EDGE Lab Director one of First Recipients of VCU COVID-19 Rapid Research Funding Opportunity Grants

May 1, 2020

EDGE Lab Director, Dr. Danielle Dick, was one of the first twenty Virginia Commonwealth University faculty members to receive internal awards to quickly pivot or expand her work to address the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the health system and the community. Congratulations, Danielle!

Danielle's study, “Acute Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on VCU Students,” will offer students who participated in her university-wide Spit for Science project the opportunity to share the ways in which COVID-19 has impacted their lives.

This project will provide critical information about the impact of the crisis on VCU students. A write-up of the results of the study will be provided to university officials to inform programming aimed at retention of the most affected students. 

The aims of the study are as follows:

Aim 1: Prospectively examine the acute impact of COVID-19 on substance use, mental health,
and academic outcomes. 

Aim 2: Identify psychosocial moderators (e.g., social support, resilience, media consumption,
living situation) of substance use, mental health, and academic outcomes. Informed by the traumatic
stress literature, a rich set of risk and protective factors will be assessed to examine the influence of
psychosocial factors on moderating the impact of the pandemic on student outcomes. 

Aim 3: Identify neurocognitive, personality, and genetic risk and protective factors that may
moderate substance use, mental health, and academic outcomes. 

For a full list of faculty members and studies that received COVID-10 Rapid Research Funding Opportunity grants, visit: https://news.vcu.edu/article/First_recipients_of_COVID19_Rapid_Research_Funding_Opportunity