Nancy George and the Wayne State University School of Nursing have been awarded a grant from the Health Resources & Services Administration for Advanced Nursing Education. Kim Jaffee of the School of Social Work will conduct the evaluation of the program. The project aims to enhance clinical education through innovative academic-practice partnerships, using a statewide collaboration between schools of nursing, federally qualified health centers, community health centers and an area health education center.

Spaulding for Children has been awarded a grant from the Department of Health and Human Services Administration on Children, Youth and Families-Children's Bureau for the development of a Foster/Adoptive Parent Preparation, Training and Development Initiative. The program will be called CORE (Critical Ongoing Resource Family Education). Angelique Day and Debra Patterson will be the evaluators of the program. The overall project will focus on a state-of-the-art training curriculum that can be applied across the nation for the development of resource parents who will be equipped to meet the needs of older youth who have moderate to serious emotional and behavior health challenges who require intensive and coordinated services and may be at risk for more restrictive congregative care. Drs. Day and Patterson will provide evaluation that will include program outcomes, implementation, disseminiation and cost evaluation. Wayne State University will take the lead in the literature review that will provide the foundation for the competencies and help guide the content of the curriculum; assist with the identification of evidence based models of care for youth with complex emotional, behavioral and mental health problems and other curricula that exist for this population; and be involved with the site infusion teams, leading efforts to ensure that data can be tracked to determine the effectiveness of the curriculum.

Debra Patterson has been awarded a grant from the National Institute of Justice for the "Rutgers Violence Against Women Consortium" project. The project aims to improve services for women who experience violence and to educate the greater community about best practices and policies, focusing on ways to identify, implement, and share research in areas where gaps in knowledge exist. Specifically, the project will look to develop a more nuanced understanding of the causes and consequences of sexual violence, intimate partner violence, teen dating violence, and stalking, with the ultimate goal of increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the criminal justice system’s response to these crimes.

Debra Patterson and Stella Resko have been awarded a grant from the Office of Violence Against Women for "A Mixed Methods Evaluation of a Culturally Specifically Latina Victim Service Program: The LAVIDA Partnership." The project seeks to understand: a) what distinguishes culturally specific services from mainstream services and the intended outcomes for enhancing Latina survivors’ wellbeing b) Latina survivors’ self-defined goals and needs, and c) the extent to which the culturally specific services meet those needs and help survivors achieve their goals. This project will be accomplished through a community-participatory exploratory sequential mixed methods evaluation of a culturally specific Latina victim service program.