Generate evidence. Inform Policy. Build Capacity. Improve Practice.
Our research focuses on interdisciplinary, global mental health issues and aims to generate evidence to inform policy, and build institutional capacity, social and cultural competence to address mental health disparities in adolescent and early childhood development (ECD).
"The future we seek begins in what we build now. Every act that centers care, every structure we reimagine, becomes evidence that another way has always been within reach."
Ubuntu Research & Evaluation
PROPS
PROPS is a multisystem (family-school-community) exploratory research project that aims to generate evidence to address the educational and mental health needs of immigrant and refugee students in high school. The project seeks to bridge gaps at the intersection of acculturation, school climate, mental health, and academic self-efficacy.
Risk, Resilience & Protective Factors in Newcomer Mother/Child Dyads
The comparative study of risk, resilience, and protective factors shaping the mental health and well-being of newcomer mothers and their children in early childhood. The study adapts the integrative model of how risk is transmitted to children of affected mothers to investigate whether the heritability of depression, exposure to negative maternal cognition and behavior, and post-migration acculturative stressful contexts interact to predispose children to poorer outcomes. The long-term goal is to generate evidence to inform policies and programs that improve refugee families' access to adequate care and advance early childhood development.
Flourishing and School Engagement
More than ever, children are pressured to excel in all aspects of their lives, including at home, school, and within their neighborhoods. Multi-system, multi-level factors intersect, and when not intentionally monitored, can connote cumulative disadvantage for the child. The US child and adolescent studies examine the associations among individual, household, and neighborhood factors and how they interact with children’s flourishing, mental health, and school engagement.