Research Office News

Mary Ellen Heisler and Adrienne Lapidos (co-PIs), Edith Kieffer, and colleagues received a sponsored project award from the Ralph Wilson Foundation. The project, conducted in collaboration with 3 health plans in Detroit, focuses on the use of Community Health Workers (CHWs) to reach marginalized underserved groups who may have reason to mistrust formalized systems of care and to generate jobs in low-resource communities.  

Associate Professor Joe Ryan received an award from the Criminal Justice Policy Committee for reviewing the methodology and draft reports studying the fiscal impact of directing minors in Michigan from the adult court and service systems to the family court and juvenile service systems.

Assistant Research Scientist Adrienne Lapidos is on a team that received funding from the National Institute of Mental Health for her project “Effectiveness and Implementation of a Peer Mentorship Intervention (PREVAIL) to Reduce Suicide Attempts Among High-Risk Adults” to determine the effectiveness of a peer mentorship intervention for reducing suicide attempts and suicidal ideation among recently hospitalized adult psychiatric patients at high risk for suicide.

Professor Edith C. Kieffer, MPH, Ph.D., co-authored two policy briefs "Advancing the Profession and Sustainability of Community Health Workers" and "Revisioning the Care Delivery Team: The Role of CHWs within State Innovation Models" that were published by the Center for Healthcare Research and Transformation.

Professor Barry Checkoway, Adjunct Lecturer Joe Galura, Professor Larry Gant, Postdoctoral fellow Odessa Gonzalez-Benson, Professor Lorraine Gutierrez, Postdoctoral fellow Shanna K. Kattari, Associate Professor Beth Reed, Assistant Professor Katie Richards-Schuster,  Lecturer William Vanderwill and Lecturer Amber Williams received a grant from the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching - Gilbert Whitaker Fund for piloting an online platform for strengthening community organization courses at SSW via a Michigan Organizers Video Archive.

Kathryn Berringer, Alex Lu (MSW student) and Joyce Y. Lee received the Doctoral Poster Awards at the School of Social Work's Social Justice in Social Work Research Symposium. Berringer was awarded for her poster, "Examining Drivers of Health Inequities in HIV Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) Implementation in the US". Lu and Lee for their poster "Spank, Smack, & Whoop”: Stay-At-Home Parents’ Spanking Tweets".

Associate Professor Daphne Watkins won two of the four awards presented at the University of Michigan Fast Forward Medical Innovations (FFMI) program on November 17, 2017.  

Watkins, who competed among 15 teams of physicians and medical professionals, is the principal investigator for the YBMen Project, which was created to better understand and address the pressures and needs of young black men using popular social media platforms to provide mental health education and social support.  Watkins won the Health IT category, and the Crowd Favorite category.  

“The Medical Innovations program is a great way to learn how to grow ideas and make good use of customer discovery,” Watkins said.  “These awards are an acknowledgement that the work we’re doing is useful and important. They are very encouraging.”

Watkins continues to write grants to evaluate the YBMen Project and make it scalable and sustainable.

Vincent Fusaro, PhD'17 is the recipient of the 2018 Society for Social Work and Research Outstanding Social Work Doctoral Dissertation Award for his dissertation entitled "The Spirit of '96: States & the Implementation of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families."