Today’s News from the University of Kansas
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Researchers answer call to improve sleep for firefighters to boost performance and safety
LAWRENCE — A team of investigators at the University of Kansas is collecting data and designing interventions to improve the quality of sleep for firefighters and paramedics in the Lawrence Douglas County Fire-Medical Department. For these first responders, better sleep could improve their quality of life and boost their performance as they encounter life-and-death situations.
Virtual reality application offers children with autism spectrum disorder a way to practice social skills
LAWRENCE — For individuals with autism spectrum disorder, social interactions can be awkward or difficult to navigate. Practicing these interactions as often as possible is key to long-term development and improvement, but it can be difficult to repeat or practice in-person as much as is needed. The solution may be found in virtual reality applications being developed by researchers at the University of Kansas.
KLETC leader selected to serve on national Consortium on Fighting Extremism and Hate
HUTCHINSON — As hearings commence on January’s insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Darin Beck, executive director of the Kansas Law Enforcement Training Center, begins work with the Anti-Defamation League’s national Consortium on Fighting Extremism and Hate. ADL launched the consortium in December 2019 to convene leaders from major national law enforcement associations in regular dialogue on efforts to combat extremism and hate. Michael Becar, executive director of the International Association of Directors of Law Enforcement Standards and Training, selected Beck to represent IADLEST on this consortium.
Legal scholar to deliver Distinguished Public Lands Lecture
LAWRENCE — Legal scholar Justin Pidot will explore the law and policy surrounding natural resources law topics when he delivers the Distinguished Public Lands Lecture at the University of Kansas School of Law this spring. Pidot will present “Protecting Sacred Lands and the Bears Ears National Monument” at 4:30 p.m. March 9 via Zoom. The lecture is free and open to the public. Advance registration is required.
Full stories below.
Contact: Brendan Lynch, KU News Service, 785-864-8855, [email protected], @BrendanMLynch
Researchers answer call to improve sleep for firefighters to boost performance and safety
LAWRENCE — A team of investigators at the University of Kansas is collecting data and designing interventions to improve the quality of sleep for firefighters and paramedics in the Lawrence Douglas County Fire-Medical Department.
For these first responders, better sleep could improve their quality of life and boost their performance as they encounter life-and-death situations. The stressful work of responding to emergencies demands both physical stamina and quick decision making.
“Among the many responsibilities of their job, our EMTs and paramedics have to make drug calculations regardless of the time of day or night or situation, so sleep deprivation is a concern,” said Kevin Joles, division chief with LDCFM. “If somebody is sleep deprived and distracted when throwing a ladder against a house and they hit a power line, it could kill them or another firefighter.”
Recognizing the importance of sleep for job performance, the department conducted its own internal surveys led by firefighter paramedic Kathryn Beseth, who then contacted Nancy Hamilton, associate professor of social and behavioral sciences and psychology at KU. Seeing an opportunity to “answer the call” with community engaged scholarship, Hamilton agreed to perform data analysis, push forward the sleep research and design interventions to improve sleep for LDCFM personnel.
“Kathryn took it upon herself to investigate her co-workers’ sleep problems and distributed a highly regarded questionnaire to many of the frontline personnel to ask them about their sleep problems,” Hamilton said. “She made a contact with me in summer of last year and asked if I would be interested in helping interpret the data and think about where to go forward from there. I was very interested and that began a conversation.”
Hamilton assembled a team at KU and analyzed responses about first responders’ sleep duration, quality, efficiency, onset latency and disturbance, along with data on wake time, sleep medications and daytime dysfunction.
Because firefighters and paramedics have sleeping quarters at the workplace, they experience a sleep environment different from most people, with less control over light, noise and bedding — and with sleep often interrupted to rush to an emergency situation.
With KU graduate students Julia Russell, Westley Youngren, Philip Huang and 10 undergraduates, Hamilton determined to combine the questionnaire data with anecdotal perspectives about sleep issues experienced within the department.
“We conducted a focus group between me and students in my lab, and Chief Joles and several frontline firefighters, about sleep problems they observed on the job among their co-workers,” Hamilton said. “We agreed on a two-phase project and started in November with an anonymous questionnaire that went out to the frontline personnel, where they reported on sleep problems related to sleep apnea, insomnia, nightmares and environmental disturbances at the firehouses. We collected and analyzed those data to provide some interventions for people with sleep apnea, telling them if they were at risk and where they could get treatment. We identified station-specific sleep problems and also identified people at risk for nightmare problems and insomnia problems.”
Data showed that around half of the respondents showed symptoms of sleep apnea and 30% had trouble staying awake at least once per week. Many reported environmental disturbances on the job, like sleeping areas that are too warm, as well as light and sound disturbances.
“Luckily, we no longer have communal bunk rooms,” Joles said. “But that doesn’t change the fact that firefighters may have interruptions to their sleep for numerous reasons. When a ladder truck goes out in the middle of the night — but the medic unit and rescue will stay in the firehouse — firefighters can hear responding firefighters preparing to leave, the sirens, garage doors closing, etc. Everyone hears the alarm — it’s startling to be woken up by emergency tones, but that happens throughout the night. LDCFM respond to about 13,000 calls in Lawrence and Douglas County on average every year.”
Moreover, first responders deal with the same sleep disorders that can plague anyone: Up to 81% are at risk for insomnia, while 23% are at risk for nightmare disorder.
“In January, I provided feedback to Chief Joles and Chief (Shaun) Coffey and other administration at the department,” Hamilton said. “We talked about where and how they could intervene with some of the firefighters or address some of the environmental sleep disturbances.”
Joles said the department would use the findings to make some changes to existing firehouses and could use them to inform the design of future facilities.
“Once Nancy has delivered the data to all of our members, we plan to create a plan in order to make positive changes in our firehouses to aid in better rest for our members,” Joles said. “Our members live here a third of their lives. They eat, train and sleep in the stations. LDCFM is going to continue to look to improving sleep quality in the firehouses. Some changes might include room-darkening shades or something as simple as adding ambient sound machines to sleeping quarters. It takes time to get things fixed. If money was no object, we would be able to fix this quickly, but unfortunately, the city budgeting process takes time.”
Hamilton’s team has applied for a grant from the Douglas County Community Foundation to push the project forward. She plans a small-sample, sleep-diary study using wrist-worn accelerometers to gather more precise data on sleep within the department. Eventually, Hamilton plans to publish scholarship about the research.
She and Joles said they hoped interventions for helping first responders get quality sleep in Lawrence and Douglas County could be exported to other departments across the country.
“We want to be well-rested and healthy so that we can serve the community,” Joles said.
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Contact: Jen Humphrey, Life Span Institute, 785-864-6621, [email protected], @kulifespan
Virtual reality application offers children with autism spectrum disorder a way to practice social skills
LAWRENCE — For individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), social interactions can be awkward or difficult to navigate. Whether it’s a conversation in the hallway at school or buying a candy bar at a grocery store, direct instruction and practice of social skills may be required to support success. Practicing these interactions as often as possible is key to long-term development and improvement, but it can be difficult to repeat or practice in-person as much as is needed to feel confident.
The solution may be found in virtual reality applications being developed by researchers at the University of Kansas.
The VOISS, or Virtual Reality Opportunities to Integrate Social Skills, walks users through a variety of potential social interactions. It can be presented in a two-dimensional way on a tablet or laptop, or it can be used with a virtual reality headset.
“Repeated exposure to improving social skills is key for effective long-term development,” said Sean Smith, the principal investigator of the project and a professor of special education at KU. “However, face-to-face interactions may not always offer the forgiveness or repetition that is required for someone to learn from it.”
In development for more than 10 years, VOISS is part of a five-year, $2.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education. Smith is leading the project with co-investigator Amber Rowland, assistant research professor in KU’s Center for Research on Learning, which is a part of the Life Span Institute, and with Bruce Frey, professor of research psychology.
Now, teachers and students at 17 schools are testing VOISS, even as schools have turned to remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. To support educators and build their capacity in social skill instruction, the team recently launched the VOISS Advisor, an implementation website. It includes video demonstrations of the app and lesson plans that help students take what they learned and practiced in virtual reality. Students can then practice and use those skills in a physical space.
“VOISS Advisor provides the tools that an educator needs in order to feel confident teaching social skills,” Rowland said.
School districts that are interested in participating or want to learn more can reach out to Rowland or Smith or complete the VOISS interest form.
Rowland said that whether it’s the small talk in the hallway or with a cashier at the supermarket, VOISS users can practice what to say and do in each situation. They can play the role of themselves or look at the interaction from the perspective of other people in the scene. Over 140 scenarios are being developed for users to practice these basic interactions. The app is available through Google Play.
In addition to practice with the experiences, the goal is to help students generalize the interaction from on-screen to their reality, or from the classroom setting to a grocery store, for example. Ultimately, Smith said, the researchers are determining if the availability of safe and repeated interactions in an online environment increases that ability to generalize the interaction.
After each guided scenario, there are questions that serve as an assessment of how the situation was handled. From there, all of this data is added to a dashboard for an educator or other professional to review.
The drive for the project stems from Smith and Rowland’s passion for innovation, specifically within education and technology.
“Technology can make a big difference for students with disabilities, but oftentimes it’s not being used or implemented effectively,” Smith said.
Rowland added, “Researchers and developers are currently using virtual reality to practice social skills, and yet, we are the only team looking at how to support educators and students as they generalize from the virtual environment, into the physical space.”
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Contact: Hannah Lemon, KU Edwards Campus, 913-897-8755, [email protected], @KUEdwardsCampus
KLETC leader selected to serve on national Consortium on Fighting Extremism and Hate
HUTCHINSON — As hearings commence on January’s insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, Darin Beck, executive director of the Kansas Law Enforcement Training Center (KLETC), begins work with the Anti-Defamation League’s national Consortium on Fighting Extremism and Hate.
ADL launched the consortium in December 2019 to convene leaders from major national law enforcement associations in regular dialogue on efforts to combat extremism and hate. Michael Becar, executive director of the International Association of Directors of Law Enforcement Standards and Training (IADLEST), selected Beck to represent IADLEST on this consortium.
“IADLEST is happy to partner with the Anti-Defamation League to provide a representative to their meeting of the Consortium on Fighting Extremism and Hate,” Becar said. “Our partnership will help provide input from the Law Enforcement Training and Standards (POST) commissions on training programs designed for law enforcement. Darin Beck’s experience and expertise will be a valuable voice in this dialogue about combatting extremism and hate.”
Beck and KLETC – a unit of the University of Kansas Lifelong & Professional Education – have a longstanding focus on policing without bias and upholding the law and safety of all citizens. Beck attended his first Consortium on Fighting Extremism and Hate meeting virtually Feb. 23, where the group discussed ADL’s PROTECT Plan to fight domestic terrorism, which includes law enforcement’s role in responding to domestic terrorist threats, online extremism, processing digital evidence, reporting suspicious white supremacist behavior and more.
“I am very honored to join this group of partners in what I believe is one of the most important issues confronting our country,” Beck said. “I am honored to have the opportunity to add my voice to the fight for social justice issues on a global scale.”
To date, 19 national law enforcement associations participate in the consortium, which has resulted in multiple partnerships between organizations to address issues related to extremism and hate.
“In these meetings and through these partnerships, we identify current challenges and collaborate to address them head on and try to mitigate threats,” said Elise Jarvis, director of Law enforcement Outreach and Partnerships for ADL.
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Contact: Ashley Golledge, School of Law, [email protected], @kulawschool
Legal scholar to deliver Distinguished Public Lands Lecture
LAWRENCE — Legal scholar Justin Pidot will explore the law and policy surrounding natural resources law topics when he delivers the Distinguished Public Lands Lecture at the University of Kansas School of Law this spring.
Pidot will present “Protecting Sacred Lands and the Bears Ears National Monument” at 4:30 p.m. March 9 via Zoom. The lecture is free and open to the public. Advance registration is required.
Pidot is a professor of law and the co-director of the environmental law program at the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law. Pidot has recently been appointed general counsel for the White House Council on Environmental Quality. He will make remarks in his personal capacity as a scholar and not as a representative of the federal government.
“KU Law is pleased to be able to have Professor Pidot speak to our community based on his extensive public lands experience and representation of tribes,” said Uma Outka, associate dean for faculty and William R. Scott Law Professor at KU Law.
Pidot previously served as the deputy solicitor for land resources at the U.S. Department of the Interior during the Obama administration and as an appellate lawyer at the Environment and Natural Resources Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. He clerked for the Hon. Judith W. Rogers of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and completed a fellowship at the Georgetown Environmental Law and Policy Institute. He received his juris doctor from Stanford Law School and his bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University.
This lecture is made possible with support from the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation. It is co-sponsored by the KU Environmental Law Society and the KU Native American Law Students Association.
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