Center for Advancing Research and Solutions for Society

Addressing Trauma in the Democratic Republic Congo

rholden — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 16:21:16 +0000

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has experienced multiple devastating wars and conflicts during its post-colonial era, with an estimated 5 million conflicted-related deaths in the past decade. Eastern DRC is now classified as the global region suffering the most sustained burden of internecine warfare, with extraordinary high rates of sexual violence towards women.

CARSS research helping reshape Detroit

amy.whitesall@gmail.com — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 17:11:17 +0000

University of Michigan urban planning professor Margaret Dewar added insight to an Oct. 23 Reuters article on the work community organizations are doing to help revitalize parts of Detroit. Dewar has worked with community groups in Detroit to fight blight in neighborhoods hit hard by foreclosures. She also leads a CARSS sponsored project to evaluate those efforts, one of five current CARSS projects based in Detroit. The others take on issues that include health, urban planning, education, workforce development and poverty.

Plan for a Healthy Detroit: Uses health impact assessments to inform city planning.
Detroit Youth Enterprise: Steers homeless teens toward safer paths to self sufficiency.
Driving Detroit Forward with Data: Helps decision-makers use the resources of Data Driven Detroit.
Community College Success: Helps community college students stay in school and connect with employers in high demand fields.

Saving Detroit neighborhoods from blight

amy.whitesall@gmail.com — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 19:58:26 +0000

Mortgage foreclosures have hit Detroit neighborhoods especially hard, leaving even middle-class neighborhoods with hundreds of vacant houses. Neglected, those vacancies drag down property values and erode residents’ confidence in a neighborhood’s future, fostering more neglect and blight.

But in some neighborhoods, community-based organizations are fighting back - taking advantage of government and philanthropic programs designed to help head off blight and strengthen housing demand. A CARSS-supported effort led by Michigan urban planning professor Margaret Dewar aims to figure out what’s working, where, and why.

Ford Foundation supports Detroit Youth project

amy.whitesall@gmail.com — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 20:03:21 +0000

Detroit Youth Passages (DYP), led by CARSS director Rachel C. Snow and colleague Mark Padilla of the University of Michigan School of Public Health, hosted the Ford Foundation's Youth Sexuality, Health and Rights Initiative Grantee Convening June 12th-14th in the city of Detroit. DYP is a Ford Foundation funded project focused on how the economic, political, social and built environment contribute to poor sexual health outcomes among Detroit youth, including participation in sex work, and both stigmatizing and coercive relationships. This Convening allowed representatives from Ford-Foundation’s six Youth Sexuality projects across the USA to share new research findings, graduate student projects, youth perspectives, and community partnerships. CARSS is sponsoring a Detroit youth micro-enterprise project, which builds upon work funded by the Ford Foundation.

CARSS researcher named 2013 Henry Russel lecturer

amy.whitesall@gmail.com — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 21:58:11 +0000

James S. House, a world-renowned scholar who has been a leader in recognizing and demonstrating that health and illness are influenced by psychosocial processes, has been selected as the Henry Russel Lecturer for 2013. The Board of Regents approved his selection Thursday, and named Allison Steiner and Angela Violi as recipients of the Henry Russel Award. House is a co-leader for the CARSS-supported Health Dynamics and Disparities project.

Source: The University Record

CARSS in Detroit

amy.whitesall@gmail.com — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 15:23:42 +0000

New projects explore solutions to health, education and urban planning challenges

When the automobile industry collapsed and the home foreclosure crisis ballooned, no place felt the crush more acutely than Detroit. The city’s problems have many connections to the plight of the urban poor. CARSS is committed to finding solutions in Detroit, funding four new, Michigan-led projects there beginning this summer.

Group explores U.S. health trends

amy.whitesall@gmail.com — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 18:45:59 +0000

The U.S. spends more on health care than comparable modern societies – yet has worse health outcomes. The Life Course Health Dynamics and Disparities project explores how that happens - and why. The working group met at U-M May 31 to identify important issues and new research questions and plan the development of a proposal to be submitted to the National Council on Aging in the fall of 2012. Members also updated the group on their research efforts and findings.

Experts gather at U-M for conference on sex, gender & drugs

amy.whitesall@gmail.com — Thu, 24 May 2012 13:02:08 +0000

More than 50 researchers and scholars from across the country gathered at U-M this week for a conference about sex and gender in relation to the use of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs. The conference, "Sex/Gender and the Use of Psychoactive Substances," took place Tuesday and Wednesday at the School of Social Work. It was attended by experts from various fields including history, neurobiology, neuroscience, pharmacology, psychiatry, psychology, public health, social work, substance abuse and women's studies.

New project aimed at stopping trauma’s cycles in families

amy.whitesall@gmail.com — Thu, 03 May 2012 14:42:06 +0000

Pregnancy is an important transitional time, when a woman harkens back to how she was mothered and begins to form a maternal identity shaped by her childhood experience. But just as loving and connected parenting provides a template for becoming a loving and connected parent, abuse can set the stage for generation after generation of relationship and parenting difficulties. CARSS is pleased to announce start-up support for a new project, Pregnancy & Traumatic Stress, which commits an interdisciplinary and multi-national team to finding interventions that will help new mothers and mothers-to-be break the cycles of trauma. The project, led by University of Michigan nursing associate professor Julia Seng, will include researchers in Australia and the United Kingdom.

“Science of compassion” conference to feature CARSS researcher

amy.whitesall@gmail.com — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:32:34 +0000

University of Michigan adjunct assistant professor Stephanie Brown, co-author of the recently published book Moving Beyond Self-Interest: Perspectives from Evolutionary Biology, Neuroscience, and the Social Sciences (Oxford University Press, 2012), will speak this summer at a groundbreaking international conference that looks at the science behind human compassion. Along with Brown, whose work in this area began as a CARSS project, several others who authored chapters in the book (Sue Carter, Dacher Keltner, Stephen Porges) are also slated to speak at The Science of Compassion: Origins, Measures and Interventions July 19-22 in Telluride, Colo.