The Evidence-to-Impact Podcast

In this episode, host Michael Donovan, Associate Director of the Evidence to Impact Collaborative at Penn State, speaks with Dr. Alice Zhang, family medicine physician researcher in the Penn State Health Department of Family and Community Medicine, and Marcia Goodman-Hinnershitz, Director of Planning and Resource Development at the Council on Chemical Abuse. The conversation explores the Health to Go program, an innovative approach that uses interactive health vending machines to expand access to essential health resources in community settings.

Part 2 is here!

In this follow-up episode, we take a deeper look at the Madison Area Recovery Initiative (MARI). Dr. Aleksandra Zgierska (Penn State), Captain Joe Balles (retired, Madison Police Department), and Captain Diana Nachtigal (Madison Police Department) share how evidence-based outreach, peer recovery partnerships, and innovative diversion strategies are reshaping the connections between policing, addiction recovery, and community health.

More information on MARI can be found here: https://www.cityofmadison.com/police/community/mari/

You know what time it is - new episode! This one takes a deep dive into how community policing supports recovery and crime reduction, specifically within the Madison, Wisconsin area. The host, Michael Donovan, sits down with Dr. Aleksandra Zgierska from Penn State, Captain Joe Balles, and Captain Diana Nachtigal of the Madison Police Department to explore this topic further.

The conversation dives into the development of the Madison Area Recovery Initiative (MARI), an innovative police-led diversion program designed to break the cycle of drug-related offenses without relying on the traditional justice system. The...

We are back! We have a discussion with Denise Holden, founder and CEO of the RASE Project, a recovery community organization that has since expanded outside of Pennsylvania and Dr. Sarah Kawasaki, the Chief of Addiction Medicine, and Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Internal Medicine at Penn State Health. 

This episode discusses the opioid crisis, the negative stigma surrounding this, and the process of recovery.

Supporting Recovery, Strengthening Families, & Fostering Healthier Communities: Effective Approaches to Addressing Substance Use Disorders in Justice-Involved Populations

Summary:

The substance use epidemic in the United States remains a significant public health concern. The rate of drug overdose deaths has increased substantially over the past decade. This risk is particularly heightened when individuals with a substance use disorder (SUD) encounter a transition in their lives, such as being released from a correctional facility. Within two weeks of release, the risk of overdose is between 8-40 times higher than standard risk. People with SUD...

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 re...

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...

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-Dir...

This month's episode tackles a fascinating combination of topics involving the impact of biological and social factors on chronic diseases like obesity and diabetes, and the prevention and treatment efforts for those chronic diseases through state and local government programs.

We spoke to Lindsay Fernández-Rhodes, Assistant Professor of Biobehavioral Health and the Director of Epidemiology and Genetics across Populations & Societies Laboratory at Penn State, and Amy Flaherty, Director of the Division of Nutrition and Physical Activity at the Bureau of Health Promotion and Risk Reduction in the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Department of Health, about public health, epidemiology, p...

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...

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...

We're back for our third season! Kicking off the 2022 season, we explore the juvenile justice system in Pennsylvania.

We spoke to Megan Kurlychek, Professor of Sociology, Criminology and Public Policy and Associate Director of the Criminal Justice Research Center at Penn State, and Rick Steele, Executive Director of the Juvenile Court Judges’ Commission at the Pennsylvania Commonwealth, about their work in the juvenile justice field, the history of the juvenile justice system, prevention programs, the issue of recidivism, and more.

Episode Resources and Notes

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...

In this month’s episode, we tackled innovations in healthcare. Since the beginning of the pandemic, we’ve seen a focus on various healthcare innovations and technology like artificial intelligence, cloud-enabled solutions, and inpatient telehealth, but other innovations are important, too. Some of these focused on in Pennsylvania include how we can get more value out of the country’s healthcare system without sacrificing the quality of care and lowering barriers for underserved populations.

We spoke to Dr. Doug Jacobs, M.D., M.P.H., Chief Medical Officer and Chief Innovation Officer in the Office o...

This month marks the beginning of the third season of this podcast!

We're kicking things off by exploring the opportunities and challenges of Pennsylvania's child welfare system. For the past several years, there has been an ongoing partnership between Penn State researchers and government partners to change the Commonwealth's county-based child welfare system through legislative and policy actions. We spoke to Jennie Noll, Ph.D., Professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies and the Director of the Child Maltreatment Solutions Network at Penn State University, and Brian Bornman, Esq., Executive Director of the Pennsylvania...

For this month's episode, we explore a topic that we have wanted to cover for some time: unemployment and the pandemic labor market.

As the nation begins to "reopen" and the economy begins shifting, many states have begun ending pandemic-era unemployment insurance benefits. For many, unemployment insurance was the only thing keeping them afloat following the unprecedented unemployment crisis at the beginning of the pandemic. And yet, despite the unbelievable numbers of unemployed workers in our country, the stigma of receiving unemployment insurance persists. We asked ourselves why, in a time of tremendous health and ec...

For this month's episode, we examined how the pandemic has revealed the "hidden crisis" of food insecurity throughout Pennsylvania and the rest of the country.

According to the U.S. Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, food insecurity is defined as the disruption of food intake or eating patterns because of lack of money or other resources. For example, this could mean cutting down on the number of meals or changing the types of food that you eat to save money.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the issue of food insecurity moved to...

This month, we return to our Pandemic Perspective series and explore the state of the childcare system in Pennsylvania during the pandemic. We discuss the challenges and opportunities to funding, access, and quality for the childcare system.

We spoke to Karen Grimm-Thomas, Director of External Relations at the Pennsylvania Office of Child Development and Early Learning (OCDEL), and Philip Sirinides, Associate Professor of Education in the School of Behavioral Sciences and Education and Director of the Institute of State and Regional Affairs (ISRA) at Penn State Harrisburg, about the impact that the pandemic has had on childcare...

This month, we are taking a break from our Pandemic Perspective series to examine an existing working relationship between academia and government. Since we talk a lot on this podcast about how the research community and government partners or policymakers can work together more effectively, it made sense for us to dig into an existing policy collaboration between the two groups.

For our March episode, we explore the Pennsylvania Coordinated Medication-Assisted Treatment Program, or PacMAT, which builds evidence-based medication-assisted treatment (MAT) programs for Pennsylvanians suffering from opioid use disorder. Currently, there are 14 PacMAT centers throughout Pennsylvania that...

This month's episodes feature everything but the kitchen sink! We're tackling how government, primarily at the local and state levels, transitioned to remote work, unemployment and the recession, the messaging behind school closings/mask wearing, the 2020 Election, COVID-19 vaccines distribution, and everything in between.

As part of our new series, The Pandemic Perspective, we spoke with Commissioner Mike Pipe, Centre County Chair of the Board of Commissioners and Co-Chair of the Election Board of Centre County, and Dr. Chris Witko, Associate Director of the School of Public Policy and Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at...

This month's two part (!) episode features everything but the kitchen sink! We're tackling how government, primarily at the local and state levels, transitioned to remote work, unemployment and the recession, the messaging behind school closings/mask wearing, the 2020 Election, COVID-19 vaccines distribution, and everything in between.

For the second episode of our new series, The Pandemic Perspective, we spoke with Commissioner Mike Pipe, Centre County Chair of the Board of Commissioners and Co-Chair of the Election Board of Centre County, and Dr. Chris Witko, Associate Director of the School of Public Policy and Professor of Public Policy...

The Evidence-to-Impact Collaborative Podcast is offering a new series called The Pandemic Perspective, where we examine how the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and various aspects of our society, institutions, and other systems have collided, changed, and even collapsed in the last nine months.

For the first episode of this series, we spoke with three experts about how the delivery of educational services for children with disabilities and the greater education system has changed since the beginning of the year, as well as how we can incorporate lessons learned into the future. The discussion stems from a Ma...

In this month's episode, we spoke to Alexis Santos, PhD, Assistant Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Penn State, and David Saunders, Director of the Office of Health Equity for the Pennsylvania Department of Health, about different disparities throughout the Pennsylvania Commonwealth and how the lack of good data impacts what we understand about poverty and health inequities. The discussion stems from a project between Penn State's Administrative Data Accelerator and Office of Health Equity which examined associations between socioeconomic characteristics of the counties of Pennsylvania and life expectancy. Interestingly, those associations can potentially help to address...

What is there left to say about the opioid crisis that has not already been said? It's claimed thousands of lives, torn apart families and communities, strained our country's already fractured healthcare system, and cost the economy billions, perhaps trillions, of dollars. If burning a path through communities for the last twenty years was not enough, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced many individuals and families to endure joblessness, potential homelessness, and other uncertainties, causing a spike in substance use and subsequently, overdoses.

In this episode, we spoke to Glenn Sterner, PhD, Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at...

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues and unemployment benefits for many Americans decrease significantly at the end of July, many Americans will be unable to pay rents and mortgages and may face eviction. Given the severity of this particular crisis, July's episode focuses on multiple issues related to housing in America, like the lack of affordable housing and housing as a means to improve overall health and well-being. In this episode, we spoke to Bryce Maretzki, Director of Policy and Planning for the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency, and Selena Ortiz, PhD, Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Administration as well...

For this month's episode, we spoke to Lisa Davis, Director of the Pennsylvania Office of Rural Health and Ann Tickamyer, PhD, Professor Emerita of Rural Sociology and Demography at Penn State, about the challenges and opportunities of healthcare in rural communities.

Pennsylvania is considered one of the most rural states in the nation, and is anchored by Pittsburgh in the southwestern and Philadelphia in the southeastern parts of the state. Across the nation, however, rural counties have much in common in terms of geographic isolation and significant challenges like access to economic development, transportation infrastructure, broadband services...

For this month’s episode, we spoke to Penn State’s Marty Sliwinski, PhD, Director of the Center for Healthy Aging and Professor of Human Development and Family Studies, and Stephanie Cole, Director of Special Projects and Executive Assistant at the Office of the Secretary at Pennsylvania Department of Aging, about challenges and opportunities related to aging.

This episode was recorded in February 2020 before the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic and mandatory physical and social distancing. The Podcast Team believes the discussion of our country’s aging population is more salient than ever as individuals, families, and children r...

This week, we spoke to two experts on issue about criminal sentencing guidelines. Sentencing guidelines are a set of standards that are generally put in place to establish rational and consistent sentencing practices within a particular jurisdiction.

Guests:

Jeff Ulmer is a Professor of Sociology and Criminology at Penn State and the Program Head of the Criminal Justice Policy and Administration MPS Degree for Penn State World Campus. His research interests include criminology, social psychology, sociology of religion, organizations, and the integration of qualitative and quantitative methods. His current projects

Mark Bergstrom is the...

Join us each month as we explore issues affecting our families and communities.

Join us each month as we explore issues affecting our families and communities.