This study examines the integration of Care ethics as a distinct factor into the Ethical Perspectives Scale (EPS; Diegel et al., 2024). In contrast to typical ethical theories centering on consequentialist, deontological, and virtue ethics reasoning, Care ethics prioritizes relational and situationally appropriate moral judgment. In the conduct of four experimental studies, we made Care an independent factor by utilizing Exploratory and Confirmatory Factor Analyses, assessed its predictive validity regarding moral dilemmas, tested its temporal stability, and generalized the findings to a population outside of the student group.

Results confirmed that Care ethics is conceptually and statistically distinct from Virtue ethics, predicting moral judgments in relational and compassion-based contexts. Care ethics correlated with political ideology, religiosity, and subjective well-being, further differentiating it from other ethical dimensions. However, ethical decision-making remained highly context-dependent, with different perspectives becoming salient across dilemma types.

The findings of this research promote the integration of Care ethics into models of moral decision-making, thus highlighting its relevance to practical uses. Future studies should examine its applicability in various cultures and its impact on professional ethics training.

Food insecurity affects more than 6 million households with children in the U.S., the majority of which are insecure without hunger. Food insecurity and the accompanying chronic unpredictability are associated with significant negative health outcomes, such as impaired immune function, anxiety/eating disorders, malnutrition, and delayed language acquisition. To explore the connection between the unpredictability of a food source and cognitive impairments, prior studies have attempted to model food insecurity in rodent models. An ideal study design to answer this question would expose mice to a truly unpredictable food source for an extended period and assess their behavior for any significant changes, but most of the prior work has not been able to make a truly unpredictable food source which limits the generalizability of their findings. To address these limitations, the present study aimed to ensure that the rodent's food source was truly unpredictable by randomly assigning periods of limited food access across each week of the study. 18-month-old male and female C57BL/6J mice were either given ad libitum food access or were food insecure, where their otherwise full food-hopper would be reduced to 25% of their baseline consumption two randomly selected nights each week until the following morning. At 21 months, the mice underwent a battery of behavioral tests, including the open field test, elevated-zero maze, and novel object location task, to assess anxiety-like behavior and spatial memory capabilities. While insecurely-fed male mice were trending towards displaying more anxiety-like behavior than their securely-fed counterparts, we found no significant impact of food insecurity on anxiety-like behavior or spatial memory capabilities. Taken together, this study provides a more complete analysis of the behavioral changes due to a truly unpredictable food source, which more closely represents the environment of those living with food insecurity, and highlights areas to improve the model for future investigations.

At least 6.9 million Americans aged 65 and above are living with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) as of 2024, and that number is only expected to increase as the aging population grows. The exact cause of AD has yet to be discovered, but there are several significant risk factors such as sleep deprivation, a lack of exercise, and diet quality. Our lab has investigated diet quality in relation to AD pathology through the creation of two representative diets, the Typical American Diet (TAD) and the Mediterranean Diet (MD). These diets are calorically matched and are used to investigate their long- and short-term effects on Alzheimer’s pathology in C57BL/6J mice. To follow up on a previous study that used 6 months of diet exposure to explore the longer-term effects of these diets, groups of mice were fed either the TAD or MD for 3 months, beginning at 4 months of age, to better understand the short-term effects. This project then conducted histological analysis on the colon, liver, and gonadal white adipose tissue using different histological techniques. Specifically, a cryostat and microtome were used to prepare the tissue samples, and they were stained using Hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining and Oil Red O. Samples were then examined using confocal microscopy, and tissues from each diet were compared and analysed. We found that 3 months of diet led to excess hepatic lipid deposition, as was found in the 6-month study. Additionally, the 6-month study suggested that the TAD may have induced an insulin resistance (IR) state, so gonadal white adipose tissue was examined to explore adipocyte expansion after 3 months on diet. Preliminary colon histology was conducted to begin the exploration into gut dysbiosis and inflammation and the connection to Alzheimer’s pathology. This study presents novel histological evidence of the impact of diet quality on peripheral tissue in relation to Alzheimer’s disease.

Each year, Black women are disproportionately affected by new HIV diagnoses. Recent data of HIV cases in Texas indicate that approximately 56% of new HIV cases in women occur in Black women, despite them making up only 13% of the female population in the state. This stark disparity highlights the need for targeted interventions that address the barriers to accessing sexual health resources, including HIV prevention services. The Beauty Shop Study seeks to address these gaps by leveraging beauty professionals as trusted community health advocates (CHAs). These CHAs facilitate sexual health conversations and connect clients with essential healthcare services. This study evaluates the effectiveness of the two combined interventions: (a) using beauty shops as community health hubs and (b) providing healthcare through either a mobile health unit (MHU) or a referral coordinator. Participants engage in three visits with a research assistant across 6 months, which include interviews and specimen collection. In Tarrant County, participants have access to a MHU for 3 months, while in Dallas County, participants receive support from referral coordinators for the same duration. Recruitment for the present study presented several challenges, including the ineffectiveness of virtual training for CHAs and the inability to accept snowball referrals. However, outreach efforts strengthened trust, ultimately increasing referrals and community engagement. Moving forward, insights from this pilot study will inform the development of future iterations of the project. The findings will continue to advancing community-centered approaches that enhance Black women’s access to sexual health care.

Substance use is a pervasive issue in adolescents, and justice-involved youth are at a heightened risk of SU compared to the general youth population. Monitoring individual SU trajectory such as initiation, escalation of use, progression, and reductions is important for identifying key prevention and intervention opportunities. There are tools to assess SU in youth populations, but little research has been conducted to compare these assessments in terms of how they accommodate sporadicity of SU within various time frames. This study compared two self-reported measures for post-release SU—Timeline Follow-Back (TLFB) and Substance Use Involvement Scale (SUIS)—within youth who were recently released from secure residential facilities. The aims of this study are to examine the differences between TLFB and SUIS in (1) alcohol and cannabis use (yes/no), (2) the cumulative number of days of alcohol and cannabis use, and (3) the average daily use frequency for youth who have initiated alcohol and cannabis use post-release. This study used a subsample of 89 youth who reported post-release SU. Results revealed that (1) SUIS reported significantly greater number of youth that indicated alcohol and cannabis use (ps ≤ .001) than TLFB, (2) SUIS and TLFB did not differ in cumulative number of days of cannabis use (p = .40), but SUIS recorded a significantly greater number of days of alcohol use than TLFB (p ≤ .001), and (3) SUIS reported significantly greater average frequency of use per day for both cannabis and alcohol use (ps ≤ .001) compared to TLFB. TLFB provided more in-depth results for individual participants’ SU patterns including date of initiation post-release and day-by-day frequencies of use compared to SUIS. Despite TLFB’s advantages, additional strategies are needed to optimize the intensive process of data capturing and to support the external validity for capturing long-term SU. SUIS adequately captured data for sporadic SU without an overwhelming amount of data that worked well for comparing broad patterns of SU. These findings collectively show the importance of TLFB and SUIS measures in addressing different research goals.