Modi Lab Research
Research in Adherence to Pediatric Medical Regimens
Avani Modi, PhD, is an assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine and the Division of Behavioral Medicine and Clinical Psychology (Center for the Promotion of Treatment Adherence and Self-Management) at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Her research lab focuses on adherence to pediatric medical regimens, including the measurement of adherence and identifying barriers to effective disease management, as well as developing health-related quality-of-life outcome measures.
The lab is currently working on two studies in pediatric epilepsy funded by Modi’s K23 Career Development Award from the NIH (K23 HDO57333). The first study seeks to document patterns of adherence in children with new-onset epilepsy (ages 2-12 years) and identify predictors of adherence (ABC study), as well as develop a surrogate marker for adherence based on pharmacokinetic modeling of serum levels. The second study is a pilot intervention to improve adherence to antiepileptic drug therapy for children with epilepsy and their families. To our knowledge, this is the first intervention study to improve adherence in pediatric epilepsy.
Modi and her team are also involved in a grant examining longitudinal outcomes in adolescents with extreme obesity undergoing bariatric surgery with Meg Zeller, PhD, and Thomas Inge, MD, PhD (1U01DK07249301 − PI: Inge). One aspect of this study is to examine adherence and barriers to vitamin supplementation and their association with nutritional complications postsurgery.
Finally, Modi’s research team has helped develop a web-based assessment of barriers to adherence for children and adolescents with sickle cell disease (U54 HLD70871).
