From the College of Psychology…
January 2024 Research Highlights reported by the College of Psychology.
In recognition of his distinguished service to the field of correctional health care, the National Commission on Correctional Health Care has honored Nova Southeastern University Professor Emeritus Thomas Fagan, PhD, CCHP-MH, with the 2023 Bernard P. Harrison Award of Merit, the organization’s highest honor.
In a career spanning nearly 50 years, Dr. Fagan earned a national reputation as an educator, researcher, author, consultant, and advocate for mental health care in corrections.
He spent nearly 25 years with the Federal Bureau of Prisons, where he worked as a psychologist, psychology administrator, and director of clinical training. He helped develop correctional mental health programs, policies, and procedures; trained professional, paraprofessional, and correctional staff; and served for many years as the system’s chief hostage negotiator.
He has published extensively on topics related to mental health care in corrections, included the highly regarded books “Correctional Mental Health Handbook” and “Correctional Mental Health: From Theory to Practice.”
Amy E. Ellis, PhD was a part of a Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) Engagement Award entitled, “Facilitating Male Trauma Survivors’ Meaningful Involvement in Health Research.” Dr. Ellis conducted two in-person focus groups with researchers and male survivors on their perspectives of health care research topics most important to them, how they hear about and make use of research findings, and barriers to their engagement in treatment. The findings later became a peer-reviewed manuscript. Based on those findings, Dr. Ellis submitted for another PCORI grant on addressing health disparities of which she served as co-PI. Dr. Ellis created the two comparative treatment protocols of MI and MI with trauma-informed, affirmative care, and delivered over 40 hours of training to 32 men with lived experience of trauma. The peer leaders who ran the 6-session weekly group also attended weekly group supervision that she provided for the MI with affirmative care group. The team ran 25 cohorts of groups, serving over 340 participants in the span of two years. They found that not only can we safely and effectively train peers to deliver the MI interventions, but that both the conditions reduced participant depression and increased their engagement in treatment post-group. However, they found that for the affirmative care component, that treatment effect was mediated by reducing minority stress, conformity to masculinity, and help-seeking barriers.
Drs. Allie Holschbach and Lisa Robison were awarded a 100-k grant from the Florida Department of Health to study the effects of motherhood and infant contact on neural and behavioral signs and symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in a transgenic AD mouse model.