Martha S. Tingen, PhD, RN
Professor and Charles W. Linder, MD Distinguished Chair in Pediatrics
Department of Medicine, Georgia Prevention Institute
Cancer Prevention, Control & Population Health Program, Georgia Cancer Center
Medical College of Georgia, Augusta University
Research Manager, Children’s Research Unit, Children’s Hospital of Georgia
Dr. Martha S. Tingen, RN, is a bio-behavioral nurse scientist who focuses on social and behavioral interventions to mitigate risk factors known to cause cancer; specifically tobacco use, alcohol use, being overweight or obese, and with poor nutritional patterns, and being physical inactive. Her work addresses cancer health disparities among minority and underserved populations, most often African Americans in both rural and urban geographical settings. She conducts community-based participatory research, where both the community and research team are collaborative members in all aspects of the research.
In addition, she is Co-Investigator and Cancer Care Delivery Research (CCDR) Lead for Augusta University’s NCORP (National Cancer Institute’s Community Oncology Research Program) minority and underserved community site award, Georgia CaRes (Cancer Research). As CCDR Lead, all research addresses the manner in which cancer care is delivered, how decision-making after a cancer diagnosis occurs, how survivorship care plans can be implemented, and ways to improve cancer surgery outcomes in the frail elderly undergoing surgery for cancer. Approximately 50% of all study accruals are minority and underserved populations.
In addition to cancer prevention and control, Dr. Tingen is passionate about her work on suicide prevention with the goal that all would “Choose Life” (the name of the extramurally awarded project) and preventing and decreasing the use of substances of abuse.
Martha Tingen, PhD
Health Sciences Campus
GCC - M. Bert Storey Research Building
CN-4121
(706) 721-0471
My early research that started during my PhD program focused on prostate cancer prevention and tailoring messages that researched the most at-risk population: African American men. As part of an interprofessional team, the specific contribution of this early work revealed that men that perceived there may be a benefit to participating in prostate screening were more likely to go for screening than men who did not perceive a possible benefit yet felt that a cancer diagnosis would be fatal regardless of screening and early detection.
As a new faculty member, I had always wanted to study theory-driven tobacco prevention and cessation to prevent the adverse health consequences of tobacco use and exposure. These publications focused on primary prevention efforts with children and youth, cessation with parents, and how providers could be equipped to deliver effective evidence-based cessation strategies (AHRQ/PHS Smoking Cessation Guideline, later updated to the Treating Tobacco Use and Dependence Guideline, 2008) within the clinical environment. The 2006 publication was one of the first studies to train school nurses to implement tobacco prevention in schools across public health districts while concurrently providing self-help cessation strategies to parents. Findings revealed that trained school nurses were effective at delivery of the tobacco prevention program and the cessation resources. The 2001 study on providers and using the PHS Cessation Guideline, published in Preventive Medicine, was cited in the 2008 update of the PHS Guideline, Treating Tobacco Use and Dependence. Study results showed that providing feedback to healthcare providers was the most effective tool for improving provider delivery of the guidelines within the clinical encounter.
For the most recent eight years, I have continued to investigate behavioral interventions affecting disparate and minority African American populations in rural and urban areas for tobacco prevention and cessation with biological measures (salivary cotinine) and cancer disparities and inequities. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) methods are used most often and the partnerships and community engagement are extensive. These efforts have shown that community partners often provide the answers needed to assure both identification of the problem at hand and successful implementation of the project.
A fourth area of research still immersed in tobacco prevention in children, cessation in their parents, and thus decreasing second-hand smoke (SHS) in children, focuses on asthma, the number one chronic illness in children and the primary cause of school absenteeism. We have explored the comparison of prevalence between those with an asthma diagnoses and those undiagnosed with symptomology between an inner-city Detroit population and a rural, southern Georgia population. We found asthma is a disease of poverty more than geographic location. I am also exploring the impact on SHS on children related to obesity and cognition and their parents smoking behaviors. We found children exposed to SHS were more obese than their non-exposed peers and performed substantially poorer on standardized cognition tests than their non-exposed peers. We discovered parent’s under-report smoking as smoking status was measured through self-report and cotinine.
