Physical Health

This domain broadly includes investigating and addressing inequities in the physical well-being of individuals and communities including chronic conditions such as cardiovascular disease (e.g., hypertension, stroke), diabetes, obesity, cancers, and other factors related to disparate morbidity and mortality rates. This research seeks to identify how disparities in environmental factors, nutrition, access to quality healthcare, and lived experiences of stress/racism influence one’s overall physical health trajectory. A critical goal is to understand how structural and economic conditions contribute to disparities in prevention, treatment access, and mortality from chronic illnesses. 

Relational Health

This domain examines the impact of economic and social adversity on family and community dynamics. Specifically, it addresses how these stressors affect family cohesion, parent-child relationships, and the prevalence of intimate partner violence or other forms of relational strain that indirectly yet powerfully impact long-term health and development for both adults and children.

Health Disparities Projects

Lyndsey Hornbuckle was recently funded by the American Diabetes Association grant for a three-year efficacy trial to expand the reach of her previous work that developed a community-engaged, dyadic exercise intervention designed to examine its effects on cardiometabolic and relationship health in middle-aged and older Black adult partners. For this project, she will continue to work closely with co-investigator, Amy Rauer (Professor in UTK’s Department of Counseling, Human Development, and Family Science) to identify characteristics of various partnered relationships that may facilitate long-term exercise behavior and health support. The study team collected extensive quantitative and qualitative pilot data to support this work and is the first to examine a dyadic exercise intervention in aging Black adults. As such, the opportunity for Dr. Hornbuckle’s laboratory to continue this work on a larger scale will fill a knowledge gap related to how partnered exercise can directly and indirectly affect cardiometabolic disease risk in this population. These outcomes, combined with the potential to improve effective health engagement of a person invested in a partner’s health, could be a key contributor to reducing cardiometabolic health disparities and mortality in aging Black adults. Hornbuckle is also actively working on additional smaller projects that aim to identify sociodemographic-based barriers to physical activity in people of color.

Deadric Williams is working on a collaborative project with Jeremy Kanter (University of Illinois) Amy Rauer (University of Tennessee), Elizabeth Johnson (University of Tennessee), and M. Rosie Shrout (Purdue University) funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to understand how, and in what ways, risks factors are associated with telomere length (TL), a biomarker of cellular stress, which is linked with later atypical human development, including elevated risk for psychopathology, chronic disease, and mortality. Specifically, we examine (1) how fluctuations in cumulative risk exposure are prospectively associated with children’s telomere length and (2) how parents’ supportiveness towards each other serves as a moderator between cumulative risk exposure and children’s telomere length. To achieve these aims, the research team will conduct a dyadic, longitudinal analysis of data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCWB). Findings from this project will contribute to a broader understanding of factors that positively or negatively impact children’s TL and elucidate sensitive periods in which cumulative exposure to adverse experiences may be most harmful for children.

Faculty