Mikael Anne Greenwood-Hickman, MPH

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“My research uses a combination of epidemiologic and qualitative methods to understand older adult health and lived experience, with the goal of informing new interventions to help prevent cognitive decline and support healthy, active lifestyles as people age.”

Mikael Anne Greenwood-Hickman, MPH

Collaborative Scientist, Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute

Biography

Mikael Anne Greenwood-Hickman, MPH, brings a mixed methods approach to geriatrics and aging research. Through the application of both quantitative and qualitative methods, her work aims to better understand the lives and behavior of older adults in order to build interventions and tools to preserve cognitive and physical function and promote wellbeing.

Since completing her Master of Public Health in epidemiology at the University of Washington in 2014, Ms. Greenwood-Hickman has served in several roles within public health research teams, including as a data manager and programmer, and as a project coordinator. She joined KPWHRI as a project manager for the Statistical Coordinating Center of the Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium in 2017. In 2021, Ms. Greenwood-Hickman formally joined the KPWHRI faculty as a collaborative scientist, bringing her operational knowledge and management skills to bear on her scientific portfolio.

Ms. Greenwood-Hickman’s research interests and work are primarily focused on understanding physical activity and sedentary behavior patterns among older adults and developing and testing interventions to promote physical activity and reduce sedentary time. She has been an active collaborator on the Adult Changes in Thought Study’s Activity Monitoring sub-study since 2018. As part of this work, she is actively engaged in several ongoing analyses linking data gathered by accelerometers (activity trackers that electronically detect up-and-down, side-to-side, and back-and-forth motion) to cognitive and physical function outcomes in later life. She is also an active collaborator in the ongoing Health Aging Resources to Thrive (HART) trial, which is testing a sedentary behavior intervention for older adults with obesity.

Outside her work in physical activity, Ms. Greenwood-Hickman is also collaborating on a pragmatic trial testing a low-cost detection tool for undiagnosed dementia — the EHR Risk of Alzheimer's and Dementia Assessment Rule (eRADAR) algorithm — in clinical practice. She will be an integral part of the study’s planned qualitative evaluation of the eRADAR intervention approach and will strive to understand the intervention’s impact on patients, their care partners, and their clinical providers.

Areas of research focus

Recent Publications

Wingood M, Bonnell L, LaCroix AZ, Rosenberg D, Walker R, Bellettiere J, Greenwood-Hickman MA, Wing D, Gell N. Community-dwelling older adults and physical activity recommendations: patterns of aerobic, strengthening, and balance activities.  J Aging Phys Act. 2021 Oct 15:1-13. doi: 10.1123/japa.2021-0194. [Epub ahead of print]. PubMed

Greenwood-Hickman MA, Walker R, Bellettiere J, LaCroix AZ, Kim B, Wing D, Richmire K, Crane PK, Larson EB, Rosenberg DE. Associations between perceived neighborhood walkability and device-based physical activity and sedentary behavior patterns in older adults.  J Aging Phys Act. 2021 Aug 13:1-9. doi: 10.1123/japa.2020-0387. [Epub ahead of print]. PubMed

Greenwood-Hickman MA, Nakandala S, Jankowska MM, Rosenberg D, Tuz-Zahra F, Bellettiere J, Carlson J, Hibbing PR, Zou J, LaCroix AZ, Kumar A, Natarajan L. The CNN Hip Accelerometer Posture (CHAP) method for classifying sitting patterns from hip accelerometers: a validation study. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2021 Nov 1;53(11):2445-2454. doi: 10.1249/MSS.0000000000002705. PubMed

Carlson JA, Tuz-Zahra F, Bellettiere J, Ridgers ND, Steel CL, Bejarano CM, LaCroix A, Rosenberg DE, Greenwood-Hickman MA, Natarajan L. Validity of two awake wear time classification algorithms for activPAL in youth, adults, and older adults. J Meas Phys Behav. 2021;4(2):151-162. doi: 10.1123/jmpb.2020-0045. Epub 2021 Apr 22. PubMed

Walker RL, Greenwood-Hickman MA, Bellettiere J, LaCroix AZ, Wing D, Higgins M, Richmire K, Larson EB, Crane PK, Rosenberg DE. Associations between physical function and device-based measures of physical activity and sedentary behavior patterns in older adults: moving beyond moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity. BMC Geriatr. 2021 Mar 31;21(1):216. doi: 10.1186/s12877-021-02163-4. PubMed

 

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