The Institute of Human Development and Social Change (IHDSC) Faculty and Research Affiliate community leverages interdisciplinary expertise and partnerships in education, health and healthcare, social and human development, economics, and more to create new knowledge and influence meaningful social change. We invite you to join us in celebrating the recent awards received by our affiliate community.
Research Scholar, Dr. Ajay Chaudry, has received funding as a subrecipient to the Jain Family Institute to partner with Sidhya Balakrishnan on the LA County Transitional Age Youth Guaranteed Income Program, a project funded by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services. The project involves a mixed methods study of low-income young adult residents in Los Angeles County. Dr. Chaudry will serve as the lead on all qualitative aspects of the project.
Assistant Professor of Special Education, Dr. Rachel Fish, received funding from the Spencer Foundation’s Research Communication grant to widely disseminate findings from her Spencer-funded study. Her findings show how racialized and gendered processes in schools shape educators’ perceptions of students’ strengths and difficulties, as well as the decisions and behaviors of teachers and parents. This results in racialized and gendered deployment of disability and gifted labels.
Dr. Pamela A. Morris-Perez, of NYU Steinhardt’s ARCADIA for Suicide Prevention and Professor of Applied Psychology has received two awards aimed at expanding the work of the ARCADIA research center. In partnership with Directing Change, Dr. Morris-Perez has been awarded a research grant by the William T. Grant Foundation to examine the efficacy of a novel school-based mental health/suicide prevention program at Directing Change. In addition, Morris-Perez in collaboration with Dean Michael A. Lindsey of NYU’s Silver School of Social Work, and Dr. Cheryl A. King of the University of Michigan’s Youth Depression and Suicide Prevention Program have been awarded an R01 research grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to implement and study the effectiveness of a system of care for Black youth that combines suicide risk screening with an intervention to help connect at-risk youth to quality mental health services.
Dr. Morris-Perez also continues to expand her research in early childhood and child development and has recently received funding from NIH’s Research Supplement for revisions for research on the study of the 2019 novel Coronavirus and the behavioral and social sciences. In collaboration with the NYU School of Medicine and the University of Pittsburgh, the project draws upon Morris-Perez’s Smart Beginnings model to promote positive parenting practices and further investigates whether changes in parenting behaviors during the first four years of a child’s life contribute to children’s early school-age functioning among a low-income, racially/ethnically diverse sample, and whether these associations are moderated by Smart Beginnings intervention status and, separately, maternal race/ethnicity.
Incoming doctoral student Rasheed Perry has been selected to join the Vital Strategies Healthy Food Policy Fellowship. The fellowship includes mentorship by Dr. Angela Trude, Assistant Professor of Nutrition and Food Studies and funding towards his doctoral studies.
In addition, we are thrilled to announce that IHDSC has received funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) to launch a collaborative working group to critically review scholarship on economic inclusion and family health and wellbeing and identify strategies to promote structural change to economic systems. The project will be facilitated by Drs. Erin Godfrey, Director of IHDSC and Associate Professor in NYU’s Applied Psychology, and Ajay Chaudry, Research Scholar at IHDSC and NYU Wagner.
At IHDSC, we are delighted to provide continuous support to the talented and impactful research teams that share a commitment to unraveling inequality and expanding opportunity.
