Author: alk320

Hawkins Lab master’s student Takashi Yoshimasu presented a research poster at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health’s 2026 Dean’s Day on April 9th.

Dean’s Day is the School of Public Health’s annual research showcase, in which graduate students, postdoctoral trainees, and faculty across departments come together to share and celebrate student-led work. This year’s event spanned three days, April 7–9, with sessions held in the first floor Commons of the Public Health building.

Takashi’s poster, “The Association Between Fasting Intervals and Changes in Depressive Symptoms from Early Pregnancy to Postpartum,” drew on data from the LEAP study (N=228) to examine whether night-time fasting intervals — defined as the time between last meal and breakfast, including sleep — were associated with shifts in depressive symptoms across the perinatal period. Using a mixed-effects model and the CES-D scale to track symptoms from 16 weeks of pregnancy through 6 months postpartum, the analysis found that night-time fasting interval length was not associated with depressive symptoms in this sample. The study adds important context to this line of research in perinatal populations.

Congratulations to Takashi on representing the Hawkins Lab at this year’s event!

“A wake-up call to prioritize our sleep” is how some members of the Pittsburgh community described our Sleep Health Workshop last Saturday, March 21st.

Dr. Hawkins and Dr. Rachel Conlon led the workshop in collaboration with Healthy Start Pittsburgh, a Black woman-led public health organization working to improve maternal and child health across Allegheny County through community-based services, advocacy, and education.

The workshop covered the science behind sleep — what’s actually happening in your brain and body while you sleep — alongside topics like the relationship between sleep and mental health, melatonin use, the challenges of shift work, and the cultural assumptions and mindsets that influence how we think about rest. From there, the group worked together to develop personalized, practical sleep strategies that community members could start using right away.

“We got a lot of engagement from members of the community who were all very interested in sleep health. There was so much enthusiasm that they would like the sleep workshop to be an annual event,” says Dr. Hawkins.

The next workshop in the series is planned for Summer 2026 and will focus on youth sleep. We’re excited to keep this momentum going and bring more sleep science to the Pittsburgh community — stay tuned for more details!

The Hawkins Lab had a strong showing at the 2026 Society for Biopsychosocial Science and Medicine (SBSM) Annual Meeting in Chicago this March.

Dr. Marquis Hawkins was the first speaker in a Featured Symposium on Thursday, March 12th: “The Uneven Storm: Structural and Psychosocial Modifiers of Perinatal Behavioral Health and Outcomes.” The session brought together researchers from the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon University, California State University Long Beach, and more to examine how structural and psychosocial factors shape perinatal behavioral health. Dr. Hawkins opened the session by framing how intersecting stressors — including racism, discrimination, food insecurity, and chronic stress — shape perinatal health through biological, behavioral, and community pathways.

Dr. Hawkins also was a planner/sub-committee member of the conference’s Great Debate on Saturday, March 14th, which tackled the question of whether biobehavioral health research should prioritize phase III clinical trials or shift toward implementation science.

PhD student Namhyun Kim’s research poster, “Trajectories of Multidimensional Sleep Health from Pregnancy to Postpartum and Their Associations with Postpartum Weight Retention,” was presented after being selected for the 2026 SBSM Scholar Award, recognizing her abstract as one of the top student and trainee submissions to the meeting. You can read more about that in our earlier announcement.

Congratulations to Dr. Hawkins and Namhyun Kim on representing the lab at this year’s meeting!

We are excited to share that Namhyun Kim has been selected to receive the 2026 SBSM Scholar Award and her research poster, Trajectories of Multidimensional Sleep Health from Pregnancy to Postpartum and Their Associations with Postpartum Weight Retention, will be presented at the Society for Biopsychosocial Science and Medicine (SBSM) Annual Meeting in Chicago.

The Society for Biopsychosocial Science and Medicine (SBSM) is a scientific organization focused on advancing research into how biological, psychological, behavioral, and social factors interact to influence health and disease. Each year, the society holds an Annual Meeting to share new findings through oral and poster presentations, symposia, and workshops.

The SBSM Scholar Award recognizes the top student and trainee abstract submissions to the Annual Meeting, with only 10 to 24 selected each year. The award helps offset the costs of attending and presenting at the conference.

Congratulations to Namhyun on this well-deserved accomplishment!

See the Graphical Abstract:

Namhyun Kim, a member of the Hawkins Perinatal Sleep and Health Behavior Lab, was recently recognized by the journal Nutrients as a candidate for its 2026 Best Paper Award.

Her paper, Association Between Chrononutrition Patterns and Multidimensional Sleep Health, co-authored with Rachel Kolko Conlon, Samaneh Farsijani, and Marquis Samuel Hawkins,  examines associations between meal timing patterns and multiple dimensions of sleep health.

This paper demonstrates that when people eat—specifically delaying the first meal or eating heavily late at night—is directly linked to poorer sleep timing and duration. By analyzing health and diet data from over 5,000 U.S. adults, she found that every hour delayed before eating breakfast increased the odds of poor sleep duration by 21%, and those who ate most of their calories late in the day had nearly double the risk of irregular sleep timing.

Nutrients is a peer-reviewed, international nutrition journal, and its annual Best Paper Award recognizes “publications of high quality, scientific significance, and extensive influence.” Of the thousands of articles published each year, a select number of papers are nominated, and three win the award. Congratulations to Namhyun Kim on this prestigious nomination!