In time, the significant findings of collected data become dogma in our approach and understanding of the topic in question. As more data is collected, these foundational findings are examined for context and “robustness” — at least they should be, according to Samuel Vincent, MS, CHP ’25, a sixth-year student in the Clinical Psychology PhD program at RFU. Vincent’s article, “Investigating the Link Between Chronic Health Conditions and Mental Health Symptoms Among Low-Income, Latine Patients Seen at a Student-Run Free Clinic,” was recently published in the Journal of Student-Run Clinics. It was co-written by Marianne G. Chirica, MS, CHP ’21; Jyothirmayi Thippana, MD, CMS ’23; and RFU faculty members Melissa Chen, MD, and Kristin L. Schneider, PhD.
The idea for the project on which the paper is based took root when Mr. Vincent was doing clinical training at the Interprofessional Community Clinic (ICC), a student-run free clinic and multidisciplinary training clinic associated with RFU. For patients who are uninsured and have limited healthcare options, ICC is a lifeline. ICC patients are not charged for services and are assisted with care coordination. Ms. Chirica and Dr. Thippana were also working at ICC.
“We began having discussions about interesting research questions and whether the data we had could answer those questions,” Mr. Vincent said. “We recognized early that a large portion of the ICC patient population was made up of people from racial and ethnic minority groups — mainly Latine* community members. They were all uninsured, coming from low SES (socioeconomic status) backgrounds.”
The team knew from their coursework that participants typically used in these research studies were overwhelmingly white and of higher SES. As students of psychology and medicine, they combined their interests to approach the research from multiple sides. Little work previously had been done investigating the link between mental and physical health conditions among people of racial and ethnic minority groups.
“To cater to all our interests and to fill a gap in the literature, we decided to move forward with a study that would analyze the relationship between mental health symptoms and chronic health conditions among patients seen at the ICC,” Mr. Vincent said. From there, Drs. Schneider and Chen backed the project and helped launch it. The team extracted data from patients seen at the ICC in 2019.
The biggest surprise for the researchers was finding “that the presence of chronic health conditions (CHCs) linked with lower anxiety symptoms, and the presence of hypertension and hyperlipidemia linked with lower depression symptoms.” This contradiction to popular research led them to seek out explanations.
“One potential reason for these unexpected findings could be that the presence of a CHC may not incrementally increase stress among individuals from lower SES and racial/ethnic minority backgrounds due to the elevated amounts of stress this population already faces with factors such as economic and racial disparities,” Mr. Vincent said. “The importance of testing the robustness of past findings in different kinds of samples is a key idea that I will take with me. These kinds of questions are applicable to whichever projects I foresee myself engaging with in the future and will, hopefully, open the door for many interesting studies to come.”
Margaret Smith is a Chicago-based freelance editor and writer whose work largely focuses on current sociopolitical happenings.