Research
IPRCE conducts injury prevention research with a focus on the injuries that have the greatest impact in Georgia and the southeast region. Current research areas reflect the top five causes of death and injury: motor-vehicle crashes, violence, falls, traumatic brain injury, and drug use.
IPRCE Core Research Projects
Exploratory Research Projects
This annual compilation is a reference guide containing publications from our core faculty during the period of January 2021 - November 2022.
The publication topics are related to the following injury and violence areas: violence prevention, traumatic brain injury prevention, drug safety, fall prevention, and transportation safety. These areas of prevention are associated with the leading causes of unintentional and intentional injury and injury death in Georgia.
Publication Briefs
Browse our collection of publication briefs featuring students, researchers, clinicians, and professors across injury prevention fields.
Access to, Experience with, and Attitudes towards Take Home Naloxone: An Online Survey
IPRCE Core Faculty member Dr. Joseph Carpenter and team investigated the prevalence of naloxone use, attitudes, and experiences with naloxone among an online community of people who use drugs.
Pediatric Firearm Injury Emergency Department Visits From 2017 to 2022: A Multicenter Study
IPRCE Core Faculty Member Dr. Sofia Chaudhary and team assessed how pediatric firearm injury ED visits during the pandemic differed from expected pre-pandemic trends.
Yoga vs Cognitive Processing Therapy for Military Sexual Trauma–Related Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Randomized Clinical Trial
IPRCE Core Faculty member Dr. Ursula Kelly and team evaluated the effectiveness of Trauma Center Trauma-Sensitive Yoga vs first-line cognitive processing therapy in women veterans with PTSD related to military sexual trauma.
“I’m Not Going to Lay Back and Watch Somebody Die”: A Qualitative Study of How People Who Use Drugs’ Naloxone Experiences Are Shaped by Rural Risk Environment and Overdose Education/Naloxone Distribution Intervention
IPRCE Core Faculty member Hannah Cooper and team evaluated people who use drugs' experience with overdose education and naloxone distribution programs in rural areas.
Intersections of Oppression: Examining the Interactive Effect of Racial Discrimination and Neighborhood Poverty on PTSD Symptoms in Black Women
IPRCE Core Faculty members Abigail Powers Lott and Jennifer Stevens and team studied the interactive effects of racial discrimination and neighborhood poverty on PTSD symptoms in Black women.
Longitudinal Study of COVID-19 Stay-At-Home Orders' Impact on Deaths of Despair in the United States, January 2019 to December 2020
IPRCE Core Faculty member Nadine Kaslow and team studied the impact of COVID-19 stay-at-home orders on deaths of despair in the United States using population-level data.
Minimum Wage and Violence Outcomes
In this policy brief IPRCE Core Faculty member Briana Woods-Jaeger and team summarize existing research examining the impact of changes in minimum wage on a variety of violence outcomes.
Use of Nonstigmatizing Language is Associated with Improved Outcomes in Hospitalized People who Inject Drugs
IPRCE Core Faculty member Joseph Carpenter and team determined how inpatient physicians describe hospitalized persons with OUD, and to understand associations of this language with outcomes along the OUD continuum of care.
Risks of Severe Assault and Intimate Partner Homicide among Transgender and Gender DiverseIntimate Partner Violence Survivors: Preliminary Findings from Community Listening Sessions
Core Faculty member Dr. Athena Sherman and team held community listening sessions to learn about severe intimate partner violence and intimate partner homicide among transgender individuals.
Can accurate demographic information about people who use prescription medications nonmedically be derived from Twitter?
IPRCE Core Faculty Dr. Abeed Sarker, and Director of Research Core Dr. Hannah Cooper, and team collaborated on a study that developed natural language processing methods to automatically estimate Twitter cohorts who mention nonmedical prescription medication use (NPMU).
"COVID gave him an opportunity to tighten the reins around my throat”: Perceptions of COVID-19 movement restrictions among survivors of intimate partner violence
This qualitative study addresses a gap by understanding the impacts of COVID-19, including the impacts of movement restrictions (i.e., shelter in place orders, quarantine, isolation orders) on experiences of IPV from the perspective of survivors.
Do Gender Differences Exist Among Victims of Head and Neck Injuries due to Intimate Partner Violence?
IPRCE Core faculty members Drs. Amy Zeidan, Dabney Evans, and Randi Smith's research aimed to address a gap by comparing the frequency, severity, and characteristics of head and neck injuries due to intimate partner violence, between men and women.
Electronic Advisories Increase Naloxone Prescribing Across Health Care Settings
Core Faculty member Dr. Joseph Carpenter and team evaluated the changes in prescriber practices at a large county hospital due to an electronic health record (EHR) advisory. This was a retrospective chart abstraction study looking at all opioid prescriptions and all naloxone prescriptions written as emergency department (ED) discharge, inpatient hospital discharge, or outpatient medications.
Natural Language Model for Automatic Identification of Intimate Partner Violence Reports from Twitter
Core Faculty members Abeed Sarker and Sangmi Kim collected publicly available English posts (tweets) related to interpersonal violence from Twitter using its public streaming application programming interface to improve surveillance and targeted distribution of support and/or interventions for those in need.
Integration of Life Care Specialists Into Orthopaedic Trauma Care to Improve Postoperative Outcomes: A Pilot Study
Core faculty member and IPRCE's drug safety task force lead, Dr. Nicholas Giordano assessed the feasibility and impact of integrating a Life Care Specialist (LCS) into orthopaedic trauma care settings.
Trauma Sensitive Yoga as a Treatment for PTSD in Women Veterans
Core Faculty Member and co-lead of IPRCE's violence prevention task force, Dr. Ursula Kelly was awarded "2021 Best Paper by a Woman in Science or Under-represented Minority" in July of 2022 for her work on the publication that aimed to address the need for treatment options and barriers to care by investigating a non-trauma-focused treatment option for women Veterans with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) related to military sexual trauma (MST).
Examining the Impact of Different News Formats on Self-Efficacy in Identifying When to Seek Care for Traumatic Brain Injuries
University of Georgia MPH graduate, current Cornell Ph.D. candidate, and 2022 Scott Lilienfield Scholarship recipient, Rebekah Wicke, examined which news format, if any, is preferable in bringing about favorable outcomes in reducing participants’ psychological distance to the threat of experiencing a TBI.
Ethical Care of the Traumatized: Conceptual Introduction to Trauma-Informed Care for Surgeons and Surgical Residents
IPRCE Core Faculty member, Randi Smith, MD, MPH reviews fundamental concepts of trauma-informed care (TIC) and applies them to the work of surgeons.
Two Generations Thrive: Bidirectional Collaboration Among Researchers, Practitioners and Parents to Promote Culturally Responsive Trauma Research Practice and Policy
IPRCE Core faculty member Briana Woods-Jaegar, Ph.D. leads a study that describes the collaboration among researchers, practitioners, and parents of color with lived experiences of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs).
Pain & Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Symptoms after combat-related injury
IPRCE Core Faculty member and Drug Safety Task Force leader, Nicholas Giordano, PhD, RN, evaluates the association between pain outcomes and PTSD symptom trajectories among combat-injured service members.
Effect of Nighttime Rental Restrictions on E-Scooter Injuries
IPRCE Director, Jonathan Rupp, PhD, and colleagues retrospectively review the effects of Atlanta's regulation banning nighttime e-scooter rentals on injury trends at a tertiary care and trauma center.
Food Insecurity Predicts Urban Gun Violence
IPRCE Core Faculty member, Randi Smith, MD, MPH, examines the impact of poor food access on the incidence of gunshot injury within the city of Atlanta.
Methadone and Suboxone Mentions on Twitter
IPRCE Exploratory Research Project PI, Abeed Sarker, PhD, explores public perceptions of effective medications for opioid use disorder.
MITIGATING NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES OF COMMUNITY VIOLENCE Exposure
IPRCE Core Faculty member, Briana Woods-Jaeger, PhD, leads a study on reducing negative consequences after violence exposure with the perspectives of African American youth.
Estimating Frequency of High-Risk Prescribing Patterns to Develop Targeted Interventions
Emory Rollins School of Public Health student and 2020 Scott Lilienfeld Injury Prevention scholar, Kara Suvada, analyzes frequencies of high-risk prescribing patterns in relation to co-prescription with contraindicated drugs.
Improved Proxy Measures of State-Level Household Gun Ownership
IPRCE Core Faculty member, Joseph Saleh, PhD, develops and validates proxy measures of state-level household gun ownership using advanced machine learning methods.
Domestic Violence in Atlanta, GA Before and During COVID-19
IPRCE Core Faculty member, Dabney Evans, PhD, MPH, studies domestic violence trends before and during shelter-in-place orders.