Jason M. Fletcher, PhD, MS, is an alumnus of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Health & Society Scholars program (2010-2012) and an associate professor of health policy at Yale School of Public Health.   Fletcher was recently lead author of the study, “How Social and Genetic Factors Predict Friendship Networks,” published October 17 in the journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences). Fletcher and his colleagues found that important interactions between genetics and the social environment help determine friendship formation during high school.

For our study, we used a national survey of adolescent friendships (Add Health, or the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health) to follow up on and expand a study published last year that showed that specific genes, including a dopamine receptor gene (DRD2), may determine friendships among teens.

We found the idea of a biological basis for, in our view, the very sociologically driven outcomes of friendship formation to be too narrow and to not take into account the social and geographic constraints that underlie friendship links.  So in our research we show, using the same data as the previous study, that once we take account of schools and social environments, the previous genetic story is not confirmed by our data.

Indeed, we show that some schools produce friendships that are genetically similar, and others produce friendships that are genetically dissimilar.  And specific aspects of schools, like socioeconomic inequality, appear to partially determine the types of friendships that we observe school-by-school.

Around the country, print, broadcast and online media outlets are covering the groundbreaking work of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) leaders, scholars, fellows and grantees. Some recent examples:

The Las Vegas Sun interviewed RWJF Executive Nurse Fellows alumna Debra Toney, PhD, MS, BSN, FAAN, who was chosen by the Coca-Cola Company to carry the Olympic torch in the relay leading up the opening ceremony on July 27. Read more about Toney’s experience in the latest issue of Sharing Nursing’s Knowledge.

RWJF Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program alumnus Levi Garraway, MD, PhD, is part of a team conducting research on genetic mutations and cancer. Health Canal reports on their findings, including which sun-damaged cells in a tumor contribute to melanoma.

A study led by RWJF Health & Society Scholars alumna Margaret Sheridan, PhD, finds that childhood adversity produces measurable changes in children’s brains, Science Daily reports.  It affects the amount of both the brain’s white matter (which is necessary for forming connections) and its gray matter, the research team found. For the study, they analyzed brain scans of Romanian children who had been moved from an orphanage to quality foster care homes.

An article from The Atlantic cites a working paper by Health & Society Scholar Jason Fletcher, PhD, that finds “adults who suffer from adolescent depression ultimately make about 20 percent less money than their peers and are somewhat less likely to be employed.”

Around the country, print, broadcast and online media outlets are covering the groundbreaking work of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) scholars, fellows and grantees. Some recent examples:

RWJF Physician Faculty Scholar David G. Bundy, MD, MPH, also an alumnus of the RWJF Clinical Scholars program, spoke to the Baltimore Sun about a proposal being considered by Maryland health officials that would require children in the state to get more vaccines before attending school. “The recommendations for these immunizations are not new nationally,” Bundy said. “This is just updating the state’s requirement to reflect the existing recommendations. It just makes us all look like we’re in alignment with what we’re doing, and it tightens the safety net at schools for kids who may be missing vaccines.”

“They have been utilized in Texas, but not appropriately utilized,” RWJF Executive Nurse Fellows alumna Alexia Green, RN, PhD, FAAN, said of Advanced Practice Registered Nurses (APRNs), in an interview with Fox 34 (Lubbock, Texas). A new report finds that greater utilization of APRNs in Texas would save the state about $8 billion.

Mahshid Abir, MD, and Art Kellerman, MD, MPH, FACE, wrote an op-ed for USA Today about the benefits electronic health records provide for health care providers and patients, especially in the wake of natural disasters like last year’s deadly tornado in Joplin, Missouri. “The twister…heavily damaged St. John’s Regional Medical Center, sucking up patient files and X-rays and depositing them up to 70 miles away,” they write. “Fortunately, barely three weeks earlier, St. John’s had switched from paper to electronic health records… Even as the hospital’s 183 patients were being evacuated, St. John’s staff accessed and printed out their records from a remote site, and sent copies with patients to hospitals where they were transferred.” Abir is an alumnus of the RWJF/ U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs (VA) Clinical Scholars program, and Art Kellerman, MD, MPH, FACEP, is an alumnus of the RWJF Health Policy Fellows program and the Clinical Scholars program.

Around the country, print, broadcast and online media outlets are covering the groundbreaking work of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) scholars, fellows and grantees. Some recent examples:

Alejandra Casillas, MD, MPH, an RWJF Clinical Scholar, spoke to New America Media about why Latinas have the highest rates of cervical cancer. Many women don’t go to the doctor as much as recommended because of a cultural belief that their families come first, Casillas says, so raising awareness among men could help encourage more women to get Pap tests.

Healthcare Finance News reports on The Primary Care Team: Learning from Effective Ambulatory Practices (the LEAP Project), a recently launched RWJF initiative designed to make primary care more accessible and effective by identifying practices that maximize the services of the primary care workforce. Learn more about the LEAP Project and read an RWJF Human Capital Blog post about it.

A team led by scientists from the Broad Institute and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute—including RWJF Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program alumnus Levi Garraway, MD, PhD—has sequenced the genomes of 25 metastatic melanoma tumors, MediLexicon reports. The first high-resolution views of the genomic landscape are published online in the journal Nature.

RWJF Scholar in Health Policy Research and political scientist Brendan Nyhan, PhD, gave comments to NPR’s Morning Edition about the political landscape, discussing why and how voters reject facts about the political parties or politicians to whom they are loyal. Nyhan’s ongoing research suggests that people may be better able to deal with cognitive dissonance—“the psychological experience of having to hold inconsistent ideas in one's head”—if they are first given an image or ego boost.

By Kathleen Hickey, EdD, FNP-BC, ANP-BC, FAAN, assistant professor, Columbia University School of Nursing and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Nurse Faculty Scholar. Hickey is president-elect of the International Society of Nurses in Genetics.

Every April, people around the world celebrate “DNA Day,” a commemoration of the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953 and the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003. It’s an important day in scientific history, and its influence has spread far beyond the laboratory.

Genetics and nursing are closely linked, and many nurses—myself, included—have seen this connection firsthand. Long before we knew the full scope of the human genome, I worked as a nurse practitioner with cardiac patients. As I worked directly with many young patients, I learned that many of them had suffered a cardiac arrest, or lost a loved one to a cardiac arrhythmia. As more information became known about genetics, what I had seen in the clinical setting was confirmed—these patients were predisposed to these conditions by virtue of their DNA. Now I work in cardiogenetics, using my knowledge of genetics in combination with my skills as a nurse practitioner, to improve the outcomes for high-risk patients and prevent sudden cardiac death.

In 2009, I had the honor of being selected to attend the National Institute of Nursing Research’s Summer Genetic Institute. The two-month program, held at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), brought together nurses who were graduate students, faculty members, researchers, clinicians, and educators for intensive genetics training. There we were immersed in didactic lectures from NIH experts, engaged in hands-on bench experiments, and had the opportunity to develop a research proposal related to our own individual interests. This was critical to laying the foundation for my subsequent Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Nurse Faculty Scholar research in the area of cardiogenetics.