News on S+A members 

Survivors + Allies (S+A) members, Kalani Phillips and Laura Knittig, are presenting at the American Public Health Association (APHA) Annual Meeting & Expo this October 27-30, 2024. If you’re attending APHA this year, please go support Kalani and Laura at their presentations! You can also follow updates on their work on Kalani and Laura’s LinkedIn profiles, as well as the S+A Instagram and website!

Kalani Philips: Presenting on food insecurity and links to teen dating violence

Kalani Phillips, MPH, CPH (she/they) is a 4th year PhD student at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) studying Public Health in the Department of Health, Society, and Behavior. She completed both her B.A. in Public Health Policy and Master’s in Public Health (MPH) at UCI, and has been a member of S+A since 2020. She is currently investigating structural barriers that young people face when accessing abortion, as well as the reasons individuals use telehealth abortions rather than obtaining an abortion in-person. She is also researching policies and resources for survivors of sexual violence and assault on UC campuses, and conducting a nutrition environmental assessment of food pantries in Orange County, California. 

In her APHA abstract, Kalani will be presenting on her findings that food insecurity may be a significant risk factor for teen dating violence. Kalani also found important disparities in food insecurity, such that older students, non-heterosexual students, and students of color had the highest prevalence of food insecurity. She also found that students previously exposed to violence in the home had a higher prevalence of food insecurity, and that teen dating violence was more prevalent among Middle Eastern or North African, Multiracial, and White subgroups of racial and ethnic categories for all types of teen dating violence (physical, verbal, and sexual).

Laura Knittig: Presenting on changes in women’s participation in clinical trials following a new government initiative

Laura Knittig, BS (they/she) is a 4th year medical student at Sam Houston State University College of Osteopathic Medicine studying to become an internal medicine physician. They completed her B.S. in Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics with a minor in Anthropology at UCLA, and has been a member of S+A since 2020. She is currently investigating the impact of women’s health initiatives on clinical trials and research in the medical field. They are also part of the S+A team analyzing responses about the resources that survivors used after their sexual assault/harassment incident. She is passionate about diversity, equity, and inclusivity and plans to continue to advocate for women as well as people of color inclusivity in clinical trials and medical research. 

In her APHA abstract, Laura will present their findings showing that, following a new government initiative to increase women’s participation in clinical trials, there was a 5% increase in women participants in clinical trials for cardiovascular research. Her abstract was also selected as the 2024 Women’s Caucus Highest Scoring Student Abstract!!!

About APHA 2024: 

This year’s APHA Annual Meeting & Expo theme is “Rebuilding Trust in Public Health and Science”, and is focused on identifying prevention and health promotion strategies that support the health and wellbeing of all individuals. Given the current polarizing political landscape, this year’s meeting is looking to rebuild trust in public health and science, in order to increase funding and policymaking that can support health equity. You can view this year’s online program here. 

Abstracts of Presentations:

Both Kalani and Laura conducted research and their abstracts were each accepted for presentation at APHA 2024. Kalani’s work is focused on family violence prevention and her abstract is below. She will be presenting a poster for the Family Violence Prevention Caucus Poster Session #2 on Tuesday, October 29, 2024 at 12:30pm - 1:30pm at the Minneapolis Convention Center - Exhibit Hall BCD. 

Associations between teen dating violence & food insecurity: Findings from the 2022 Minnesota student survey 

By: Kalani Phillips, MPH, CPH; Matt McFalls, MPH, PhD; Marizen Ramirez, MPH, PhD

Background: Food insecurity is linked to intimate partner violence among adults, but the relationship between food insecurity and teen dating violence (TDV) has yet to be explored. Little is known about the impacts of food insecurity outside of the home and its relationship to TDV.

Methods: Using cross-sectional data from the 2022 Minnesota Student Survey (n=61,068), I assessed associations between food insecurity and TDV types (physical, verbal, sexual), measured the prevalence of TDV, and estimated the odds of TDV among 1,844 food insecure youth in grades 9 and 11 at public schools in Minnesota, USA with chi-square tests and multivariate logistic regression.

Results: Older students, non-heterosexual students, and students of color had the highest prevalence of food insecurity. Students ever exposed to violence reported higher rates of food insecurity compared to students never exposed. TDV prevalence was highest among Middle Eastern or North African, Multiracial, and White subgroups for all TDV types. After adjusting for sexual orientation and biological sex, food insecure students had 4.15 (95% CI: 3.63, 4.77) higher odds of experiencing physical TDV, 3.17 (95% CI: 2.83, 3.54) higher odds of experiencing verbal TDV, and 3.29 (95% CI: 2.90, 3.74) higher odds of experiencing sexual TDV.

Conclusion: Findings emphasize that TDV is common among food insecure youth and suggest that food insecurity may be a significant risk factor for TDV, highlighting the importance of addressing barriers to basic needs resources among teens and their families.

Laura’s work is focused on women’s health and her abstract is below. She will be presenting a poster of her research for the Amplifying the Voices of Women’s Health Disparities Session as part of the Women’s Caucus on Monday, October 28, 2024 at 12:30pm - 1:30pm at the Minneapolis Convention Center - Exhibit Hall BCD.

The transformative impact of women’s health initiatives on cardiovascular clinical trials

By: Laura Knittig, BS; Mahaa Siddiqui, BA; Patrick Davis, PhD

Women are underrepresented in clinical research. In 2016, the NIH inclusion policy was amended for studies to evaluate how biological variables factored into research design. A 2020 study called Women’s Participation in Cardiovascular (CVD) Trials from 2010 to 2017 found that women encompassed only 38.2% of participants among 740 CVD studies.

The goal of this study is to evaluate the changes in the percentage of women in cardiovascular clinical trials since 2016 after the NIH amendment and comparing them to the 2020 study.

Using clinicaltrials.gov, we searched “Cardiovascular Diseases” as the condition. Settings and exclusion criteria mirrored the CVD study published in 2020. Changes were made to show the differences after the 2016 NIH amendment by adding “United States” as the country, start date from 01/01/2016 to 12/31/2023, and primary completion from 01/01/2018 to 12/31/2023.

There were 720 studies found with the search criteria in which 396 qualified. The total female participant percentage of these studies was calculated to be 43.6%. The condition with the highest percentage of female participants was pulmonary hypertension (69.7%) and the lowest was myocardial infarction/ischemia (28.4%).

Our data shows that total female participants in clinical trials overall increased from 38.2% to 43.6% after the NIH amendment/previous CVD study. We can conclude that there has been success in women’s health research initiatives, but improvement can be made in research related to cardiovascular disease in women.