Caren Frost

caren.frost@socwk.utah.edu

Specialties: Psychosocial aspects of breast and ovarian cancer, international and domestic maternal and child health, program evaluation, and research ethics

Classes Taught: Administration and Leadership in Health and Social Work, Cross-Cultural Communication, Diversity and Social Justice, and Introduction to Research

As a Research Associate Professor in the College of Social Work, Caren J. Frost brings a public health and anthropological focus to her work. Dr. Frost's Ph.D. (1995) is from the University of Utah's Department of Anthropology and is in Medical, Cultural, and Applied Anthropology. Her field research for her dissertation was conducted in Morocco from 1994 to 1995, and considered at how rural Moroccan women use traditional and modern medical systems and information to provide health care for their families. Her decision to complete her fieldwork in Morocco was due to her work as a Peace Corps Volunteer there in the early 1980s, when she learned Moroccan Arabic and how to successfully live in an Islamic country. After completing her Peace Corps service, she decided to obtain a master's degree in Public Health. Her area of focus for her M.P.H. was in Population and Family Health, specifically emphasizing International Maternal and Child Health program development and evaluation. While working on her M.P.H., Dr. Frost studied about mechanisms for parasitic disease control, routes for successful vaccinations for women and their children, and the impact of sexual abuse on children in the United States.

When she came to work at the College of Social Work in 2001, Dr. Frost was invited to serve as an Institutional Review Board (IRB) panel member. The Chair of the IRB was pleased with her commitment and knowledgeable comments about the IRB process as well as the impact of the social and behavioral science studies on human participants. As a consequence, she was asked to serve as a Vice-Chair of the IRB in 2003, focusing on reviews of social and behavioral science studies. This position requires Dr. Frost to be current on the federal requirements for protecting human participants, review and authorize principal investigators' research protocols, and ensure that information about the IRB is available to researchers in the social and behavioral sciences. In addition, she assists faculty and graduate students in the College of Social Work and at Huntsman Cancer Institute's High Risk Breast Cancer Clinic in conceptualizing, developing, and submitting their research protocols.

Over the past three years, Dr. Frost has conducted research on the psychosocial aspects of women breast cancer patients and survivors through work with the High Risk Breast Cancer Clinic at Huntsman Cancer Institute. In the area of psychosocial research on cancer, Dr. Frost is finishing in-depth interviews with parents from the Huntsman Cancer Institute and the Northern California Cancer Center about parental perceptions regarding minor daughter's participation in cancer-based clinical studies. This research effort is funded through a U01 grant awarded to Huntsman Cancer Institute. In June 2006, Dr. Frost and her colleagues at Huntsman Cancer Institute will submit a grant proposal on women's decision-making around prophylactic mastectomy to the National Science Foundation. As a result of her contact with Huntsman Cancer Institute colleagues, she serves on Salt Lake Affiliate of Susan G. Komen Foundation Board as Chair of the Grants Committee and Community Profile development. With Social Work colleagues, Dr. Frost has researched the quality of life issues of children with disabilities and their families through a grant by Primary Children Medical Foundation.