Potter, Sirard Named 2024-25 CRF Family Research Scholars
The CRF chooses faculty members each year for the program based on their promising work in family-related research.
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Kinesiology faculty members Katie Potter and John Sirard are among the six 2024-25 Family Research Scholars selected by the University of Massachusetts Amherst Center for Research on Families (CRF).
The CRF chooses faculty members each year for the program based on their promising work in family-related research. The scholars will participate in an intensive year-long seminar designed to assist faculty in various stages of research, providing the opportunity for faculty and peer mentorship and national expert consultation with the goal of preparing a successful grant proposal. The current group is the twenty-first cohort in the program's history.
Katie Potter, an assistant professor of kinesiology, will examine the role of dog companions in preventing Alzheimer’s dementia. Physical inactivity is responsible for the largest proportion of preventable dementia cases in the United States. Social isolation is another major risk factor for dementia. Dog ownership supports physical activity and social connectedness, but whether older adult dog owners experience better brain and cognitive aging is unknown. This project will investigate differences in cognitive function and dementia biomarkers in older adult dog owners compared to non-dog owners, as well as factors that mediate the dog ownership-brain health relationship. This research could have significant public health impact by informing novel dementia prevention interventions that support dog ownership and dog walking for older adults.
John Sirard, an associate professor of kinesiology, was selected for a research proposal titled "Extending the FAST Study: Social Dynamics of Youth Weight Related Behaviors." The long-term goals of Sirard's research program are to develop, test, and disseminate successful intervention programs that work at multiple levels of influence to increase youth physical activity and decrease screen media use, leading to long-term improvements in physical, social, and mental health. To accomplish these long-term goals, his research embraces the Social Ecological Model as a framework to better understand the multiple levels of influence on youth physical activity and sedentary behavior. One facet of his research program is to better understand the social and physical environmental influences on youth physical activity and sedentary behavior. At the heart of the Social-Ecological Model are an individual’s behaviors and their health outcomes. Therefore, another integral facet of his research program is to better understand how to quantify physical activity and sedentary behavior in youth. His lab uses research-grade accelerometers (i.e., motion sensors) coupled with regression and machine-learning models to objectively quantify frequency, intensity, and timing of physical activity and inactivity but also rely on questionnaire data, when appropriate, to assess relevant contextual information.
His overall goal is to extend his recently completed Food, Activity, Screens, and Teens (FAST) Study. An NIH R03 application will support analysis and modeling of data from the FAST Study, completing core work that was interrupted by the COVID closure and taking advantage of the new opportunistic data collected after 2020; outside the scope of the original project. The aim of the R03 is to leverage the team's existing data to investigate the long-term impact of the pandemic closure and social distancing guidelines on social relationships, health behavior, and health outcomes for disadvantaged urban adolescents. They will also move beyond the school to incorporate neighborhood and community features related to physical activity and food access.