Assessment of Health
Services Needs Pre- and Post-Disaster in Rural SC
Cancer Prevention and Control Program
Códice
Consortium for Latino Immigration Studies
Duke Endowment Wellness Initiative
Healthy Eating Reduces Obesity Effectively in Students (HEROES)
Mainstreaming
Nutrition Initiative
My Mother's Keeper:
Raising Breast and Cervical Cancer Awareness in the African American
Community
Partnership to Promote Physical Activity
and Healthy Eating in AME Churches
Self-Determination for Increasing Physical Activity
South Carolina American Legacy Empowerment Evaluation Project (SCALE)
South Carolina Food Stamp
Nutrition Education Demonstration
South Carolina Hispanic/Latino Health Coalition
South Carolina CPCRN
South Carolina Cancer Disparities Community Network
Women's Well-being Initiative
Assessment of Health Services Needs Pre- and Post-Disaster in Rural SC
Assessment of Health Services Needs Pre- and Post-Disaster in Rural SC is a National Institute of Health (NIH)-funded project led by Dr. Lucy Annang with Dr. Sacoby M. Wilson (University of Maryland – College Park) as Co-Principal Investigator. The goal of this project is to assess the impact of a man-made disaster (train derailment and subsequent chlorine spill) in Graniteville, SC by using qualitative and quantitative methods rooted in the community-based participatory research (CBPR) framework. We will use PhotoVoice methodology, semi-structured interviews, and review of hospital discharge data to assess the impact of the disaster on public health, quality of life, and health services in Graniteville. Our work has implications for illustrating how state and federal level disaster preparedness and management, public health, and environmental protection agencies can address the short and long-term public health consequences of disasters particularly in vulnerable medically-underserved communities.
Cancer Prevention and Control Program
Códice is a Mexican non-governmental organization devoted to encouraging, developing and refining communication skills that promote social change. With funding from the Bloomberg Global Initiative to Reduce Tobacco Use, Dr. James Thrasher and Dr. Deborah Billings have worked with Códice to build civil society coalitions and enhance their capacity for media advocacy activities that strengthen tobacco control policies in Mexico and other Latin American countries. This work was initiated in 2007 to promote federal tobacco control legislation and, after significant successes in this arena, has increasingly focused on strengthening smoke-free policies in Mexican states. Research resulting from this collaboration includes: content analyses of media coverage of tobacco; evaluation of paid media campaigns to promote smoke-free policy; and analyses of the barriers and facilitators of coalition building processes that aim to integrate feminist movement activists into the tobacco control activist infrastructure.
Consortium for Latino Immigration Studies
The Consortium for Latino Immigration Studies at USC promotes and coordinates multi-disciplinary research related to Latinos in South Carolina and the Southeast. Through its various activities the Consortium fulfills the University's mission to improve the quality of life and wellbeing of all state residents.
Duke Endowment Wellness
Initiative
Funded by the
Duke
Endowment, the goal of this project is to enhance the environments of 30
children's homes in North and South Carolina to promote physical activity
and improve nutrition among the children's homes' residents. The primary
strategies are identification and training of children's homes' wellness
teams, on-going consultation and support for wellness teams, and enhancing
organizational support for these organizational changes. The project also
includes extensive evaluation and measurement, including assessments of
individual physical activity and dietary behavior, observation of children's
homes' environments and organizational policies and practices, assessment of
organizational and environmental change through key informant interview, and
qualitative assessments of wellness team activities. Please contact
Dr. Ruth
Saunders, Principal Investigator on the project, for additional information.
Healthy Eating Reduces Obesity Effectively in Students (HEROES)
This emerging collaboration builds on the existing Zest Quest® model of school wellness programs to improve the school nutrition environment through partnerships with school districts and their contractors. Dr. Douglas Winesett, pediatrician at Greenville Children's Hospital Center for Digestive Health, has led the effort to build on Zest Quest's community investments in upstate South Carolina. Please contact Dr. Sonya Jones, the Co-Investigator at USC, for additional information.
Mainstreaming Nutrition Initiative
The Mainstreaming Nutrition Initiative is funded by the World Bank to catalyze the integration of priority nutrition actions into health sector policies and programs worldwide. It is a collaborative effort among the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (ICDDR,B), the Program in International Nutrition at Cornell University, and other partners. Dr. Edward Frongillo at USC is the Principal Investigator for the US‑based portion of the effort. In the first year of the project, we are reviewing the evidence for integrating nutrition interventions within various maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH) policies and programs. This will lead to the development of a framework, tools and strategies to facilitate the mainstreaming process in different countries and different policy and program contexts. Other project activities in Year 1 include a global review of nutrition interventions led by ICDDR,B and Aga Khan University, which will contribute to the forthcoming Lancet series on nutrition. A series of reviews on critical issues confronted by nutrition programs has also been commissioned. The reviews will address such questions as: what are the barriers to accessing health and nutrition services, current issues in growth monitoring and promotion, challenges to scaling up exclusive breast feeding promotion programs, and targeting of supplementary feeding. In addition, the mainstreaming nutrition team is working with the Department of Child and Adolescent Health of the World Health Organization on a related project, and this past summer assisted the Gates Foundation on the development of its forthcoming global nutrition strategy.
My Mother's Keeper: Raising Breast and Cervical Cancer Awareness in the African American Community
My Mother's Keeper: Raising Breast and Cervical Cancer Awareness in the African American Community is a project led by Drs. Lucy Annang and Mindi Spencer. The purpose of My Mother’s Keeper is to improve health by capitalizing on the strength of the mother-daughter relationship to raise awareness about breast and cervical cancer in the African American community. The project will use upstream intergenerational communication – defined as communication from a younger generation to an older generation – as an innovative way to transfer health promotion messages within the family. Adult women (ages 19 years and older) will share health information about breast and cervical cancer with their mothers in an effort to raise awareness about these topics. Through formative research methodology, daughters and mothers will help develop the intervention program which will later be implemented and evaluated for effectiveness.
Partnership to Promote Physical Activity and Healthy Eating in AME Churches
The major goals of this study are to partner with African Methodist Episcopal (AME) churches to promote moderate-intensity physical activity and healthy dietary practices using a community-based participatory research model. Dr. Ruth Saunders at USC is a member of the intervention planning group and facilitator of process evaluation planning. This research is being funded by the National Institutes of Health-National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
Self-Determination for Increasing Physical Activity
This project, being funded by National Institutes of Health-National Child Health and Human Development, is testing the effectiveness of a 6-month student-centered, after school program on physical activity in an under-served adolescent population. The intervention will be conducted in 12 middle schools in South Carolina; 12 additional middle schools, providing a typical after-school program, will serve as controls. Dr. Ruth Saunders at USC is a member of the intervention team and taking the lead on process evaluation planning for the intervention.
South Carolina Food Stamp Nutrition Education Demonstration
The aim of this project is to capitalize on existing data and programming resources in the State of South Carolina to provide information about the effectiveness of Food Stamp Nutrition Education in changing food stamp households' purchasing patterns for fruits and vegetables. The Budget and Control Board, Department of Social Services and Office of Public Health Nutrition are each contributing to the collaboration for this exciting study. Dr. Sonya Jones at USC is involved in the policy, implementation, and evaluation components of the project.
Please visit the following websites for additional information:
http://www.scdhec.gov/health/proservices/nutrition/
http://www.healthyhelpings.org/food_stamp.htm
South Carolina Hispanic/Latino Health Coalition
The South Carolina Cancer Prevention and Control Research Network (SC-CPCRN) is funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Cancer Institute. Drs. James Hebert and Daniela Friedman are the principal investigators. The SC-CPCRN is focused on building the infrastructure needed to conduct quality and evidence-based dissemination and implementation research with community partners and other stakeholders. The key partner of the SC-CPCRN is the South Carolina Primary Health Care Association. Dr. Daniela Friedman is leading the SC-CPCRN community-based mini-grants initiative and she participates actively in the national CPCRN Survivorship Workgroup and the Federally-Qualified Health Center Workgroup’s Data Subgroup. Dr. Heather Brandt is co-investigator working on implementation of evidence-based cancer prevention and control programs in partnership with communities as well as a documentary film showing the implementation of an innovative federally-qualified health center farmers’ market to improve food access. Learn more about the Cancer Prevention and Control Research Network program at http://www.cpcrn.org/default.asp.
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The South Carolina Cancer Disparities Network-II is funded by the National Cancer Institute as part of the Community Networks Program Centers of the Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities. Dr. James Hebert is the principal investigator. Dr. Daniela Friedman is the Project Leader of a pilot research project focused on informed decision making for prostate cancer screening among African-American communities. It is one of few studies to include both men and women in a prostate cancer education intervention. The study also examines culturally appropriate strategies for promoting cancer research participation among African-American communities in South Carolina. Project partners include Spartanburg Regional Gibbs Cancer Center and UsTOO Spartanburg. The Community Outreach Core, led by Dr. Heather Brandt, is a partnership with the State Baptist Young Woman’s Auxiliary (YWA) of the Woman’s Baptist Education and Missionary Convention of South Carolina, Insights Consulting, Inc., Clemson University, and the University of South Carolina. Together, they are working to promote cancer education and action in communities to help them achieve and maintain better health for all. Through these partnerships, communities improve how they motivate, assist and facilitate their member’s access to health resources, health information and health programs. Learn more about the South Carolina Cancer Disparities Community Network-II at http://sccdcn.sph.sc.edu.
Well-being is conceived of broadly to include mental and physical health, social, economic, and spiritual well-being. The primary aims of the Initiative are to enhance and facilitate:
- university-community partnerships
- collaborations across disciplines (sciences, social sciences, humanities)
- critical perspectives and approaches to the promotion of well-being that incorporate the full diversity of women's experiences across race, class, age, ethnicity and other dimensions of difference.
