Congratulations to Chuka Emezue, PhD, MPH, MPA, CHES, on being named the inaugural John L. and Helen Kellogg Endowed Faculty Scholar at Rush College of Nursing! At C3EN, Emezue has been the recipient of both a Joyce Chapman Community Grant and a Pilot Award for his work on BrotherlyACT, a digital tool based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) to reduce the risk and effects of violence and substance use.

This autumn, Emezue’s EMERGE Innovations Lab continues their annual Technology and Adolescent Mental Health Internship (TAMI) program for high school students. Initiated with a $3000 C3EN community grant, the program has been steadily growing. “So far, we’ve graduated over 70 students from six high schools on the West and South sides,” says Emezue. “This year, we received 36 new applications, and we’ve expanded to about eight total schools.”

The eight-week internship is a hands-on, paid interdisciplinary opportunity for students to gain skills in community based-research and practice through group projects related to youth mental health. Recent student-led projects topics include school shootings, sleep deprivation, substance use, and body image issues. “Students come up with their own topics and pick their own group leaders,” says Emezue. “We encourage them to think of their projects as public health campaigns. They do their own literature reviews and present their work at an in-person graduation event at Rush, where families are invited. The top five students are invited to co-author a paper with me and my lab. So far, seven students have co-authored two published papers.”

Now in its third year, demand for the program is high, with students and parents asking Emezue to run the program more than once a year–forming a waitlist of 70 prospective participants last fall. Past students are also returning to participate again with a level of enthusiasm Emezue had not anticipated. “Two TAMI alumni who were with us last year are returning this year,” he says. “I’m thinking we might build a mentor–mentee model into the program now. Some have already reached out expressing interest in doing AP research. I’d love for them to lead their own projects, not just play a supporting role. Some of them remind me of myself at that age—they have so much passion for their community.”

Through TAMI, Emezue seeks to instill confidence in the young participants similar to that bestowed upon him as a researcher when he received a C3EN Pilot Award. “It was the very first grant I received after joining Rush as faculty, and at the time, it was also the largest. It was a huge morale booster—it felt like someone was saying, ‘Your science is good enough to fund,’” he recalls. The 2023 award enabled Emezue to develop a research version of the BrotherlyACT app that is now available on the App Store and Google Play. In 2024, his lab ran a pilot feasibility test of the app’s video-based modules with 70 young Black males ages 15 to 24, which was published in JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting this August. “We found significant changes in attitudes toward guns and violence, and reactive aggression also decreased significantly,” he says, noting that the content is still being adapted. A pilot test of the full app, funded by Rush to Progress Grant, is in progress.

Currently Emezue, who has a background in biochemistry, is expanding his work into stress biology research­­, examining how early life adversity shapes the gut microbiome, gut-brain axis, and youth mental health. “When we did our C3EN pilot, a good number of our participants showed low to moderate psychological distress at baseline, which was really concerning,” he says. “I started thinking about things both we and they can control—things like quality nutrition, rest, sleep, and play. These are among the few domains in which youth retain some agency, even under challenging circumstances. That’s what led me to think about the gut microbiome— often described as the body’s ‘second brain’—and its connections to mental health. I also want to explore how other stress-reactive pathways play a role.” Emezue is now working to secure funding for larger studies to evaluate the BrotherlyACT app through randomized controlled trials and to integrate biomarker analyses with digital intervention data to better understand how stress becomes biologically embedded.