Dr. Hsu is a tumor biologist, with specific training and expertise in molecular epidemiology and environmental exposure including tobacco, heavy metal, and small molecule metabolites. She runs two fully equipped environmental exposure and biomarker laboratories in the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute and Biomedical research building II. I am the PI of the Arkansas Rural Community Health (ARCH) Study that consists of around 26,000 women from all 75 counties in Arkansas. Her goal is to identify the drivers of health disparity in rural underserved communities and hope our studies can make impact to improve the quality of life and extend lives.

Click here to read her recent abstract in Cancer Research.

Dr. McGill is a sought-after expert in liver injury caused by xenobiotics, which are chemicals foreign to the body such as drugs, pesticides, and dietary supplements. He is also a fellowship-trained clinical chemist. In addition to his research and teaching at UAMS, he has held numerous roles within scientific and professional organizations, including Vice President of the South Central chapter of the Society of Toxicology (SOT). He has also received several significant awards, including the prestigious Pinnacle Research Award from the American Association of the Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) Foundation.

Click here to read his recent co-authored paper from Food and Chemical Toxicology: Hepatotoxicity due to herbal dietary supplements: Past, present and the future.

Dr. Boysen’s research interest has been in understanding the interplay between chemical exposure and nutritional or other lifestyle habits, such as diet selection and physical activity and how these and be used to improve prevention and treatment of lung cancer. To achieve this, he utilizes analytical chemistry tools to study carcinogen metabolism, how this is modified by nutritional components and the underlying mechanisms regulating corresponding enzyme activities. More recently he has focused on common metabolic pathways, using targeted and un-targeted mass spectrometry-based metabolomic approaches to improve diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer.

Click here to read Dr. Boysen’s recent NIH-published article: Nanopore Sequencing for Detection and Characterization of Phosphorothioate Modifications in Native DNA Sequences.

Rachel Hale, MA, an Instructor in our department, recently secured a $20,000 feasibility grant from the Southwest Center for Agricultural Health, Injury Prevention, and Education at the University of Texas at Tyler for their project, Assessing the health and climate change risk perceptions of small farmers through application of the Health Belief Model. The project will survey small farmers in Arkansas to collect information on their current health status and their beliefs and risk perceptions about how our changing climate may impact their health. Additionally, the survey will ask farmers about any regenerative agricultural practices they use on their farms.
Climate change is a pressing public health issue that threatens the overall health of small agricultural farmers. Small farmers are highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change on their physical and emotional health. As our world continues to warm, farmers will face an increased risk of heat-related illnesses, such as heat exhaustion, stroke, and cardiovascular issues, alongside work-related injuries and death. Small farmers are a unique population as they may have increased exposure and sensitivity to the effects of climate change on their health due to socioeconomic factors increasing their vulnerability.
Small farmers will have access to either an English or Spanish survey in three different ways: online, paper, or over the phone with a member of the research team. This survey will help us know where are we now, which is essential in furthering research and developing projects to reduce work-related illnesses and injuries and improving the overall well-being of small farmers in Arkansas.
In addition to the Health Belief Model, this project will use the Total Worker Health (TWH) Approach. TWH approach is defined as “policies, programs, and practices that integrate protection from work-related safety and health hazards with promotion of injury and illness-prevention efforts to advance worker well-being.” The use of this approach aligns with this project’s target population, owners/co-owners of small farms, as a defining element of TWH is developing leadership commitment to occupational safety. In addition, the information gathered from the survey will be viewed from the lens of future interventions to “eliminate or reduce safety and health hazards and promote worker well-being,” with the worker being the small farmer. The survey is the starting point by capturing baseline data to be used in co-developing interventions with small farmers to improve their overall well-being and occupational safety. TWH provides a hierarchy of controls that provides different levels to incorporate in future interventions.
The goals of this project are: 1) To assess the current health status of small farmers in Arkansas and current adaptive agricultural practices; and 2) To assess a small farmer’s perceived susceptibility, perceived severity, perceived benefits of taking action, perceived barriers from taking action, cues to action, and self-efficacy in regard to climate change affecting their overall health.