Michelle Livings, Jeremiah Williams, and Betty Lai successfully published an article in the Academy on Violence & Abuse Research Reviews. Their article,  “Wenchuan earthquake aftermath: Trajectories of posttraumatic stress symptoms among adolescent survivors,” may be found in volume XI.

The Lai Lab recently received a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) award by the National Science Foundation! We are very excited for this opportunity to include undergraduates in our research lab.

The Association of Schools & Programs of Public Health (ASPPH) recognized Dr. Lai and Dr. Esnard’s work on schools and disasters in the article “Georgia State: Schools Ideal Site for Kids’ Postdisaster Mental Health Screening.” The article discussed their recent publication in Current Psychiatry Reports. The full ASPPH article can be found here!

Congratulations to Dr. Betty Lai on her most recent publication of “Psychological Distress Mediates the Effect of Alexithymia on 2-Year Change in HIV Viral Load” in the International Journal of Behavioral Medicine! The full text can now be viewed here.

Congratulations to our senior Graduate Research Assistant Rayleen Lewis for successfully defending her thesis today! Her thesis is entitled “Exploratory factor analysis of the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children: A Comparison of two factor extraction methods.” Rayleen evaluated the construct validity of the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children using exploratory factor analysis, and demonstrated differences in factor solutions extracted using exploratory factor analysis and principal components analysis.

Congratulations to Principal Investigators Dr. Betty Lai and Dr. Ann-Margaret Esnard and their colleagues on publishing their article “Schools and disasters: Safety and mental health assessment and interventions for children” in Current Psychiatry Reports. The full-text can now be viewed here!

Principal Investigator Dr. Betty Lai recently spoke to WSB-TV, Channel 2 Atlanta, about the Disaster-SMART project and its significance for understanding not only academic recovery from Hurricane Ike, but also future disasters.

Watch the full clip of Dr. Lai discussing the project on WSB-TV here!

Congratulations to Principal Investigators Dr. Betty Lai and Dr. Ann-Margaret Esnard and their colleagues on their recent acceptance of an article to Current Psychiatry Reports! The article, titled “Schools and Disasters: Safety and Mental Health Assessment and Interventions for Children” is currently in press.

Georgia State University has issued a press release highlighting the awarding of the National Science Foundation grant funding the Disaster-SMART project.

Congratulations to Disaster-SMART project team member Melissa Cowart, whose abstract has been accepted for presentation at the 3rd Annual CDC Statistics Day! On September 23, 2016, Melissa will present her poster, titled “Leveraging Large-Scale Secondary Data to Study School Recovery after Disasters,” to an audience of data analysts, statisticians, and researchers from across CDC.

CDC/ATSDR Statistics Day is an annual event hosted in Atlanta, Georgia, by the  Statistical Advisory Group (SAG) within CDC. The theme of this year’s event is “Big Data, Big Computation, or Both?”