Faculty Research Spotlights

Assistant Professor of Writing, Health Policy & Management and Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies,  Columbian College of Arts and Sciences
Research Title: project writehealing, policy and praxis (WHPP)

Research Description

The writehealing, policy and praxis project (WHPP) is a community engaged effort that employs community-informed digital/narratives to propose writing, policy and praxis-focused behavioral change solutions to community health challenges such as birthing justice and intergenerational traumas. Students will engage with SPACEs in Action to develop writing projects, across genres and for action-oriented efforts in the DC area. SPACEs in Action participants/community members will participate in a writehealing curriculum and digital storytelling workshop, focused on wellness, self-care and uncovering trauma through narrative. They will have the option to opt-in into an action-oriented policy advocacy training. The goal is to share accessible mindfulness and advocacy strategies, as a measure of self-determination.

Associate Professor of Clinical Law; Director of the Health Equity Policy & Advocacy Clinic
Research Title: Medical-Legal Partnership (MLP)

Research Description

The Medical-Legal Partnership (MLP) project is an interprofessional, community-based effort that brings professionals from the medical, legal, and public health fields together to identify and treat social and legal issues that result in poor health among patients. Low-income renter households in Washington, D.C. often experience significant and dangerous housing-related barriers to health. For example, 60% of evictions occur East of the river, the asthma rate in Wards 7 and 8 is 95-100%, 43% of the region's food insecure population is Black and another 26%, Hispanic. In light of the significant and dangerous housing-related barriers to health, this project aims to increase health equity by removing barriers to safe and decent housing. The project will:

• Provide legal assistance in an MLP: law students from the Jacob Burns Community Legal Clinics of GW Law School will be embedded as specialists in the healthcare setting in order to address the legal causes of poor health for low-income patients. For example, students will represent low-income tenants in housing conditions cases, leveraging the city’s housing laws, to resolve respiratory distress and other health harming legal needs.
• Support community-led solutions: interprofessional teams of students will partner with community organizers and tenant associations while exercising cultural humility and active listening skills to 1) train the community in legal rights and gaps, and 2) support the community in defining the problem and identifying solutions to address the political and legal determinants of poor health.
• Advocate for structural and systemic remediation: interprofessional teams of students will collaborate with the community and other professionals to engage in policy advocacy that addresses longstanding and root causes of health inequity, including the political and legal determinants of poor health, as identified by the community.
• This innovative project has been made possible by the generous support of two GW Law School alums and champions.

Senior Research Associate,  School of Medicine and Health Sciences
Research Title: Restoring mental health after COVID-19 through commUnity based Psychological services in New York City

Research Description

RECOUP-NY is a 5-year NIH funded study that is investigating the effectiveness of Problem Management Plus (PM+) as a mental health intervention in community-based organizations for marginalized populations hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. GWU has partnered with The New School and various community organizations in NYC to train trusted community members to deliver PM+ to their clients with the aim of mitigating depressive and other mental health symptoms, COVID-19 public health behaviors and to describe implementation parameters to inform policy recommendations for involvement of non-specialists in mental health services. RECOUP-NY uses a task-sharing approach to build capacity in community-based staff and increase the availability of culturally sensitive mental health support to communities that often struggle to access this care. Data collection and PM+ training have already begun in the first wave of community based organizations. This study is the first cluster randomized controlled trial (cRCT) of PM+ delivered in US community settings and has major implications for increasing the availability and delivery of mental health services by and to members of minority groups thus reducing the racial/ethnic gap in mental health services among marginalized populations.

Associate Professor of Law, George Washington University Law School
Research Title:  The Prosecutor’s Paradox: How Race-Neutral Prosecutions Drive Racial Disparities & How Race-Neutral Reforms Can Help

Research Description

Prosecutors in every large jurisdiction in the country face a paradoxical problem: even if they treat every case before them in a race-neutral manner, they will impose substantially harsher penalties on Black defendants than they will on White defendants who engage in the same illegal behavior. This state of affairs is the result of a poorly-understood combination of two pervasive phenomena: the over-policing of nonviolent offenses in Black communities and escalating sanctions for repeat offenses. This problem accounts for a substantial part of racial disparities in criminal penalties and yet, as of this writing, no one has described the structure of this problem or offered solutions. In this article, we do both.

Associate Professor of Philosophy/Associate Provost for Undergraduate Affairs & Special Programs, Columbian College of Arts and Sciences
Research Title: Moral Psychology and Antiracist Obligation

Research Description

This project uses the tools of analytical philosophy and cognitive science to model resistance to antiracism. The research question is: why is there so much resistance, even among those who sincerely assert that they reject “racism”? The paper suggests an explanation that appeals to a central domain of folk psychology – the common-sense morality (CSM) of individual obligation. According to CSM, there’s no individual obligation to actively promote social justice or the interests of strangers. Doing so may be morally admirable, but it’s optional, not obligatory. CSM casts the soft light of permissibility on all but the most blatant forms of racism. Evidence from cognitive science suggests that the tenets of CSM are deeply rooted in the psyches of most Americans.

Professor of Public Administration & International Affairs, Elliott School of International Affairs
Research Title: The Generations Dialogue Project

Research Description

The Generations Dialogue Project aims to increase the number of under-represented youth who pursue and succeed in American foreign policy careers by connecting young Americans with giants who blazed a trail in American foreign policy and international affairs. The project builds on the recently published book, The Young Black Leader’s Guide to a Successful Career in International Affairs: What the Giants Want You to Know (Aaron S. Williams, Taylor A. Jack, and Jennifer M. Brinkerhoff, Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 2022).

Our theory of change is both simple and ambitious.

• If we expose more young people to the possibility of these careers at an early age;
• If we show them evidence that people like them have succeeded in achieving meaningful and impactful careers, serving at all levels and across all organizations of American foreign policy; and
• If we provide inter-generational guidance to them for how to navigate the challenges they will face in primarily white (at least for now) institutions;
• Then we will achieve an American foreign policy infrastructure that reflects American society and brings every resource we have to crafting a democratic, American foreign policy that maximizes impact, relevance, and innovation.

Research Professor, Columbian College of Arts and Sciences
Research Title: Economics and Gender Egalitarianism

Research Description

Considers aspects of the economic and demographic context to help explain why the movement toward gender egalitarianism in the succeeded during the course of the 20th century in contrast to its many previous failures. The research emphasizes the prevalence of small nuclear families with its implications for the relationships between spouses, parents and children, and siblings. Persisting over several generations, the shift to small family size generated significant changes in the attitudes of adult men toward the women in their lives and hence to women in general.

Associate Professor, Educational Leadership, Graduate School of Education and Human Development
Research Title: Leading for Equity: How Educational Leaders Experience Professional Learning

Research Description

Schools in the United States show an increasing focus on the intentionality of equitable mindsets and practices. These efforts emanate often from a desire to reduce unequal representation and treatment of racial groups, socioeconomic groups, and students with disabilities, among others. While it is important for school districts to draft and implement written policies that all hold a lens of equity, it is in some ways more critical to determine how educators, in particular school leaders, will enact those written aspirations.

My research examines how principals experience professional learning that asks them to reflect on their own biases and beliefs, as well as to determine where there are systemic issues of inequity in their schools, and what to do to address those. Through an existing partnership and network with more than 7 years of collaboration for large scale conferences and smaller institutes, my research explored how principals who participated experienced and made meaning of their journey personally, their professional application of lessons learned, and their recommendations for future institutes and leadership preparation. The institute facilitated an ongoing effort to sustain intentionality in equitable practices and enhance professional growth opportunities across the region.

The research and professional learning is ongoing.

Assistant Professor & Center Director, Milken Institute School of Public Health
Research Title: The Center for Community Resilience EquityDashboard: A Platform for Accountability & Systems Change

Research Description

Acting as a GPS for economic and social policies, the Center for Community Resilience’s (CCR) Equity Dashboard model show place-based investments promote equity over time across key indices such as race, income, and education. Using system dynamics modeling, the dashboard forecasts and tracks social and economic return on investment by measuring expected gains across multiple sectors, including employment, criminal justice, housing, health, and education. Generated by models specifically built to each community’s unique context, these customizable simulations project how a combination of policy and systems change, coupled with public and private investments, can contribute to improved outcomes for children and families. By adjusting levers that represent policy change and investments (e.g., creation of affordable housing) users can generate a range of simulated outcomes for a given community (e.g., kindergarten readiness or public safety). Community leaders, investors, and policymakers are using these tailored simulations—which leverage big data from the federal, state, and local level and across sectors—to design policies and programs that fit the context of the community, prevent the widening of disparity, and give community members the supports and equitable access to infrastructure needed to thrive.

Professor of Sociology, Africana Studies, and Epidemiology, Columbian College of Arts and Sciences
Research Title: The Mental Health Consequences of Parental Incarceration

Research Description

Millions of children are indirectly affected by the carceral system, and children of incarcerated parents experience multiple harms. Prior research discusses the negative (but complex) mental health outcomes for young adults with an incarcerated parent. This study will explore how parental incarceration is related to depression levels among their offspring, how parental incarceration is related to other adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), and how parental incarceration intersects with layers of social disadvantage. In Part 1 of the grant, my team and I published work that used Waves 1-4 of Add Health and found ACEs were statistically higher the more the parents have been incarcerated, parental incarceration enhanced depression levels, and racialized group membership and gender high higher depression levels but there risks of depression was not enhanced by parental depression. Part 2 expands this work but including the most recent wave of data collection. Part 3 is working with my community partner to explore whether the relationships between parental incarceration, ACEs, and depression is present in the local DC context.

Associate Professor, Columbian College of Arts and Sciences
Research Title: Race, Immigration, and Confinement in Rural Meatpacking: Decentering Whiteness and Mapping Injustices

Research Description

This project pairs social science researchers from GWU with community and civic partners in the two states with the highest concentration of rural meatpacking workers: Minnesota and North Carolina. In these states, most workers in packing plants are Latina/o/x or African-American, and rates of unionization are kept artificially low through legal and corporate initiatives.

Inspired by the work of the immigrant labor advocacy group Contratados, Ken and León are establishing relationships with workers in these states who will provide reviews of their meatpacking employers. On a 5-star system, the workers will rate employers on aspects of their working conditions such as safety, sexual harassment, retaliation, payment of wages, and housing. These reviews help identify the institutional--rather than individual--sources of harm to employees in this sector and allow even non-unionized workers to hold their employers accountable. The project is meant to promote transparency and fairness based on the perspectives of workers who have first-hand knowledge of the conditions of work in this industry.

Research Scientist, Milken Institute School of Public Health
Research Title: Disparities in air pollution and associated health burdens in the United States: Who, Why, and What to Do?

Research Description

Dr. Kerr researches ambient air pollution, and projects he has led span topics ranging from understanding the emission sources of pollution to assessing the health impacts experienced by the populations pollution impacts, with a special emphasis on understanding associated ethnoracial and socioeconomic disparities. His research uses a wide variety of tools and methods, including remote sensing, atmospheric chemistry models and other numerical models, exposure assessment, and spatial statistical techniques.

Director, Energy Innovation Initiative,  School of Engineering and Applied Science
Research Title: Accessing Community Healthcare with Innovations in Electric Vehicles for Equity (ACHIEVE)

Research Description

The communities at the core of this project are in Wards 7 and 8 in Washington, DC where complex and interrelated drivers like poverty, inequality, poor housing, constricted access to food resources, constrained democratic practices, and the legacy of racist practices such as redlining lead to consequences of high energy burdens, poor health, and reduced transportation options. The project aims to explore the ways new energy, transportation, and healthcare technologies and processes can improve health outcomes. The objective of this project is to create and implement a community-engaged model for synergistically integrating community needs, values, and contacts within the design and implementation of emergent technologies, processes, and policies. The project uses community-based participatory research approaches to engage a variety of community navigators (nursing staff, public housing facilitators, community health workers, and elected public housing resident council members) in discussion-style forums. The forums serve as a mechanism to build relationships between participants and engage in co-learning about participants’ needs, perspectives, and resources. The project will yield relationships, concepts, and methods to support equitable energy and healthcare transitions in the District.

Professor of Marketing, Strategic Management and Public Policy, School of Business
Research Title: To Err Is Automated: Have Technological Advances in the Mortgage Market Increased Opportunities for Black Homeownership?

Research Description

The focus of this research, co-authored with colleagues at the Urban Institute's Housing Finance Policy Center, is the impact of discrimination and redlining on the racial wealth gap, and in particular Black homeownership opportunities. This paper examines the impact of past neighborhood redlining practices of the U.S. government's Home Owners Loan Corporation in the 1930s on present day home values estimated by an automated valuation model (AVMs). The purpose is to test the widely held belief that these algorithmic models can reduce the bias that may occur when the appraisal process is driven by human decision makers. We find evidence that these AVMs are more likely to produce valuation errors in predominantly Black neighborhoods. Implications for housing market participants and policy makers are discussed.

Clinical Professor of Neurosurgery,  School of Medicine and Health Sciences
Research Title: The Impact of Neocolonialism on Surgical Training Structures in Africa

Research Description

Since the first African country attained independence from colonial rule, surgical training has evolved through three models. The first is a colonial-local master student model, the second is a purely local training model, and the third is a collegiate inter-country model. The three run concurrently and there are varied perceptions of their equivalence in training and competence. We review the historical development of training and seek to further explore the neocolonial underpinnings of how they are perceived and how these various models of training impact positive development of surgical capacity in Africa as opposed to contributing to “brain-drain”. To date, there are no studies in the literature evaluating this systemic issue and we aim to uncover a potentially addressable source of health inequity in this region through virtual interviews, surveys, direct data collection, and in person field research.

Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Administration,  Graduate School of Education and Human Development
Research Title: Do Same-Race Teachers Affect the Likelihood of Suspension for Black and Latinx Students? Evidence From New York City

Research Description

Black and Latinx students are significantly more likely to be suspended from school than their White peers. Since suspension has negative short- and long-term consequences for students, including increased risk of school dropout, arrest, and incarceration, some have argued that disproportionalities in suspension and other forms of exclusionary discipline serve to accelerate the “cradle-to-prison pipeline” for Black and Latinx students.

This study explores whether being assigned teachers that share their ethnoracial backgrounds impacts the likelihood of suspension for elementary and middle school students. We use ten years of data on every public school student and teacher in grades 4-8 in New York City, following students over time and examining how their likelihood of suspension changes depending on the composition of their teachers.

We find that in years when they are assigned greater proportions of ethnoracially matched teachers, Black and Latinx students are significantly less likely to be suspended from school. The sizes of these effects are modest but suggest that diversifying the teacher workforce could be one approach to reducing the disproportionate use of suspension for Black and Latinx students and avoiding channeling these students into the juvenile and criminal justice systems.

Professor and Director of WGSS, Columbian College of Arts and Sciences
Research Title: MeToo in Retrospect: A Transnational Reflection

Research Description

My work offers a retrospective transnational reflection on #MeToo, situating it less as a US-driven movement and more as an intensification of an ongoing strain of digitally-driven activism against sexual violence in several countries. The framing of #MeToo as a singular global movement and a digitally-driven conflagration linked to the 2017 hashtag risks denying important antecedents in feminist organizing against sexual harassment and violence both within the United States and in multiple parts of the world. I argue for a robust reframing of the relationship between #MeToo in the United States and in other locations. I review five examples of digital mobilization around sexual violence and harassment that have taken place over the past decade in multiple parts of the globe. Based on these examples, I argue that MeToo hashtag did not inaugurate activism so much as provide an inflection point in ongoing activism. I review the range of racial, class, and caste identities of those who have used digitally-driven activism against sexual violence and harassment. Based on this range, I stress the need for elasticity in our critiques of #MeToo to account for its heterogeneous expression around the globe.

Professor of Anthropology,  Columbian College of Arts and Sciences
Research Title: Culture Keepers: African American Funeral Directors in the Era of COVID

Research Description

This oral history project is led by Dr. Kami Fletcher, Associate Professor of American & African American History at Albright College and Senior Research Consultant on the NSF-funded project, “Rituals in the Making,” a study of COVID-19 memory, misinformation, and mourning.

Voices of Funeral Service, Baltimore
“I had to take care of the community; I had to take care of the dead.”
– Mr. Joseph H. Brown, III, CEO of Joseph H. Brown, Jr. Funeral Home

“It’s just what we do.”
– Mrs. Nadean Paige, 16-year Funeral Service Professional, Founder of C.A.L.L.E.D.

African Americans in Baltimore have been engaged in the death trade by establishing livery stables, making coffins, and providing death care and proper last rites rituals since 1840. Historical records indicate how these women and men were dedicated to ensuring excellent and efficient services rooted in cultural traditions and practices. Caring for the dead meant caring for the community.  Locks, Hemsley, Brown, Elliott, Pye, Hooper are just some of Baltimore’s first Black families of funeral service. These families were the leaders and economic engines in their communities. The history of funeral service in Baltimore, right on up through COVID, is a continuous story of community uplift, civic service, and deep care and concern. In interviewing death care workers at the Joseph H. Brown, Jr. and Vaughn C. Greene Funeral Homes, I learned that death care is a ministry, which means you are required to support, guide, and aid those in need. Death care is selfless. 

Assistant Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, Elliott School of International Affairs
Research Title: Come Out of This World: Beyond Criminalization to Where Life is Precious

Research Description

Since 2000, there has been an exponential increase in the gun-related murder rate in low-income urban communities in Trinidad. Alongside this rise in intra-community murders, there has also been a rise in extrajudicial police violence. This is the result of a war on crime where the police are permitted to exercise total punishing force in marginalized urban landscapes marked as breeding grounds for criminality in the name of securing the nation-state. Drawing on 24 cumulative months of ethnographic, visual, and archival research in East Port of Spain, Trinidad my research project, seeks to do the following: 1) make visible the socio-political processes by which ideologies of “the violent criminal” are constructed; 2) interrogate the ways these racialized and gender ideologies about violent criminality legitimize state violence as a practice of management and discipline; and 3) explore alternative methods of addressing harm and conceiving of justice that do not reproduce violence. Overall, my work shows how coloniality, criminalization, and anti-Black criminalization endure even in nation-states founded on projects of Black sovereignty, like Trinidad.

Research Description

This project developed tactics to provide free, online, open access educational content about overcoming vaccine hesitancy for practicing nurses and undergraduate pre-licensure nurses. It also developed educational materials through various modes to address the concerns about vaccines to inform the general public, focusing on booster vaccines, as well as vaccinating thousands of people in underserved communities with limited access to care.

Our work contributed to addressing lack of information, fear of vaccine side effects, and mistrust of the healthcare system as key reasons for low booster vaccination rates. By contributing to the vaccination of people of all races and ethnicity and armed with the knowledge about overcoming vaccine hesitancy, our school of nursing and pharmacy partnership provided over 10,000 vaccines directly at the community level, increasing the vaccination rates of people by race and ethnicity. In addition, by providing information to people in both English and Spanish, access to services and vaccinations were more readily available.