other types of cancers—especially among underserved populations.

Visualizations Of Social Communication Behavior Of Children With Autism
Investigators: Karrie Karahalios, PhD, UIUC; Siraj Siddiqi, MD, OSF HealthCare; David Forsyth, PhD, UIUC; Mark Hasegawa-Johnson, PhD, UIUC; Hedda Meadan, PhD, BCBA-D, UIUC
Given that many children with autism spectrum disorder have deficits and delays in communication skills, researchers have been exploring ways to diagnose children early and begin with interventions at a very young age. Much of this begins with improving communication between parents and clinicians. This project’s objective is to develop a series of digital, interactive, and visual tools to do just that. The idea is that these visualizations could mitigate challenges in discussions between parents and providers.

Social and behavioral disparities proposals awarded funding for Spring 2021 cycle

Voice vitals: A new approach for anxiety and depression screening in the era of COVID-19
Investigators: Mary Pietrowicz, PhD, U of I; Ryan Finkenbine, MD, UICOMP, OSF HealthCare; and Sarah Donohue, PhD, UICOMP
Existing systems fall short in identifying and treating individuals with anxiety disorders and major depressive disorders due to a variety of issues, including people not seeking medical attention, attitudinal barriers like stigma, and structural barriers such as a lack of providers. This proposal aims to develop a prototype of machine models that can listen to speech and language and automatically screen for anxiety and depression disorders. 

Building a motivational, interviewing conversational agent (MintBot) for promoting COVID-19 vaccination among people with multiple sclerosis
Investigators: Jessie Chin, PhD, U of I; Suma Bhat, PhD, U of I; Chung-Yi Chiu, PhD, U of I; Jared Rogers, MD, OSF HealthCare; and Brian Laird, PharmD, OSF HealthCare
Individuals with multiple sclerosis are likely to be hesitant to get the COVID-19 vaccine due to their compromised health condition. This concept aims to develop an accessible, generalizable and efficient digital health solution for promoting COVID-19 vaccination among vulnerable populations, such as people with disabilities.