Active Projects/Grants Managed in the SSW

Healthy Michigan Plan CMS Evaluation FY18

October 2017 - September 2018

An interdisciplinary team of researchers from the Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation has partnered with MDHHS to conduct the evaluation of Michigan's Medicaid expansion, known as the Healthy Michigan Plan (HMP). Per the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, IHPI will carry out evaluation in seven domains: 1) an analysis of the impact of Medicaid expansion on uncompensated care costs borne by Michigan hospitals; 2) an analysis of the effect of HMP on the number of uninsured in Michigan; 3) the impact of HMP on increasing healthy behaviors and improving health outcomes; 4) the viewpoints of beneficiaries and providers of the impact of HMP; 5/6) the impact of HMP's contribution requirements and MI Health Accounts on beneficiary healthcare utilization; 7) the cost effectiveness of the Marketplace Option.

Genetic Contributions to Smoking and Internalizing Problems in Adolescence

August 2015 - August 2019

This Career Development Award (K01) will provide the candidate with the necessary skills to develop an independent research program focused on integrating genetic methodologies to the candidate's already strong longitudinal modeling skills to explore and clarify the etiology of the interplay between cigarette use and internalizing problems during adolescence. Despite decreases in prevalence of smoking during adolescence in the past two decades, adolescence continues to be the developmental period of greatest risk for cigarette use onset and increase in internalizing problems. Clarifying the complex etiological pathways involved in the co-occurrence between cigarette use and internalizing problems during this vulnerable time requires using multiple methodologies. The overall aim of the current proposal is to test increasingly complex longitudinal models that explore the degree to which the co-occurrence between adolescent cigarette use and internalizing problems are influenced by genetic and environmental factors and to include measured genetic variants. The training plan will be completed at the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics at Virginia Commonwealth University and is designed to provide the candidate with skills in genetic epidemiology, quantitative genetics, and molecular genetics. The candidate will acquire the knowledge and skills to a) conduct univariate, bivariate, and multivariate genetically informed studies to identify the genetic and environmental risk factors in smoking initiation, progression t heavier smoking, nicotine dependence, and internalizing problems; b) conduct longitudinal genetically informed studies to clarify the causal pathways involved in cigarette use and internalizing problems by exploring the degree to which genetic and environmental factors explain the covariance between the behaviors; and c) conduct genetically informed ecological momentary assessment studies of adolescent twin pairs to explore the causal pathway between these problems behaviors. These skills will be developed through a combination of formal coursework, mentored research projects, and didactic training. The proposed research program involves a combination of analysis of existing longitudinal studies of adolescent twins and an original data collection pilot project. The existing longitudinal studies of adolescent twins inclue the Swedish Twin Study of Child and Adolescent Development, the Minnesota Twin and Family Study, the Virginia Twin Study of Adolescent Behavioral Development, the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, the GEDI (Genes, Environment, Development Initiative part of NIDA's Genetics Consortium). In the pilot project, the candidate will collect momentary cigarette use and mood data of 16- and 17-year-old adolescent twin pairs recruited from a population-based twin registry comprised of over 50,000 twins. Training activities and results will be used to develop a R01 proposal for a prospective momentary assessment and genotyping study of 14 to 17 year old adolescent twins.

OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH EDUCATION AND RESEARCH CENTERS (T42)

October 2018 - June 2023

The University of Michigan Center for Occupational Health and Safety Engineering (COHSE), a NIOSH Education and Research Center (ERC), has been continuously funded by NIOSH since its establishment in 1982. Our Center has a distinguished legacy, building on NIOSH Trainee Program grants in the early 1970s, the Institute of Industrial Health founded in 1951, and may other milestones dating back to the establishment of the Laboratory of Hygiene in 1888. The mission of the Center is to serve the region, nation and world as a center of excellence for graduate education and research in occupational health and safety. We maintain outstanding Master’s, doctoral and research programs in Industrial Hygiene, Occupational Health Nursing, Occupational Safety Engineering and Ergonomics, and Occupational Epidemiology. Our academic and research programs provide broad-based interdisciplinary academic training to ensure that graduates are qualified to pursue careers and assume leadership roles in the practice of occupational health and safety, and to help ensure an adequate supply of well-trained researchers. Complementing the academic programs, our suite of Research-to-Practice projects, Continuing Education programs, and Outreach activities are aimed at transferring state-of-the-art knowledge to professionals and practitioners in occupational health and safety and allied disciplines. As a NIOSH Education and Research Center, we serve a number of constituencies, including: (1) NIOSH; (2) industry, labor and professional interests in our region and beyond; (3) academic units within the University of Michigan that provide critical teaching and research resources necessary for Center success; and (4) our students. The broad goals of the Center are to: • Promote excellence in our professional training and research training programs in each core program; • Increase the financial resources needed to improve the number, quality and diversity of graduate students in each core area; • Enhance the quality of our continuing education courses and other service and outreach activities; • Increase external research funding to improve our research infrastructure, expand opportunities for research training, and promote interdisciplinary research related to occupational health and safety; • Provide an organizational structure to coordinate and promote interdisciplinary educational activities for all core programs; • Promote awareness and education of occupational health and safety in undergraduate and graduate courses in other departments and schools; • Utilize a variety of research-to-practice (R2P) mechanisms, including our Visiting Partners Program, to develop skills and capabilities of mid-career occupational health and safety professionals; and • Assist Center programs and affiliated academic units in recruiting, promoting and retaining faculty

Comprehensive Community Assessment of Detroit's Older Adults

April 2018 - May 2019

The proposed Detroit Area Older Adult Comprehensive Community Assessment will update the 2002 assessment data on older Detroiters in the context of a post-bankrupt Detroit along with rapidly gentrifying pockets of the city where displacement of seniors continues. Thus, this is a crucial time to collect data on the contributions and needs of seniors in Detroit’s changing environment and make recommendations to stakeholders and community-based agencies. Given the city’s leadership (Councilpersons’ Mary Sheffield and Casteneda-Lopez), and collaborating city departments (Health Department, Department of Transportation, Parks and Recreation, Disability Department) in this project, key stakeholders have expressed the benefit of this project for the future of the city, given the absence of a Senior Citizens Department at this time.

CBPR: Enhancing Capacity to Use Innovative Methodologies

December 2014 - June 2019

The need for the use of innovative methodologies in the behavioral and social sciences has been widely noted. The past two decades have seen continued recognition that more innovative and community-engaged approaches to research and interventions are needed to address the social and environmental determinants of population health and more specifically racial and ethnic inequities in health. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is one such approach to community-engaged research. Within the National Institutes of Health (NIH), increased funding support for CBPR is in keeping with their mission statement, as well as the overarching research capacity-building priorities delineated in the NIH Health Disparities Strategic Plan 2009-2013, and select Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) research goals. As the need for and opportunities to expand CBPR increases, so does the need to enhance capacity in innovative methods for researchers conducting behavioral and social sciences research (BSSR) to use this approach. Not only is CBPR an innovative approach in and of itself for many researchers conducting BSSR, there are also several specific innovations within the context of a CBPR approach that are particularly relevant to the mission of NIH. These innovative methods include the integrated use of mixed methods (combining qualitative and quantitative methods), and innovative research designs that complement randomized controlled designs. Although numerous educational materials on CBPR have been developed in recent years, there are few opportunities for both early-career and established researchers to engage in a co-learning process facilitated by experienced academic-community faculty teams. Further, there is a need to promote the diversity of the BSSR workforce, including increasing participation of researchers from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups. Thus, the overarching goal of the proposed research education program, Community-Based Participatory Research: Enhancing Capacity to Use Innovative Methodologies in the Behavioral and Social Sciences (the Enhance Program), is to enhance knowledge and skills in the use of innovative methodologies in CBPR, in partnership with the communities involved, to address and eliminate health inequities. The three-pronged approach of the Enhance Program is: 1) to develop and implement an intensive short course in innovative methodologies in CBPR for conducting BSSR; 2) to extend and apply innovative methods in CBPR from the short course through a year-long educational program, including, on-line learning activities, expert mentoring, and peer engagement; and 3) to establish a network of diverse scholars to foster continued learning, career development, and innovation in BSSR using a CBPR approach to promote health equity. An evaluation will be conducted to determine and enhance program effectiveness, and materials will be widely disseminated.

Greater Than

December 2016 - September 2021

To focus on substance abuse and HIV prevention services is commendable and essential. The focus on at-risk racial and ethnic minority adolescents is also ideal as their rates of substance use and HIV is disproportionately high. The UM contribution to the larger grant will be in providing an evaluation of the project and disseminating evaluation findings to both the larger project team and to the local community in Detroit, Michigan.

Mood-Lifters: a novel approach to mental wellness

Approximately 57% of adults in the United States will develop a mental illness during their lifetime and 32% of adults live with a mental health condition at any given time. This has significant costs to society, government and industry with lost wages and disability payments estimated at $217 billion. There are over 55 million adults in the USA with a mental illness not receiving any treatment and millions of others receive substandard care. We created a program that shifts the paradigm in how wellness care in delivered from a clinic-based, clinician-run structure, to a scalable paraprofessionally administered, community-based, educational, wellbeing program called Mood Lifters. Mood Lifters is a 15-week self-referral program, where facilitators, who are not trained clinicians but rather professionals in a number of fields, are certified specifically in the psychoeducation provided by Mood Lifters to be inexpensive to deliver, scalable and evidence-based mental health care. Up to 15 participants per group will participate in weekly meetings that cover the teaching of evidence-based techniques that fall within five domains known to influence mental health - biology, cognitive, emotion, social processes, and behavior including evidence based treatments such as Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Insomnia (CBTi), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) and character Strengths (positive psychology). Clients are given a targeted set of goals (homework) for incorporating new wellness activities associated with the covered material into their lives and receive “points” for self-reported wellness behaviors during the intervening week. Mood Lifters has the potential to be used by multiple groups that work on wellness such as employers, social service providers, local Ys, community centers, schools or prisons. Unlike online programs, such as Mood Gym, Mood Lifters has social interaction and peer support, two essential components to successful self-referral programs. In addition the points manual that is used by participants has the essential component of using self-management to track their own behavior and outcomes while at home and at work. This grant will help us to take the the model program from the lab in the community as well plan to run 24 adult groups and 4 child groups next year testing the efficacy of the program.

Michigan Interprofessional Consortium for Health- Global Action Network (MICH-GAN)

September 2017 - September 2018

Co-creating a sustainable global health platform involving three professional schools from the initial conception of the project, partnership building and needs assessment is innovative in and of itself. We will also be piloting a comprehensive community needs assessment-originally developed by nursing faculty from the US and Thailand, and adapting it for the Ugandan context. Based on this assessment we will develop intervention and research projects to be carried out the following year.

Michigan Institute for Clinical and Health Research (MICHR) - TL1 Award

June 2017 - February 2022

The University of Michigan (U-M) and the Michigan Institute for Clinical and Health Research (MICHR) are strongly dedicated to the education of a competent clinical and translational research workforce. To this end, MICHR’s educational programs cater to members of the clinical and translational research workforce within four broad roles: 1) pre-doctoral students, 2) post-doctoral fellows, 3) faculty, and 4) staff. The “crown jewel” of our educational offerings is the KL2 program, which has attracted and developed exceptional scholars. Collectively, over the last 10 years, the MICHR KL2 Scholars have published more than 1000 peer-reviewed publications and received over $155,385,534 in grant support as principal investigators (more than $4 million per scholar). Importantly, 100% of the KL2 Scholars have remained in clinical and translational research and 68% have been successfully promoted since program completion. One of our main priorities going forward is to expand the program, use creative methods to increase the number of KL2-like trainees that we influence, and create pathways of access to our KL2 offerings for the many other categorical K-12 scholars at U-M. Additionally, we aim to focus on mentor training for both the mentee and the mentor, using the curriculum developed by the National Research Mentoring Network (NRMN). Creation of the MICHR Career Development Academy will provide education on critical skills for professional development that are often not taught. Through purposeful integration of our KL2 Scholars, along with our TL1 students, other MICHR Scholars, and community partners, we will provide the opportunity for our KL2 Scholars to gain “hands on” experience in mentoring and patient engaged research. Through development of an individualized learning plan, each Scholar will work with their mentoring team to successfully complete their research project and training plan. Monitoring of KL2 Scholar progress will take place through instruction and creation of eportfolios which will allow mentors ready access to each scholar’s work and formative reflective thoughts. Lastly, creation of a greater network or supportive research community surrounding our KL2 Scholars will be accomplished though purposeful integration with a diverse group of clinical and translational scientists as well as other Scholars within institutional training programs.

Oakland Promise Qualitative Evaluation

April 2018 - December 2018

The Oakland Promise Qualitative Evaluation seeks to learn about the origins, goals, and operation of the Oakland Promise in Oakland, CA. Specifically, this study will examine two programs within the Oakland Promise: Brilliant Baby and Kindergarten to College. The study seeks to learn about the origins, goals, and operation of the Oakland Promise from the perspective of steering committee and advisory board members; program administrators; financial institution providers; funders; financial coaches; and staff at implementing partners. Methodology will consist of in-depth interviews, a review of earned opinion media, existing research on Promise Programs, as well as documents related to the Oakland Promise. A separate report will be prepared for both Brilliant Baby and Kindergarten to College.

Support to Develop a Research Design to Test Combining Reward Card Programs with Children’s Savings Account Programs

January 2018 - February 2019

At any given point in 2015, there were approximately 428,000 children in foster care in the United States. Almost 22,000 young people aged out of foster care in that year, without being reunited with a parent or placed with a family member or other guardian. While these are not the only children who will face steep odds in their effort to attain postsecondary education and transition successfully to adulthood, evidence suggests that they will face unique and daunting odds, realities that warrant additional, targeted intervention. While many Children’s Savings Account (CSAs) programs have developed ways to encourage children to save from the limited funds they control, few have developed good approaches for meeting the unique needs of children in cases like foster care or parental incarceration. This research project looks to identify new approaches to helping foster children to better benefit from CSA programs while working toward the creation of a national CSA policy.

General Support of AEDI

September 2018 - August 2019

The Center on Assets, Education, and Inclusion (AEDI), is wholly focused on harnessing the power of assets to create meaningful, equitable opportunities for economic mobility for all American children. AEDI’s mission is to create and study innovations related to assets and economic well-being, with a focus on the relationship between children’s savings and the educational outcomes of low-income and minority children as a way to achieve the American Dream. We bring our analytical expertise, theoretical foundation, collaborative relationships, and strategic insights to this formidable challenge. A core focus for AEDI is advancing Children’s Savings Accounts (CSAs) as critical interventions with considerable potential to realize this vision of broadly-shared prosperity.