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As Stephen Metraux, the new director of the Center for Community
Research and Service (CCRS), seeks to increase CCRSs overall research profile,
he has taken steps toward this goal with two projects that he is leading.
The first project, funded by the Laura & John Arnold
Foundation, identifies creative responses to addressing unsheltered
homelessness on the community level and identifying specific jurisdictions that
are engaging in creative ways to address this problem. Dr. Metraux, along with
research assistant and SPPA graduate student Cara Clase, have started this
project with an in-depth survey of promising practices in areas such as
policing, temporary housing and ways to engage this population. The second
phase of the project will identify eight sites that are creatively engaged in
responding to unsheltered homelessness. After visiting these sites, the project
will produce a report of findings to guide the foundation with their
philanthropy related to unsheltered homelessness and provide recommendations
for how jurisdictions can be part of the solution.
The second project is to evaluate a program, called Healthy
Beginnings at Home, that provides housing, case management, and health care
services to homeless, pregnant women in Columbus, Ohio. The ultimate goal of
the program is to reduce levels of infant mortality in Columbus through
providing a stable living situation and prenatal care during an intervention
that spans a yearlong period covering the time directly before and after the
birth. CCRS will be responsible for conducting an evaluation of the housing
outcomes related to this initiative. Graduate research assistant Emily Moore is
engaged in work with Dr. Metraux on this project.
In describing these projects, Dr. Metraux cites them as part
of his goal for increasing the research activity coming out of CCRS, as well as
expanding the geographical scope of CCRSs research. We are very active in
Delaware, he said, and I want to continue with this focus. But we also want
take our skills and experience beyond Delaware. As further examples of ways by
which Metraux wants to expand CCRSs research portfolio, he points to his
desire to develop more collaborations around the Medicaid data made available
to the CCRS from the State of Delaware, and CCRSs active participation in community
partnerships through Healthy Communities Delaware and with the Veterans
Administration.
For more information on the Laura & John Arnold
Foundation or Healthy Beginnings, see the links below.
https://www.arnoldfoundation.org/
https://celebrateone.info/news/healthy-beginnings-home-housing-stabilization-program-pregnant-women/
