Ep. 25: Social Media TestDrive for Youth with Amanda Purington, Cornell University

This episode Chris is joined by Emily Wang of Yale's Health Justice Lab, a collaborative, innovative interdisciplinary team focused on improving the health of individuals and communities who have been affected by mass incarceration. They discuss her work with incarcerated and recently-incarcerated patients; how the transition from incarceration to home is a particularly health-harming time; getting buy in from patients; evaluating programs; and the joy her work brings her. Dr. Emily Wang, MD, MAS, is an associate professor in the Yale School of Medicine and directs the Health Justice Lab. The Lab has run studies ranging from the epidemiology of incarceration and cardiovascular health to mitigating the community impact of gun violence using a participatory approach and assets based framework. Dr. Wang has cared for thousands of individuals with a history of incarceration and is co-founder of the Transitions Clinic Network (TCN), a growing consortium of 30 community health centers nationwide dedicated to caring for individuals recently released from correctional facilities by employing individuals with a history of incarceration as community health workers. Dr. Wang has an AB from Harvard University, an MD from Duke University and a MAS from the University of California, San Francisco.

15 Apr 202024min

This month's guest is the BCTR's own Martha Holden, director of the Residential Child Care Project (RCCP). She and Chris discuss her years of studying, and training care workers, how to keep children in care safe and healthy. They cover how power struggles escalate, working with state agencies and facilities, working with children with trauma and RCCP's internationally-used training programs. Martha J. Holden is a senior extension associate with the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research and the director of the Residential Child Care Project. As project director, she provides technical assistance to implement CARE, a program model for residential child caring agencies, Therapeutic Crisis Intervention System to residential and educational organizations, training programs in violence prevention, and a program in the Investigation of Institutional Maltreatment, throughout the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and Israel. Throughout her career, Ms. Holden has been studying ways to prevent the occurrence of institutional abuse of children through training, investigating and influencing organizational culture.

14 Mars 202026min

Do we recognize our influence on others? Vanessa Bohn's research suggests we underestimate it. This episode she and Chris discuss social influence and the psychology of compliance and consent. Issues around consent and compliance arise in our romantic relationships, work life and interactions with law enforcement, to name a few, and we're not always consciously aware when they're in play. Vanessa Bohns is an associate professor in the Department of Organizational Behavior at Cornell University, Her research focuses broadly on social influence and the psychology of compliance and consent. In particular, she examines the extent to which people recognize the influence they have over others in various interpersonal interactions, including when asking for help, encouraging one’s peers to engage in questionable behaviors and making romantic advances. Some of her additional research interests include prosocial behavior, perspective-taking and self-conscious emotions. Doing Translational Research is produced by Carrie Chalmers.

15 Feb 202021min

Ever since postal systems arose, people have engaged in distance learning. But how are digital technologies impacting learning contexts? This month's guest René Kizilcec discusses his work in this area, including massive online open courses (MOOCs): who uses them, what are they learning and do MOOCs improve access to knowledge? Chris and René also touch on whether digital learning perpetuates achievement gaps along race and gender lines or narrows them. René Kizilcec is an assistant professor in the School of Computing and Information Science at Cornell University, where he directs the Future of Learning Lab. His research is on the impact of digital technologies in formal and informal learning contexts and scalable interventions to broaden participation, raise academic performance and reduce achievement gaps. Kizilcec is known for his research in Learning Analytics on understanding and supporting learners in open-scale courses such as Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs. He also works on developing methods for the design and analysis of experiments. Doing Translational Research is recorded, edited and produced by Carrie Chalmers.

15 Jan 202021min

The foundation of his research interests stem from his background growing up in a large, working-class family in South Dakota, Dan Lichter explains. He and Chris discuss rural communities and how they develop and grow, poverty, issues of racial diversity and identity and the sentiment of disenfranchisement in rural communities. Lichter has always done work that is obviously important to the general population and acknowledges that rural America has been historically left out of consideration in academia. Daniel T. Lichter is the Ferris Family professor in the Department of Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell University and Professor of Sociology. Lichter has published widely on topics in population and public policy, including studies of concentrated poverty and inequality, intermarriage, cohabitation and marriage among disadvantaged women and immigrant incorporation.

15 Nov 201920min

Karen Levy has a background in sociology and law and studies the social, legal and ethical implications of technology. She and Chris get into her interest in the employment of surveillance in mundane contexts: the workplace, households and in intimate partner relationships. They discuss when individuals use surveillance on each other as well as when companies watch workers and consumers. They also explore the ways surveillance data can be used to counter injustice on behalf of workers or marginalized populations. Karen Levy is an assistant professor in the Department of Information Science at Cornell University, and associate member of the faculty of Cornell Law School. She researches how law and technology interact to regulate social life, with particular focus on social and organizational aspects of surveillance. Much of Dr. Levy's research analyzes the uses of monitoring for social control in various contexts, from long-haul trucking to intimate relationships. She is also interested in how data collection uniquely impacts, and is contested by, marginalized populations. Doing Translational Research is produced, recorded and edited by Carrie Chalmers, who actually enjoyed that Ulysses comment (Ithaca tie in!).

15 Okt 201922min

Our guest Bruce Lewenstein is a professor in the Departments of Communication and of Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University. A historian and social scientist, his main focus is the public understanding of science. He and Chris discuss studying scientific controversies and the essential importance of listening to and understanding what a community values in order to work with that community. Bruce Lewenstein is an authority on public communication of science and technology, how science and technology are reported to the public and how the public understands controversial scientific issues and "emerging technologies" such as biotechnology and nanotechnology. Trained as a historian of science, he often uses historical case studies in his research. He has also done extensive work evaluating "citizen science" outreach projects, in which citizens fully participate in the scientific process by gathering, entering and sometimes analyzing scientific data. In recent years, he has helped connect the "public communication" field with the "learning sciences" field, especially around issues of public engagement in science. He works frequently with scientists learning more about public communication of science and technology.

14 Sep 201920min

Lars Andersen of the Rockwool Foundation in Copenhagen, Denmark joins us this month to discuss his research on crime and the consequences of punishment. He and Chris discuss the importance of using quality data to answer questions or reexamine existing knowledge based on poor data; how criminal justice professionals (wardens, guards, parole officers, etc.) engage with his research; and how to design sentencing policies that improve life chances instead of ruining them. Lars Højsgaard Andersen is a senior researcher at the Rockwool Foundation Research Unit in Copenhagen, Denmark. His research interests include how criminal justice contact concentrates within and across generations, how conditions of confinement affect people and the role of family processes for these topics.

15 Aug 201920min