We’re back! The Evidence-to-Impact Podcast is back with a new episode where we discuss The Adolescent Health Network (AHN) from Penn State PRO Wellness. This episode features a conversation with Dr. Deepa Sekhar, executive director of Penn State PRO Wellness, Victoria Smith, career coordinator at Hershey High School in the Derry Township School District, and two amazing 12th-grade students and past program participants, Sarah Anderson, and Mena Morsy.

The AHN is a program that connects health researchers with teens to get their feedback on research ideas, helps researchers design studies that are more relevant to adolescents, and gives students valuable experiential knowledge of health careers and research in general. This program is a great way to ensure your research is relevant to teens and their health needs. In addition to providing feedback on research ideas, teens can also help with study design, recruitment, and dissemination strategies.

We're closing out this semester's season with a conversation about prevention and partnerships. We focus on a discussion between a long-standing collaborative relationship between Penn State and the Pennsylvania Commonwealth government, which targets interventions and prevention work targeted towards youth and families. Our episode covers a wide span of topics, including why prevention and implementation work are difficult, but critical; the changes that happen when there's a political transition, and much more.

We spoke to Janet Welsh, PhD, Research Professor at the Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Center, and the Principal Investigator of the Evidence-based Prevention Intervention and Support program (EPIS) and SPEP™ (Standardized Program Evaluation Protocol) at Penn State, and Geoff Kolchin, Deputy Director of Unit of Violence Prevention Initiatives in the Office of Justice Programs at the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency (PCCD), about their decades long collaboration between EPIS and PCCD.

Resources and Additional Information

• Wrong Pocket Problem
• PAYS Reports

The transcript is available here.

For this month’s episode, we did something a little different. We spoke to two researchers with two different approaches to tackling the same problem: knowledge mobilization. In essence, the concept of knowledge mobilization focuses on making knowledge, resources or practices that exist in one space and making them accessible to specific audiences. We talked about the work behind SOSNetLab (Social Opportunity Space Networking Lab) and the Research-to-Policy Collaboration, barriers to this type of research and implementation, and what the future has in store for addressing this problem.

We spoke to Taylor Scott, PhD., Co-Director of the Research-to-Policy Collaboration and Assistant Research Professor at the Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Center at Penn State, and Alan J. Daly, PhD., SOSNetLab Chief Executive Dreamer, and Professor, University of California, San Diego as well as SOSNetLab’s full team, which includes: Mimi Lockton, Ed.D., SOSNETLAB Chief Project Catalyzer, and Doctoral Candidate at the University of California San Diego; Anita Caduff, SOSNETLAB Chief Swiss Army Knife, and Ph.D. Candidate at the University of California San Diego, and Martin Rehm, Ph.D., SOSNETLAB Chief Data Wrangler, and Post-Doctoral Scholar at the University of Regensburg in Germany.

Resources

• SOSNetLab’s Website
• Research-to-Policy Collaboration’s Website
• Taylor mentions the work of Jennie Noll, Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Penn State, Director of the Center for Safe and Healthy Children, and a previous guest on this podcast; and Francesca Lopez, the Waterbury Chair in Equity Pedagogy and Professor of Education at Penn State.
• Additionally, Taylor discusses working with the Kauffman Foundation and the William T. Grant Foundation to expand their work on entrepreneurial research.
• SOSNet’s work is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The transcript for the episode is available here.

This month's episode discusses mental health screenings for adolescents in the K-12 school system. We spoke to Deepa Sekhar, MD, Associate Professor, Department of Pediatrics at the College of Medicine, and Executive Director, Penn State PRO Wellness; Perri Rosen, PhD, NCSP, Consulting Psychologist, Office of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, Pennsylvania Dept. of Human Services, and Steve Sharp, School Counselor in the Hempfield School District, and K-12 School Counseling Coordinator for the Hempfield School District about why having mental health screenings (or mood screenings) in K-12 schools makes a difference when helping children who might be struggling and getting them the resources that they need to succeed.

Episode Resources and References

• The SHIELD study is mentioned several times throughout the episode. SHIELD stands for Screening in High Schools to Identify, Evaluate and Lower Depression.
• The Student Assistance Program (SAP) is a systematic team process used to mobilize school resources to remove barriers to learning. SAP is designed to assist in identifying issues including alcohol, tobacco, other drugs, and mental health issues which pose a barrier to a student’s success.
• Steve mentions receiving a school safety grant through Pennsylvania Commission and Crime and Delinquency (PCCD). He also mentions getting an ESSER grant through the Department of Education.
• Deepa discusses the SHIELD study receiving funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration and the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute.
• Steve mentions using MTSS teams, which stands for multi-tiered systems of supports.
• Lastly, Steven talks about the CAMS Model (Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality), which is a therapeutic framework for suicide-specific assessment and treatment of a patient’s suicidal risk.

The end of the spring semester marks the release of another episode! This month, we tackled the tough topic of mental health among college students. We talked about how COVID-19 has impacted college students seeking mental health services, the challenges for counselors and administrators working in university mental health centers, policy solutions to the crisis, and other things that have happened as a result of the pandemic like changes in technology.

We spoke to Maithreyi Gopalan, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Education and Public Policy and Social Science Research Institute co-funded faculty member at Penn State, and Brett Scofield, Ph.D., Associate Director of Counseling and Psychological Services at Penn State and Executive Director of Center for Collegiate Mental Health (CCMH) about mental health, college students, what universities are doing (and should be doing), and a little bit of everything in between.

Episode Resources and References

• There's been a series of articles in the New York Times about adolescent mental health that are worth perusing: Teens In Distress Are Swamping Pediatricians, ‘It’s Life or Death’: The Mental Health Crisis Among U.S. Teens, Hundreds of Suicidal Teens Sleep in Emergency Rooms. Every Night., and Surgeon General Warns of Youth Mental Health Crisis.
• Maithreyi mentions a study that she did with her colleagues, Stephanie Lanza, Ph.D. and Ashley-Linden Carmichael, Ph.D., from the Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Center, about overall college experiences, the student community, and their sense of belonging and impact that may have on their well being, health, and academic performance.
• Brett discusses the Clinical Load Index (CLI), a metric used to measure the average annual caseload of a clinician at a mental health center.
• Maithreyi mentions the dozens of calls for grant applications opened up by the National Institute of Mental Health about understanding the effect of the pandemic on mental health.
• Brett discusses two researchers involved with projects at CCMH: Louis Castonguay, Ph.D. and Jeffrey Hayes, Ph.D.

The transcript for the episode is available here.

This month's episode tackles all things related to the U.S. Census. We discussed the decennial Census, the data products created and released from the U.S. Census Bureau, the current demographic trends and challenges, and measuring hard-to-reach populations.

We spoke to Raeven Chandler, Ph.D., Director of the Pennsylvania Population Network (PPN) at the Population Research Institute (PRI), and Assistant Research Professor of Rural Sociology at Penn State, and Eric Jensen, Ph.D., Senior Technical Expert for Demographic Analysis in the Population Division at the U.S. Census Bureau, about their work as demographers, both in academic and government settings, and some issues around collecting and analyzing data, especially as it pertains to the 2020 Census.

Episode Resources and Notes

• Eric mentions the American Community Survey (ACS) and the Current Population Survey as some examples of the many data products that the U.S. Census Bureau produces for the public.
• Eric discusses how Penn State has a Federal Statistical Research Data Center (RDC), a place where qualified researchers can access restricted microdata from a variety of statistical agencies.
• Raeven and Eric talk about some issues around collecting data in college towns across the United States. Most recently, some towns have said that they want to challenge the results of the 2020 Census.
• Raeven discusses the concerns surrounding questions about Latino and Hispanic heritage questions on the 2020 Census. For more information about that topic, this is a blog post from the U.S. Census about the issue.
• Eric mentions the U.S. Census Bureau working with two Penn State demographers, John Iceland, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Demography, and Jenny Van Hook, Ph.D., Roy C. Buck Professor of Sociology and Demography at Penn State. He also mentions Sue Capella at the Pennsylvania State Data Center, which is part of Penn State Harrisburg.

The transcript for this episode can be found here.