Data in Action: Using Publicly – Available Datasets to Answer Innovative Health Behavior Research Questions
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Data in Action: Using Publicly- Available Datasets to Answer Innovative Health Behavior Research Questions
September 3, 2025
Presenter:
Sherecce Fields, Texas A&M University
Large publicly-available datasets serve as rich sources of information for researchers to capitalize upon to address innovative health-related research questions. Use of these datasets also answers calls for increased transparency in the methods and analytics underlying health behavior research, in line with the aims of the open science movement. The present symposium aimed to demonstrate how researchers can adeptly participate in open science and use publicly-available data to advance the health behavior research evidence-base via four presentations. Our study used data from adolescents in the Centers for Disease Control’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey to examine associations among physiological markers of iron status (e.g., serum ferritin) relative to depressive symptoms, alcohol and substance use, physiological markers of sexually transmitted diseases (e.g., chlamydia, herpes), and sexual behavior, and whether these associations differed based on adolescents’ racial/ethnic identities. This presentation will highlight how publicly-available datasets can be used to answer innovative health behavior research questions.
Join us in person on the Texas A&M University Campus, College Station, TX in Teague 326
or
via Zoom (link will be provided after registration)
REGISTER HERE
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Bio:
Dr. Sherecce Fields‘s research focuses on behavioral decision-making (with an emphasis on impulsivity) as a trans-disease process in health risk behaviors. Her research draws attention to self-regulatory and self-control pathways to behavior, modeling both their causes and consequences in order to better inform intervention efforts. Specifically, she is interested in how behavioral decision-making and other family, process and psychosocial factors interact to affect prevention and treatment outcomes for health behaviors. Her primary research examines factors related to the initiation and maintenance of addictive behaviors (specifically in children and adolescents). Her secondary research line extends the knowledge gained from addiction research to eating behavior, obesity, and subsequent diabetes risk. In both areas of research, she am also studying the neural mechanisms that underlie performance on laboratory behavioral tasks modeling impulsive behaviors in order to better inform prevention and treatment interventions. |