Taking Meds Laboratory

General Laboratory Description

Together with a vibrant research team, Dr. Jaclyn Schwartz leads the Taking Meds Laboratory. The vision of the lab is to ensure optimal and equitable health, well-being, and quality of life for people with cardiovascular conditions. We do this by working towards our mission to enable adults with cardiovascular disease to better take their medications as prescribed through interdisciplinary community engaged research and training to inform best practices and policies. All of our work is guided by our values of integrity; diversity, equity and inclusion; development; and wellness. The following themes are found throughout our work:

  • Health equity: How do we develop interventions that work for all people and populations, particularly populations with health disparities that are under-resourced and underrepresented in current research?
  • Advocacy: How can we change policy and practice to support health and health equity?
  • Implementation science: How do we develop interventions that can be successful in real-world environments?

Current research projects include:

  • Interventions to support medication adherence in the home environment
  • Screening, brief intervention, and referral for adherence services in inpatient settings
  • App-based interventions to support adherence
  • Changing practice to support practitioners in addressing medication adherence

General Description of Student Activities

Our lab welcomes dedicated learners to participate in our work. This quote guide our teaching philosophy:

“The one who does the work does the learning.” – Terry Doyle

Our goal is to help learners to develop both research and life skills in the context of implementing a research project. Learners start their experience by developing a mentoring plan, clarifying the expectations of the position and outlining what the learners want to learn and how to best support them. We use a team-based mentoring approach, allowing learners to benefit from the experience of other learners, faculty and staff. Learners will have the opportunity to build their research skills by completing research activities and are expected to participate in all phases of the research process including literature reviews, data collection, quantitative or qualitative data analysis, and presentation of findings. We particularly encourage requests for learning experiences and mentorship from first-generation college students, women, people with disabilities and/or persons from underrepresented minority groups.

For more information about our projects, see our research outputs.

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