health equity

Meet the Research Leaders: Nick Zaller, PhD

December 11, 2020 by Haley Cureton

As a team, we’re all involved in work with criminal justice populations. We’ve been particularly interested in how we can provide better access to substance use and mental health treatment among folks who are under community supervision, so people who are on probation or parole.

We proposed to do a pilot study integrating telehealth counseling into a probation parole office setting. We have a lot of folks in Arkansas who live in very rural communities. They have poor access to behavioral health treatment, yet they’re under community supervision. They’re mandated to come in and interact with their probation parole officer. Plus, if they’re required to attend treatment, they’ll have to find a way to actually show up. We figured if we integrate all this, folks could go to their probation office and get more services so they wouldn’t have to show up a bunch of different times. We designed a telehealth intervention, six counseling sessions.

We started enrolling people in that, and then COVID hit. Our probation parole offices had to shut down. We were focusing on one area, one office, and now we’re taking a step back and saying, “Ok. Let’s talk to other area offices that serve rural areas.”

Meet the Research Leaders: Kathleen Wolf, PhD

December 4, 2020 by mafex005@umn.edu

My team members are Pooja Tandon, a pediatrician and Cary Simmons, a landscape architect. Our project is about schoolyard conversions – to explore how green schoolyards can become community parks – and we’re working in the city of Tacoma, Washington. Cary and the Trust for Public Land (TPL), our community partner, has analyzed communities all around the Puget Sound area. They’ve found that underserved neighborhoods often have a dearth of parks, and that’s the situation in our study location.

Meet the Research Leaders: Anne Rufa, PhD

November 27, 2020 by Haley Cureton

Our team partnered with the I AM ABLE Center for Family Development on the West Side of Chicago. They are a wellness and mental health center. They created a model – TR4IM (Trauma Response and Intervention Movement). We’re working with them to do a program evaluation of that particular model and building capacity so they can do evaluation of the work moving forward. That might help them seek additional funding.

Somewhat separately, we’re doing qualitative work with people who have been part of the program, to get their feedback and see if there are barriers to success or things that people who are engaged in the program think would be a good idea to consider shifting.

Meet the Research Leaders: Whitney Garney, PhD, MPH

November 20, 2020 by Haley Cureton

We are working in Hearne, a small, rural community in east central Texas. We originally planned to address substance use health disparities. Through our first year of research we learned from the community that was a symptom, but one of the underlying reasons was lack of opportunities for youth. We reprogrammed our project to look at increasing opportunities. We’re using a process called “human-centered design” or “design thinking” to engage youth to develop their own program, set of products, or whatever the result is. We don’t have the answer at the beginning of the process. We’ll work with youth over the next year and a half to develop their program and then pilot test it.

Meet the Research Leaders: Nikki Raymond, MBA, MS

November 6, 2020 by Haley Cureton

We are interested in examining the engagement levels in mental health services in community-based versus home-based care and between rural versus urban settings. There has been an initiative in recent years with a focus on community-based mental health. “Community-based” refers to bringing services to homes and schools, which increases the level of engagement. Engagement can be defined in many different ways. We are looking at a number of appointments at the outset of services in a one month or 90 day period. Other folks might see engagement as no-show rates, things of that nature.

Meet the Research Leaders: Jessica Palardy, MSW

November 3, 2020 by Haley Cureton

I am from Team Philly in Cohort 4. I work with Ashlee Murray, MD, MPH and Melissa Dichter, PhD, MSW who are both researchers. I’m the community partner. We are looking at how we can improve the connection between pediatric medical providers and families who identify as experiencing domestic violence. We’re trying to develop a feedback tool where survivors would be able to have their voices heard in the screening and referral process, where they can say, “I was referred by my doctor, but I didn’t appreciate how they spoke to me about it,” or, “It was very impactful how the nurse spoke to me, and she was so kind, and that worked well.” The provider will be able to take that information. Hopefully it will improve their screening practices.