Education
- Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, Social and Behavioral Health, Virginia Commonwealth University
- M.P.H., Social and Behavioral Health, Virginia Commonwealth University
- Ph.D., Communication, State University of New York at Buffalo
- M.A., Communication, State University of New York at Buffalo
- B.A., Communication (Minor in English), State University of New York at Buffalo
Research Summary
Dr. Heather Gardiner is associate professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Director of the Health Disparities Research Laboratory, and founding Director of the Office of Community Engaged Research and Practice, which leads the growth of interdisciplinary community-engaged activities for research, teaching and practice for the College of Public Health.
Gardiner is a mixed-methodologist with training and experience in qualitative and quantitative research designed and analytic methodologies, including the development and implementation of protocols for in-depth and focus group interviews and systematic literature reviews, the use of inductive and deductive approaches in the development of coding schemas and manuals, the application of codes using qualitative software (e.g., MaxQDA), and survey development and pilot testing as well as advanced statistical methods and software (i.e., multivariable analyses; SPSS, Plus). Her program of research is focused at the intersections of interpersonal health communication, chronic and end-stage kidney disease, and organ and tissue donation, and kidney transplantation.
She has a strong record of externally funded research to increase access to transplants for underserved, minority and marginalized populations, for which community engagement remains a core component. She has served as both Principal and Co-Investigator on multiple externally-funded projects, including the last two tests of the original Communicating Effectively about Donation (CEaD) intervention (R01 DK081118 and R39 OT25728), a substudy of Genotype Tissue Expression Project which adapted the CEaD for telephonic requests for tissue donation for research purposes (S10-170), and an ongoing project to increase donor designation among Asian Americans (R01 DK114881). Currently, she serves as MPI on grants (with Laura Siminoff) to understand VCA decision making among severely injured veterans and their caregivers and physicians, and develop and test a communication skills building intervention targeting organ procurement organizations staff responsible for making VCA requests to the families of organ and tissue donors (RT80031 and W81XWH1810679). She is also PI on a newly funded grant to develop a decision aid for African American/Afro-Latinx potential living kideny donors considering genetic testing for the APOL1 allele as part of the medical evaluation for donation (R01 DK131016). In these roles, she has developed scripts for simulated patient-provider encounters; casted and trained actors to portray families of potential organ and tissue donors; designed curriculum for web-based training programs targeting Organ Procurement Organization staff making requests for organ and tissue donation and patients awaiting kidney transplantation; and developed and evaluated educational and behavioral communication programs for patients awaiting kidney transplant (R39 OT24208) and for community health workers to educate their community about organ donation and promote donor designation (R39 OT29878).