HCAT lab has developed a series of visuals to help people identify acral lentiginous melanoma (ALM) – a rare form of skin cancer. Limited patient materials exist to help people identify this deadly form of cancer. You can see our ALM materials here.
Visual Research
Ugly Duckling Sign Brochures and Pamphlets
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.
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.
Top Paper at NCA 2021
HCAT presented multiple papers at NCA 2021, including a Top Paper in the Health Communication Division. Led by Manu Pokharel, the manuscript reported the results of biophysiological research of UV imagery. Pokharel, M., Jensen, J. D., John, K. K., Christy, K. R., Taylor-Burton, S., & Upshaw, S. (2021, November). Visual communication and skin cancer prevention:…
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…
Drone Pilots
Both Kevin John and I bought drones recently with an eye toward developing novel content and experiences for experimental research. Kevin’s drone was fast – perhaps too fast – as it ended up crashing into a tree branch one day. It spiraled out of control and was never seen again. But he was not deterred:…
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 Utah Grand Challenge Grant
HCAT just won a Utah Grand Challenge grant. This mechanism provides funding for cancer researchers to address pressing cancer issues facing the state of Utah (and beyond). Utah leads the nation in Melanoma incidence (in a bad way). Given that, our project will develop and test and innovative approaches to melanoma detection in coordination with…
NIH R01 to study Personalized Messaging
Led by Yelena Wu, we recently won an NIH R01 grant to support a 5 year health intervention targeting sun safe behavior in Utah adolescents. The goal of the grant is to evaluate a multi-school intervention designed to decrease skin cancer. The study will run from 2020 through 2025. The intervention includes multiple components including…
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…
Sean heads to the University of Texas at Austin
After two years as a postdoctoral fellow in HCAT lab, Sean Upshaw will join the faculty in the Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin. Sean will be an Assistant Professor in the Department of Advertising at Moody beginning July 2020!
Sean Upshaw joins HCAT as a Postdoc
Dr. Sean Upshaw recently joined HCAT lab as a Postdoctoral Fellow after completing his PhD at Howard University in health communication. Sean has a background in graphic design and illustration with a BPS in Biomedical Illustration from the University of Memphis. As an HCAT Postdoctoral Fellow, Sean will work on designing and evaluating innovative…
High Risk, High Reward Symposium
Every year, NIH New Innovators are invited to Bethesda to present our research. This year, I presented some of our work on UV photography. We were the first poster visible through the door of the session. The face of the symposium, if you will. 🙂
Manu wins Fellowship
March: Dogfight
If you ran into a lab member in March, then we probably looked busy. And Jake was definitely drinking some form of caffeine. That’s because we were working hard to get 7 article submitted to 2 different conferences. The end of March is home to the submission deadline for the National Communication Association (NCA) and…
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…
Manu defends her prospectus
Manu successfully defended her prospectus on February 7th, 2018. In HCAT lab, the prospectus defense is a cumulative process that builds on the comprehensive exams and the preprospectus. Her next, and final, meeting is the dissertation defense. Manu’s dissertation consists of three studies: a meta-analysis, a large visual communication experiment, and a biophysiological lab experiment.…
Sundance 2018
We love to go to Sundance Film Festival each year because (1) it is awesome, (2) it is nearby – Park City, UT), and (3) it is a wonderful opportuunity to learn about cutting edge communication technology (e.g., VR and AR). Sundance is approximately 11 days long and the lab was out and about the…
L16 light camera
The lab just purchased a 16 lens Light camera. We were on the waiting list for about 2 years. This camera takes 16 shots at once so it is a cutting edge item. It might be the solution to several key problems facing our research. Fingers crossed. Excited to see what it can do.
Kevin John interviewed about Melanoma
Utah has the highest rate of melanoma in the U.S. Given that, Deseret News recently published a long-form story about melanoma in the…
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…
Manu finishes her comps!
Manusheela completed her comprehensive exams on June 16th, 2017, after 4 weeks of intense writing. Her dissertation program focuses on visual health communication. Congrats Manu!
Collecting data in Altamont, UT
HCAT headed to Altamont, UT (2 hours from Salt Lake City) to collect data for the SUN study. We were joined by two graduate students from Yelena Wu’s lab (Bridget and Ayesha). Altamont has a beautiful new high school, and both the teachers and kids were great hosts. A thunderstorm appeared just as we were…
Immersion Lab on KSL
http://www.ksl.com/?sid=42993197&nid=148&title=u-researchers-can-study-inversions-year-round-with-60k-camera Our Immersion Lab was featured on KSL. They visited the lab to view our Ozo, and learn more about our air quality video.
Can UV photos improve skin cancer control?
Our lab has been with ultraviolet (UV) imagery for several years. We are currently conducting several studies were we study public reaction to these images. Here is a photo of me in visible light. And here is a photo in UV light.
VR video – A Bad Air Day in Salt Lake City
My lab recently purchased a Nokia Ozo pro grade immersive camera. As a test of the camera, we decided to film both a good air quality day in the valley (August 30th, 2016 – a green day), and a bad air quality day (January 1, 2017 – an orange day). We filmed the valley from a trail just below the H Rock. The video begins with a good air quality day (August 30th) and then transitions to a bad air quality day (January 1st).
The Sundance Film Festival just launched a new initiative focused on climate change and environmental awareness. The 2017 festival showcases 14 innovative projects devoted to this theme, including An Inconvenient Sequel (which HCAT members attended last night!). Our air quality immersive video parallels Sundance’s initiative as well as their groundbreaking work in VR.
Click here to view our video on YouTube. Make sure you have the YouTube app downloaded in advance:
HCAT goes to Sundance 2017
The Sundance Film Festival is a wonderful gathering of media and communication professionals in Park City, UT. As such, HCAT lab spends quite a bit of time going to shows, meeting with industry folks, and checking out the latest gadgets. For example, last year we were introduced to the Nokia Ozo camera at Sundance, and…
Grad seminar explores immersionÂ
In Fall 2016 I taught a 7000-level grad seminar called Communication Theory. Ten wonderful grads were in the class, including MA and PhD students. We spent the semester exploring constructs and practicing how to think more abstractly. I used immersion as a practice construct as it is both timely and enduring. The students learned how…
HCAT on the Madison River
Ozo!
HCAT goes to the 2016 Sundance Film Festival
Ultraviolet (UV) Photography at the Museum
We have developed a high performance, monochrome UV camera to advance research in dermatology, public health, and (interestingly enough) the documentation and discovery of historical artifacts. HCAT lab is working with several faculty on the latter initiative, including Professor Rory Becker from Eastern Oregon University. We recently used the camera to photograph specimens at the Utah Museum of Natural History, including scorpions (who glow when exposed to UV)! Rory has also used our UV camera to photograph Neanderthal caves in Croatia (photos to come).
Kevin John – Director of Eye Tracking at BYU
The cartoon we made
Once upon a time, I animated a cartoon. It was animated in the style of Chuck Jones (i.e., Road Runner artist). I created this cartoon for research on media violence. You can read the subsequent research here.
It was created using an early version of Flash. I remember working on this for days and days. I love to make things. It’s my nature.
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