In addition to the stress that accompanies important developmental milestones for emerging adults (i.e., leaving home, establishing financial independence, navigating peer and romantic relationships, and developing an adult identity), LGBTQIA college students face stressors related to their LGBTQIA identity, such as coming out, transitioning gender identities, encountering non-affirming and/or hostile campus and work environments, and experiencing lack of access to inclusive health and mental health services. Our goals are to examine the role of protective factors in increasing positive outcomes for LGBTQIA college students and the potential moderating influences of social support and belongingness on the relationships between stressors (i.e., social isolation, discrimination, and family-related stress), flourishing, and social, academic, and mental health outcomes.

Our working group is multidisciplinary, comprised of VCU faculty and students and external collaborators in psychology, social work, education, kinesiology, sports management, and behavioral genetics. We are are conducting cross-sectional and longitudinal studies that examine social determinants of health (e.g., discrimination, social and systemic inequalities, COVID-19 pandemic) and cultural assets (e.g., racial-ethnic identity, civic engagement, etc.) on academic outcomes and minority mental health, including alcohol, tobacco, and other substance use.

The positive factors working group is interested in exploring the role of various positive factors (e.g., resilience, well-being, flourishing, etc.) on mental and physical health outcomes during the college years. Our goals are to produce high-quality research in this area with the hope of moving science from a deficit-based approach to one also focused on strengths and positive factors that promote mental and physical well-being.

Our group aims to facilitate the use of S4S genetic data via documented data and file structure organization, recommendations for best practices for common genomic analyses, and facilitate ongoing updates related to the genetic data towards inclusive use of the genetic data (e.g., using trans-ancestral analytic methods) and reproducibility of results. Our efforts will include documentation via READMEs, scripts, and GitHub repositories. Major projects will include: (1) organized file structures, (2) updates to imputation, ancestry informative principal component covariates, and ancestry assignments, and (3) best practices for genomic analyses including genome-wide association studies, polygenic risk scoring (PRS), genetic architecture (heritability, genetic correlation), and PRS by environment studies. Additional statistical genetic workflows will be included based on advancements in the field and user need (e.g., Mendelian randomization, genomic structural equation modeling).

Our group seeks to examine substance use in college students during emerging adulthood, to include alcohol and illicit substances, across the spectrum of use to disorder to recovery. Our work aims to focus on group-based differences, prediction models, and longitudinal/trajectory models of these outcomes.

The ‘Smoking’ subgroup grew out of the ‘Genetics, Epidemiology, Methods & Smoking’ lab, in short gemS.  This group includes VCU faculty, trainees and external collaborators, all of us with an interest in exploring the role of genes and environment in the stages of smoking behavior from initiation to dependence and cessation.  We use a variety of genetic epidemiologic approaches to investigate why people start smoking and continue to smoke, and to identify risk and protective factors that predict trajectories of smoking and related outcomes.

Traumatic stress is a transdiagnostic risk factor for the development and maintenance of psychiatric and substance use problems. Emerging adulthood is a particularly high risk developmental period wherein the prevalence of exposure to traumatic events, both interpersonal and accidental in nature, is high. Our working group examines the impact of exposure to stressors and traumatic events in relationship to psychiatric and substance use outcomes across college. We are also interested in examining sex/gender differences, potentially modifiable moderators, and interplay with genetic risk.