AIM FUNDED RESEARCH

AIM 2022 Implementation & Equity Grantee: Briana Last, PhD

2022 – AIM Implementation & Equity Grant to Dr. Briana Last, from University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Last’s implementation science project is a community-based, participatory research study that seeks to support clinicians in implementing evidence-based practices. Using mixed methods, she plans to engage youth-serving clinicians in New York State’s public mental health clinics to examine structural and pragmatic barriers to implementing evidence-based practices. Informed by this contextual inquiry, she plans to use a human-centered design approach to develop a session planning tool that will facilitate clinicians’ use of evidence-based practices. Finally, she will use insights from behavioral science to design financial incentives to support clinicians’ use of the session planning tool, enabling clinicians to fully optimize the tool’s benefits. $10,000

AIM 2022 Clinical Science Fellow Grantee: Karolin Krause

2022 – AIM Clinical Science Fellow Grant to Dr. Karolin Krause, from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto.

As an AIM Clinical Science Fellow, Dr. Krause will work to addresses urgent knowledge gaps regarding the content validity and interpretability of impairment scales in youth mental health. Her research focuses on strengthening outcome measurement in youth mental health, with a focus on consistency, youth-centeredness, and the assessment of functional impairment. $50,000

AIM 2022 Clinical Science Fellow Grantee: Kunmi Sobowale, M.D. – Mental Illness Prevention/ Early Intervention

2022 – AIM Clinical Science Fellow Grant to Dr. Kunmi Sobowale, from University of California, Los Angeles.

As an AIM Clinical Science Fellow, Dr. Sobowale’s study will use mobile sensing devices (audio recorders, Bluetooth sensors, and a wearable wristband) to assess how postpartum depression affects the mother-child interaction and child development. He aims to elucidate specific modifiable mechanisms by which postpartum depression affects the mother-child interaction, and in turn, how this interaction affects child socioemotional development in the first year of life. $50,000

allcove x AIM Ideas Lab Collaboration Fund

2021 – allcove and AIM Youth Mental Health Collaboration – For a Preliminary Youth-led Needs Assessment in the Salinas Valley

allcove is developing an innovative network of integrated youth mental health centers designed with, by, and for youth that reduce stigma, embrace mental wellness, increase community connection, and provide access to culturally responsive services. One of the locations under consideration for an allcove center is the Salinas Valley of Monterey County.  AIM Youth Mental Health will provide $10,000 in grant funding to support allcove staff with specific focus on the goal of collecting data that can be used by both allcove and the AIM Ideas Lab.

AIM 2021 Clinical Science Fellow Grantee: Benjamin Johnson, M.S. – Suicide Prediction and Prevention in College-Aged Youth

2021 – AIM Clinical Science Fellow Grant to Benjamin Johnson, from Pennsylvania State.

Dr. Johnson’s research combines two aims: 1) apply machine learning to ecological momentary assessment (EMA) data to predict the emergence of self-harm urges and suicidality among young adults; 2) employ a mobile intervention to reduce the likelihood of such behaviors. $50,000

AIM 2021 Clinical Science Fellow Grantee: Hannah Rose Lawrence, PhD – Smartphone Mindfulness Intervention for Anxiety and Depression

2021 – AIM Clinical Science Fellow Grant to postdoctoral research associate, Dr. Hannah Lawrence, from the Treatment and Etiology of Depression in Youth Laboratory at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Lawrence research will test whether a smartphone-delivered mindfulness intervention reduces anxiety and depressive symptoms in adolescents by helping them disengage from repetitive negative thought (RNT). $50,000

AIM 2020 Clinical Science Fellow Grantee: Alexandra Werntz, PhD

2020 – AIM Clinical Science Fellow Grant to postdoctoral research associate, Alexandra Werntz, from the University of Virginia.

Dr. Werntz will develop and evaluate a free, easy-to-access technology-delivered intervention (TDI) for youth anxiety used within the context of formal mentoring programs. $50,000

AIM Funds Eating Disorder Research. “The Ginger Doyel Honorary AIM Grant” – Walter H. Kaye, MD of UCSD (top), and James Lock, MD, Ph.D of Stanford University (bottom): Taking Eating Disorder Treatments Virtual

2020 – Two coordinated telehealth family intervention eating disorder studies at UCSD and Stanford

The study will include two coordinated projects focused on the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary clinical utility of telehealth to deliver family interventions for eating disorders in youth. The UCSD project will focus on multi-family support for patients in treatment. $70,000. The Stanford University project will focus on the online self-help family interventions for patients/families awaiting treatment. $50,000. Both projects will have common outcome measures to assess feasibility, acceptability and clinical change.

AIM Funds Research on Children at High Risk for Developing Serious Mental Illness

Seed funding for a study of innovative treatment that combines computerized brain training exercises resembling popular video games and intensive “talk therapy.” The research is being done by Dr. Barbara Cornblatt, a Professor of Psychiatry and Molecular Medicine and the Director of the Recognition and Prevention (RAP) Program at Hofstra University’s Northwell School of Medicine. $60,000

AIM Funds Research on Frequent Aggressive, Disruptive Behavior in Children

$65,580 Second-Year Science Fellowship award for research into finding effective responses for children with severe irritability and frequent aggressive, disruptive behavior.

The work is being done by Dr. Spencer Evans, a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University.

AIM Funds Emory University Research on Eating in the Absence of Hunger Among Youth

$50,417 Clinical Science Fellowship award to support research on eating in the absence of hunger and obesity risk among African-American and Latinx youth.

The work is being done by Dr. Joya Hampton-Anderson, a clinical post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Psychology at Emory University. A key element in this research is the role that stress, anxiety, and parental influences play in determining children’s eating behaviors.

AIM Funds UCSF Research on Attention Difficulties with Monterey County Youth at Chartwell School

$45,600 AIM grant. Dr. Adam Gazzaley, an AIM Scientific Advisory Board member and founder of UCSF’s Neuroscape, will conduct a pilot study of a novel, adaptive attention training software, Engage, in adolescents who have difficulties with attention.

AIM Sullivan Family Rising Star Award – Kate Fitzgerald, MD: Early Intervention in Clinically Anxious Preschoolers

$250,000 grant for 3 years at University of Michigan. Anxiety disorders start early in life, affecting one in five children, and often set the stage for later depression, substance abuse, and even suicide. Dr. Kate D. Fitzgerald’s AIM Sullivan Family Rising Star Award is funding research to prevent childhood anxiety from worsening by increasing brain capacity for controlling fear.

AIM Rising Star Award – Katie McLaughlin, PhD: Understanding How Stress Causes Anxiety and Depression in Youth

$250,000 grant for 3 years at University of Washington. Dr. McLaughlin used brain imaging and smartphone-enabled technologies to investigate the biology of how stress can lead to anxiety and depression in youth.

AIM disburses $180,000 to UCLA’s Center for Cognitive Neuroscience – Semel Institute

AIM disbursed $180,000 to UCLA’s Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, which studies the brain and neuropsychiatric disorders in children and adults using advanced brain imaging, specifically functional and structural MRI.