One of the best ways to identify melanoma is using the ugly duckling sign (UDS) technique. The UDS technique teaches patients to look for the “ugly duckling” – a mole that is atypical for the patient. You can see HCAT Lab’s new UDS brochure and pamphlet here.
Andy King
New ABCDE Brochures & Pamphlets
HCAT Lab develops innovative materials to help patients identify melanoma, including patient brochures, pamphlets, and videos. We recently completed a series of studies that yielded new materials to teach patients how to identify melanoma using the ABCDE technique. You can read more about the materials, and download them here.
Film Festivals 2021
HCAT lab goes to Sundance Film Festival every year. It’s a wonderful chance to see films, interact with media professionals, learn about emerging technologies, and cultivate relationships with talented individuals working in AR/VR content creation. In 2021, most film festivals were either partially or entirely virtual. We started the year with Sundance and Ended with…
Tribeca 2021
In 2021, Tribeca Film Festival was virtual. HCAT lab enjoyed the film festival including the VR/AR content. Virtual festivals are not the same as attending in person, but I like to put up the entire schedule on the wall of my house to make the fest come to life.
HCAT wins COVID seed grant
HCAT won funding from the Immunology, Inflammation, and Infectious Disease Initiative (i3) at the University of Utah. The funding provides support for a repeated, cross sectional study that will track perceptions of COVID communication across 18 weeks. Notably, we are interested in whether people felt COVID messages were exaggerated. HCAT members Andy J. King (Iowa…
Spring: research, research, research
HCAT has lots of research in progress. We are writing IRBs, designing studies, collecting and analyzing data, and writing manuscripts. It’s great to have so much activity in the lab. Recently, I started using post-it notes to keep track of all the studies in progress. It helps me to visually track the studies and it…
Best Article in Risk Analysis
We just found out our 2017 publication in Risk Analysis was selected as a best article by the editors. The article is: Jensen, J. D., Pokharel, M., Scherr, C. L., King, A. J., Brown, N., & Jones, C. (2017). Communicating uncertainty to the public: How amount and source of uncertainty impact fatalism, backlash, and overload.…
2017 HCAT Writing Retreat – Adobe House
Once again, HCAT lab hosted a writing retreat in beautiful Park City, UT. The writing retreat was October 11th – 14th, 2017. The attendees were Lisa Guntzviller, Andy King, Courtney Scherr, Kevin K. John, Manusheela Pokharel, Chelsea Ratcliff, Kaylee Crossley, Katheryn Christy, Hannah Badal, Kevin Coe, and Brandon Rivera-Melo. We missed Rob Yale (a lot).…
The Dread Professor Jensen
Every HCAT writing retreat begins with an roundtable session where attendees detail what they will be working on. Typically, the roundtable is led by Jake, but this year, in honor of the 30yh anniversary of The Princess Bride, it was led by the Dread Professor Jensen. He told attendees to “work hard, submit manuscripts” as…
Kevin John’s Dissertation Published in JHC
The first article from Kevin John’s dissertation was just published in the Journal of Health Communication. In that article, Kevin articulates a framework for studying how visual images might impact visual skill (what he labels the visual skill acquisition model). He then demonstrates how the…
HCAT day retreat in Chicago
HCAT decided to host a day retreat during the AEJMC conference in Chicago. The retreat was held in Courtney’s lab space in downtown Chicago which happened to be a few short blocks from the conference hotel. After writing all day, the lab ventured off to the Barcade for fun and drinks. We ate popsicles with…
iMotions training
HCAT lab recently purchased a biophysiological measurement system from iMotions. The system allows us to measure eye movements, emotional response, and heart rate (among others). We’ve been interested in biophysiological measurement for years, and have conducted several eye tracking studies via the labs at Texas Tech (Andy King) and BYU (Kevin John). But now we…
2016 HCAT Writing Retreat
HCAT lab held another writing retreat October 12th – 16th, 2016 in Park City, UT. The writing retreat was held at a 5 bedroom house located just above main street in old town (you can rent it here). Fourteen people attended the retreat, including folks from Texas, Illinois, and Maryland. We had two research groups at the retreat: a skin cancer research group and a psychological reactance group. Both groups wrote manuscripts, analyzed data, and designed future studies.
The 2016 retreat also saw two different trips to the emergency room. Jake was in the emergency room when one of his sons developed a nasty case of parainfluenza. Kevin John ended up in the emergency room with appendicitis!
Despite these obstacles, the retreat was a huge success. We wrote from the moment the house opened on the 12th until 2 am in the morning the night of the 15th. Lisa Guntzviller led a workshop on building tables in Excel, and Jake led a workshop on the Johnson-Neyman (JN) technique.
The tattoo sleeves made a second appearance too. As folks finished papers, they were rewarded with the awesome sleeves. Nick Carcioppolo and Rob Yale weren’t able to make it this year, so we made Nick and Rob paper cutouts – and enjoyed taking crazy photos with them.
It was another wonderful writing retreat!
Andy King – Top Paper at BEA
HCAT lab wins Golden Monograph
The Golden Anniversary Monograph Awards were created to mark NCA’s 50th Anniversary in 1964. Originally, there were awards given to monographs and to books. The book award was deleted and later reinstated as the Diamond Anniversary Book Award. The Golden Anniversary Monograph Awards are presented to the most outstanding scholarly monograph(s) published during the previous calendar year.
My randomized controlled trial published in Social Science & Medicine was honored with the 2015 Golden Anniversary Monograph Award from NCA. You can read more about it here. You can see a list of past award winners here.
Chamber House Writing Retreat – Fall 2015
HCAT lab held another writing retreat October 8th – 15th, 2015 in Park City, UT. The writing retreat was held at a 5 bedroom house located just above main street in old town (you can rent it here). Courtney and I gave a workshop on writing NIH grants, and we also reviewed vitas and (for…
NCA 2014 – At the Parade
Dallas Writing Retreat
HCAT held a writing retreat March 14th – 17th, 2014 in Dallas, TX. Twelve faculty and grads attended the retreat. Jake led a workshop on writing grants, and we also talked a lot about publishing strategies. Jake’s consumption of Mountain Dew during the retreat reached epic levels, I think I slept a total of 2 hours. An air hockey table provided us with quite a bit of fun. A pool also occupied our time. The retreat was put on by HCAT members Rob Yale (Assistant Professor, University of Dallas) and Andy King (Assistant Professor, Texas Tech University). A great time was had by all.
This was the first retreat to have it’s own logo:
Nordic House Writing Retreat in Park City
HCAT lab held another writing retreat October 11th – 14th, 2013 in Park City, UT. The writing retreat was held at a 5 bedroom cabin in Deer Valley that described itself as the Nordic House (you can rent it here). Eleven faculty and graduate students attended the retreat. I led a workshop on Lisrel and confirmatory factory analysis, Lisa Guntzviller led a workshop on bibliography software, and Rob Yale took us all out to dinner at the Blue Iguana (which would become a writing retreat tradition). We also discovered numerous quirks such as my love of high quality scrap paper and Kevin Coe’s need to have lots of gum on hand while writing. Finally, Rob Yale impressed everyone (as he tends to) with an amazing suitcase.
We worked on 12 manuscripts during the writing retreat, 7 of which were finished by end. We played an excessive amount of shuffleboard.