October 2019 Newsletter

Spotlight: Lt. Tia Rogers, Cohort Two Fellow

Lieutenant (Lt.) Tia Rogers, Cohort Two fellow, is a Scientist Officer in the United States Public Health Service (USPHS) and an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer in the Special Surveys and Prevention Initiatives Branch of the Division of Violence Prevention (DVP) in the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Her research focuses on mixed methods approaches to understanding the mechanisms through which adverse life experiences impact trajectories for children, adolescents, and families, with a specific focus on promoting resilience and coping. She is interested in the ways scientific insight can be leveraged to inform surveillance, research, and programmatic activities to prevent child abuse and neglect, sexual violence, intimate partner violence, and other forms of adverse childhood experiences.

Her current work at CDC has included an array of experiences related to injury prevention and control including the 2019 Lung Injury Response, an evaluation of the Indiana Violent Death Reporting System, and the adaptation of the global Violence Against Children Surveys (VACS) to a domestic setting, which began in the fall of 2019. As a member of the Special Surveys and Prevention Initiatives Branch, Tia works with a dynamic science and implementation team at CDC where they partner with public and private organizations and over 22 countries to conduct nationally representative VACS. The goal of the global VACS is to measure the burden of violence against children and youth and its health consequences, including HIV. The VACS provide data to launch and evaluate violence prevention programs and child protection systems. In collaboration with senior level CDC staff, Tia is involved in designing the implementation and analytic approaches to aid in the adaptation of the global VACS to a U.S. context.

Of the Doris Dukes Fellowships, Tia says, “In the early stages of my public health career, the Fellowships provided me with several avenues to gain knowledge from a broad range of disciplines including medicine, epidemiology, sociology, psychology, criminology, and education. As a Cohort Two fellow, I developed foundational knowledge from diverse sectors through meaningful interactions and collaborations with a vast network of fellows, alumni, and mentors in research and policy. I continue to benefit from the skills I learned as a fellow and implement many of the best practices I continue to learn through Fellowship-sponsored activities. My experience as a Cohort Two fellow has also allowed me to effectively utilize research, practice, and policy as complementary tools towards the goal of stopping violence before it begins, thereby improving the lives of children."

A conversation with Carly Dierkhising, Cohort One fellow and recent recipient of National Institute of Justice Grant

From Left to Right: Three Doris Duke Fellows: Barbara Chaiyachati, Cohort Three fellow; Ericka M. Lewis, Cohort Five fellow; and Megan Feely, Cohort Three fellow connected at the R25 Summer Training Institute.

Carly Dierkhising, Cohort One fellow, recently received funding for her project, Evaluation of Services for Victims of Crime (2020-2021). Carly is an Assistant Professor at the School of Criminal Justice and Criminalistics at California State University, Los Angeles, She talks with Doris Duke Fellowships staff, Mickie Anderson, to discuss her project in more detail.

MA: Can you give us a brief overview of the work you will be doing with the grant?

CD: The purpose of this project is to conduct an evaluability assessment of the service delivery models for children and youth who have been commercially sexually exploited (CSE) in Los Angeles County. The service delivery models that will be evaluated include the work of the Los Angeles County Probation Department’s Child Trafficking Unit (CTU) and the DCFS of Los Angeles County Bureau of Specialized Response Services for Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children. These service delivery models, while lauded for being innovative and comprehensive, are not ready for an outcome evaluation conducted because there has been no specification of their design, program components, or intended outcomes. The goal of this project is to assess these models so they can be further defined and operationalized to prepare them for further evaluation and replication in other jurisdictions.

The approach includes a multidisciplinary team of researchers, practitioners, and advocates. The project will be managed by Cal State LA in collaboration with the University of Southern California and the National Center for Youth Law.

MA: What led you to propose this project?

CD: This project is an extension of the work I’ve been doing with these partners for the last 2-3 years. We initially worked together to submit a multi-method research report to the Board of Supervisors in LA County and following the conclusion of that work we received the Research to Action Grant that continued the collaboration between all these partners.

MA: Any hypotheses, expectations, or goals you want to share for this project?

CD: If I’ve learned anything from the numerous research projects I’ve been involved in is to expect the unexpected! Things rarely go as planned and projects evolve over time. But, I am very hopeful to have a final product from this grant that can move the field forward in how service systems work with youth who have experienced commercial sexual exploitation. My main goal is to have an implementation guide for other jurisdictions to implement and ultimately evaluate these service delivery models so that we can begin to capture best practices for Juvenile Justice and Child Welfare systems working with youth who have experienced commercial sexual exploitation.

MA: How has the Doris Duke Fellowships prepared you for this project?

CD: I’ve always been an applied researcher and I think the Fellowships has created a space for me to explore, cultivate, and refine how to best apply research to practice and to overcome the challenges associated with conducting research with practitioners and policymakers.

Dissemination Highlight: Maria Schweer-Collins, Cohort Eight fellow

Maria Schweer-Collins, Cohort Eight fellow, is working together with her Policy Mentor, Laurie Theodorou of the Oregon Health Authority Child and Behavioral Health Unit, to create efficient and sustainable mechanisms to disseminate quarterly updates on the implementation and outcomes of Oregon’s statewide Parent-Child Interaction Therapy efforts.

This idea is a continuation of Laurie’s longtime perspective that in order to continue to ask for and receive high-quality data from practitioners, the practitioners need to see their efforts visualized and receive regular, ongoing feedback. Thus, the goal of this work is to create an interactive published data dashboard wherein providers can look at their state-, county- and program-level statistics, for example, the number of clinicians trained and providing PCIT, the number of children and families served, and outcomes for families and children who have completed the PCIT program each quarter.

A secondary focus of this work is to equip practitioners themselves with the ability to easily disseminate the data from their programs with members of their respective communities. Finally, given the high rates of attrition known to policy and practice environments, a final goal of the data script is to equip new staff members at the Oregon Health Authority with the ability to replicate the same dissemination materials each quarter. This data script will be available to the public December 2019.

Fellows Updates:

Elizabeth Jarpe-Ratner, Cohort Five, recently published a blog post on LGBTQ+ Inclusive Sexual Education on ETR

Francie Julien-Chinn, Cohort Five, will be joining CSP Fellows, a program supported by the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation. This fellowship creates a team of health care providers from every discipline to learn and work together to build a #CultureofHealth.

Upcoming Dates:

Doris Duke Fellowships Mid-Year-Meeting at The University of Maryland, School of Social Work: April 22 - April 24, 2020: Baltimore, MD