USF College of Behavioral & Community Sciences

June 7 - 13, 2020
COVID-19 Update

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More CBCS Faculty Involved in Round 2 of the USF COVID-19 Rapid Response Grants Program
The University of South Florida's COVID-19 Rapid Response Grants program is investing in 14 faculty research projects that would advance new medical interventions to detect and stop infections, develop innovations in personal protective equipment, and address fear and confusion in communities particularly vulnerable to the virus.
The grants come under the auspices of the USF Pandemic Response Research Network™ - a transdisciplinary initiative organized by university leadership and faculty researchers to quickly respond to current and future pandemics. The network draws on the university's broad range of expertise on a range of health, environmental, social issues, coupled with USF's capabilities in technology transfer, commercialization and corporate partnerships.
Full news article is available here.
Exploring Racial Disparities in the Treatment, Perceptions, and Tracking of COVID-19 Through Automated Stigma Detection and Sentiment Analysis of Social Media Data
PI: Tempestt Neal, Engineering
Co-PI: Kristin Kosyluk, MHLP
Co-PI: Sylvia Thomas, Engineering
This project is an interdisciplinary collaboration between the USF's departments of Computer Science and Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and Mental Health Law & Policy, where faculty members have expertise in text analytics, writer demographics, topical profiling, and thematic coding. The researchers will extract and study discussions on COVID-19 in the African-American community with the goal of understanding how personal experiences and stigma shape and impact understanding and perceptions of the disease. Social media trend analysis has been cited as an effective methodology for flagging, tracking, alerting and educating communities regarding the spread of a disease. The researchers are designing a machine learning tool capable of analyzing the estimated 1.64 billion tweets posted daily by African American Twitter users.
Research Roundup

Trina Spencer (CFS)
Academic Language Enhancement Community Partnership
Sponsor: Children's Home Society of Florida
7/1/2019-6/30/2020
Amount: $57,224.00

The purpose of this project is to establish a community-university partnership around the promotion of academic language. This partnership will be with Children's Home Society and Dr. Trina Spencer from the Rightpath Research and Innovation Center, Department of Child and Family Studies, College of Behavioral and Community Sciences. Through her research, Dr. Spencer has developed several interventions to teach primary grade students' academic language which includes narrative and informational text structures, vocabulary, inferencing, listening comprehension, reading comprehension, and narrative and informational writing. In this partnership, Dr. Spencer will guide the installation of academic language instruction at Mort Elementary and oral language interventions in an extended learning program held after school for at-risk students.

Christina Dillahunt-Aspillaga (CFS)
Enhancing Veteran Community Reintegration Research (ENCORE)
Sponsor: James A Haley Veterans' Hospital & Clinics
2/13/2020- 9/30/2020
Amount: $9,600

The goal of Enhancing Veteran Community Reintegration Research (ENCORE) is to improve VA policies, programs and services that support Veteran community reintegration (CR). Two strategic objectives will guide ENCORE activities: (1) mobilize Veteran CR research and (2) promote innovation, relevance and acceleration of Veteran CR research and knowledge translation. Successful achievement of ENCORE's goal will be measured by meeting project milestones and benchmarks including deliverables developed by the multi-stakeholder partnership (MSP), ENCORE informed research proposal submissions, and knowledge translation (KT) of research and MSP consensus into VA policies and programs.

Christopher Simmons (SW)
Comprehensive Community Collaboration Demonstration Model to Strengthen and Preserve High Risk Families (CCCDM)
Sponsor: The Stephen Group, LLC
1/27/2020-9/30/2024
Amount: $185,000

CCCDM is a collaboration project funded by the Administration of Children, Youth and Families (ACYF). The purpose of this project is to reduce entrance into foster care by developing and strengthening collaborations to identify and engage high risk families and children who have yet to enter the Child Welfare system or are currently involved with the Child Welfare system with the child remaining in the home residing in Lee County, Mississippi. The current study will evaluate the effectiveness of the CCCDM project in reducing entry into foster care.

Michelle Arnold (CSD)
Development and Assessment of a Spanish-Language Toolkit for Hearing Loss Self- Management
Sponsor: National Institutes of Health
4/1/2020-3/31/2023
Amount: $450,000

There is a lack of hearing loss education materials for Spanish-speakers in the US. We believe that by developing and testing patient education materials that are culturally and language appropriate, we will be helping to increase hearing loss understanding for Spanish-speakers who are not fluent in English. Upon completion of this study, we aim to demonstrate that participants will have better understanding of their hearing loss difficulties, and will be better able to identify options for self-management following delivery of culturally and linguistically appropriate patient education materials.

CBCS In the News

Discussing Police and City Curfews
KFI AM-Los Angeles
named were William Ruefle he teaches criminology University of South florida who really look into that there are some...

Studies struggle to pin down racism's role in police relations with blacks
The Washington Times
"It seems pretty clear that the consensus is it was excessive force. What is never going to be clear is whether it was bias," said Lorie Fridell, a criminology professor at the University of South Florida, and founder of the Fair and Impartial Policing...

Biases and Police Training
BBC World Service Radio
Lorie Fridell is a Professor of criminology at the University of South Florida she is also very candid I certainly have...

New Publications
  1. Dobbs, D., Peterson, L., & Hyer, K. (2020). The Unique Challenges Faced by Assisted Living Communities to Meet Federal Guidelines for COVID-19. Journal of Aging & Social Policy, 1-9. doi: 10.1080/08959420.2020.1770037
  2. Cecil, D. K. (2020). Fear, Justice, and Modern True Crime. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
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