Duke Center for Girls & Women with ADHD faculty and staff with community steering committee members at the Town Hall in June 2024.
On Friday, June 14, 2024, the Duke Center hosted its inaugural Town Hall focused on girls and women with ADHD. The event was co-facilitated by Duke Center for Girls & Women with ADHD Co-Director, Dr. Julia Schechter, PhD and Associate Director, Dr. Jennifer Giersch, PhD. Over 120 people from across the United States registered for the event.
The Town Hall began with a discussion of results from the Center’s Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) funded survey, which identified the top ADHD research priorities for girls and women living with ADHD and their communities. This survey included 46 unique research themes developed in partnership with community members with lived experiences of ADHD and based upon seven listening and learning sessions with girls and women with ADHD, their families, educators, mental health clinicians, and medical providers.
The top five research priorities ranked by girls and women living with ADHD include:
- Role of Hormones on how ADHD shows up and is treated for girls and women
- Connections between aging, cognitive decline, and ADHD for post-menopausal women with ADHD
- Unique harms of misdiagnosis or later-in-life diagnosis of ADHD in women
- Ways that executive functioning challenges (e.g. organization, prioritizing, time management) appear in girls and women with ADHD
- Impact of high achievement and high intelligence on delayed diagnosis and treatment for girls and women with ADHD
To learn more about this survey and some of its results, check out this article by ADDitude Magazine.
The Town Hall also included a series of mini lectures highlighting topics relevant to ADHD. These topics were presented by ADHD experts and included:
- “Sleep Well to Think Clearly: Insomnia & Executive Functioning in ADHD,” by Dr. Jessica R. Lunsford-Avery, PhD.
- “Risk for Nicotine Use Among Young People with ADHD,” by Dr. Maggie Sweitzer, PhD.
- “Impact of Hormones on ADHD Across the Lifespan,” by Dr. Julia Schechter, PhD.
- “Medication for ADHD and Considerations for Females,” by Dr. Jonathan Posner, MD.
- “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Adult ADHD,” by Dr. John Mitchell, PhD
The event concluded with a workshop led by Dr. Maura DeVito, PhD on tips and strategies for supporting executive functioning for adults with ADHD. Dr. DeVito highlighted the key executive skills required to accomplish daily tasks of adulthood in the home, at work, and in relationships. She then discussed the importance of:
- Adjusting the environment to support executive skills challenges;
- Building executive skills by choosing a very small, specific targeted action to practice for a few minutes every day; and
- Practicing positive self-talk and self-reflection each day to celebrate the efforts, learn what works, and change what does not work.
At the conclusion of the Town Hall, attendees had the opportunity to provide feedback on the event to the organizers. Comments were positive and feedback was constructive and encouraging. We are truly inspired by the community’s interest and passion for improving lives for girls and women with ADHD and look forward to hosting similar events in the future.
We are grateful for funding from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute and financial support from individual donors that allowed us to host this event!