Students to Present at Western Psychological Association (WPA) Conference 2021

Members of The Mindful Health and Resilience Lab, Kaylie Green MS '19 and Aurora Newman '24, spearheaded a symposium submission for this year’s virtual WPA Conference being held April 28-30. The team received word in March that their symposium was accepted.

This symposium titled, Impact of Poor Sleep on Health Outcomes Across Three High-Stress/High-Risk Groups, will include three oral presentations which explore the relationships between poor sleep in high-stress/high-risk populations, the subsequent functional impacts, and mitigating factors which may reduce the impact that inadequate sleep has on these populations.

Specifically, presentations in this symposium (1) explore psychological flexibility mitigating the impact of poor sleep on activities of daily living in firefighters, (2) investigate sleep factors that predict injury risk in athletes, and (3) examine the longitudinal effect of poor sleep on COVID-19 distress in older adults.

The success of this symposium submission could not have happened without the collaboration from lab members of Dr. Peter Vik’s lab at Pacific University and Dr. Tyler Duffield at Oregon Health and Science University. Additional important contributors of this symposium include, Kaylie Green MS '19 (co-chair), Aurora Newman '24 (co-chair), Nicole McCullough '24 EdS (presenter), Michael Christopher PhD (faculty primary investigator), Carisha Kelsey MS '18 (presenter) and Ellie Embry '25 (presenter).