When thinking about how they share the outcomes of their research, most researchers would likely point to scholarly papers as the primary output. However, increasingly it is becoming a standard practice to share other digital research objects, such as data and code, to increase research transparency and reproducibility as well as enable reuse. With the NIH’s new Data Management and Sharing Policy going into effect in less than a year, even researchers who have never considered sharing their data will soon be required to do so, likely leading to an even greater wealth of data and digital research objects available for reuse. This talk will discuss the biomedical research data ecosystem, implications of the NIH’s Data Management and Sharing Policy, and efforts to understand the impact of and incentivize sharing of digital research objects.

Fancy new gadgets, wearables, mobile apps, and the internet in general all represent novel tools that might facilitate traditional clinical research, provide insights to “real-life” and “real-time” phenomena within individuals’ natural environments, and might themselves be worthy of study. However, rather than focusing on the glitz a shiny new technology might theoretically inspire, the most meaningful conclusions that can be readily extrapolated to our daily lives require sound and scientifically rigorously research questions pursued utilizing conventional research designs and statistical analyses. Our group has combined these new technologies with these traditional approaches to yield results that have become pertinent to the lay public, patients seeking care, and clinicians, including understanding how a smartwatch might detect a common arrhythmia, how screentime affects sleep, how a smartphone’s geolocation might help facilitate clinical research, how the pandemic affected overall health such as weight gain, how alcohol can immediately affect the heart, and how coffee or caffeine might (or might not) have adverse cardiovascular effects. Much of this work highlights a new Digital Research Platform called Eureka, an NIH-supported resource built for any interested investigator with the goals of leveraging existing technology to facilitate mobile-health based research of any discipline.

So many people love nature and learning about the world around them: they’re curious, concerned and they want to make a difference. The good news: all of these people of all ages can do real science, at any time, by becoming citizen scientists! Citizen scientists volunteer to collect or analyze data, moving science forward and helping researchers understand how things work — with all types of science, from astronomy to health to zoology.

Join this session to learn more about this exciting field, as well as related programs, applications, and how YOU can get started!

With nearly 17,000 library branches nationwide, public libraries serve 95% of the United States population. They have extensive population reach and the ability to serve as a partner in health promotion for communities. The goal of this presentation is to discuss strategies for librarians to partner with researchers and health professionals to support the well-being of youth and families. We will describe existing library-university partnerships and propose additional partnerships that could support communities.

Presenter: Stacey B. Stephens MSW, LCSW-C, Director of B’more for Healthy Babies and Early Learning Programming@Promise Heights

B’more for Healthy Babies Upton/Druid Heights@ Promise Heights (BHB U/DH), is a place-based program at the University of Maryland School of Social Work and Medicine, in a historically under-resourced community in West Baltimore working to prevent infant mortality, and improve maternal and child health outcomes. The program is a part of Baltimore’s B’more for Healthy Babies Initiative that collaborates with stakeholders to ensure that every baby born in Baltimore is born healthy and of a good weight and able to live in a thriving family. BHB U/DH employs African American Community Health Workers (CHWs) as community outreach and engagement specialists who develop and facilitate culturally congruent perinatal and parenting educational groups to promote maternal and family health/well-being. Building relationships and gaining the trust of expectant and parenting families, caregivers and community partners has proven to be an important component of their work as public health messengers. Feedback received from these trusted relationships has informed programming, direct service provision and the program’s annual workplan. Over the past decade, the program has worked collaboratively with expectant women, parents of children ages 0-3 and community partners to significantly decrease infant death-specifically those related to unsafe sleep practices. To date, sleep related deaths per 1,000 births decreased by 47.5% compared to the 10 years prior to the start of the intervention and the 5-year average infant mortality rate decreased by 74.6% since the beginning of the intervention. The program has also accomplished increases in breastfeeding rates on par with the Baltimore City’s rates. Community outreach and educational campaigns on safe sleep practices, breastfeeding, smoking cessation and birth spacing have contributed to this success, while simultaneously building skills of health literacy in community members. The program integrates stress management techniques into group-based activities, engages fathers, and supports parents in fostering literacy, numeracy, and socioemotional development of infants and toddlers. Additionally, the program provides microgrants to residents and financial supports for the training of community-based doulas and lactation consultants. The pandemic and the call to “socially distance” exacerbated issues of social isolation, stress and distress, and grief and loss experienced by community members. This presented a unique opportunity for the program to address the issues of poverty, food apartheid, and community violence, among an interconnected web of structural factors. Building upon the CHW’s established relationships with community members and partners and centering the identified needs of families, the program responded by creating and expanding BHB’s existing programming to support families beyond CoVID.