The Resilience for Advocates through Foundation Training (RAFT)

Faculty mentor: Dr. Karen McDonnell

RAFT improves the level of care for sexual and domestic violence survivors by supporting advocates and organizations in building resilience to compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma, and preventing burnout. Creating awareness of domestic and sexual violence is pivotal to ending it. Supporting survivors in rebuilding their lives, including men and boys in the conversation, and working with abusers are all necessary pieces of the puzzle. But the physical, mental and spiritual well-being of the advocate supporting the survivor must also be addressed. RAFT trains workers of sexual and domestic violence organizations to practice various scientifically-backed life management techniques, in order to better manage the pressures often associated with their line of work. A team of students will work on designing a logic model, evaluation plan, and conducting an evaluation of the program (using existing data, surveys, and qualitative methods ie. focus groups and interviews)

The BRYCE Project:
Addressing Youth and Adolescent Mental Health Issues

Faculty mentor: Dr. Monica Ruiz, Co-Director for Practice

Dr. Monica Ruiz and the GW MCH Program have had a long and fruitful relationship with Beacon House, an outstanding community-based organization that serves the needs of families, children and adolescents in the Edgewood neighborhood of Northeast Washington, D.C. The mission of Beacon House is to “provide a safe and nurturing community for children who come from economically disadvantaged families and help them improve their academics, discover their talents, and grow into healthy adults who achieve their greatest potential.”

The Building Resilient Youth through Connection and Empowerment (BRYCE) project is being conducted in partnership with our community partners at Beacon House to address opportunities that have been identified to improve the mental health and socio-emotional wellness among its youth population. “With this project, which is based on the excellent foundational work done by one of our MCH students during her Practicum, our MCH students will work in collaboration with the Beacon House team to develop a multi-tiered approach to improving organizational capacity to address youth mental health needs, including a staff training curriculum and programmatic activities for young people,” said Dr. Ruiz. “The various components of the BRYCE program will be pilot tested and evaluated in order to assess feasibility, cultural competence, effectiveness, and replicability. It is hoped that the program developed through this collaboration will be something that can not only be institutionalized and sustained at Beacon House, but also shared with other community organizations interested in addressing youth mental health issues and building youth resilience.”

South Asian American Women’s Health

Faculty Mentors: Dr. Amita Vyas & Dr. Nitasha Nagaraj

South Asian Americans are one of the fastest growing populations, yet there remains limited data on the health and well-being of this immigrant and minority population. Based on previous work it has been noted that South Asian American women are incredibly worried about developing diabetes, yet the vast majority engage in cultural nutrition practices that can increase one’s risk for developing diabetes and report very low levels of physical activity. Finally, recent literature points to gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) to be on the rise for South Asian American Women (specifically Asian Indian). Further, more than 20% of South Asian women in the U.S. reported experiences of childhood and adult violence. While both chronic disease  and violence have been explored in this population, the relationship amongst these issues have not. Therefore, this CE team will work on 2 primary activities:

1) Conduct quantitative and qualitative studies to examine the relationship between violence, stress and chronic disease among SAA women. This study will focus on adult women (18 and over) living in the U.S. that identify as South Asian and will include an online cross-sectional survey and a qualitative component (in-depth interviews).

2) Building off previous work on GDM among SAA, assess current best practices and design an intervention for South Asian American women, and conduct qualitative research to gather feedback on intervention components.

Practice Fellowship Opportunities

Faculty mentor: Dr. Nitasha Nagaraj

The GW Center of Excellence in Maternal and Child Health Practice Fellowship is a competitive opportunity to support a few MCH students complete an internship (and optionally, their practicum) with our community partners. Applications typically go out at the end of the fall semester and fellowships are awarded for the spring semester. Read more here.

Other Research Opportunities

Over the course of the academic year, faculty members may advertise the availability of  Graduate Research Assistant (GRA) positions. Students can apply and compete for opportunities to work with faculty members on one of their funded research studies. These positions are paid on an hourly basis and do not come with tuition assistance.