SOPHE / CDC Student Fellowship

SOPHE / CDC Student Fellowship in Injury Prevention

The SOPHE / CDC Student Fellowship in Injury Prevention is funded by the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.  The fellowship is designed to recognize, assist and train students working on research or practice-based projects in either unintentional injury prevention or violence prevention from the perspective of health education or the behavioral sciences.  For one year, selected "SOPHE / CDC Fellows in Injury Prevention" receive a stipend, one-year student membership to National SOPHE, and complementary registration at the SOPHE Annual Meeting, where they have an opportunity to display poster presentations on their projects.

From the mouths of experience…

"What attracted you to the SOPHE / CDC Student Fellowship opportunity?"

This fellowship offers an important opportunity for students interested in injury and violence research. Although there are many agencies interested in funding studies of adolescent substance use behavior, the support for youth violence research is much more limited, especially at the pre-doctoral level.
—Kate Karriker-Jaffe, doctoral candidate, 2005-2006 Fellowship Recipient

This fellowship is the only one I've seen that emphasizes behavioral approaches to injury prevention. It's a great opportunity for behavioral science students to secure support for their research project.
—Michelle Price, doctoral candidate, 2005-2006 Fellowship Recipient

The professional recognition of my research project. In addition, it is also wonderful to have the opportunity to meet with other students who share the similar research interests.
—Ying Li, doctoral candidate, 2005-2006 Fellowship Recipient

My Major Professor pointed it out to me. I thought it would be a good opportunity to reach a larger audience with my research on suicide, as we tend to mainly present to clinical psychology audiences.
—Tracey Witte, doctoral student, 2005-2006 Fellowship Recipient

To view the Fellowship Applications and see deadlines please go to http://www.sophe.org/content/awards.asp

Meet this year's SOPHE / CDC Student Fellowship Recipients:

• Heidi Ehrenreich
  

  Ms. Ehreneich is a graduate student at the University of Georgia. Her paper titled "Process Evaluation of "Studio 2B," a Business Women-Led Program for At-Risk Middle School Girls in Georgia" explores the implementation of a nationally recognized Studio 2B program at a middle school in Georgia by volunteers in the business community. Studio 2B is a Girl Scouts USA initiative with a mission to build courage, confidence, abilities, and a voice among girls aged 11-17 through individually researched program topics. At its best, Studio 2B amplifies messages underlying the middle school's three-year School Improvement Framework to decrease disciplinary referrals by targeting a select group of female students. As a behavioral intervention, Studio 2B touts the importance of soft skills such as outward presentation, empathy, and adaptability - skills that are transferable across contexts. Short-term objectives of the program, therefore, are to raise awareness of social skills, self-efficacy for making decisions in "stress situations," and pro-social behaviors. Medium-term objectives are to increase positive participation at school. Long-term objectives are to improve school retention and decrease aggression-related behaviors.

• Shagun Sabarwal
  

  Shagun is a graduate student at Harvard University. She used funds from this fellowship to identify and assess major factors, questions, and issues surrounding domestic violence against women in Nepal. Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world and violence against women is a commonplace occurrence in the country. Shagun examined the data from victims of domestic violence who sought shelter from a Nepalese non-Governmental organization. The context of domestic violence in Nepal differs from that found in other countries and includes dowry-related hostilities, second marriage by husbands and conflict with other members of the family. Shagun has highlighted these contextual factors into her paper and has also looked into services available to the victims of domestic violence in Nepal. They include the presence of barriers in accessing these services. The main contribution of her study is to identify and assess major questions and issues that need to be integrated within both research and intervention initiatives in Nepal.

• Michael Stellefson
  

  Dr. Stellefson recently completed doctoral work at Texas A&M University. Resources from this fellowship allowed him to complete a project that addressed the development of the Self Administered Fall Evaluation (SAFE) tutorial to educate families on how to prevent falls in the home. Among the aged, falls are the leading cause of injury deaths and the most common cause of injuries and hospital admissions for trauma. The majority of death and disability due to falls are potentially preventable. When developing fall prevention research projects for community-dwelling older adults, health educators are encouraged to facilitate comprehensive fall risk assessments which identify the primary risk factors associated with falls. A majority of injuries result from environmentally-related falls occurring inside and around the home environment. Health educators have been called to empower community dwelling older adults to conduct their own home-based risk assessments for environmental hazards in their own homes. In light of this pressing need, The Self Administered Fall Evaluation (SAFE) tutorial was developed as a tool for older adults to use when assessing environmental fall risk factors present in their own home. The SAFE tutorial was developed using the Precaution Adoption Process Model as its theoretical basis. The goal of the SAFE project is to guide older adults through assessing their risk and ultimately towards taking preventive action (i.e., making home modifications). Visual guides were used to help older adults identify risk factors present in their homes when going from room to room to assess potential hazards. Following risk factor identification, a guidelines tutorial was presented to show older adults how to remedy potential environmental hazards that are identified.