Please comment on what one of the PRC-RH values means to you.

Dr. Gena R. Ghearing is an epileptologist at the University of Iowa and works in the epilepsy clinic, EEG lab, and epilepsy monitoring unit, caring for people with seizures. She is involved in clinical research that is focused on improving the lives of people with epilepsy. Particular research interests include epilepsy self-management, epilepsy care in rural and other underserved populations, improving epilepsy surgery outcomes, and semiology and autonomic changes during seizures.

What PRC-RH-related work are you excited to share?

With funding from the CDC’s Managing Epilepsy Well Network, Dr. Ghearing is helping to conduct a randomized controlled trial of the self-management for people with epilepsy and a history of negative health events (SMART) program, targeted to rural and underserved communities. This self-management program is delivered remotely by phone or video-conferencing. In order to scale and refine the SMART program to a rural population, Dr. Ghearing helped to conduct focus groups and create a community advisory board of patients, caregivers, advocates, and health care providers, involved in epilepsy care for rural populations. It was important to involve community stakeholders in this clinical trial, as Dr. Ghearing believes research must address health equity and also amplify the voice of those who have epilepsy and who care for people with epilepsy, especially stakeholders from communities which have experienced greater disparities in healthcare and research in the past.  Some of the work done by Dr. Ghearing and other members of the Managing Epilepsy Well Network was featured on the rural health information hub at Out of the Shadows: Reducing the Rural Impact of Epilepsy - The Rural Monitor (ruralhealthinfo.org). You can also review the following publications which have resulted from the SMART trial:

1. Blixen C, Ghearing G, Wade O, Colon-Zimmerman K, Tyrrell M, Sajatovic M. Engaging stakeholders in the refinement of an evidence-based remotely delivered epilepsy self-management program for rural populations Epilepsy Behav. 2021 May;118:107942. doi: 10.1016/j.yebeh.2021.107942.
2. Duke SM, González Otárula KA, Canales T, Lu E, Stout A, Ghearing GR, Sajatovic M. A systematic literature review of health disparities among rural people with epilepsy (RPWE) in the United States and Canada. Epilepsy Behav. 2021 Sep;122:108181.doi: 10.1016/j.yebeh.2021.108181.
3. Ghearing GR, Briggs F, Cassidy K, Privitera M, Blixen C, Sajatovic M. A randomized controlled trial of self-management for people with epilepsy and a history of negative health events (SMART) targeting rural and underserved people with epilepsy: a methodologic report. Trials. 2021 Nov 20;22(1):821. doi: 10.1186/s13063-021-05762-z. PMID: 34801061; PMCID: PMC8605559.
4. Rostad, S.E., Ghearing, G.R. Self-care and Epilepsy. Curr Treat Options Neurol (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11940-022-00743-2