COVID-19 Rapid Response Research Grant

The Office of Research is pleased to announce the COVID-19 Rapid Response Research Grant (CR3) Program. The goal of the CR3 Program is to engage CSU researchers in investigations of the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the local, statewide, national, and international response to COVID-19 on our communities, economy, and governing structures. Investigations related to COVID-19’s impact on social determinants of health, Northeast Ohio businesses and workforce, and effects on educational outcomes are strongly encouraged.

*The CR3 Program is closed. Please see below for the list of award recipients.

Award Recipients

The Office of Research would like to congratulate the following faculty members on their successful CR3 proposals:

Brian Ray
Cleveland-Marshall College of Law
Department of Law

Pandemic Privacy

This research will identify and describe in detail the ways that surveillance technologies are being used as part of apparently successful virus mitigation strategies by several countries, including China, South Korea and Taiwan and proposals to use some of those same technologies in U.S. Communities. Those descriptions will be used to identify the legal, especially privacy and civil liberties, concerns those programs raise and to evaluate how a newer set of privacy protective applications and technologies mitigate those concerns. Proposals for implementing those privacy-protective alternatives will be developed and analysis of the tradeoffs between advancing public health objectives and protecting privacy and civil liberties will be performed.

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Heather Rice; Cyleste Collins
School of Nursing; College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
Department of Nursing; Social Work

Addressing African American Maternal and Infant Mortality Using Technology During the COVID-19 Crisis

This research proposes to extend our previous work to conduct a mixed-methods study to explore: (1) clinical and quantitative birth outcomes of mothers delivering during the COVID-19 pandemic; (2) the meaning of perinatal support services in the context of social distancing for clients and staff and (3) the implications of social distancing and technology for infant mortality prevention programming and efforts to reduce health disparities.

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Julia Phillips
College of Education and Human Services
Department of Doctoral Studies

Qualitative Investigation of Asian International Students' Experiences of Racism and Xenophobia During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Incidents of stereotyping, racism, and xenophobia in the U.S. toward people of Asian descent have been reported in the media since the pandemic first began in China This project will be a pilot study using qualitative methods to examine the lived experiences of Asian international students prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic to allow their voices to be heard regarding their experiences. In addition to exploring experiences of racism, participants in this study will be asked to describe their use of constructive coping strategies, including those related to their ethnic identities.

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Joseph Mead
Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs
Department of Urban Studies

Agenda-setting and State Government in a Time of Crisis

Although public policy has a large influence on people’s day-to-day lives, that reality is often obscured by the existence of a web of mediating institutions, structures, and systems. The COVID-19 pandemic and the rapid public policy responses have illuminated the impact of public policy on lived experience in a more immediate way. Given the urgency of the crisis, public policy decisions are being made quickly, and without benefit of the usual pathways of policy deliberation and civic engagement. This research will explore one pathway of communication from the lived experiences of the public and the policy making choices made by executive branch officials in a time of crisis. Drawing on the public policy, agenda-setting, and representation literature, we will examine the information exchanges through one type of mediating actor – local journalists - as the first stage in developing a model of the pathways by which policymakers receive information in real time.

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Shereen Naser; Elisabeth Goncy; Kimberly Fuller; Katie Clonan-Roy
College of Sciences and Health Professions; College of Sciences and Health Professions; College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences; College of Education and Human Services
Department of Psychology; Psychology; Social Work; Curriculum & Foundations

Assessing the Impact of School Closure due to COVID-19 on LGTBQ+ Youth Health

Schools are complex systems where vulnerable youth, including LGBTQ+ youth, can both access health and safety supports, and where they might also be exposed to discrimination that hinders their health and well-being. Those who provide health services to LGBTQ+ youth are asked to partner with schools in order to increase access to health and safety supports for LGBTQ+ youth while concurrently helping build school capacity to create environments that reduce discriminatory actions and exclusionary practices towards LGBTQ+ youth. Recent school closures have distanced LGBTQ+ youth from these supportive services as well as potentially supportive peer and adult relationships. The primary aim of this study is to assess the impact of school closure on LGBTQ+ youth wellbeing in order to better understand the role school’s play in the lives of LGBTQ+ youth and to make recommendations to health care providers and school’s on continuing to support LGBTQ+ youth during these unprecedented times.

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Sathish Kumar, Miyuki Tedor, and Patricia Stoddard-Dare
Washkewicz College of Engineering; College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences; College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science; Criminology, Anthropology, and Sociology; Social Work

Investigation of Sensor and Decision Technologies to Improve Mental and Behavioral Health Crisis During COVID-19

The recent novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is impacting the physical and economic health of the countries worldwide on an unprecedented global scale. This in turn results in widespread mental and behavioral health-related crisis in the community. In this project, leveraging our existing platform drughelp.care (www.drughelp.care), we plan to incorporate and investigate the impact of sensor and decision technologies to improve mental and behavioral health crisis during COVID-19.

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Rama Jayanti
Monte Ahuja College of Business
Department of Marketing

Institutional Discord: Impact on COVID 19 Outcomes

The advent of COVID 19 created much chaos globally and flipped our country upside down. Public depend on institutional harmony that produces a consistent narrative to deal with an invisible enemy. Unfortunately, the novelty of the pandemic left institutions such as healthcare, Government, and Public Opinion in much discord that seeded public misinformation. Using Institutional Theory, this research aims to identify the sources of discord and its impact on COVID 19 outcomes. Qualitative data from Facebook of hospitals (healthcare), Twitter feed of White House officials, News conferences and announcements from local authorities such as governors (Government) and Public reporting of the pandemic by newspapers such as New York Times and WSJ (Public Opinion) will be examined for three different locales (Cleveland, Detroit, and New Orleans) to tease out the sources of discord. The themes uncovered from this qualitative phase along with demographic data will be correlated with county-wide COVID 19 mortality data available from CDC in this pilot study.

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Wendy Green; Kelly Liao
College of Education and Human Services
Department of CASAL

Impact of COVID-19 on Learners in Clinical Placements: Investigating Psychosocial and Educational Outcomes Using Mixed Methods

The global pandemic, COVID19, has caused significant shifts in the way US society engages in work and formal learning activities. In March of 2020, Universities stopped offering in person classes and shifted all classes to virtual settings. It is unclear at this time how this shift to remote learning has affected the students more broadly. In addition to classroom-based activities, learners in clinical settings have also been affected by shelter-in-place and social distancing guidelines. Two groups in particular, medical residents and clinical psychological trainees, are expected to engage in on-site practice as they near the end of their educational programs. The closure of worksites and scaling back of services that has occurred within in- and outpatient settings has shifted the ways in which these two groups are able to practice and engage in apprenticeship-based learning. This pilot study has two aims. First, through a survey, we aim to investigate how these groups are experiencing and coping with changes and stressors associated with COVID19. Secondly, through qualitative interviews, we aim to understand how the learning environments have shifted and how residents and psychological trainees view the efficacy of their learning processes as well as their preparedness to enter practice as they finish their final educational placements.