Congratulations to Marlene Schwartz who received a grant from the USDA, “Developing and Implementing a Farm-to-School Policy and Practice Assessment.” The purpose of this project is to develop an assessment of farm to school procurement, education, and community engagement practices in school districts throughout the state. This information will be used by UConn Extension to provide tailored professional development to schools to support stronger relationships between schools and local farmers.

Congratulations to Candi Nwakasi, who was awarded a grant from the Office of Global Affairs, “Mental health support seeking among Nigerians with a history of cancer and HIV!

UConn Today recently interviewed Marlene Schwartz for their new video about the Rudd Center’s “Cultural Foods Guide”. https://today.uconn.edu/2024/10/tackling-food-insecurity-cultural-food-guide/

Caroline Mavridis is an Assistant Research Professor of HDFS and Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Culture, Health, and Human Development (CHHD). Her work includes research, evaluations of social intervention programs in Connecticut, supervising graduate and undergraduate research assistants in the CHHD, and training front-line human service workers. Caroline’s research interests are twofold: 1) the role of culture in parenting ideas and practices, and its implications for children’s developmental outcomes; and 2) experiences of stress, self-care, and well-being among caregivers.

Caroline became interested in stress and self-care as a doctoral student working with interview data from expectant and new mothers in the International Baby Study (funded by NIH) with advisors Sara Harkness and Charles Super, developing a mixed-methods analysis that formed the basis of her dissertation. Around the same time, as part of the CHHD, Caroline became involved in collaboration with the Connecticut Office of Early Childhood through evaluation research and training for direct service staff, such as home visitors, who serve families with complex needs. Caroline found that these family service staff were an understudied caregiving population, with their own sets of daily contexts and ideas that shaped their self-care, well-being, and job satisfaction. This experience led her to carry out an analysis of staff reflections about their stress and self-care (Mavridis, Super, Harkness, & Liu, 2019), and, more recently, to design and conduct a study of stress and coping among supervisors of home visiting programs as they supported staff through the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic (Mavridis, Gans, & Harkness, 2024, submitted for publication).

The findings of these studies point to the need for more formal support tailored to the unique emotional challenges of frontline family service staff and the people who supervise and support them, and the promise of empowerment-based training for helping these staff to enhance their mindfulness and self-care, set healthier work/family boundaries, and build up their support systems. Caroline is involved at all stages of other CHHD research projects. She has presented at national and international conferences, such as ISSBD, and for the local service provider community through webinars and workshops for the Office of Early Childhood. She continues a long record of work on behalf of the National Family Development Credential ™ (FDC) Program, having co-facilitated training for frontline staff and leaders from Connecticut and nationwide.

Caroline earned her BA in Anthropology at Connecticut College and completed her PhD and postdoctoral training in UConn’s Department of HDFS at the CHHD. When not in research mode, Caroline enjoys time with loved ones, science fiction, and early morning workouts.

Mavridis, C. J., Harkness, S., Super, C. M. & Liu, J. L. (2019). Family workers, stress, and the limits of self-care. Children and Youth Services Review, 103, 236-246.

Mavridis, C., Gans, K. M., & Harkness, S. (2024, submitted for publication). Supervising home visitors at a distance: Challenges and adaptations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Professor Keith Bellizzi was featured in UConn Today in an article about his work on a new study of communication and intimacy among couples facing metastatic breast cancer: https://today.uconn.edu/2024/10/study-investigates-communication-intimacy-among-couples-facing-metastatic-breast-cancer/

Beth was promoted to Professor effective August, 2024!

Beth Russell has spent 20 years studying psychological distress and how people manage it. Her studies examine how individuals and families respond to stress across a range of typical life events (like the transition to parenthood) and atypical experiences (caregiving in the context of chronic health conditions). Her most recent work examines the multi-level influences that shape people’s responses to stress, spanning individual, social, and place-based factors over time. She is currently on several teams funded by both internal and external awards to develop and test interventions that target the regulation of distress to improve psychosocial outcomes.

Families are a primary source of support during times of stress. Much of the modeling close loved ones provide about how to manage challenges is shaped by attitudes about stress and the coping behaviors that might (or might not) be useful in a given situation. The range of supports to cope with stress extend far beyond family influences to include informal supports like friends/peers, and formal supports including help-seeking through treatment providers. Beth’s work across different stressful situations demonstrates that there are subgroup patterns in help-seeking which ultimately impact coping strategies. For example, young men tend to be strikingly absent from clinical trials and community-based service provision, indicating meaningful gaps in our understanding of help-seeking in times of stress. Describing the unique distress and resilience trajectories among subgroups at heightened risk for mental health struggles is an important step in tailoring accessible and equitable interventions for those with the greatest needs. Beth and her HDFS colleague Kari Adamsons won the National Council on Family Relations 2024 Men in Families Focus Group Best Research Paper Award for their coauthored work “Longitudinal transmission of risk behaviors between mothers, fathers, and adolescents” published in the Journal of Family Psychology.

Beth became the Director of the Center for Applied Research in Human Development (CARHD) in 2018, where she has over a decade of experience directing evaluations of human service programs that provide supports to disadvantaged communities, helping programs identify what works best for whom within their client populations. Beth also holds two editorial board member seats for the journals New Directions for Evaluation and Child Psychiatry and Human Development.

Outside of work, Beth spends time with her family, in her gardens and art studio, and connecting with friends over good food. Three generations of her family love coming together from around the country to travel to the best beaches, jungles, waterfalls, and caves every summer – next up in 2025: SCUBA diving a Pacific Island volcano crater!