Two innovative and interdisciplinary research projects that include researchers from the University of Washington’s School of Social Work were awarded grants from the UW Population Health Initiative. The projects will examine child maltreatment amid the pandemic and test culturally adapted trauma-informed parenting interventions for the Colville Tribes.
The grants with School of Social Work representation are:
Collecting data to better understand child maltreatment and the pandemic. Washington’s child protective services received nearly 112,000 reports of child maltreatment in 2019. Since Covid has impacted most areas of health and wellbeing, there is reason to believe that child maltreatment was affected, as well. This project, which includes representatives from the School of Social Work, School of Medicine, Harborview Injury Prevention & Research Center and Casey Family Programs, will create a linked administrative dataset to enable scientists to determine how Covid is impacting the frequency and severity of child maltreatment, whether poverty, race or ethnicity plays a role, and how the medical profession is responding.
School of Social Work team members: Melissa L. Martinson, associate professor, and Benjamin de Haan, associate dean for social service innovation and partnerships and director of the Center for Social Sector Analytics & Technology
Culturally adapted, trauma-informed parenting interventions for the Colville Tribes. American Indian communities experience family disruption for many reasons, including contacts with the foster care system, parental substance use and untreated trauma response. Without efforts to support healing, parent-child attachments can be disrupted for the long term, creating a core public health problem in American Indian communities. This project involves team members from UW School of Social Work, UW Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Department of Behavioral Health at the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Indian Reservation, and Washington State University. Team members will develop and test a culturally adapted, trauma-informed curriculum focused on parenting skills that strengthen parent-child relationships. (A portion of the funding was made available by the UW Office of Global Affairs.)
School of Social Work team member: Tessa Evans-Campbell, associate dean for academic affairs
The projects are among eight that received Tier 2 grants totaling $677,000. Of this amount, $463,000 came from the initiative; matching grants were made by the various schools, colleges and departments. Tier 2 grants are intended to help faculty and staff develop preliminary data or proof-of-concept needed to pursue additional funding to scale up the effort.
Read more about this latest group of UW Population Health Initiative grantees.