Dr. Aishia Brown serves as the lead program evaluator for Bridge Kids International, a global non-profit organization helping young people of Africa and the African Diaspora unleash their social entrepreneurial spirits to solve challenges in economic development, education, environment, girls’ rights, and health to build sustainable communities. This three-year evaluation project is focused on assessing the outcomes of Bridge Kids’ Seven Generations African Heritage Summer Camp, Young Adult Mothers of African Heritage Community Group, and the African Heritage Family Activity Book Series.

The partnership between University of Louisville Commonwealth Institute of Kentucky (CIK) and the Food Literacy Project is to conduct a process and outcome evaluation of programming for the Food and Agriculture Service Learning Implementation Project (FASIP) funding from United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) from September 2018 to August 2020.

The Food Literacy Project provides farm-based experiential education and entrepreneurial youth development programs that bring the Field-to-Fork experience to life for local youth. Commonwealth scholars Drs. Aishia Brown and Kristi King are leading a program evaluation effort for the Food Literacy Project. The goal of the evaluation is to assess the impact Food Literacy Project activities and programs have on the community they serve. The evaluation will consist of conducting focus groups with members of the Food Literacy Project community advisory council and conducting a photovoice project with youth participants of the Food Literacy Project’s Youth Community Agriculture Program.

For more information about this study, click here.

CIK Assistant Director Dr. Susan Buchino and Graduate Research Assistant Malea Hoepf Young partnered with Kentucky Voices for Health (KVH) to engage in multiple strategies in order to monitor ongoing Medicaid changes. Aims of this study included understanding the implications of ongoing Kentucky Medicaid reform on access to and utilization of care; understanding how enrollment assisters aid their clients to navigate changes in policies and coverage; assessing gaps in consumer and professional comprehension of the changes; and exploring the role of stakeholders in influencing Medicaid policy.

This qualitative study serves as a mechanism to provide feedback to stakeholders and policy makers regarding the implementation process, program successes, and barriers to accessing health coverage and health care in Kentucky during a period of extensive system alterations. Additionally, in anticipation of the implementation of Kentucky HEALTH, an 1115 Medicaid waiver to alter Medicaid expansion, CIK authored a baseline report outlining the impact of the Affordable Care Act in Kentucky and potential impacts of the waiver. External funding was provided to KVH by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities with grant funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Dr. Liza Creel and Dr. Susan Buchino serve as the program evaluators for the HRSA-funded Kentucky Early Hearing Detection and Intervention (KY EHDI) Family and Community Engagement (FACE) Project of the Kentucky Commission for Children with Special Health Care Needs (CCSHCN). For this project, CIK researchers administer annual stakeholder surveys and analyze EHDI program data, reporting results to the program’s Advisory Committee. Additionally in the past year, CIK reported the results of this project’s year-long learning community, which was conducted with health care providers and members of the community around developing an individualized care plan. Drs. Creel and Buchino also coauthored a poster with the KY EHDI team for the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs Annual Conference.

The research employs a new method for helping children with hearing loss receive timely care by using a patient navigator, who is someone who teaches and provides emotional/social support for the families of these children. As site PI on this project, Dr. Creel leads Specific Aim 3 – Determining the cost-effectiveness of PN. She is responsible for establishing data collection structure and methods, monitoring data collection throughout the study period, and leading the cost-effectiveness analysis. https://www.ccts.uky.edu/news/32-million-grant-helps-families-access-diagnostic-hearing-tests-infants

CHOT is a federally awarded National Science Foundation industry-university collaborative research center that aims to accelerate applied research and workforce development by integrating healthcare systems engineering, health services research and health policy. In 2017, the University of Louisville joined six other universities in this innovative Center, which is comprised of university members from the United States and United Kingdom.

Visit the CHOT website for more information.

This project focuses on developing pre-exposure prophylaxis PrEP materials, provide PrEP education to an AIDS service organization and medical doctors, conduct and media campaign to assess if community knowledge about PrEP increases. This is an intervention study that aims to increase knowledge of PrEP among high risk groups in West Louisville, Kentucky and those that treat high risk individuals.

Louisville’s Youth Violence Prevention Research Center (YVPRC) was  established in 2015, joining other National Centers of Excellence in Youth Violence Prevention (YVPCs) funded by the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention.

YVPRC launched its community social norming campaign, Pride, Peace, Prevention, in 2017. The YVPRC team includes faculty, staff, students, and youth from West Louisville, who together with community partners and Renaissance Creative Group, designed the campaign. The first wave of the campaign focused on pride, which emphasized important elements of history. The second wave, launched in May 2018, promotes advancing justice to achieve peace. The final wave will run in 2019 and center on prevention. Through visibility from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Louisville’s YVPRC is recognized as a resource for other communities and is leveraging opportunities to provide training and consultation to help others prevent violence.

Learn more at: https://pridepeaceprevention.org/

This study proposes probability methods to address the problem of when to schedule the next exam for an asymptomatic individual with a history of negative screenings. Distribution of Lead time (i.e., diagnosis time advanced by screening) and probability of over-diagnosis are derived, if one would be diagnosed with cancer at the future scheduled time. The methods will be applied to four cohorts from the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal, and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial for lung cancer (PLCO-Lung) and four cohorts from the National Lung Screening Trials (NLST).

This project develops important preliminary data on the genotoxic effects of particulate matter (PM)  and will also explore how PM induces lung carcinogenesis.

This project aims to clarify whether and how exposure to nickel nanoparticles causes genotoxic and carcinogenic effects. The researchers expect that the results will provide scientific knowledge and tools for evaluating other nanomaterials. Successful completion of this project will lead to a better understanding of the mechanisms by which metal nanoparticles induce genotoxic and carcinogenic effects.

This project aims to explore how exposure to metal nanoparticles may cause lung diseases. The researchers expect that the results will provide tools for evaluating other nanomaterials. Successful completion of this project will not only lead to a better understanding of the mechanisms by which metal nanoparticles induce lung injury, but also provide scientific evidence to reduce their toxicity.

In this study, Dr. Zheng develops new statistical inferences methods for high dimensional censored quantile regression, work with other PIs on other types of high-dimensional inference, and mentor graduate students.