CChronic illnesses such as cancer and heart disease can be difficult to manage under the best of circumstances.
Stress, anxiety and depression can easily exacerbate suffering and impede healing.
Amanda J. Shallcross, DNM, MPH, assistant professor of population health, is collaborating with Olugbenga G. Ogedegbe, MD, MPH, director of the Center for Health Behavior Change, to find that interventions such as mindfulness-based cognitive therapy can lead to breakthroughs. I’m looking into it to see if it helps. negative cycle.
Such interventions use meditation and other cognitive techniques to teach patients how to become more aware of and accept difficult emotions like sadness or fear. By helping people pay closer attention to their bodily sensations, thoughts and feelings rather than avoiding them, these “awareness skills” could help reduce the stress and anxiety that can exacerbate patients’ physical illnesses, according to Dr. Shallcross.
As a student at the National College of Naturopathic Medicine in Portland, Oregon, Dr. Shallcross witnessed how basic mindfulness techniques improved the mental and physical health of his patients. Since then, peer-reviewed studies have strengthened evidence of the approach’s effectiveness for conditions such as depression and chronic pain. After earning his PhD in Naturopathic Medicine, Dr. Shallcross began measuring physiological indicators of stress and using mindfulness techniques to address mood disorders as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Denver.
“After I finished my postdoc, I wanted to be in an environment where I could ask those same questions about patients with chronic illnesses, not just mood issues,” she says.
She saw the perfect opportunity to launch it under the guidance of Dr. Ogedegbe, a leading expert in community-based health interventions.
Given Dr. Shallcross’s unconventional background in naturopathic medicine, Dr. Ogedebe was impressed by her eagerness to develop new research skills and explore whether her strategies for supporting mental health could also be applied to patients with physical illnesses. “She was curious, she was bold, and she was very ambitious in what she was proposing,” Dr. Ogedebe says. He sensed her passion for her work, calling it a “fire in the belly,” and concluded that investing in the effort to hone her skills was worth the risk. “Risk-taking and investing in people go hand in hand,” he says.
So far, Shallcross says he has benefited greatly from his growth as an independent researcher. Since arriving as a postdoctoral researcher in 2013, Shallcross has published 16 peer-reviewed papers, seven of which he is the first author on. With Ogedebe’s support, Shallcross received a prestigious five-year Research Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health. In 2015, he was promoted to assistant professor, developed multiple research areas, and initiated clinical trials to test the effectiveness of his methods.
When Dr. Shallcross first arrived at NYU Langone, Dr. Ogedegbe suggested that she work closely with Dr. Tanya M. Spruill, associate professor of population health medicine in the Center for Health Behavior Change. Dr. Ogedegbe and Dr. Spruill began a collaboration with Orin Debinsky, MD, professor of neurology, neurosurgery, and psychiatry and director of the Comprehensive Epilepsy Center at New York University Langone. For patients with epilepsy, Dr. Ogedegbe says, They have psychosocial stress, problems taking their medications, and problems keeping clinic appointments. ”
The researchers began testing whether the behavioral intervention that Dr. Ogedebe and his colleagues had shown to be effective for people with high blood pressure would be equally effective for people with epilepsy.
Dr. Shallcross joined the team, adding her expertise in mindfulness interventions to the toolkit of techniques. The collaborative project was a success, with Dr. Spruill as principal investigator, and a recent grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention enabled the collaborators to translate the mindfulness-based treatment manual into Spanish to increase access.
As a faculty member at the Center for Health Behavior Change, Dr. Shallcross has developed a unique partnership as the go-to expert for clinicians interested in applying mindfulness-based interventions to their patient populations. “The conversation will revolve around the impact of psychological stress as some risk factor for adverse health outcomes in patient populations and her desire to explore ways to target and alleviate distress through that mechanism.” she says.
As part of one of his projects, Dr. Shallcross is distilling the core elements of an in-person mindfulness therapy protocol into a telephone-delivered version to improve access for patients with chronic conditions such as hypertension and depression. Masu.
In another project, she is investigating the effectiveness of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for breast cancer patients who have recently completed treatment, who are often struggling with pain, fatigue and other side effects as well as worries and anxiety that their cancer will come back.
Ultimately, Dr. Shallcross hopes to establish a training center to help clinicians like herself pursue careers in academic research. Dr. Ogedegbe shared her own checkered career trajectory and helped us understand the skills needed to run the center while conducting her innovative research. “There are many different paths her research career could take,” she says. “But I think learning leadership skills will be very helpful no matter where you go.”
Meaning of mentorship
According to Ogedegbe, the art of collaboration is best taught by example. “If you don’t collaborate, your mentor won’t collaborate,” Ogedegbe says. After he forges partnerships with other research groups, his mentors are often the bridge that maintains and develops those relationships. Protégé Shallcross credits his mentor for facilitating such collaborations by identifying connections between the center’s researchers and other scientists both within and outside the institution. “He’s a master matchmaker in the sciences,” Shallcross says.
