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Month: January 2021

Collaborator Spotlight:
Dr. Aida Midgett and Dr. Diana Doumas

Collaborator Spotlight:
Dr. Aida Midgett and Dr. Diana Doumas

Dr. Aida Midgett and Dr. Diana Doumas, both from Boise State University, currently collaborate with KB Senior Scientist, Dr. Valerie Myers, on the STAC-T Project. STAC-T is a technology-delivered adaptation of a bullying intervention program for schools – STAC – that teaches students to act as “defenders” on behalf of targets of bullying. STAC stands for four bullying intervention strategies: “Stealing the Show,” “Turning it Over,” “Accompanying Others,” and “Coaching Compassion.”

Dr. Aida Midgett is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Counselor Education. She obtained her doctoral degree in Educational Psychology/Counseling Psychology and her masters degree in Community Counseling from Northern Arizona University. Her professional background includes behavioral health and school-based research, training counselor education students, and evaluating service-learning projects related to multicultural training. Dr. Midgett is a Licensed Professional Counselor. She has worked as a clinician in university, agency, and in-patient mental health hospital settings. Currently, her research focuses on evaluating the bystander bullying intervention program in K-12 settings.

Dr. Diana Doumas is a Distinguished Professor and Director for the Institute for the Study of Behavioral Health and Addiction. She is a Licensed Professional Counselor and Licensed Psychologist in Idaho. She is a member of the American Counseling Association, the Association of Counselor Education and Supervision, and Research Society on Alcoholism. Her experience includes both individual and couples counseling for clients with substance abuse, depression, anxiety, and interpersonal concerns. She specializes in empirically-based interventions and cognitive-behavioral therapy. Her research interests include substance abuse prevention and intervention, with a focus on harm reduction and online interventions for high-risk college and high school students.

The STAC-T project is funded by a small business (STTR) grant to Klein Buendel from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities at the National Institutes of Health (MD014943; Dr. Aida Midgett, Principal Investigator).

Association of Occupational Sun Safety Policy with Employee Practices

Association of Occupational Sun Safety Policy with Employee Practices

Occupational sun protection policies are fundamental for the increased implementation of employee sun safety practices. Investigators and staff from Klein Buendel, led by Dr. David Buller, Director of Research, recently published baseline results from a large-scale workplace sun safety policy project in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine.

In the publication, the authors report on the coding and evaluation of written safety policies from 21 state Departments of Transportation (DOTs) enrolled in a randomized trial testing methods for scaling-up an occupational sun safety intervention. A total of 1,113 managers who supervised people who work outdoors reported on workplace and employee sun safety practices in a baseline survey.

Analysis showed that 20 of the state DOTs had a policy with at least one sun protection component (e.g., sunscreen, eye protection, use of shade). Sun safety training was increased at workplaces with written sun safety policy and unwritten standard operating procedures on sun protection. Sun safety actions were highest where there was a written sun safety policy and unwritten standard operating procedures on workplace sun protection. The measures, methods, analyses, results, conclusions, and limitations of the baseline manager survey are detailed in the publication.

This research was funded by a grant from the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health (CA210259; Dr. David Buller, Principal Investigator). Coauthors include Dr. Barbara Walkosz, Savanna Olivas, Rachel Eye, Xia Liu, Alishia Kinsey, Mary Buller, and Andrew Grayson from Klein Buendel.