Exploratory Projects
Identifying Barriers and Facilitators to Implementing a Community Drug-Checking App among the Department of Health and Diverse Communities of People Who Use Drugs in Fulton County, GA
The CDC has funded a new web-based app called StreetCheck, which allows people who use drugs to anonymously share the results of their drug tests with public health departments. This 18-month pilot project aims to assess facilitators and barriers to implementing StreetCheck with our Communities of Practice (CoP). The findings of this study can potentially improve the implementation and uptake of the app in Georgia and beyond.
Identifying Facilitators of Coordinated Care for BIPOC Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence: Formative Research Towards Intervention Development
Coordinated care, the process of identifying at-risk individuals and connecting them with health and social services at the point of care, is an important evidence-based approach for optimizing service connection and retention among individuals at highest risk for poor health outcomes. This project aims to characterize facilitators of coordinated care to inform intervention development for BIPOC survivors of intimate partner violence.
Life Care Specialists (LCS) with a Focus on Multi-modal Non-Pharmacologic Strategies For Pain Control in the Aftermath of Orthopaedic Trauma
Pain management following trauma continues to be centered around opioid pharmaceutical analgesia with little emphasis on individualized risk assessment for opioid use disorders, nonpharmacologic strategies for pain control, and early intervention by mental health/substance use specialists. To address this gap, we introduced a Life Care Specialist (LCS) as an integral member of our orthopaedic trauma clinical team, with a focus on “pain coaching” for trauma patients. The goal of this study group is to determine which components of the LCS intervention contribute to effectiveness, whether LCS affects long-term abuse risk and overdose-related deaths, and ultimately, to nationally scale this for all patients receiving an opioid prescription.
Identification of Victims, Types, and Risk Factors of Intimate Partner Violence during COVID-19 on Social Media
The volume of IPV-related discussions on social media has rapidly increased over the last two years and more so during the pandemic. With restricted in-person interactions and communications, social media can be a key channel to collect IPV-related live streaming data accurately, unobtrusively, at scale, and anonymously. However, social media’s role in monitoring IPV and helping IPV victims has been under-explored, although recent feasibility studies have produced promising outcomes. Our long-term goal is to establish a framework for IPV surveillance and support of IPV victims during the pandemic and onward by utilizing social media.
Examining the Psychosocial Impact of COVID-19 on Undocumented Latinx Immigrant Families
This community-engaged pilot study examines how stress related to COVID-19 is impacting the mental health and risk for child maltreatment among Latinx immigrant families, and how unique factors such as immigration policy effects and cultural and community resources influence this impact.
Leveraging Physical and Online Digital Infrastructures to Infer College Students' Social Isolation and its Relationship to Risk of Suicide
This project aims to provide preliminary insights on detecting and monitoring multi-dimensional risk and protective factors of suicide using sophisticated machine learning techniques from data gathered on social media interaction.