Lauren Parker

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health | JHSPH · Department of Health, Behavior and Society

Objective: To address notions around care arrangements for Black and Hispanic people living with dementia (PLwD), the study examined if racial and ethnic differences exist for community-dwelling PLwD. Methods: Using cross-sectional data from the 2015 National Health and Aging Trends Study, we used Pearson’s chi-square and mean comparison to examine...

Although Hispanic/Latino older adults are at disproportionate and increased risk for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, few evidence-based supportive care interventions are specifically developed for or adapted for this population. Adapting a supportive care intervention requires more than Spanish language translation; it necessitates an un...

Background: Although nonpharmacological approaches are considered first-line treatments for dementia-related behaviors, it is unclear as to their effectiveness for different racial groups. We evaluated the effects of the Tailored Activity Program (TAP) on agitated and aggressive behaviors in Black and White families. Methods: We conducted a sing...

Objectives: We examine associations between use of paid help and caregiving-related experiences (emotional, financial, and physical difficulty) of Black family and unpaid caregivers of older adults. Methods: We examine a sample of N = 572 non-Hispanic Black caregivers of community-dwelling older adults receiving help with daily activities from t...

Nearly 30 years after the 1993 National Institute of Health Revitalization Act, which required the inclusion of women and racial/ethnic minority groups into government-funded clinical trials, minority groups remain under-represented in research and disparities in health outcomes and longevity remain. These problematic trends are particularly eviden...

Background and Objectives Nearly 8.2 million of community-dwelling, older Medicare beneficiaries receive support from long-term services and supports (LTSS) with routine daily activities. Prior work demonstrates disability related disparities; however, it is unclear whether these patterns persist among LTSS recipients and across specific sets of ac...

Background and Objectives Despite adult day services (ADS) being the most racially diverse home-and-community based service (HCBS), there is a paucity of research that has examined the impact of ADS on well-being measures among Black caregivers of people living with dementia. To address this gap, this study examined the association between the use...

Over 16 million caregivers of people living with dementia require support in a range of issues, including self-care, disease education, and guidance for how to manage behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD). Non-pharmacological interventions are needed to address these areas, and online applications have been shown to be safe and e...

Objective The purpose of this study is to identify whether dementia caregiving is associated with physical difficulty among informal caregivers. Methods This cross-sectional retrospective cohort study design used data from the 2015 National Health and Aging Trends Study and the National Study of Caregiving. Binary logistic regression was used to e...

The COVID-19 pandemic forced adult day services (ADS) to close and abruptly end in-person services to clients. To understand the effect of the pandemic on ADS, a 20-item survey was used to examine services provided, staffing, finances, and plans to reopen. Data came from 22 sites participating in the Adult Day Service Plus a national randomized con...

Objectives: To examine racial differences in respite utilization among a nationally representative sample of caregivers for persons living with dementia (PLwD). A secondary aim identified factors associated with respite utilization. Methods: Using data from the 2015 National Health and Aging Trends Study and National Study of Caregiving, we conduct...

Background: Less educational training is consistently associated with incident dementia among older adults, but associations between income and financial strain with incident dementia have not been well tested in national samples. This is an important gap because, like education, financial resources are potentially modifiable by policy change and...

The success of any intervention for caregivers of persons with dementia is dependent on the caregiver’s readiness to enact the strategies. This presentation explores the reliability of the new 17-item Caregiver Readiness Scale (CRS) and also to examine the differences by race in readiness. Participants were caregivers in the Dementia Behavior Study...

Prior work has demonstrated that there are race and gender disparities in the prevalence of need for assistance with tasks such as self-care, mobility, and household activities. Research has historically shown that older black Americans and women experience greater prevalence of physical functioning declines. It is unclear whether these differences...

Introduction Literature posits that discrimination can be a barrier to racial and ethnic minorities’ healthcare use. This study examines the relationship between perceived discrimination in the form of racial microaggressions and delayed prenatal care in African American women. It also investigates whether this relationship is modified by women's s...

Background/objective: Adult day services (ADSs) that provide community-based supervised support for persons with dementia (PWD) may also function as a respite for familial caregivers to attend to self-care needs. Guided by a revised version of the Andersen Healthcare Utilization Model, the objective of this study was to identify the association be...

Little is known about the impact of daily experiences of interpersonal discrimination on cognition among adults across the lifecourse. The Midlife in the United States-II Study (n = 3,470) data was used to examine associations between discrimination and executive functioning (EF) and whether associations differ by age. A telephone-based neurocognit...

Midlife is an important period in the lifecourse trajectory and heath outcomes during this period can have long-term implications into late adulthood. Hence, it is important that modifiable factors relating to these health outcomes in midlife are identified. Psychosocial stressors influence physical and mental health outcomes; these experiences may...

There is a paucity of research on health promoting behaviors and the use of adult day services (ADS) among dementia family caregivers. Using baseline data from the Care of Persons with Dementia in their Environment (COPE) study, the aim of this study was to examine the association between the use of ADS and scheduled health appointments among 223 d...

A relationship between types of pain (e.g. back pain) and interpersonal discrimination experienced by African Americans (AA) is known. It is unknown if this relationship extends to generalized pain. We examined the relationship between pain and discrimination in participants with complete data on relevant measures from the Midlife in the United Sta...

BACKGROUND. This study examines the relationship between self-reported instances of major discrimination and inflammation among older adults, and explores whether this relationship varies in accordance with race/ethnicity. We hypothesized that self-reported instances of major discrimination would be associated with a higher likelihood of high-risk...

Gait speed is an important indicator of mobility and quality of life in older adults. Pain is related to gait speed; however, it is unknown if this relationship varies by race in a population based national sample. The aim of this study was to examine if the association between slow gait speed and pain differed between 7,025 older African Americans...

p> Objectives: The objectives of our study were to determine the prevalence of major depressive symptoms and identify factors that are associated with major depressive symptoms among Black men with prostate cancer (PCa). Design: This study consisted of 415 Black men aged 40-81 years that entered the North Carolina Central Cancer Registry during t...

The objective of this study was to examine the association between discrimination and obesity among a U.S. nationally representative sample of African-American men. Data from the 2001–2003 National Survey of American Life (NSAL) were used to collect measures of everyday and major discrimination, and body mass index (BMI) taken from self-reports. Po...

When older African Americans experience pain they often have higher rates of functional limitations and disabilities than older non-Hispanic Whites. There has been little work done on the relationship between pain and walking speed and if it varies by race. Slow walking speed is related to poorer quality of life and less independence in older adult...

Unmet need for activities of daily living (ADL) among disabled older adults can lead to adverse consequences resulting in worsening health outcomes. Previous studies have identified race and gender as risk factors for unmet ADL need, however few studies have examined this among older men. Using baseline data from the National Health and Aging Trend...

Criminal justice contact-defined as lifetime arrest, parole, or incarceration, seems to exacerbate chronic conditions, and those who are most likely to have had contact with the criminal justice system, such as Black adults, often already have pre-existing disproportionately high rates of stress and chronic conditions due to the social determinants...

Background: Medical mistrust is thought to affect health care-based decisions and has been linked to poor health outcomes. The effects of medical mistrust among men with prostate cancer are unknown. Thus, the goal of the current study is to examine the association between medical mistrust and quality of life (QOL) among black and white men with pr...

Background: Cigarette smoking poses a major public health problem that disproportionately affects Blacks and men. Religious attendance has been shown to be positively associated with health promotion and disease prevention among the Black population. In light of this evidence, this study examined if a similar relationship could be found for religi...

Methods: Data from the Indiana Black Men's Health Study, a community-based sample of adult Black men, was used to conduct multivariate logistic regression to examine the relationship between the physical and emotional effects of discrimination and smoking, net of healthcare and workplace discrimination, age, education, household income, and being...

The weathering hypothesis, an explanation for race disparities in the USA, asserts that the health of African Americans begin to deteriorate prematurely compared to whites as a consequence of long-term exposure to social and environmental risk factors. Using data from 2000–2009 National Health Interview Surveys (NHIS), we sought to describe differe...

Black men may use marijuana as an externalizing coping mechanism to handle the chronic stress of discrimination. The aim of the study was to examine the relationship between everyday and major discrimination and marijuana use among a national sample of Black men. Using the National Survey of American Life, logistic regression analyses was used to d...

Black men are less likely to seek routine health care examinations or preventative care compared with their racial/ethnic and gender counterparts. Because of Black men's limited engagement with the health system, Black men's preference to receive health information is unclear. Guided by a revised version of the Andersen Healthcare Utilization Model...

Background: Findings from previous research has demonstrated a positive relationship between interpersonal discrimination and cigarette smoking. Cigarette smoking is proposed to be an externalizing coping mechanism used to alleviate discrimination. At the national level, it is unclear if discrimination is associated with cigarette smoking among Af...

Using data from the Indiana Black Men's Health Study (N = 455), a community-based sample of adult Black men, the primary aim of this study was to explore factors of health care discrimination, and to examine if such reports differed by age and the frequency of race thoughts. Approximately one in four men reported experiencing discrimination in the...

Objective: This study aims to describe correlates of past year dental health visits among Black Men of Indiana. Methods: A 2011 health needs assessment survey was conducted by the Indiana Minority Health Coalition with a convenience sample of 1,444 Black men from 12 Indiana counties and from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds. Descriptive...

Using the National Survey of American Life, a nationally representative household survey of non-institutionalized US Blacks, our study examined whether the endorsement of racial/ ethnic stereotypes was associated with excess body fat composition among African Americans (n = 3,265) and Black Caribbeans (n = 1,332) living in the United States. We use...