Bill Copeland and Ken Dodge
The Great Smoky Mountain Study
Date: 09/24/2020 (Thu)
Time: 3:30pm- 5:00pm
Location: Seminar will be held on-site: ZOOM: https://duke.zoom.us/j/95272001068
Organizer: Laura Satterfield
Meeting Schedule: (Not currently open for scheduling. Please contact the seminar organizer listed above.)
All meetings will be held in the same location as the seminar unless otherwise noted.
3:30pm - Seminar Presentation (3:30pm to 5:00pm)
Additional Comments: The Great Smoky Mountain Study (GSMS) is a prospective, longitudinal epidemiological study of 1420 children begun in the early 1990s in 11 rural counties in western North Carolina. Study participants were originally recruited using a multi-stage household equal probability, accelerated cohort design. The area includes the Qualla Boundary which is home to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and 350 of the youth in the study are enrolled members of the tribe. Annual assessments were completed with the child and the primary caregiver until age 16 and then with the participant again at ages 19, 21, 24-26, 30, and mid-30s. An average of 83% of possible interviews were completed overall (range: 75% to 94%). At this point, the study has been ongoing for over 25 years with the original participants assessed up to 12 times from for over 12,000 assessments total. The original aims of the study were to estimate the prevalence of common psychiatric disorders in this rural area, their development over time, and associated levels of service use. The aims of GSMS have evolved over the years and the study is currently funded to study the biological consequences of early trauma exposure, the intergenerational transmission of risk and resilience, and increasing levels of suicidality, alcohol abuse and opioid use in rural Appalachia. The presentation will include an overview of the study, its history and current work focused on the so-called “diseases of despair.”