By Laurel White
Two School of Education research projects aimed at reducing opportunity and inclusion gaps for socially and economically disadvantaged populations have been awarded funding through the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education’s Increasing Social and Economic Inclusion initiative.
Shinye Kim, an assistant professor in the Department of Counseling Psychology, and Taylor Odle, an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Policy Studies, lead the two projects.
Only seven research projects across campus were selected for funding from the initiative.
“The selected projects hold promise for informing policy that ensures that those at risk of poverty, discrimination, and social exclusion have the opportunities and resources necessary to overcome the inequities they face, and to lead healthier and more safe and secure lives,” said Lonnie Berger, associate vice chancellor for research in the social sciences, in a story on the initiative released by the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education.
Kim’s research is focused on developing tools that will better help health care providers understand the level and nature of pain being experienced by Asian American patients.
Kim says the popular Numeric Rating Scale standard for pain assessment — referred to as the 0-10 scale — is simple and convenient, but is “severely limited” in capturing the cultural, linguistic, and emotional nuances of chronic pain experienced among racial and ethnic minorities and those who don’t have strong English language skills. She says this mismatch can lead to ineffective medical care, and that the gap is profoundly felt by Asian Americans.
“Asian American immigrants have been historically excluded in pain science, despite being the fastest growing minority group in the U.S.,” Kim says. “There is a critical need to identify Asian American cultural and linguistic pain communication patterns and expressions so that providers have complete information for clinical decisions.”
Maichou Lor, an assistant professor of nursing, is the co-principal investigator on the project. The research will include in-depth interviews with Asian immigrants to understand their language use relating to pain and lead to the creation of a cultural and language-specific pain dictionary and expression library database based on distinct cultural and linguistic factors.
The researchers also aim to create a web or mobile app that includes Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, and Hmong pain terms, idioms, and linguistic patterns and draft a health policy brief that addresses critical cultural-linguistic implications of pain care disparities in the Asian population.
“Our long-term goal is to develop and implement effective communication interventions and digital health technologies that remove cultural and linguistic hurdles between healthcare providers and patients,” Kim says. “We hope this will increase diagnostic accuracy and treatment efficacy for underserved populations, and ultimately reduce health disparities.”
Odle’s project will focus on evaluating a program aimed at boosting college admission for rural and low-income high school students in Tennessee. The comprehensive analysis of the roughly six-year-old program, called Advise TN, will help educators, policymakers, and philanthropists determine future paths for their work aimed at boosting postsecondary enrollment for vulnerable populations.
Odle says 92 percent of high-income, suburban high school graduates enroll in college within two years of graduation, compared to only 54 percent of their lower-income, rural peers.
“These disparities fuel a cycle of under-enrollment and under-credentialing that limits the development of already-underserved communities,” Odle says.
Since 2016, Advise TN has embedded advisers in Tennessee schools in underserved communities with the goal of increasing college applications and enrollment. Odle says there is much to learn by studying data from program enrollees, and that his work will be the first to use empirical evidence to gauge the efficacy of such a program.
“The study will generate insights for Tennessee’s ongoing operation and further scaling of the program, aid decision makers in other states considering adoption, and fill a gap in knowledge for researchers and funders alike by generating practically-grounded and empirically-guided recommendations to drive investment and future work,” he says.
The project aims to produce public-facing factsheets, briefs, and infographics, as well as presentations at academic and policy conferences, peer-reviewed journal articles, and social and earned media.
The Increasing Social and Economic Inclusion initiative is supported by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and provides research grants in two categories: projects less than $100,000, and projects $100,000 up to a maximum of $250,000.