Quicklinks

Butryn Lab

The primary aim of Meghan Butryn’s lab is to improve the efficacy of lifestyle modification programs for adults, particularly for those who are overweight or obese. The Butryn lab uses behavioral principles to understand the challenges of eating a healthy diet and engaging in physical activity, and creates innovations in intervention programs by integrating the latest advances in scientific theory as well as technology. Butryn’s research is funded by the National Institutes of Health. Her projects have been awarded a total of $8 million to date.

The lab has a strong interest in understanding how individuals can most effectively manage aspects of the obesogenic environment. The home food environment is of particular interest as an intervention target. Research on self-monitoring is also ongoing, including determining how sharing the data collected by self-monitoring tools with others might facilitate supportive accountability. More recently, the lab is conducting research on diet, weight control, and physical activity as they pertain to cancer prevention and cancer survivorship. Obesity prevention in young or middle-age adults is another major focus of the lab’s work.

Contact:

Meghan Butryn, PhD, Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences; WELL Center Director of Research
215.553.7108 | mlb34@drexel.edu

Hannah Silverstein, Research Coordinator
hs988@drexel.edu

Anna Upman, Research Coordinator
aeu26@drexel.edu

Forman Lab

The Forman lab, which is part of the Center for Weight Eating and Lifestyle Science (the WELL Center), develops and evaluates innovative behavioral- and technology-based interventions for health behavior change. One of the lab’s overarching interests is using our understanding of self-regulation to devise and evaluate innovative behavioral and technological approaches for health behavior change. For instance, most people find it difficult to initiate and sustain lifestyle modification involving dietary and physical activity improvements. These changes run counter to biological and environmental forces, and thus require specific self-regulatory capacities including the ability to tolerate discomfort, give up pleasure, cultivate and make salient longer-range motivating factors and accurately perceive internal states. As such, one line work involves developing and evaluating acceptance and mindfulness-based behavioral treatments that teach these strategies. A current project, Activate, is an NIH R01-funded Multiphasic Optimization Strategy (MOST) trial evaluating the independent and interacting effects of mindfulness and acceptance components of behavioral weight loss.

Self-regulation is aided when clinicians and behavior coaches are able to provide supportive accountability (strategies, skills, emotional support, and beneficent oversight). However, there is a severe shortage of clinical services, especially for pervasive problems such as obesity. The lab is interested in methods of optimizing intervention to meet clinical needs. For example, the NIH R01 Project ReLearn is evaluating an artificial intelligence (AI) system for optimizing the delivery of weight loss interventions in a manner that allows for scalability across large populations. In addition, we are developing and evaluating automated systems that can skillfully deliver certain aspects of intervention. For instance, we have conducted a series of studies on a smartphone-based system (OnTrack) that uses machine learning to predict and prevent dietary lapses, which is the main driver of an inability to succeed at weight control. The system uses a risk algorithm to deliver just-in-time, adaptive interventions (JITAIs).

We are also interested in how inhibitory control--the ability to resist behavioral prepotent impulses (e.g., to approach immediately rewarding stimuli)--contributes to successful self-regulation of health behavior and how training inhibitory control can improve health. Additionally, we are interested in how gamification of intervention can improve engagement and intrinsic motivation, and thus outcomes, especially in men who tend to be disinterested in traditional behavioral treatments. For instance, the NIH R01 Project DASH evaluates whether gamification and neurocognitive training improve engagement and weight loss outcomes for men.

Contact:

Evan Forman, PhD, Professor of Psychology and Brain Sciences
215.553.7113 | emf27@drexel.edu

Juarascio Lab

The Juarascio Lab is focused on the development and evaluation of novel treatment approaches for eating disorders. Treatment development focuses largely on two areas: 1) the use of acceptance-based behaviors treatment approaches to improve factors that maintain eating pathology (e.g. emotion dysregulation, impulsivity, altered patterns of reward sensitivity) and 2) the use of technology to augment existing treatments.

Current studies include:

1. The Balancing Act Project: An NIDDK R01 focused on evaluating an acceptance based behavioral group treatment for binge eating disorder designed to help individuals both lose weight and reduce binge eating.
2. The Acquire2 Project: An NIMH R01 designed to test the independent and interact efficacy of various components of a novel smartphone app (CBT+) as an augmentation to CBT for bulimia nervosa that is designed to improve skill acquisition and utilization.
3. The COMPASS Project: An NIMH R01 that uses a Multiphasic Optimization Trial (MOST) to evaluate the independent efficacy of four commonly-used mindfulness and acceptance components (distress tolerance, emotion modulation, mindful awareness, and values-based decision making).

Contact:

Adrienne Juarascio, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychology and Brain Sciences
215.553.7154 | asj32@drexel.edu