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Project Impact Receives New NIH Grant for Continued Research

Friday, February 24, 2023

Prof. Astraea Augsberger, faculty affiliate at the Center for Innovation in Social Work & Health (CISWH) and BUSSW assistant professor, received a new grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to expand Project Impact, a preventative service program for parents with intellectual disabilities. Working in partnership with Montclair State University (Wendy Zeitlin) and Community Partners at the Westchester Institution for Human Development (Trupti Rao and Danielle Weisberg), Prof. Augsberger will use the funding to build upon the  pilot study.

Initially, the  study found that 88% of all families participating in Project IMPACT and 98% of families completing the program remained intact one year after ending the program (i.e., their children were not placed in foster care). Those findings, however, were not enough to show that Project IMPACT was actually responsible for those high rates of success. 

The proposed research funded by the new NIH grant will expand on the study by examining how effective Project IMPACT is at reducing foster care placement, an indicator of serious child maltreatment, for this high-risk population.  While this is a public health priority because maltreated children are at high-risk for long-term negative health outcomes, there is a lack of research that focuses on targeted interventions for families of parents with intellectual disabilities. 

“Given my expertise in community-engaged health equity research,  the findings from these analyses will be shared with key stakeholders in a series of listening sessions that are designed to  present and contextualize the key findings, as well as gather feedback for additional rigorous research, policy advocacy, and service provision.” says Augsberger.   

CISWH will assist the research team in dissemination of the research findings.

Learn more about Project IMPACT