Contact Information
Education
T32 Postdoctoral Fellowship, Case Western Reserve University
PhD, University of Louisville
Predoctoral Fellowship, University of Louisville
MSN, University of Louisville
BSN, Indiana University Southeast
Research Areas
Health & Community Systems
Managing Chronic Conditions
Adolescents / Young Adults
Cardiovascular Nursing
Community-engaged Research
Comorbidities
Families
Intervention Development / Evaluation
Mental Health
Quality of Life
Self-management
Symptom Science
Managing Symptoms
Underserved Populations
Awards and Honors
Indiana University Southeast Alumni Award of Excellence, 2023
Midwest Nursing Research Society Service Award, 2021
Council for the Advancement of Nursing Research, Duck-Hee Kang Memorial Award, 2018
Midwest Nursing Research Society Health Promoting Behaviors Research Interest Group, New Investigator Award, 2018
Biography
Dr. Hardin’s program of research is focused on adolescent depression and associated conditions. She has completed a series of studies that build towards the development and testing of interventions to prevent or manage major depression in youth. Dr. Hardin has led interdisciplinary teams of researchers from nursing, social work, psychology, public health, and medicine to apply patient-centered behavior change interventions to improve health behaviors, disease outcomes, and quality of life in youth.
Media Features
Tackling Youth Depression. Interview with Health K. Hardin, PhD, RN, in an article about her study of an intervention to prevent depression in youth. https://nursing.iu.edu/news-events/vital-signs/2024/2024-11-faculty-feature-dr-heather-hardin.html
Publications
Hardin, H. K., Bender, A. E., Killion, C. M., & Moore, S. M. (2023). Materials and methods for recruiting systematically marginalized youth and families for weight-management intervention trials: Community stakeholder perspectives. Family & Community Health, 46(1), 13-27. https://doi.org/10.1097/FCH.0000000000000352
McVoy, M., Hardin, H. K., Fulchiero, E., Briggs, F., Caforio, K., Neudecker, M., Sajatovic, M. (2023). Mental health comorbidity and youth onset type 2 diabetes: A systematic review of the literature. International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine, 58(1): 37-55. https://doi.org/10.1177/00912174211067335
Griggs, S., Al-Kindi, S. Hardin, H., Irani, E., Rajagopalan, S., Crawford, S., Hickman, R. L. (2023). Socioeconomic deprivation and cardiometabolic risk factors in individuals with type 1 diabetes: T1D Exchange Clinic Registry. Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice, 195, 110198. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.diabres.2022.110198
Hardin, H. K., Bender, A. E., Killion, C. M., & Moore, S. M. (2022). Strategies to engage systematically marginalized youth and their families in research using high-tech methods. Advances in Nursing Science, 10.1097. https://doi.org/10.1097/ANS.0000000000000421
Hardin, H. K., Bender, A., Speck, B. J., & Hermann, C. P. (2021). An integrative review of adolescent trust in the healthcare provider relationship. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 77(4): 1645-1655. https://doi.org/10.1111/jan.14674
Hardin, H. K., Lee, D., Alchami, H. K., & Jones, S. M. (2021). Unmet health need and barriers to health care among adolescents living in a rural area. Children’s Health Care, 50(1), 108-123. https://doi.org/10.1080/02739615.2020.1833333
Hardin, H. K., Moore, S. M., Moore, S., & Uli, N. (2021). Associations between trust of healthcare provider and body mass index in adolescents. Comprehensive Child and Adolescent Nursing, 44(3): 197-208. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694193.2020.1783028
Hardin, H. K., Alchami, H. K., & Connell, A. (2020). Depressive symptoms and trust of healthcare provider in rural adolescents: Relationships and predictors. Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 42(3): 208-215. https://doi.org/10.1080/01612840.2020.1789783
Moore, S. M., Borawski, E. A., Love, T. E., Jones, S., Casey, T., McAleer, S., Thomas, C., Adegbite-Adeniyi, C., Uli, N. K., Hardin, H. K., Trapl, E. S., Plow, M., Stevens, J., Truesdale, K. P., Pratt, C. A., Long, M., Nevar, A. (2019). Two family interventions to reduce BMI in low-income urban youth: A randomized trial. Pediatrics, 143(6), e20182185. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2018-2185
Hardin, H. K., Speck, B. J., McCarthy, V. L., & Crawford, T. N. (2018). Diminished trust of health care providers, risky lifestyle behaviors, and low use of health services: A descriptive study of rural adolescents. Journal of School Nursing, 34(6), 458-467. https://doi.org/10.1177/1059840517725787
Moore, S., Komton, V., Adegite-Adeniyi, C., Dolanski, M., Hardin, H. K., & Borawski, E. (2018). Development of the Systems Thinking Scale for Adolescent Behavior Change. Western Journal of Nursing Research, 40(3), 375-387, https://doi.org/10.1177/0193945917697219
Heerman, W., Jaka, M., Berge, J., Trapl, E., Sommer, E., Samuels, L., Jackson, N., Haapala, J., Kunin-Batson, A., Olson-Bullis, B., Hardin, H., Sherwood, N., Barkin, S. (2017). The dose of behavioral interventions to prevent and treat childhood obesity: A systematic review and meta-regression. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity; 14: 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12966-017-0615-7
Description of the video:
My name is Heather Hardin, and I'm an assistant professor at the Indiana University School of Nursing. So, my interest in research started when I was a young person. My mom is a nurse, and when I was a teenager, my friends started saying things to me like, "Can you ask your mom a question for me?" And they were looking for someplace, someone who could provide them with honest, non-judgmental, you know, science-based, true answers, right? They wanted answers they could trust. So, while I was in my PhD program, I wanted to get some more clinical experience working with young people. And so I looked around my community, and the only place that I could find that young people were routinely receiving health care at for prevention was at WIC, which is Women, Infants, and Children. I ended up being the nurse who saw all the teen moms every week in my local community. They had needs for mental health care. They had needs for transportation to healthcare. They had needs around finding a healthcare provider that they can trust. I think that all of these experiences have sort of come together to influence the work that I'm doing now. So, my research focuses on behavior change interventions to improve mental health in youth. I did a trial where I developed an intervention to address depressive symptoms in youth who were diagnosed with depression. Teens in the study told me that they really loved being a part of the study. They really liked the intervention. They thought it helped them a lot. However, they wished they'd had it a few years earlier to prevent the disease from progressing and to avoid, you know, all that discomfort. I took their advice, and now I'm trying out this intervention with youth who are 11 to 13 years old, who do not yet have depression. And, our goal is to see if we can prevent or delay the onset of depression in these youth. The nurse's contribution to research that is unique is that we sort of take a whole person perspective, and we focus on things like symptom management and self-management of chronic diseases. And so, nurses are able to help people learn how to manage their own conditions so that they do not get worse. Or in my case, I'm hoping to prevent the onset or delay the onset of a chronic disease. The reason why someone might want to come to the Indiana University School of Nursing to do research or get their PhD is that there's a wealth of research support available. The faculty and the researchers here, they're very supportive, and they're very collaborative, and they're really good about helping one another make their research better, to make it more applicable, and to help connect other researchers to resources to increase the reach of their research.