Sarah Woods
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, TX·Public Health & Epidemiology
Families pull health in two directions. A supportive relative can help someone stick to a diet or manage pain, while family stress can make illness worse.
- Fields
Public Health & Epidemiology
Medicine & Clinical Research
Psychology
- Topics
hypertension
blood pressure control
self-management
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jan 2031
What they work on
- Test in a randomized controlled trial whether Walk Together, four dyadic patient-plus-family sessions over eight weeks, improves hypertension self-management adherence and blood pressure control more than a hypertension education control.
- Examine family support and hypertension knowledge as mechanisms through which Walk Together improves self-management adherence and blood pressure among African American primary care patients with uncontrolled hypertension.
- Evaluate whether participating family support persons also gain hypertension knowledge and improve their own health behaviors during the Walk Together trial.
- Identify which features of family emotional climate, support and stress in marital and non-marital relationships, predict pain development, persistence, interference and severity among African American participants in the MIDUS and HRS cohorts.
- Determine whether depression and anxiety symptoms and inflammation mediate family-to-pain pathways, and whether harassment, education and income moderate them, using repeated HRS waves from 2006 to 2020.
More about the research
For African Americans, who often describe family support as central to managing their health, this two-way influence may matter a great deal, yet health programs rarely include family members directly. Two projects examine how family support and family stress shape two conditions with marked racial disparities: high blood pressure and chronic pain. One tests a family-based program in primary care; the other analyzes large national aging datasets.
Why it matters
African Americans face higher rates of uncontrolled hypertension and worse chronic pain outcomes, yet family support remains an untapped resource in self-management programs. If Walk Together improves blood pressure control, it could provide evidence for family-based, primary care-delivered care to reduce hypertension disparities. The pain analyses could inform precision health and culturally responsive, family-based pain self-management approaches for aging African Americans.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Testing the Efficacy of a Family-Level Intervention to Improve Hypertension Outcomes in African American Primary Care Patients: The Walk Together Trial
NIH · Jul 2026 – Jan 2031
Using Secondary Analyses to Test Novel Pathways Linking Family Stress and Pain Incidence and Persistence Among African Americans
NIH · Sep 2022 – Aug 2026
Closest labs
Sheldon Riklon
University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, AR·Public Health & Epidemiology
Test whether Ājjmuurur Baamḷe, a family-model diabetes self-management program, improves HbA1c, blood pressure, lipids, BMI, and self-efficacy among Marshallese patients, in a cluster randomized trial delivered by community health workers in faith-based organizations.
Gayenell Magwood
University of South Carolina-Columbia, SC·Public Health & Epidemiology
Refine the iCINGS FAM intervention through interviews and focus groups with rural community stakeholders, so that it fits individual, family, community and social needs for managing illness as a dyad.
Briana Sprague
Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis, IN·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
Collect primary data from Black adults receiving care at federally qualified health centers to learn their preferences and needs for managing stress.
The school
University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center: 40 labs on PI Pages, $869M a year on research, 86 research doctorates a year.
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