Antonio Morgan-Lopez, RTI
“Modeling Group Membership Turnover in "Ecologically-Valid"
Alcoholism Treatment Interventions: The Case for Latent Class Pattern
Mixture Modeling”  

September 19
Dr. Priscilla Wald, Duke University
“The Outbreak Narrative: Disease Emergence and the Obscured
Geography of Poverty”

October 3
No colloquia

October 17
Seth M. Noar, University of Kentucky
“Does Tailoring Matter? Meta-analytic Review of Tailored Print Health
Behavior Change Interventions”

October 31
Michael Emch, UNC, Dept. of Geography
"Spatial, Environmental, and Social Network Analysis in Vaccine Trials"

November 14
Jane Brown, UNC, School of Journalism and Mass Communication
“The Mass Media and Adolescents' Sexual Health”

Additional Information

September 5
Antonio Morgan-Lopez [PDF flyer]     (Intro by Susan Ennett)
RTI
amorganlopez@rti.org
"Modeling Group Membership Turnover in 'Ecologically-Valid' Alcoholism
Treatment Interventions: The Case for Latent Class Pattern Mixture
Modeling"

Abstract: In community-based alcoholism and drug abuse treatment programs,
the majority of interventions are delivered in a group therapy context, usually with
open (or "rolling") enrollment. In turn, treatment providers and funding agencies
have called for more research on group therapy interventions in an effort to make
the emerging empirical literature on the treatment of alcoholism and substance
abuse more ecologically valid. Unfortunately, the complexity of data structures
derived from therapy groups (due to member interdependence and turnover in
group membership over time) and the present lack of statistically valid approaches
to analyzing data from rolling treatment groups have contributed to a significant
stifling effect on group therapy research.

As the problem of handling turnover in group membership went unsolved in the
methodological literature, and as negative critiques of study designs with "natural"
turnover in membership persisted in grant reviews, investigators (understandably)
avoided "community-friendly" and ecologically-valid designs (i.e., groups with
session-to-session turnover) for behavioral treatment trials. However, this created
a significant disconnect between the federal (i.e., NIDA, NIAAA) treatment
research portfolio and how treatment is done in community settings. In this
presentation, we give an overview of a small, but emerging program of research
on models to defensibly account for turnover in group membership in drug and
alcoholism treatment trials. We propose latent class pattern mixture modeling
(LCPMM) as a statistically and conceptually defensible approach for modeling
treatment data from rolling groups and provide a gentle introduction to the
technique.

September 19
Dr. Priscilla Wald  [PDF flyer]     (Intro by Noel Brewer) 
Professor, English and Women’s Studies
Duke University
pwald@duke.edu
“The Outbreak Narrative: Disease Emergence and the Obscured
Geography of Poverty”

Abstract: Accounts of newly surfacing diseases appeared in scientific publications
and the mainstream media in the West with increasing frequency following the
introduction of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in the mid-1980s.  They
put the vocabulary of disease outbreaks into circulation, and they introduced the
concept of “emerging infections.”  While these accounts were neither monolithic,
nor static, their repetition of particular phrases, images and story lines produced a
formula that was amplified by the extended treatment of these themes in the
popular novels and films that proliferated in the mid-1990s. Collectively, they
drew out what was implicit in all of the accounts: a fascination not just with the
novelty and danger of the microbes, but also with the changing social formations
of a shrinking world.

The outbreak narrative--in its scientific, journalistic, and fictional incarnations--
follows a formulaic plot that begins with the identification of an emerging infection,
includes discussion of the global networks throughout which it travels, and
chronicles the epidemiological work that ends with its containment.  As the
epidemiologists trace the routes of the microbes, they catalogue the figures and
spaces of global modernity. Microbes, figures, and spaces blend together as they
animate the landscape and motivate the plot of the outbreak narrative: a
contradictory but compelling story of the perils of human interdependence and
the triumph of human connection and cooperation, scientific authority and the
evolutionary advantages of the microbe, ecological balance and impending
disaster.  These stories have consequences.  As they disseminate information,
they affect survival rates and contagion routes. They promote or mitigate the
stigmatizing of individuals, groups, populations, locales (regional and global),
behaviors and lifestyles, and they change economies.

They also influence how both scientists and the lay public understand the nature
and consequences of infection, how we imagine the threat and why we react so
fearfully to some disease outbreaks and not others at least as dangerous and
pressing, as well as which problems merit our attention and resources. 

October 17
Seth M. Noar [PDF flyer]      (Intro by Noel Brewer)
Department of Communication
University of Kentucky
noar@uky.edu
"Does Tailoring Matter? Meta-analytic Review of Tailored Print Health
Behavior Change Interventions"

October 31
Michael Emch  [PDF flyer]      (Intro by ?? maybe Jo Anne Earp)
Associate Professor
UNC, Dept. of Geography
emch@email.unc.edu
"Spatial, Environmental, and Social Network Analysis in Vaccine Trials"

November 14
Jane Brown  [PDF flyer]     (Intro by Noel Brewer)
UNC, School of Journalism and Mass Communication
jane_brown@unc.edu
“The Mass Media and Adolescents' Sexual Health”