Behavioral Science

World War II vet, CU prof joins event marking end of that war

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 08 Nov 2024 15:17:11 +0000

World War II vet, CU prof joins event marking end of that war Rachel Sauer Fri, 11/08/2024 - 08:17

Clint Talbott

Richard Jessor, ��񱦵� professor emeritus, to join Miami’s New World Symphony this weekend to be interviewed by historian James Holland

Next spring marks the 80^th anniversary of the end of World War II and the Holocaust, and Miami Beach’s New World Symphony is performing two concerts this weekend that will feature pre-concert interviews with Richard Jessor, a ��񱦵� professor emeritus of behavioral science who fought with the U.S. Marines on the island of Iwo Jima.

Conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya and best-selling historian James Holland will team up for a commemorative concert honoring veterans and the “global sounds of resilience.”

The symphony characterized the event this way: “From the beaches of Normandy and Iwo Jima to the skies of the Tuskegee Airmen, explore the global fight for democracy through music that commemorates and reflects. Soprano Emily Magee makes her NWS debut in the pensive and poignant Four Last Songs.”

In pre-concert appearances on Saturday, Nov. 9, and Sunday, Nov. 10, Holland will interview Jessor about his experiences in the war.

Jessor, who will turn 100 this month, said the attempt to use music to illuminate “such deeply disturbing human experiences as war and the Holocaust is, to my mind, an admirable enterprise deserving support.”

Additionally, he said, the event should underscore the need for societies to do everything possible to avoid such calamities in the future. “And finally, perhaps, as one of the diminishing cohort of WWII combat veterans still alive, I feel a continuing responsibility to be a voice against the madness of wars.”

Jessor noted that the senior vice president for artistic planning and programs of the New World Symphony is Martin Sher, son of Boyce Sher and Daniel Sher, dean emeritus of ��񱦵�’s College of Music.

Jessor met Martin Sher in July when he was visiting his parents in Boulder. At that meeting, Sher discussed his plan to devote the 2024-25 programs to commemorating the end of World War II and the Holocaust, and he wanted to present music that would provide an interesting and inspirational commentary.

Examples include Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony, written when the city was under siege, and the music for the film Saving Private Ryan, written by John Williams. Sher also wanted to learn more about Jessor’s combat experience as a Marine in the battle for Iwo Jima.

At the time, Sher was consulting with Holland, and Holland interviewed Jessor via Zoom on his blog. Later, Sher conceived the idea of the pre-concert interviews and asked Jessor to have those conversations with Holland in person. “Of course, I agreed,” Jessor said.

This weekend’s Veterans Day concerts are free to veterans. Saturday’s concert is available to stream live and will be available online after the performance. The streaming option is free to anyone with an email address who registers at this link. The full concert program is at this link.

Jessor’s pre-concert interview will not be streamed, however.

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Richard Jessor, ��񱦵� professor emeritus, to join Miami’s New World Symphony this weekend to be interviewed by historian James Holland.

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Above: Richard Jessor at his home in Boulder. ��񱦵� photo by Glenn Asakawa.

Does the sweet seduction of flavored tobacco make quitting harder?

Anonymous — Tue, 02 May 2023 23:29:27 +0000

Does the sweet seduction of flavored tobacco make quitting harder? Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 05/02/2023 - 17:29

Clay Bonnyman Evans

Study led by ��񱦵� researcher finds that flavored-tobacco products reduce likelihood of later cessation, but researchers say more investigation is needed

As a senior studying psychology and neuroscience at the ��񱦵�, Christine Steeger (Psych’03) took a job at a large residential treatment center for youth in nearby Westminster. During overnight shifts she found herself poring over client case files.

“While the kids were sleeping, I was reading through a lot of their history, becoming more interested in why they have these problems, and how we can prevent them,” says Steeger, who is now a research assistant professor at the Institute of Behavioral Science.

After conducting behavioral and mental health research with youth and their families for several years, she earned a PhD in developmental psychology from the University of Notre Dame in 2013 and did postdoctoral work at Yale University. She was a research scientist at the University of Washington before returning to ��񱦵� in 2017.

Christine Steeger's research interests and expertise are in prevention science, developmental psychopathology, etiology of problem behaviors, tobacco and cannabis research, and individual-, family- and school-based interventions.

Throughout her career, Steeger has retained her interest in substance-use prevention and prevention of other problem behaviors for youth.

“The vaping and opioid epidemics are significant public-health issues affecting youth and adults. Given the widespread impact, society is paying more attention to these problems and how to treat and prevent them,” she says.

Although adults were the subjects of a recent paper, “Longitudinal associations between flavored tobacco use and tobacco product cessation in a national sample of adults,” published in July 2022 in Preventive Medicine, the study also has significant implications for youth, says Steeger, who served as the study’s lead author.

Flavored tobacco products are “designed to appeal to kids as well as adults. Big tobacco knows how to market to kids and catch their eyes,” she says.

For the study, Steeger and her co-authors, including Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience Karl G. Hill at IBS and colleagues from Yale and the University of Southern California, analyzed data from the ongoing Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health Study of thousands of subjects from 2013 through 2018 to determine whether use of flavored tobacco affected later cessation of tobacco use.

The researchers found that past 30-day use of flavored cigarettes, cigars, hookah, e-cigarettes and smokeless tobacco was associated with lower likelihood of short-term and “longer-term” (24-month) cessation or abstinence from tobacco use.

“We were looking at how likely or unlikely people are able to quit that product a couple of years later, and how likely they were able to quit any of the five products. We found compelling evidence that flavored compared to unflavored tobacco use meant they were much less likely to quit,” Steeger says.

She stresses that further work needs to be done, but argues that the study’s design shows the same pattern of effects across five products over a significant period of time, indicating that “characterizing flavors like menthol/mint and fruit, candy/desserts and other sweet flavors are likely contributing to prolonged use of tobacco.”

The study found that the effect for e-cigarettes was more pronounced for users aged 18-24 than those ages 25 and older.

“That’s telling us that young adults (who use flavored e-cigarettes) may have an even harder time quitting,” Steeger says.

Meanwhile, it’s no secret that tobacco companies design and market nicotine-containing products to appeal to new users, most notably the young. Adding flavoring to various products may make it easier to hook new users.

“With e-cigarettes in particular, a lot of kids start because they are just curious about them and they come in fun flavors. And if it tastes good, the flavors can mask the harsh and bitter taste from using nicotine, allowing them to continue using the product,” Steeger says.

Menthol flavoring, for example, may act as an analgesic to reduce irritation on mucus membranes and the respiratory system. And sweet flavorings mimicking fruit, candy, or chocolate, may trigger pleasant sensory associations with food, partially mitigating negative sensations.

Steeger stresses that researchers “certainly don’t have all the answers yet” when it comes to the consequences of using flavored tobacco products. But she notes that research lags the constant introduction of new products by tobacco companies, making it challenging to mount an effective regulatory response. She also points out that research on whether flavored e-cigarettes actually help adults quit smoking remains inconclusive.

“But this study provides additional evidence for the (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) to consider. When we are finding the same pattern of associations across both combustible and non-combustible flavored products, it’s likely that it’s contributing to sustained use,” she says.

As the researchers conclude, “If the current study associations between flavor use and cessation behaviors reflect causal links, FDA regulations to remove flavored cigarettes and cigars from the market would reduce longer-term exposure to harmful combustible products.”

Steeger is interested in delving deeper into what may account for any association between flavored-product use and ability to quit. She recently obtained a seed grant to begin looking at disparities in both nicotine and cannabis vaping among youth across gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, rural or urban location, and other factors.

The big tobacco companies are smart and know exactly how to market to teens. They say they haven’t been, but just look at the ads and the range of tasty flavors that directly appeal to teens.”

Understanding why and how kids start to use potentially addictive products, and which types of kids are vaping and continue to vape over time, is critically important, she says, given the forces marshaled on the other side.

“The big tobacco companies are smart and know exactly how to market to teens,” she says. “They say they haven’t been, but just look at the ads and the range of tasty flavors that directly appeal to teens.”

Study led by ��񱦵� researcher finds that flavored-tobacco products reduce likelihood of later cessation, but researchers say more investigation is needed.

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Study: High crime raises diabetes risk

Anonymous — Mon, 06 Mar 2023 15:07:41 +0000

Study: High crime raises diabetes risk Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 03/06/2023 - 08:07

Daniel Long

Genes matter, says ��񱦵�’s Jason Boardman, but so does the environment

Young adults living in high-crime areas have an increased genetic risk for Type 2 diabetes, according to a recently published study co-authored by Jason Boardman, ��񱦵� professor of sociology and director of the Institute of Behavioral Science’s Health and Society Program.

Boardman and his co-authors published their paper, “Does Crime Trigger Genetic Risk for Type 2 Diabetes in Young Adults? A G x E Interaction Study Using National Data,” in Social Science & Medicine in November.

A key takeaway is that genes are not an irrefutable crystal ball predicting people’s health future. The environment plays a significant role as well.

Jason Boardman teaches undergraduate and graduate-level courses in statistics, social demography, and the sociology of race and ethnicity.

“Genes matter,” says Boardman, “but how they are linked to your health depends on where you live.”

Key to understanding why, says Boardman, who studies the social determinants of health, is the notion of environmental triggering, a phenomenon by which the environment elicits certain genetic responses.

It’s a bit like planting a flower, Boardman says, with the seed being people’s genes and the soil, water and sunlight being the environment. The seed may be planted, but without the right environmental conditions, it won’t sprout.

Something similar happens with Type 2 diabetes.

“Genetic risk for Type 2 diabetes does not manifest as a risk absent environmental triggers—in this case, local area crime rate,” Boardman explains. “Indeed, we find that the polygenic risk for Type 2 diabetes is non-existent among residents of communities with little to no crime.”

In other words, genetic variants linked to Type 2 diabetes are not enough to give someone the disease. What counts is how those genes interact with the environment.

Boardman and his colleagues’ findings recast what many consider the primary driver of Type 2 diabetes: obesity, which Boardman says plays not so much a causal role as a mediating one.

To understand how this works, Boardman explains, imagine the same person in two scenarios.

In the first scenario, this person lives in an area with a low crime rate. He or she therefore experiences little stress and has access to healthy coping mechanisms, such as walking or riding a bike outside. This person is consequently unlikely to become obese and develop diabetes.

In the second scenario, however, this same person lives in a high-crime area and has elevated stress levels and limited access to healthy coping mechanisms. This person is therefore more likely to internalize stress, adopt an unhealthy dietary pattern, gain weight and become diabetic.

Same person, same genes, opposite outcomes. The only difference between the two scenarios is the environment.

“Thus,” says Boardman, “what appears to be a biological process is in large part a social process.”

Boardman began studying the social influences of health several decades ago.

“I was fortunate to be part of the Social Environment Working Group of the National Children’s Study in the early 2000s,” he says.

While working with this group, Boardman witnessed the scientific community placing “a great deal of emphasis on collecting and summarizing rich biological measures of population health” while overlooking “comparably rich measures of the social and physical communities in which people live, go to school and play.”

But rather than criticize the field of statistical genetics, Boardman decided to gain training in it. He received a career development award from the Eunice Kenney Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Development and, as a tenure-track professor, enrolled in the graduate-training program at CU’s Institute for Behavioral Genetics.

Boardman says that research exploring gene-environment interactions provides a more nuanced understanding of what causes Type 2 diabetes than does the nature-nurture argument.

“The nature-nurture dichotomy gets us nowhere in terms of understanding complex phenomena like the increase in obesity in recent years,” says Boardman, adding that it’s not either nature or nurture that people should be focusing on, but both.

“Nurture fundamentally affects nature, and nature fundamentally affects nurture.”

Boardman also hopes his research will provide a counterpoint to what he considers a worrying trend.

“I am most concerned about the routine practice among researchers utilizing genome-wide data and related summary scores to limit their analyses to individuals who identify with a similar socially defined racial group,” he says.

“My hope is to contribute to methods that provide summary genetic scores that belie the unnecessary need to run models separately by racial and ethnic group.”

Genes matter, says ��񱦵�’s Jason Boardman, but so does the environment.

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