Evidence for Action (E4A) grantees are conducting research to assess health outcomes and address key determinants of health, with a particular focus on improving population health and racial equity. Grantee research results will help identify actionable strategies and priorities for building a Culture of Health.
Projects listing
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Project Director(s)
Mapuana C. K. Antonio, DrPH
Nicole Cristobal, PhD
Tribal or Indigenous Community Served
Native Hawaiian
Project Summary
The purpose of this project is to address the disproportionate rates of gender-based violence experienced by Native Hawaiian women, girls, māhū through a Kānaka ʻŌiwi-led coalition to generate accu
Start date
Award amount
$300,000
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
Puni Jackson, MFA
Megan Inada, DrPH, MPH
Tribal or Indigenous Community Served
Native Hawaiian
Project Summary
The team aims to strengthen Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander (NHPI) birthing sovereignty by examining cultural agency as a protective factor for pregnant NHPI women navigating Western medical s
Start date
Award amount
$200,000
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
Deana Williams, PhD, MPH
Project Summary
The project team’s community-centered effort aims to build a toolkit tailored to bisexual women of color to address racial health inequity and intersectional factors that contribute to perinatal he
Start date
Award amount
$480,850
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
J. Keʻalohilani Worthington Antonio, MPH
Chevelle Davis, MPH
Tribal or Indigenous Community Served
Native Hawaiian
Project Summary
The project team aims to develop an alternative maternal health data collection system to the recently eliminated surveillance model, Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS), that authe
Start date
Award amount
$499,983
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
Chioma Nnaji, MPH, MEd
Gloria Aidoo-Frimpong, PhD, MPH, MA
Project Summary
The project team has positioned African immigrant communities as co-governers of the knowledge systems to address the long history of erasure of African immigrant identities and lived experience by
Start date
Award amount
$499,871
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
Sigolène A. Ortega, MPH
Project Summary
The project team (Salud) proposes to examine how integrating clinical and legal support through a Medical-Legal Partnership model at Salud Para La Gente, a Federally Qualified Health Center serving
Start date
Award amount
$500,000
Duration
36 months
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Project Summary
Through two Rapid Response Research calls for proposals, Evidence for Action awarded approximately $7 million, with each grant receiving up to $200,000 across both rounds to 44 diverse organizations representing multiple sectors and missions whose federal research funding was terminated. These grantees are conducting timely, action-oriented research across the country rooted in improving health while advancing Indigenous and racial equity. Research topics include environmental justice and climate change, improving health and wellbeing for Native and Indigenous Peoples through multiple pathways, alleviating trauma, addressing substance use disorder, food and housing security, impacts of changes in the social safety net for children and families, farm worker health, suicide prevention, Black maternal health, and civic participation.
Start date
Award amount
Approximately $7M
Duration
Up to 24 months
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Project Director(s)
Lorinda Riley, SJD
Project Summary
The project team seeks to address colonial trauma and facilitate healing by developing and validating a culturally appropriate historical trauma and resilience (HTR) instrument, to improve holistic wellbeing for Native Hawaiians.
Start date
Award amount
$575,000
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
Kia L. Davis, ScD, MPH
Project Summary
Despite abundant research describing the social determinants of health inequities, there is a lack of research identifying potential place-based solutions to address these inequities. The project team is evaluating whether and how community benefit agreements (CBAs) improve neighborhoods and impact displacement. They are evaluating CBAs that are formal agreements between community organizations and developers where communities have negotiated for affordable housing, green space, etc. The team is looking at data trends over 10-20 years from racially segregated residential areas that implemented CBAs between 2002-2008 in seven cities (Denver, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco).
Start date
Award amount
$603,750
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
Daniel Ho, PhD
Project Summary
The project team aims to address and overcome lack of access to high-quality race and ethnicity data in Electronic Health Records (EHRs) by analyzing discrepancies in race reporting and investigating factors behind hesitancy to disclose race.
Start date
Award amount
$546,250
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
Jessica Williams-Nguyen, PhD, MPH
Cole Allick, PhD, MHA
Project Summary
The purpose of this project is to reorient the quantitative research process toward Indigenous knowledges and promote cultural safety for Indigenous Peoples in health research. To achieve this goal, the grantees are developing the Indigenous-Centered Quantitative Analysis Toolkit for Equity (ICQuATE), which they will employ to help dismantle barriers between Indigenous Peoples and the process of quantitative data generation, analysis, and interpretation. The ICQuATE project is guided by Etuaptmumk (Two-Eyed Seeing), which calls for synergistic integration of Indigenous and Western ways of knowing and has been applied in health studies to strengthen elements of reciprocity, relational accountability, and rigor.
Start date
Award amount
$545,616
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
Nicholas Shapiro, DPhil
Matthew Clarke, PhD
Katherine LeMasters, PhD
Gina Poe, PhD
Project Summary
The project team is studying how police patrolling by helicopter impacts communities, which predominantly affects Latine and Black neighborhoods. The team’s aim is for changes in helicopter noise to have meaningful impacts for sleep quality and health.
Start date
Award amount
$581,248
Duration
24 months
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Project Director(s)
Louisa McCovey
Tribal or Indigenous Community Served
Yurok Tribe
Project Summary
Recently the Yurok Tribe has reacquired 30,000 acres of land that was forcibly removed from Yurok stewardship. The Tribe is actively working to maintain Indigenous management practices in relation with non-human relatives (plants, animals, forest lands, and river systems). These interconnected relationships are integral to Yurok health and wellbeing. The project team is developing and testing methods to evaluate how Yurok Indigenous stewardship practices affect Yurok health and wellbeing. All work is led by Yurok staff and tribal members and founded in community engagement.
Start date
Award amount
$500,000
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
Bridget Puni Kekauoha
Tribal or Indigenous Community Served
Native Hawaiians
Project Summary
The Papakōlea Hawaiian Homestead Kūpuna (Elders) Supportive Living Center (KSLC) at Puowaina project team is working to understand the cultural values and practices instrumental in addressing the needs of kūpuna to age safely in place, alongside an exploration of the current facilitators and barriers experienced within the Papakolea Homestead. The team is collaborating with Native Hawaiians residing in the Hawaiian Homestead communities of Papakōlea, Kewalo, and Kalawahine to gain necessary insights for developing the conceptual design and programming of the KSLC, specifically focusing on addressing the unique health and social needs of kūpuna while fostering a sense of community and cultural preservation.
Start date
Award amount
$400,000
Duration
24 months
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Project Director(s)
Jingjing Sun, PhD
Tribal or Indigenous Community Served
Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Nation
Project Summary
Through a partnership between the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes (CSKT) of the Flathead Nation, two school districts on the Flathead Nation, and the University of Montana (UM), the project team is working to better understand how schools serving Indigenous students can co-develop culturally responsive interventions with their communities to support Indigenous children’s educational success and wellbeing. Previously the project team and their partners in the Arlee School District co-created Pathways to Wellness, a strengths-based, culturally-responsive social-emotional learning (SEL) intervention composed of Indigenous and Western knowledge for children, educators, and families through community-engaged research. The team’s aim is to expand the Pathways to Wellness intervention and disseminate a model for co-adaptation of Indigenous-led, school-based interventions to other Indigenous communities to help advance health equity and transformative educational change.
Start date
Award amount
$634,786
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
Tess Abrahamson-Richards, PhD, MPH
Tribal or Indigenous Community Served
Native American, Alaska Native, First Nations, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander community members in western Washington state
Project Summary
Hummingbird Indigenous Family Services’s mission is to facilitate and support healthy Indigenous babies being born into healthy Indigenous families and communities through its birth-to-three programming and research. Through its Data Sovereignty program, the organization is bolstering its internal community-driven research capacity to document the impacts of its programs on birth justice in western Washington state. This grant is focused on developing internal capacity to lead research and evaluation efforts, enhance policy advocacy work through data, and contribute to a broader national landscape of Indigenous community-led science. The project team aims to advance Indigenous evidence-based practice and policy for the benefit of Indigenous birthing families and young children by carrying out research to decrease the gap between innovative Indigenous-led programming, data production, and dissemination efforts.
Start date
Award amount
$430,000
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
Mindie Bird, PhD
Jeremy Braithwaite, PhD
Tribal or Indigenous Community Served
Anishinaabe communities in Northern Minnesota
Project Summary
The project team is developing a comprehensive Indigenous organizational community caretaking model that addresses Anishinaabe wellbeing and justice equity priorities, such as community reintegration, family wellness, cultural reclamation, employment, housing stability, and disconnection from carceral systems. By integrating traditional values with contemporary demands, this research will address the immediate needs of Northwest Indian Community Development Center (NWICDC) members and contribute to long-term systemic change, promoting sustained well-being and justice. NWICDC, as the largest Native non-profit provider of culturally specific services in Northern Minnesota, will lead the implementation and advocacy efforts, ensuring that the findings translate into actionable strategies across its programs and influence broader state policies.
Start date
Award amount
$375,412
Duration
30 months
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Project Director(s)
Samantha Keaulana-Scott, PhD, MSW
Chevelle Davis, MPH
Reni Soon, MD, MPH
Tribal or Indigenous Community Served
Native Hawaiians
Project Summary
The project team is working to advance the well-being of Native Hawaiian birthing people and their keiki (children) by reducing morbidity and mortality through weaving the integration of culturally sensitive perinatal care practices into western healthcare settings. If birthing hospitals adopt recommendations generated from this research project into health system staff education and training programs, the team anticipates that culturally responsive approaches to perinatal care within western medicine will facilitate relationship building, trust, and better health outcomes for Native Hawaiian families.
Start date
Award amount
$500,000
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
Michelle M. Jacob, PhD
Tribal or Indigenous Community Served
Yakama Nation
Project Summary
The Sapsik’wałá Program team is partnering with the Yakama Nation and K-16+ schools to develop models for Yakama storytelling and language practices to increase Yakama wellbeing. Ichishkíin teachers, Elders, and students are helping to develop and pilot storytelling kits and gather information about Yakama language and story exposure, learning, and usage. The team is dedicated to strengthening existing protective factors in the community, ensuring that thousands of years of tradition continue to be honored as a key component of Yakama wellbeing. The team’s hope is to utilize storytelling and language practices as a foundation for systems-level change to increase Indigenous wellness.
Start date
Award amount
$750,000
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
Abigail Echo-Hawk, MA
Lannesse Baker, PhD Candidate, MPH
Tribal or Indigenous Community Served
Urban American Indian/Alaskan Native Peoples
Project Summary
The project team is developing and testing a national survey of strengths based behavioral health questions and measures with urban American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) populations to create a community-informed statistical weighting methodology to be utilized with the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). The BRFSS has long been a cornerstone of health data collection across the United States (U.S.), but it remains glaringly insufficient in capturing the health practices, social determinants of health, and historical trauma of urban and rural AI/AN communities. To address this gap, the team aims to achieve health equity for AI/AN communities and honor ancestors and empower descendants, ensuring that the data tells the truth of vitality and enduring resilience.
Start date
Award amount
$750,000
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
Valerie Jackson, PhD
Richard A. Garner, PhD, LMSW
Project Summary
The project team aims to deepen the understanding of why kinship caregivers looking after children in the foster care system, particularly Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), forgo supported permanency, a type of state-sponsored financial and interpersonal support and service provision for foster families. By identifying existing barriers and potential practice and policy strategies, the team plans to provide insights and solutions to better encourage and support BIPOC kinship caregivers to utilize the available resources.
Start date
Award amount
$300,300
Duration
24 months
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Project Director(s)
Sonya Shin, MD, MPH
Carmen George, MS, BS
Project Summary
The research team seeks to tackle the harmful effects of sugar-sweetened beverage marketing to Indigenous youth. The team is facilitating a social marketing / media literacy campaign that will be developed by and for the Navajo community with the goal of strengthening cultural identity and healthy beverage consumption among Navajo children.
Start date
Award amount
$599,639
Duration
24 months
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Project Director(s)
Kevin Griffith, PhD
Rosemary Nabaweesi, DrPH
Project Summary
The project team will leverage Nashville, Tennessee’s unique mixed-income housing initiative, Envision Cayce, in the Cayce neighborhood to conduct a rigorous, equitable evaluation of anti-displacement housing redevelopment on social cohesion and health outcomes of Cayce families with low incomes. While other initiatives rely on "right of first refusal" return, the anti-displacement approach allows residents to stay in the community during redevelopment. The team’s goals are to deconcentrate poverty, reduce racial segregation in housing, and increase the well-being of the Cayce's predominantly Black population.
Start date
Award amount
$631,469
Duration
48 months
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Project Director(s)
Rita Hamad, PhD, MD
Guangyi Wang, PhD
Project Summary
The 2021 expansion of the US Child Tax Credit reduced child poverty by 40%. Limited research has examined the impacts of this policy on health. The project team will assess the effects of the 2021 Child Tax Credit (CTC) expansion on perinatal and child health. The team has a specific focus on understanding how the impacts of the CTC expansion impacted people differently based on race and ethnicity.
Start date
Award amount
376,689
Duration
24 months
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Project Director(s)
Lucie Kalousová, PhD
Deborah Carr, PhD
Project Summary
The project team is evaluating the effects and barriers of the 2016 Medicare reimbursement policy changes for advance care planning (ACP) and hospice care on racial disparities in ACP and death quality. They will work with focus groups consisting of Black and white caregivers and healthcare providers of recently deceased persons to understand their perspectives on the systemic barriers to better understand what they are and identify policy recommendations.
Start date
Award amount
$600,000
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
Lauren Gase, PhD, MPH
Jennifer Kilpatrick, JD
Project Summary
The project team aims to assess the integration of an equity tool into the prosecutorial decision-making processes to determine whether the tool has an effect on racial inequities in criminal case outcomes. The equity tool, accessed through an app, will modify the processes and criteria that prosecutors use to make decisions and provide a mechanism to integrate office-level policy into prosecutors' workflow. The app is intended to support prosecutorial decision-making at four decision points: bond recommendations, diversion decisions, plea offers, and sentencing recommendations.
Start date
Award amount
$376,690
Duration
24 months
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Project Director(s)
Barbra G. Rabson, MPH
Ben Lê Cook, PhD, MHP
Marcela Horvitz-Lennon, MD
Project Summary
The project team will leverage Massachusetts Health Quality Partners' (MHQP) existing annual patient experience survey to explore social risk factors in adjustment models. Their aim is to fairly compare racial and ethnic disparities in patient experiences across organizations with different patient populations and to better understand racial inequities in patient experiences. The team will engage national and local stakeholders to accomplish the goals of developing and implementing social risk adjustment and other provider comparison methods that fairly account for the intersection of race, ethnicity and social risk factors, and of deepening the understanding of the ways in which social risk explains and reinforces racial and ethnic disparities in patient experience. Through this work, the project team will shed light on structural disparities in healthcare for Black, Hispanic/Latino/a/x, Asian, and other patients of color. The project ultimately aims to inform value-based payment reforms that promote fair comparisons and incentivize the reduction of disparities.
Start date
Award amount
$300,000
Duration
18 months
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Project Director(s)
Bryan Glenn, President of SERVUS
Jean-Pierre H. Dubé, PhD
Project Summary
The project team is examining whether a city that uses water shut-offs and late fees to deter missed payments can achieve improved welfare and fairness for the Black and Latino communities in Portland, Oregon through a new payment model. The team has established a partnership with the Portland water bureau to implement a more equitable “ability to pay” model that will aim to reduce water shut offs across the city. SERVUS will help Portland implement a tailored debt forgiveness program correlating with each individual’s ability to pay, that can simultaneously address the municipal financial burden of unpaid debt and alleviate the individual struggle with payment compliance. To determine the ideal amount of debt forgiveness to offer, or the greatest amount that a payer would be likely to actually pay, the team will utilize machine learning and create a prediction model that could, in theory, be used by water departments across the country.
Start date
Award amount
$568,532
Duration
27 months
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Project Director(s)
Naomi Zewde, PhD
Project Summary
The project team is investigating whether cash transfers can prevent infant deaths in the first year of life, reduce maternal morbidities, and promote racial and ethnic equity. In order to provide evidence of the effects of cash support on infant health, the team will evaluate the effects of the 2021 American Rescue Plan (ARP)’s version of the Child Tax Credit (CTC), which provided significant cash transfers to all families earning less than $400,000 with documented children.
Start date
Award amount
$300,000
Duration
24 months
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Project Director(s)
David J. Knight, PhD
Danielle S. Allen, PhD
Benjamin Barsky, JD (Co-PI)
Project Summary
The research team is investigating whether and how alternative emergency response programs (AERPs) are successful in transforming state responses to crises in ways that move away from systems of po
Start date
Award amount
$550,000
Duration
24 months
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Project Director(s)
Sadé Lindsay, PhD
Laura DeMarco, PhD
Project Summary
The research team is examining how state collateral consequence policies (SCCP) impact the health of justice-involved populations, including those with arrest, conviction, and incarceration records
Start date
Award amount
$642,827
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
Jungyoon Kim, PhD
Project Summary
The project team will leverage a unique cross-sectoral partnership with Nebraska’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) service locations to develop a community-based screening program for colorectal
Start date
Award amount
$591,708
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
Patience Afulani, MBChB, MPH, PhD
Malini Nijagal, MD, MPH
Project Summary
The project team is conducting an implementation and process evaluation of The San Francisco Pregnancy Family Village model to support pregnant people and their families – a one-stop-shop for cross
Start date
Award amount
$500,000
Duration
24 months
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Project Director(s)
Jaquelyn L. Jahn, MPH, PhD
Jessica T. Simes, MA, PhD
Project Summary
Nearly 500,000 legally innocent people in the U.S. are currently in pretrial detention. The inability to afford bail prevents many from being released from jail pretrial, disproportionately impacting Black Americans and people living in poverty. Recent cash bail policies have been aimed at eliminating financial barriers to bail and reducing jail incarceration. This includes policies in New Jersey, which in 2017 implemented one of the most comprehensive pieces of bail reform legislation to date. The goal of the project is to provide advocates, practitioners, and policy makers across the U.S. with evidence about the community health effects of eliminating cash bail in order to equitably reduce pretrial detention in New Jersey and beyond.
Start date
Award amount
$347,709
Duration
24 months
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Project Director(s)
Robert O Motley Jr., PhD
Christopher Salas-Wright, PhD
Project Summary
The research team will validate a measure of perceived racism-based police violence (RPV) among emerging adults (aged 18-29) who identify as non-Hispanic Black/African American or Latinx, and asses
Start date
Award amount
$395,560
Duration
24 months
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Project Director(s)
Tonia Poteat, MMSc, MPH, PhD
Lauren Brinkley-Rubinstein, MA, MS, PhD
Project Summary
The project team will conduct an evaluation of the process and community perceptions of the implementation of a novel alternative first responder program in Durham, North Carolina, on mental health
Start date
Award amount
$529,486
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
Jennifer Hefner, PhD, MPH
Leah Bevis, PhD
Steve David, MSW
Project Summary
The project team is conducting a rigorous evaluation of how various models of 911 response to mental health crisis impact health-related outcomes, and how this impact varies by neighborhood racial composition and wealth in Columbus, Ohio. The three response models being tested include: 1) a standard police officer; 2) a Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) – trained police officer; and 3) a Mobile Crisis Response (MCR) team consisting of one police officer and one social worker. The proposed, mixed method research will provide Columbus City Council and other city stakeholders with rigorous research on racial inequalities in the city’s 911 mental health crisis response.
Start date
Award amount
$368,566
Duration
24 months
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Project Director(s)
Charles J. Neighbors, PhD, MBA
Project Summary
The research team is evaluating a unique intervention for individuals with serious mental illness (SMI), which involves a partnership between a Medicaid Managed Care Organization (MCO), Healthfirst, and a community-based organization (CBO), Fountain House. The intervention, a “clubhouse” psychosocial rehabilitation approach, is designed to improve healthcare by addressing whole-life needs for individuals with SMI who are disconnected from primary care. The team is testing whether the intervention increases primary care engagement, reduces acute care, lowers healthcare spending, and impacts patient-reported outcomes, such as social isolation and quality of life.
Start date
Award amount
$479,882
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
Akhgar Ghassabian, MD, PhD
Lorna Thorpe, PhD, MPH
Project Summary
The New York State (NYS) Legislature has authorized a traffic congestion pricing plan for Manhattan, which will allow fees to be placed on vehicles driving in Manhattan streets and roadways south of and including 60th Street. The project team will evaluate the impact of this landmark congestion pricing policy, scheduled to go into effect in early 2022, on air quality, health outcomes, and the extent to which the policy affects racial and economic inequities among residents in the study areas.
Start date
Award amount
$473,157
Duration
48 months
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Project Director(s)
Carrie S. Cihak, MA, BA
Atheendar Venkataramani, MD, PhD
David Phillips, PhD, MA, BA
Project Summary
In October 2020, King County Metro Transit launched a subsidized annual transit pass program to provide transit passes to people with incomes ≤80% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) who are also enrolled in qualifying State cash benefit programs. The project team is evaluating the impact of King County’s subsidized annual pass program on health and well-being. The team will look specifically at outcomes by race to understand whether the impacts of the subsidized annual pass are racially equitable.
Photo by Ned Ahrens, King County Metro.
Start date
Award amount
$447,996
Duration
24 months
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Project Director(s)
Wendy Epstein, JD
Christopher Robertson, JD, PhD
David Yokum, JD, PhD
Project Summary
The project team is exploring if new marketing of existing insurance offerings prompt uninsured individuals – with an emphasis on the young and healthy – to purchase health insurance. This would be the first empirical project to explore whether generosity framing could enhance insurance uptake.
Start date
Award amount
$388,244
Duration
24 months
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Project Director(s)
John Strang, PsyD
Anna van der Miesen, MD
Project Summary
This grant was awarded through E4A’s special Call for Proposals: Approaches to Advance Gender Equity From Around the Globe. The project team is investigating core components of the Netherlands’ (NL) Gender Affirming Care Policy (GACP) to determine which components might be best adapted for and implemented in U.S. settings.
Start date
Award amount
$249,868
Duration
30 months
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Project Director(s)
Suresh Naidu, PhD
Adam Reich, PhD
Project Summary
The project team is evaluating the causal impact of labor organizing on health and labor market outcomes in the health care sector. In partnership with a labor union, the investigators plan to randomize efforts to unionize health care facilities and implement mixed methods data collection around these efforts to obtain the first ever randomization-based causal effects of labor organizing within the health care sector.
Start date
Award amount
$412,830
Duration
48 months
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Project Director(s)
Katie Crist, PhD, MPH
James Sallis, PhD
Project Summary
The project team is evaluating longitudinal changes in multiple health, economic, and environmental outcomes over a 3-year COVID recovery period and in the context of a new light rail transit (LRT) line, called the Mid-Coast Trolley, among 465 UC San Diego (UCSD) staff. The primary aim is to evaluate change in objectively measured total and moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA), travel mode, and vehicle miles traveled (VMT).
Start date
Award amount
$547,844
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
Chima Ndumele, PhD
Project Summary
The research team aims to examine whether changes in SNAP eligibility impact patterns of health service use and health outcomes among Medicaid beneficiaries. To do this, the team will construct a novel data linkage of administrative Medicaid and SNAP datasets to evaluate two natural experiments that lead low-income families to acquire or lose SNAP benefits.
Start date
Award amount
$396,311
Duration
30 months
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Project Director(s)
Chris Lim, PhD
Project Summary
The project team is investigating the health and other impacts of the New York City (NYC) Schoolyards to Playgrounds (S2P) program, a partnership between the NYC Departments of Education and Parks and the Trust for Public Land (TPL), that renovates and opens schoolyards to the public as playgrounds. They aim to measure the impact of the program on the academic performance and health of NYC students and to assess differential impact based on level of investment.
Start date
Award amount
$303,972
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
Laura Boudreau, MSc, PhD
Sylvain Chassang, MA, PhD
Ada González-Torres, MSc, PhD
Project Summary
This grant was awarded through E4A’s special Call for Proposals: Approaches to Advance Gender Equity From Around the Globe. The investigators are conducting a cluster randomized control trial to study an innovation to an independent grievance reporting and resolute system (the Helpline) – the incorporation of a reporting escrow. The researchers will randomly assign garment factories in Bangladesh to: 1) the Helpline’s status quo system or 2) to the Helpline’s status quo system plus a reporting escrow. The researchers also aim to vary the design of the reporting escrow across factories. The researchers are evaluating the escrow’s effects on reporting of labor issues, including sexual harassment, and on workers’ mental well-being, as well as its effects on factories’ internal capacity to resolve issues and on worker absenteeism. The team will also explore whether the reporting escrow changes perceived social norms and acceptability of different behaviors on workers, and in the longer term, reduces the actual incidence of labor issues. Evidence from this study could substantially improve the design of reporting escrow systems and increase the probability of take-up and success in the U.S.
Start date
Award amount
$225,484
Duration
24 months
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Project Director(s)
Jessica Dalpe, LMSW
Jhumka Gupta, ScD, MPH
Project Summary
This grant was awarded through E4A’s special Call for Proposals: Approaches to Advance Gender Equity From Around the Globe. The investigators are evaluating the feasibility and acceptability of adapting an internationally developed women’s protection and empowerment intervention – Economic and Social Empowerment (EA$E) – for forcibly displaced populations (FDPs) in Phoenix, AZ to address the unique challenges women and households face in achieving gender equity. The project team is testing: 1) What programmatic components from EA$E are perceived (or not perceived) as acceptable, appropriate, and feasible by US-based FDPs; 2) Why are some programmatic components perceived as acceptable (or not acceptable) for US-based FDPs; and 3) What are the barriers and facilitators to implementing an adapted version of EA$E by International Rescue Committee’s US-based offices. Findings will lead to the formulation of data-informed recommendations for adapting EA$E for US-based FDPs.
Image credit: Heidi Chase, International Rescue Committee.
Start date
Award amount
$244,784
Duration
24 months
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Project Director(s)
Joanne Yoong, PhD
Lila Rabinovich, MPhil
Project Summary
This grant was awarded through E4A’s special Call for Proposals: Approaches to Advance Gender Equity From Around the Globe. Drawing on the RE-AIM framework, the investigators are exploring the potential for deployment of the Citi-Tsao Financial Education Program, a 12-week group-based intervention, for women in the U.S. The investigators will develop detailed recommendations for the potential adaptation of this program to a low-income U.S. setting, examining implications for design modifications and targeting of beneficiaries and stakeholders.
Start date
Award amount
$228,554
Duration
30 months
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Project Director(s)
Angelica Meinhofer, PhD
Project Summary
The research team is evaluating how different prenatal substance use policies (PSUPs) impact (1) how systems, such as child welfare, criminal justice and healthcare providers, respond; (2) maternal substance use and healthcare behaviors; and (3) maternal and newborn health. The researchers are also examining whether the policies have differential impact based on the mother’s race and ethnicity.
Start date
Award amount
$149,443
Duration
18 months
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Project Director(s)
Julia Raifman, ScD
Project Summary
The team is expanding a comprehensive, publicly available COVID-19 U.S. State Policy database – CUSP. The CUSP database is free to access and documents the dates of health and social policies in the wake of COVID-19 and its economic ramifications in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The researchers will continue to expand the database to track COVID-19 social safety net policies and health care policies.
Start date
Award amount
$299,713
Duration
18 months
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Project Director(s)
Ezra Golberstein, PhD
Project Summary
The research team is assessing what happens when K-12 schools adopt a School-Based Mental Health (SBMH) services model, where schools partner with an external mental health services agency to directly place licensed mental health clinicians inside schools. Leveraging a staggered adoption of SBMH across K-12 public schools in Minnesota between 2005-2017, the team will study whether SBHC services affect a range of mental health and human capital outcomes for children and adolescents. The team will further investigate whether effects vary in subgroups of children and adolescents who are at higher risk of mental health problems.
Start date
Award amount
$189,751
Duration
21 months
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Project Director(s)
Parissa Ballard, PhD, MA
Alison Cohen, PhD, MPH
Project Summary
The researchers are conducting a randomized controlled trial evaluating an “action civics" program (AC) that offers a school-based civic engagement intervention. The researchers are testing the causal effects of AC on changes in civic engagement and sense of community and subsequent health and wellbeing among middle and high school students.
Start date
Award amount
$415,288
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
Adam Reich, PhD
Hana Shepherd, PhD
Project Summary
The project team is conducting a randomized control trial (RCT) among people working in low-wage, precarious retail jobs to evaluate the impact of a new form of online organizing – facilitated discussion groups – on physical and emotional well-being, as well as health-related workplace engagement. Using a customized version of the mobile app WorkIt, developed as a resource for low-wage workers by the non-profit organization United for Respect, the researchers will test the relative effect of a facilitated discussion group compared to an online group that receives health-related information only.
Start date
Award amount
$513,650
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
Jennifer Heissel, PhD, MPP
Project Summary
The research team is leveraging unique U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) policies and the DoD’s robust administrative records to examine whether parental support policies, such as maternity and paternity leave and subsidized childcare improve parents’ health outcomes. To study whether these policies can improve parental health, the researchers take advantage of changes to DoD parental supports available to active duty parents. For parents, access to maternity and paternity leave changed at different times, while childcare access depended on location, allowing researchers to interact these policies with one another to estimate if any benefits are multiplicative – or if they offset each other. Findings from this study will shed light on whether and how particular policies support parents’ health – and if and how patterns differ based on parental characteristics.
Start date
Award amount
$273,058
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
Hongying (Daisy) Dai, PhD
Project Summary
Raising the minimum legal age of tobacco sales to 21 (T21) is among a small number of low-cost, population-level interventions that may significantly delay youth tobacco initiation and reduce smoking prevalence. The overarching goal of this study is to develop a community data-driven policy framework in order to 1) optimize the effects of T21 and 2) reduce policy-related health disparities.
Start date
Award amount
$233,688
Duration
24 months
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Project Director(s)
Christina Stacy, PhD
Project Summary
The project team is conducting a randomized control trial (RCT) to test the impacts of both a conditional and unconditional monetary payment with the explicit goal of addressing youth at-risk of engagement in the criminal justice system. The first component of the intervention is a youth violence prevention program that involves an after-school curriculum followed by subsidized employment. The second component of the intervention is a weekly cash subsidy that is meant to reduce the barriers that youth face to both participating in programming and to living a healthy life with minimal justice system interaction.
Start date
Award amount
$436,244
Duration
33 months
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Project Director(s)
Sandra Newman, PhD, MUP
Charles Scott Holupka, PhD
Project Summary
The project team is testing whether assisted housing affects children's healthy development by reducing family housing cost burden, and/or by improving their housing and neighborhood conditions. A nationally representative sample of children ages 0-12 in 1997 who lived in assisted housing are followed into adulthood and their outcomes are compared to those of a comparison group of children who were eligible for but did not live in assisted housing.
Start date
Award amount
$295,016
Duration
30 months
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Project Director(s)
Jenny Seelig, PhD
Jennifer Hamilton, PhD
Scott Hays, PhD
Project Summary
The project team is assessing how civic engagement of young people can impact health, well-being, and equity in rural communities by evaluating the impact of Engaging Youth for Positive Change (EYPC). Engaging Youth for Positive Change is a civic engagement program that provides young people ages 14-19 with a systematic approach to working with local governments to adopt health-promoting policies. The researchers are assessing youth outcomes and also examining the implementation of the program in EYPC classrooms to determine the cost-effectiveness.
Start date
Award amount
$428,139
Duration
30 months
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Project Director(s)
Stacia Martin-West, MSSW, PhD
Amy Castro Baker, PhD, MSW
Project Summary
The Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration (SEED) is the country’s first city-led guaranteed income (GI) pilot. The project team is evaluating the impacts of the additional income on a variety of outcomes – including, but not limited to, financial security, civic engagement, and health and wellness – while simultaneously anchoring policy proof of concept in the lives and perspectives of Stocktonians. The purpose of this research is to test the effects of a guaranteed income on volatility, inequity drivers, and social determinants of health, as well as to what degree GI acts as a financial vaccine to help people weather unexpected shocks.
Start date
Award amount
$678,315 (COVID supplement: $285,692 started August 2020)
Duration
36 months (COVID supplement: 18 months started August 2020)
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Project Director(s)
Terry Huang, PhD, MPH, MBA
Katarzyna Wyka, PhD
Project Summary
The project team is examining the impact of New York City’s Community Parks Initiative (CPI), a citywide park redesign and renovation, on physical activity, park usage, psychosocial and mental health, and quality of life in underserved neighborhoods. They are following up on an existing cohort of parent-child dyads drawn from intervention vs. matched control neighborhoods from CPI. This natural experiment is a unique collaboration with NYC Parks and the city-led environmental change intervention is unprecedented in scale.
Start date
Award amount
$487,202
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
John Bulger, DO, MBA
Project Summary
The project team is investigating the effects of an innovative program, Geisinger's Fresh Food Farmacy (FFF), that "prescribes" healthy food to food-insecure diabetics and their families. Each week, participants fill their prescription at a local clinic where they receive healthy food for two meals per day over five days for everyone in their household. Participants also receive education on diabetes self-management and information about nutrition and healthy diets. Evidence generated will contribute information about the effectiveness of the program on patients, spillover effects on household members, and the effects of participation on other types of wellness care.
Start date
Award amount
$ 261,816
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
Melissa Richmond, PhD
Sara Bayless, PhD
Project Summary
The project team is determining the degree to which a scalable, community-based model of family supportive services is effective at improving family health and wellbeing. The intervention group receives Family Development (FD) services, which includes meetings with a FD worker to set and work towards family-driven goals using a strengths-based, family-centered approach.
Start date
Award amount
$435,328
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
Benjamin Cowan, PhD
Nathan Tefft, PhD
Project Summary
The project team is identifying the causal effect of college enrollment and attainment on health by examining how community college access modifies risky health behaviors and outcomes later in adulthood. In order to identify the causal effect of college enrollment on health behaviors, the investigators are evaluating the differential opening of new colleges and universities by state over the time period 1960-1995.
Start date
Award amount
$196,684
Duration
24 months
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Project Director(s)
Michael Siegel, MD, MPH
Claire Boine, LLM, MPP, MA
Project Summary
Surveys reveal that the overwhelming majority of gun owners support firearm policies such as universal background checks, leading to the belief that there are shared values that can bring gun owners and non-gun owners together to engage in gun violence prevention. The project team is developing and evaluating communication strategies to include all stakeholders in firearm violence prevention. They aim to identify the values that bridge backgrounds and perspectives and develop and test the effectiveness of different message framing strategies in changing gun policy-related attitudes and mindsets and willingness to engage in gun violence prevention. By testing the effects of a targeted communication intervention on mindsets and civic engagement, the researchers are determining the extent to which these Making Health A Shared Value Drivers can be changed for an issue that is considered intractable.
Start date
Award amount
$599,413
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
Jeff Niederdeppe, PhD
Liana Winett, DrPH, MPH, MCHES
Project Summary
There is strong evidence that investments in early childhood development can shape health and well-being in later stages of life. The project team is evaluating the effect of a messaging intervention on Making Health A Shared Value Drivers: mindsets, expectations, and civic engagement related to early childhood development. Specifically, they are developing and testing the effects of values-based policy messages to promote funding and support for early childhood education.
Start date
Award amount
$281,392
Duration
18 months
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Project Director(s)
Katherine Theall, PhD, MPH
Lisa Richardson, PhD
Project Summary
The project team is examining the effectiveness of a neighborhood blight remediation strategy in New Orleans, Louisiana on Making Health A Shared Value Drivers: well-being and health interconnectedness, sense of community and sense of safety, and civic engagement. They are also testing the causal relation between these drivers and family and youth violence, substance use, and mental health; as well as examining the moderating impact of additional neighborhood level buffers (e.g., fewer alcohol outlets, greater green and park space) on blight reduction efforts.
Start date
Award amount
$500,000
Duration
48 months
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Project Director(s)
Dean Schillinger, MD
Cristy Johnston Limon, MBA
Project Summary
Health As a shared Value Of Youth CulturE (HAVOYCE) is a campaign to eradicate Type 2 diabetes (T2D) in youth by inspiring youth to become powerful messengers who use the art of spoken word to shift mindsets and expectations away from “shame and blame” towards "the bigger picture": reversing T2D’s social and environmental drivers. The project focuses on capturing the effects of the intervention on mindset and expectations, sense of community, and civic engagement.
Start date
Award amount
$502,698
Duration
24 months
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Project Director(s)
Kevin Bastian, PhD
Sarah Fuller, PhD
Project Summary
The project team assessed how school start time changes impact student sleep, school engagement and achievement outcomes, and the daily schedule and interactions with school district personnel and parents. The study took advantage of a natural event in which an urban school district in North Carolina delayed start times for district high schools and advanced start times for district elementary schools.
Start date
Award amount
$193,165
Duration
15 months
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Project Director(s)
Mustafa Hussein, PhD
Project Summary
The goal of this project is to assess the effects of living wage (LW) policies on the health and wellbeing of low-income adults. The project team is leveraging natural experiments in LW policy adoption across metro areas in two population-based, longitudinal studies: the Community Tracking Study and the CARDIA (Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults) Cohort Study. The project will demonstrate the feasibility of placing health as a front-and-center objective for social and economic policy.
Start date
Award amount
$247,406
Duration
24 months
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Project Director(s)
Sherry Barr, PsyD
Eric Jenner, MMC, PhD
Project Summary
The project team investigated how a positive youth development and cross-age peer mentoring model known as Peer Group Connection impacted economically-disadvantaged students in urban high schools in New York City and rural high schools in North Carolina. This project complemented and extended prior and concurrent research by exploring the potential of a positive youth development model, with an emphasis on social and emotional learning, on adolescent health and educational outcomes.
Start date
Award amount
$348,295
Duration
24 months
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Project Director(s)
Taletha Derrington, PhD
Joseph Ferrie, PhD
Project Summary
The project team is assessing the impact of preschool education on the long-term economic and health outcomes of children who were exposed to Lanham nursery schools. From 1942 through 1946 under the National Defense Housing Act of 1940, popularly known as the Lanham Act, the Federal Works Agency provided funds to local school districts to operate nursery schools. The team has identified the places that received Lanham funds for nursery care along with a group of control sites that did not receive the funds. The team is following the two groups born 1938-1948 over the entire life course to assess the impact of early-life education.
Photo courtesy of Kaiser Permanente Heritage Resources: Medical checkup at Kaiser Oregonship child development center, circa 1944.
Start date
Award amount
$249,776
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
Helen Colby, PhD
Meng Li, PhD
Project Summary
In the U.S. healthcare system, patients often have no access to information about the original cost of medical services. The investigators tested whether disclosing information on the original cost of preventive care increased its perceived value and led to increased adoption of such services. Their research focused on four preventive healthcare services that generate substantial health benefits for targeted populations: 1) flu vaccination for insured adults under 65, 2) nutritional counseling for insured patients with diabetes, 3) regular dental checkups for insured patients who under-utilize dental checkups, and 4) annual wellness visits for insured patients who under-utilize wellness visits.
Start date
Award amount
$156,230
Duration
18 months
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Project Director(s)
Lisa J. Meltzer, PhD
Amy Plog, PhD
Project Summary
The project team conducted a multi-year, broad-based evaluation of how changing school start times impacts health and well-being for students in a diverse district in suburban Denver, Colorado. This study took advantage of a natural experiment where the district changed school start times, with high school students starting at 8:20 a.m. (70 minutes later), middle school students starting at 8:50 a.m. (40-60 minutes later), and elementary schools starting at 8:00 a.m. (60 minutes earlier).
Start date
Award amount
$402,568
Duration
33 months
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Project Director(s)
Abigail Friedman, PhD
Project Summary
The project team estimated the impact of combustible cigarette and electronic cigarette policies on the selection and use of tobacco products. To further population health, tobacco regulations should serve two aims simultaneously: reducing tobacco use overall and leading those who do use to choose lower risk tobacco products over higher risk ones. The team studied how several different types of tobacco policies implemented at state and local levels impacted both electronic cigarette and combustible cigarette use.
Start date
Award amount
$337,679
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
Scott Brown, PhD
Jose Szapocznik, PhD
Joanna Lombard, MArch
Project Summary
The project team examined the impact of greenness and greening interventions (tree plantings) on cardiovascular disease (CVD) diagnoses. The study took advantage of a natural experiment to increase greenness in low-income neighborhoods in Miami-Dade County. The team used a prospective, longitudinal quasi-experimental design to study the impact of block-level greenness exposure on CVD outcomes in low-income Miami-Dade Medicare beneficiaries.
Start date
Award amount
$382,500
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
Hongmei Wang, PhD
Ann Mangiameli, JD
Project Summary
The project team is assessing the impact of legal services provided to health care super-utilizers through a medical-legal partnership (MLP) on their health and health care use. The team is conducting a randomized controlled trial to examine whether the provision of social and/or legal services through MLP to address the social and legal needs of these healthcare super-utilizers will improve their health outcomes and reduce medical care utilization and expenditure.
Start date
Award amount
$536,316
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
Marianne Bitler, PhD
Janet Currie, PhD
Project Summary
The project team is developing plausible estimates of the causal effects of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) on infant and child outcomes. The investigators focus on the effects of WIC on children after they are born; spillover effects from targeted children to other family members who are not directly eligible for the programs; and on the effects of changes to the composition of the WIC food package and delivery of program benefits (e.g., changes from an identifiable voucher to an Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) card).
Start date
Award amount
$340,000
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
Marcos Rangel, PhD
Christina Gibson-Davis, PhD
Project Summary
This project team estimated the effects of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activities, specifically 287(g) programs and Secure Communities, on the maternal and infant health of Mexican-born immigrant mothers in North Carolina. The team explored how immigration enforcement activities affect the health and well-being of immigrant mothers and their newborns, and if changes in birth outcomes arose due to changes in maternal behaviors and access.
Start date
Award amount
$ 136,139
Duration
18 months
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Project Director(s)
Heather Koball, PhD
James Kirby, PhD
Project Summary
The project team examined the effect of immigration enforcement policies, including restricting driver’s licenses for unauthorized immigrants, and public health insurance expansions on health outcomes among children of unauthorized and legal immigrants. Beginning in the early 2000s, states diverged in their levels of cooperation with federal immigration enforcement and approaches to expanding public benefits to immigrants. The study took advantage of the patterns of state immigration policy variations to measure the health impacts of different policy approaches to immigration regulation.
Start date
Award amount
$127,424
Duration
18 months
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Project Director(s)
Ingrid G. Ellen, PhD
Robert Collinson, MA, MPP
Project Summary
The project team studied the effect of tenant-based housing vouchers and public housing programs on the health outcomes of vulnerable individuals and families. The study took advantage of a natural experiment in which a unique housing assistance lottery produced random offers of public housing or housing vouchers to a subset of wait-list households.
Start date
Award amount
$60,674
Duration
24 months
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Project Director(s)
Janel Hanmer, MD, PhD
Project Summary
The next-generation Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS®) has health measures for clinical, research, and population health uses. The project team developed a summary PROMIS-Preference (PROPr) score combining information from 7 PROMIS domains. They estimated crosswalks between PROPr and other summary measures of health. A crosswalk uses the score from one measure to predict another measure’s score, allowing the synthesis of information across surveys and studies.
Start date
Award amount
$333,055
Duration
34 months
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Project Director(s)
Andy Brownback, PhD
Alex Imas, PhD
Michael Kuhn, PhD
Project Summary
The project team examined how introducing waiting periods into the decision-making process affects the food purchasing choices of SNAP recipients. The team particularly focused on various ways in which subsidies for healthy food distribution optimized both the effective promotion of healthy consumption and the preservation of choice for participants.
Start date
Award amount
$198,940
Duration
18 months
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Project Director(s)
Atheendar Venkataramani, MD, PhD
Alexander Tsai, MD, PhD
Project Summary
The project team examined the causal physical and mental health effects of three types of economic opportunity policies targeted predominantly toward underserved populations: the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, affirmative action bans, and small business set-asides. They also assessed the importance of economic mediators by examining impacts of these policies on employment, education, and income.
Start date
Award amount
$368,575
Duration
24 months
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Project Director(s)
Jennifer Otten, PhD, RD
Project Summary
The project team evaluated the impact of the implementation of an increased minimum wage ordinance in the early childhood education (ECE) setting. The team examined how changes to the minimum wage affected the health of ECE providers and how provider health relates to the quality of the ECE environment. The study was designed to compare minimum wage change outcomes over time in Seattle, WA and South King County, WA to the control city, Austin, TX.
Start date
Award amount
$729,500
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
Joan Williams, JD
Susan Lambert, PhD
Saravanan Kesavan, DBA
Project Summary
This is the only experimental study to examine the health and well-being effects of a shift to more stable schedules for hourly workers. The project team conducted a natural experiment to evaluate the health effects of targeted efforts to change employer scheduling practices that provide hourly workers with greater schedule stability, predictability, adequacy, and control.
Start date
Award amount
$188,420
Duration
18 months
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Project Director(s)
Bruce Tonn, PhD
Project Summary
The project team evaluated the health impacts of the Extreme Energy Makeover (EEM) program – designed to improve energy efficiency in low-income homes through weatherization. The team assessed how improving dwelling quality impacts health as well as energy cost savings. They also examined how the resulting energy cost savings affect household budgets and expenditures on health and well-being.
Start date
Award amount
$190,130
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
Sarah Gillespie, MPA
Devlin Hanson, PhD
Project Summary
The project team estimated the impact of a supportive housing intervention on homeless individuals who cycle in and out of jail, detoxification centers, and emergency medical services. The study’s treatment group received supportive housing services in project-based and scattered-site supportive housing units. The team also evaluated inmate health records, filling an existing gap in the evidence base on health interventions for a frequent jail reentry population.
Start date
Award amount
$400,000
Duration
36 months
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Project Director(s)
Jean Terranova, JD
Seth A. Berkowitz, MD, MPH
Kevin C. Cranston, MDiv
Liisa M. Randall, PhD
Project Summary
The home delivery of medically tailored meals (“MTM”)—an approach called ‘Food is Medicine,’ offers a convenient, healthy, and medically optimized diet for the severely ill. The project team evaluated the impact of MTM programs on healthcare expenditures, inpatient hospitalizations, and emergency department visits in severely ill and nutritionally vulnerable adults.
Photo by Kate McElwee.
Photo by Kate McElwee.
Start date
Award amount
$358,040
Duration
30 months
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Project Director(s)
Rebecca Dudovitz, MD, MSHS
Project Summary
The project team evaluated the impact of Advancement via Individual Determination (AVID) – a college preparatory curriculum targeting students in the academic middle – on students’ academic performance and health outcomes. The team explored whether and how AVID changed peer networks and relationships with teachers, whether those changes led to improvements in academic and behavioral outcomes and, if so, what the relative importance of peer versus adult network changes were. In addition to examining the effects of AVID on participants, the team examined how exposure to AVID impacted the academic achievement and health of high-performing non-AVID peers.
Start date
Award amount
$400,000
Duration
30 months
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Project Director(s)
Hye-Young Jung, PhD
Mark Aaron Unruh, PhD
Project Summary
The project team explored how the Medicaid primary care fee bump affected the health and costs for beneficiaries with chronic conditions who were covered by both Medicare and Medicaid. The team evaluated whether higher reimbursements to providers for primary care services led to better care and lower overall health care costs for this patient population.
Start date
Award amount
$279,750
Duration
18 months
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Project Director(s)
Jens Hainmueller, PhD
Duncan Lawrence, PhD
Maria Isabel Rodriguez, MD, MPH
Jonas Swartz, MD, MPH
Project Summary
The project team examined the causal effect of access to prenatal care for immigrant women on maternal and infant health outcomes and state economic impacts. The team compared undocumented and recently arrived immigrant families before and after the staggered implementation of Oregon’s Citizen Alien Waived Emergent Medical (CAWEM) Plus program, which provides access to prenatal Medicaid services for undocumented women.
Start date
Award amount
$70,150
Duration
12 months
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Project Director(s)
Michael Siegel, MD, MPH
Project Summary
The project team developed a new framework for the study of firearm violence within the context of gun culture. The investigators defined gun culture and developed methods by which to measure and analyze its effect on gun violence. The team expanded a multi-state-level database on gun ownership, firearm policy, and firearm mortality, and examined the inter-relationship among these factors and gun culture. Results have provided new data to enable public health practitioners to identify strategies for addressing and reducing firearm violence.
Start date
Award amount
$486,500
Duration
30 months
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Project Director(s)
Kurt Schwabe, PhD
Bruce Link, PhD
Mindy Marks, PhD
Project Summary
The project team assessed whether there is a causal effect of adverse weather events on indicators of population health, and if water policy affects the strength of the link between adverse weather conditions and health. To conduct this research the investigators created a dataset that includes health measures, indices of drought and extreme temperature, and water policy measures, which is publicly available for future research.
Start date
Award amount
$284,700
Duration
24 months
Worksite Wellness: A Field Experiment on Participation Incentives & Selection into Wellness Programs
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Project Director(s)
David Molitor, PhD
Damon Jones, PhD
Julian Reif, PhD
Laura Payne, PhD
Project Summary
The project team conducted a randomized controlled trial to examine the effect of workplace wellness programs on health, medical utilization, and well-being. The team focused on the role of incentives and peer effects in influencing self-selection into worksite wellness programs, and whether these programs differentially attract certain employees over others.
Start date
Award amount
$ 200,000
Duration
18 months
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Project Director(s)
A. Janet Tomiyama, PhD
Project Summary
The project team conducted a randomized controlled trial to determine if “comfort eating” actually reduces stress, and, if so, if eating healthy food can produce the same stress-relieving effects as eating less healthy foods. This was the first randomized, controlled experiment testing the causal effects of comfort eating on physiological stress markers.
Start date
Award amount
$46,000
Duration
24 months
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Project Director(s)
Elizabeth Gifford, PhD
Lindsey Eldred Kozecke, JD
Project Summary
The project team examined how parents’ interactions with the criminal justice system affect children’s health and well-being outcomes. The team analyzed over a decade’s worth of North Carolina statewide administrative data to explore whether and how the presence of children in a defendant’s life affects sentencing decisions, and if those decisions impact children’s experiences with the foster and health care systems, specifically, how criminal sanctions for parents affect children’s health and health care utilization.
Start date
Award amount
$315,939
Duration
36 months
A Multisector Solution to Build a Culture of Health Among Food Insecure Populations in Dallas County
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Project Director(s)
Sandi Pruitt, PhD
Tammy Leonard, PhD
Project Summary
The project team worked to expand the reach, scope, validity, and availability of The Hunger Center Longitudinal Database. They also evaluated an ongoing, large-scale natural experiment of a shift in charitable food distribution to a community-based model.
Start date
Award amount
$460,700
Duration
30 months
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Project Director(s)
Hangsheng Liu, PhD
John Engberg, PhD
Project Summary
The project team leveraged existing data from an urban public school system in Tennessee to determine if locating a health clinic onsite and managing chronic conditions improved teacher health, retention, and productivity. The team also examined if this will in turn impact student academic performance.
Start date
Award amount
$251,100
Duration
18 months
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Project Director(s)
Stephanie Farquhar, PhD, MA
Roxana Chen, PhD, MPH
Maria Ursua, MURP, MPA
Project Summary
The project team conducted a mixed method study to evaluate the impact of the Yesler Terrace (YT) Redevelopment Project on resident and community health and well-being. Yesler Terrace is a publicly subsidized housing community of low-income, ethnically diverse residents owned and operated by Seattle Housing Authority.
Photo courtesy of the Seattle Housing Authority.
Start date
Award amount
$451,000
Duration
30 months
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Project Director(s)
Kristine Madsen, MD, MPH
Hannah Thompson, PhD, MPH
Project Summary
The project team researched the impact of a lawsuit against 37 non-physical education (PE) compliant school districts in California on PE quality and quantity, and potential resulting unintended consequences. The team conducted a qualitative study to assess districts’ and schools' perceptions of the lawsuit. They also quantified the impact of PE litigation on cardiovascular fitness among a diverse group of students.
Start date
Award amount
$147,193
Duration
30 months
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Project Director(s)
Leighton Ku, PhD, MPH
Brian Bruen, PhD
Project Summary
The project team analyzed the relation of state tobacco use cessation efforts, other tobacco policies, and individual characteristics on the smoking and quitting behavior of Medicaid smokers.
Start date
Award amount
$199,520
Duration
12 months
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Project Director(s)
Sanjay Basu, MD, PhD
Project Summary
The research team evaluated an EARN savings intervention, or Individual Development Account (IDA), that encourages financial saving among low-income US adul
Start date
Award amount
$97,300
Duration
24 months
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Project Director(s)
John Mullahy, PhD
Project Summary
Dr. Mullahy examined the use of Multiple Chronic Conditions (MCCs) data as an indicator of individual and population health, functioning, and well-being. He assessed whether this data can be used to establish metrics that will describe the status of, disparities in, and trajectories over time of population health.
Start date
Award amount
$199,200
Duration
24 months