USU Announces New Event Series on Health and Well-being Research

Beginning September 2020, Utah State University will launch a new opportunity for the public to engage with USU researchers on topics important to the state. The event series, Blue Plate Research, will share easy-to-understand well-being research with Utah health advocates, statewide stakeholders and other attendees. 

“Outreach to Utah's citizens is central to USU’s mission,” said President Noelle Cockett. “Especially now, new knowledge on health and well-being is critical for Utahns’ quality of life. We’re continuing to increase our efforts to provide data and expertise that’s of value to the state.”

More than 130 USU faculty members from all of USU’s eight colleges have active projects related to health and well-being. A few areas of interdisciplinary expertise include nutrition, opioid addiction, health technology, adolescent health, resilience, movement science and autism.

“One strength of a series like this is that we can bring researchers from different fields together to share distinct and cross-cutting perspectives on a single topic,” said Lisa Berreau, USU vice president for research. “So, in Blue Plate Research, an attendee might get to learn about the biology of a health issue, its societal determinants, as well as engineering or clinical innovations to address it.”

In the first three events, USU researchers will address issues of mental health, obesity and family relationships. Information for the first event, to be held virtually Tuesday, September 29, will be released next week.

Blue Plate Research is a partnership between USU’s Office of Research and Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Utah. This new event series grew out of a previous collaboration between USU and Regence known as Sunrise Sessions that began in 2006. It featured quarterly research presentations in Salt Lake City. The previous series had thousands of attendees across more than 50 live events and was highly successful.

“We applaud the innovative, impactful research that’s continuously conducted at USU,” said Jim Swayze, president at Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Utah. “We’re looking forward to advancing our collaboration with this leading university, truly a gem in northern Utah, to launch Blue Plate Research. This exciting new series is a direct intersection of our shared focus on health and well-being.”

The goal of Blue Plate Research is to provide tools and knowledge that will positively impact the attendees, the people they interact with in their careers and their coworkers, friends and family.

The presentations will focus on sharing actionable information, including analysis of how the areas of research have changed over the years and where they might be headed, highlight videos of the presenters implementing the findings in their respective fields and easy-to-understand charts and graphs.

Blue Plate Research Event Series Details

Blue Plate Research events will be hosted virtually for the foreseeable future, with the initial event on September 29. It will consist of a presentation on YouTube that features USU faculty sharing their research and its everyday applicability to the lives of people in Utah, followed by a live question-and-answer panel session with USU researchers hosted on Zoom.  

Anyone is welcome to attend the virtual events. Learn more about upcoming Blue Plate Research presentations at blueplateresearch.usu.edu. The event website will be updated leading up to each event with highlights of researchers at USU whose work is related to the presentation topic. Additional researchers are also highlighted on the Instead podcast, which is produced by the USU Office of Research.

To learn about upcoming events and receive first notice when the RSVP form opens, sign up for the Blue Plate Research email list. Only information about the event series will be shared to those emails. Additionally, follow USU’s Office of Research on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to get additional insights into upcoming Blue Plate Research events and other happenings around the world of research at Utah State.