October 2020 Newsletter

Spotlight: Chie Kotake

Chie Kotake is a project manager at Tufts Interdisciplinary Evaluation Research (TIER) at Tufts University. Using her organizational skills, expertise in early childhood development and parenting, and her extensive experience in complex quantitative analyses of administrative and survey data, she strives to manage, design and implement analytic components of evaluation research projects that aim to help organizations and programs understand how they can better support the families and children they serve.

Chie currently leads the data analysis for two statewide home visiting program evaluation projects funded by Massachusetts Department of Public Health. One is a mixed methods evaluation of Early Intervention Parenting Partnerships (EIPP), a home visiting program that provides services to pregnant and postpartum women and infants with vulnerability to poor health and development. The second is a quasi-experimental evaluation of the Massachusetts Maternal, Infant, Early Childhood Home Visiting Program (MA MIECHV), a federally-funded program administered by Massachusetts Department of Public Health that enhances the home visiting services in 17 high-need Massachusetts communities. The aim of the two evaluation projects is to understand the early impacts of different MA home visiting programs, each with a unique service delivery structure, on maternal and infant health and development outcomes and linkages to Early Intervention services.

Chie considers being part of the Doris Duke Fellowship as a pivotal moment in her career. Chie says, “As I witnessed firsthand the importance of quality care and early intervention through my early teaching career and field experiences in child welfare, I saw a great need to promote effective collaboration among early childhood service systems. The Fellowship provided me with an opportunity to learn how I can effectively translate what we know from research into policy and practice to encourage such collaborations among these systems and ultimately promote resilience in children. The Fellowship stills remains a place where I continue to learn from and develop professionally through interactions and collaborations with fellows and mentors to improve the lives of children.”

Future of Fellowships Announcement

The Doris Duke Fellowships will be focusing on Research to Action Grants and supporting the new Child Well-Being Research Network—a network of the current fellows and other researchers committed to interdisciplinary, applied research to prevent maltreatment and promote child well-being. Here is a short video that gives a little more detail about the planned future activities:

Stay tuned for more information and updates!

Fellows Updates:

Sarah Prendergast started a new position at the Urban Institute in the Center on Labor, Human Services, and Population.

Kate Marçal has a new publication on understanding mechanisms driving family homelessness though a community-based system dynamics approach in the Journal of Social Service Review.

Wendy Ellis authored a newly article about the role of educators in healing community traumas that show up in the classroom.

Three Fellows: Gracelyn Cruden, Byron Powell, and Paul Lanier published an article in Prevention Science on developing a multi-criteria decision analysis tool to support the adoption of evidence-based child maltreatment prevention programs.

Kaela Byers was awarded a contract with TFI Family Services, Inc., along with co-investigators Jared Barton, PhD, and Becci Akin, PhD, for a year-long collaborative research project to identify and assess predictors of youth absence from foster care. Findings from this study will be leveraged for prevention purposes among youth in out-of-home placement in Kansas and Texas.

Brooks Keeshin held a free one-hour webinar for California ACES Academy on deciding the right next steps for trauma-exposed youth using the pediatric traumatic stress care process model.

Tova Walsh

Was featured in a story on paternal depression in Men’s Health Magazine
Received from the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families to complete a project on COVID-19 and Low-Income Noncustodial Fathers

Byron Powell has two new publications:

An article in Implementation Science Communications on collaborating with health economist to advance implementation science
An article in Implementation Science highlighting an example of how to use data-driven implementation strategies