Awardees of 2021 pilot research grants report on project progress

Addressing Inequities in Speech-Language Pathology Services for Children with Communication Disorders

Investigators
Sara Kover, Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences
Carly Roberts, College of Education
Natasha Arora

Project update
This project is designed to deepen understanding of contributors to disparities in speech-language pathology (SLP) service delivery to children with communication disorders of diverse racial, cultural and linguistic backgrounds, as well as to initiate local community connections.

To date, the project team has connected with SLPs and administrators in King and Pierce Counties in both public school settings and early intervention settings. Through qualitative interviews, the team is seeking to understand the perspectives and experiences of those who provide or oversee speech-language pathology services to children with communication disorders of diverse backgrounds.

Themes from these interviews related to facilitators and barriers to equitable service delivery will inform next steps for community collaborations.

Characterizing Risk Communication around Smoke Exposure in Rural and Tribal Communities in the Okanogan River Airshed Emphasis Area

Half of the funding for this award came via a partnership with UW’s EarthLab, which works in partnership with others to co-produce and catalyze actionable science.

Investigators
Ernesto Alvarado, School of Environmental and Forest Sciences
Savannah D’Evelyn, Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences
Nicole Errett, Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences
Cody Desautel, Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation

Project update
The goal of this project was to describe how tribal and non-tribal communities in the Okanogan River Airshed Emphasis Area (ORAEA) receive and communicate information about smoke exposure. This goal was to be met through the following aims. Aim 1: Describe and evaluate how information about smoke exposure is being communicated within the tribal and rural communities of the ORAEA. Aim 2: Identify trusted sources and networks for information sharing that are perceived by community members and leaders to influence behavioral modifications that reduce smoke exposure. Aim 3: Discuss gaps in meeting local risk communication, needs, and identify pathways for continued collaboration and community-academic partnerships to address these gaps.

Between June and November 2021, the team completed 17 key informant interviews and six focus groups, which they recorded and transcribed for analysis. The team’s graduate student research assistant is currently completing an analysis to share with the project team for feedback before preparing a report and other products for dissemination.

Supporting Equitable Land Management Decisions Through the Characterization of Wildfire and Prescribe Smoke Exposure for At Risk Communities

Investigators
Tania Busch Isaksen, Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences
Julian Marshall, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering
Claire Schollaert, Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences

Project update
Prescribed burn events contribute to harmful air pollution exposures despite being identified as one of the most effective methods in potentially decreasing future human exposure to smoke from wildfires. Investigators on this project are pursuing information regarding the differentiation between fine particulate matter exposure from wildfire smoke and prescribed burn events. They also aim to quantify disparities in the distribution of these exposures and the way forest management resources are allocated relative to at-risk population locations. Their goal is for this information to reduce high severity wildfire risk and promote ecosystem restoration through the integration of their research into a more holistic method of forest management planning.

The team first established a source-specific smoke emissions inventory that differentiates between wildfire and prescribed burn sources of smoke emissions by overlaying emissions inventories with a burn tracker to delineate the type of emission for fires greater than 1,000 acres. They also compared state and federal databases of burn treatments, permit systems and administrative records against the emissions inventory to understand source-specific information on daily emissions levels for smaller emissions events.

From here, the project team plans to create and run a model of the dispersion of smoke emissions to compare population-level exposures and will complete their model validation protocol after developing the model. They also plan to apply for additional funding for the continuation of model runs and support in working with the community and government partners to use their findings for the creation of resources contributing to future forest management planning activities.

A Collaboratory to Support Equitable and Just Climate Action

Investigators
Jeremy Hess, Departments of Emergency Medicine, Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences, and Global Health
Jason Vogel, Climate Impacts Group
Julian Marshall, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering
Sara Curran, Jackson School of International Studies and Department of Sociology
Kris Ebi, Departments of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences and Global Health
Nicole Errett, Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences
Andrew Dannenberg, Departments of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences and Urban Design & Planning
Tania Busch Isaksen, Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences
Esther Min, Front and Centered
Deric Gruen, Front and Centered
Tim Sheehan, Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences

Project update
This team seeks to pursue just and equitable climate action in Washington state by forming a Collaboratory between the University of Washington and Front & Centered (F&C). As a coalition of environmental justice organizations in Washington, the Collaboratory will be built around three linked platforms: community engagement, policy analysis including health impact assessment, and web-based visualization of current and future health impacts associated with various policy scenarios. The project also has three main aims: to generate a standardized process for assessing community priorities, to develop a model for co-producing policy platforms and health impact assessments (HIAs) and to create a web-based platform for visualizing environmental health disparities and climate-related health risks.

On the front of collaboration between the UW and F&C, the team has already finalized a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that includes a communications plan and a shared approach to data collection and ownership. Implementation of a process for updating policy priorities, including a review and adjustment of existing priorities is currently in progress. They are shifting away from relying solely on focus groups and toward community input, utilizing methods based on the Delphi process to facilitate these efforts. The team also completed a beta version of the visualization tool with baseline demographic and climate information.

In the short term, the team is focused on processing downscaled projected information on weather hazards, developing the source-receptor matrix outlined in their plan and developing demographic projections to projections for HIA modeling. Supporting research and policy at the federal and state level are future goals. The team will seek future funding from the state government, private foundations and federal agencies.

Addressing the Need for Culturally Responsive and Bidirectional Research Communication with the Latinx Community – The BRIDGE Project

Investigators
Nathalia Jimenez, Department of Anesthesiology & Pain Medicine
Carmen Gonzalez, Department of Communication
Daniel Cabrera, Department of Medicine
Diana Maria Oliveros, Mexican Consulate in Seattle
Meg Gomez, School of Social Work
Aida Hidalgo, School of Public Health
Mikaela Freundlich Zubiaga, UW Latino Center for Health

Project update
BRIDGE is a project that aims to recognize COVID-19 related gaps in care, education and outreach by identifying community needs through personal stories. In developing BRIDGE, the team created three phases to achieve their goals.

• Phase 1: The team aims to highlight the challenges posed by COVID-19 on the health and well-being of the Latinx community by amplifying the voices of the community through digital storytelling. They will collaborate with bicultural and bilingual faculty and students to develop educational videos based on the stories they collect in this phase.
• Phase 2: BRIDGE will create video clips to amplify community experiences and evaluate engagement with their content. They will also include the message in the curriculum content for medical students in the Latino health pathway to reach the UW community.
• Phase 3: The educational videos will be disseminated through trusted media outlets from the Mexican Consulate.

So far, BRIDGE has reviewed existing information regarding their areas of concentration and identified five Latinx groups they plan to direct their focus: immigrants living in detention centers, AfroLatinx, indigenous populations, women during the perinatal period and Latinx living with disabilities. They have conducted two of three interviews with community leaders based on an interview structure they created to examine the impact of the pandemic on these communities and their interactions with the healthcare system. Two interviews with UW faculty and the production of four video clips based on their interviews are currently in progress.

The team’s future plans involve creating a website to maintain their relationships with these communities. The website will include the videos they create and resources from UW schools and programs. Applying for additional funding for the website and a project manager will likely occur in the near future.

Rapid Community Partnered Mixed-Methods to Promote Vaccine Uptake in Diverse Communities

Investigators
Theresa Hoeft, Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences
Bonnie Duran, School of Social Work
Diem Nguyen, Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences
Morhaf Al Achkar, Department of Family Medicine

Project update
This project aims to improve vaccine uptake through community partnered rapid mixed-methods research to minimize the disproportionate levels of illness and death U.S. communities of color face due to COVID-19. Their goal is to create a draft toolkit to support this research by seeking advice from a methods advisory group of experts and developing a quantitative survey and qualitative interview guide to determine barriers and facilitators to vaccine uptake.

The team has already met with partners at the Vietnamese Health Board and the Community Health Board Coalition for purposes of making progress with the toolkit and recruiting members for a Community Planning Group (CPG). They received feedback on potential toolkit content, ways to gather feedback from the broader community and how to determine beneficial collaborators during their multiple discussions with the CPG. The CPG is also helping develop strategies on how to ensure effective partnerships between their group and the core team.

Ongoing goals for this team include revising the table of contents for the toolkit, meeting with the methods advisory group to collect draft feedback and applying for additional grant funding for continued refinement of the toolkit.

Co-Designing a Culturally-Responsive, Advanced Technology Intervention to Support the Health and Development of Young Children in King County

Investigators
Julie Kientz, Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering
Kendra Liljenquist, Department of Pediatrics

Project update
The goal of this project is to develop more advanced smartphone-based interventions through collaborative design efforts to offer culturally relevant activities and health recommendations. To reach this goal, the team’s plan includes conducting community-driven collaborative sessions with parents who are of racial/ethnic minority backgrounds and have children aged 0-5 in King County. Their first major aim is to demonstrate the cultural relevance of mobile-based interfaces for children’s’ health and development to parents of racial/ethnic minorities. Their second major aim is to use heuristic evaluation with expert preventative care and health promotion technology designers to create a usability assessment method.

Starting with their co-design sessions with parents, the team has already developed consent protocols workshop materials, which include COVID-19 safety procedures. In terms of collaboration, they met and presented to prospective community partners focused on developmental screening, created a relationship with a partner serving BIPOC mothers in Kent, WA and enlisted families for co-design sessions that are currently taking place. The team also engaged in a literature review of parent-use technologies and a content analysis of apps regarding early childhood health to further their work toward creating a usability assessment. Finally, they developed an initial evaluation framework to examine the cultural relevance of parent-use apps and presented to experts for feedback.

The team’s efforts in the immediate future will primarily focus on their first aim of setting expectations with parents in King County, as they are slightly behind schedule on this front compared to their exceeding progress for their second aim regarding creating the usability assessment method. They anticipate applying for a no-cost extension and additional grants in the upcoming summer or fall to continue implementing their technology designs and conducting pilot studies with target communities.

Community-Based Formative Research to Advance Reproductive Health Equity in Iñupiaq Alaska

Half of the funding for this award came via a partnership with the UW Office of Global Affairs, which seeks to enhance the UW’s global engagement and reach, including with sovereign tribal nations.

Investigators
Elizabeth Harrington, Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology
P. Joshua Griffin, School of Marine and Environmental Affairs and Department of American Indian Studies
Dian Million, Department of American Indian Studies
Corina Kramer, Maniilaq Association
Lucas Trout, Maniilaq Association

Project update
This project has three goals:

1. To build a long-term, multidisciplinary research collaboration between the University of Washington and Maniilaq Social
   Medicine.
2. To understand the social, medical, and geographic contexts framing Alaska Native women’s reproductive experiences and outcomes in Northwest Alaska.
3. Develop an intervention study proposal to promote sexual and reproductive health (SRH) equity in Northwest Alaska.

To date we have created a robust collaborative relationship between UW and Maniilaq Social Medicine. Even before submitting our proposal our team of investigators from both institutions co-designed project goals to center community-relevant knowledge production for health equity across the region. Since receiving funding we have hired a local research coordinator and women’s health consultant; co-designed qualitative instruments; and completed half of our interviews with reproductive age women.

This month (April 2022) we are launching key informant interviews. We have formed a seven-member Community Advisory Group of regional health practitioners, Elders, and youth to support and guide our work. This summer we will hire a UW doctoral student research assistant to coordinate our qualitative analysis team. In the Fall we will hold dissemination and interventional concept workshops.