Engaged Research Grants
Opioid Use and Drug Injection in Tompkins County: Understanding and Supporting Communities within Communities
Connecting students and Black communities through community-based participatory research
Understanding and Supporting Communities within Communities (USCWC) is a multilayered community partnership, student-to-neighborhood cultural exchange experience and prospective health intervention focused on contextualizing the specter and nature of opioid use and drug injection among Black individuals in Tompkins County and the Southern Tier.
Partnering with REACH Project, a community healthcare clinic for marginalized populations, and Southside Community Center, a nonprofit forging Black empowerment best practices, USCWC aims to embed Cornell undergraduates in an equitable, affirming research undertaking, via robust community-based participatory research, by bringing them into closer proximity to their Black neighbors — namely those on the margins of Ithacan society who are at risk of drug-related morbidity and concurrent barriers to wellness, education and employment.
Type: Public purpose research grant
Topics: Access, Equity and Justice; Children, Youth, Seniors and Families; Health, Nutrition and Medicine; Law, Government and Policy
The Team
-
Jerel Ezell, Africana Studies and Research Center; Center for Health Equity
College of Arts and Sciences
-
Bruce Schackman, Population Health Sciences
Weill Cornell Medicine
-
Czarina Navos Behrends, Population Health Sciences
Weill Cornell Medicine
- Community partner: REACH Project, Inc.
- Community partner: Southside Community Center
Engaged Research Grants
Funding scholarship and scientific research collaborations with undergraduates and community partners.