PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — On Thursday, Feb. 27, 2014, Brown University’s TRI-Lab (Teaching, Research, and Impact) program announced the launch of two new Rhode Island-focused teaching and research collaborations. The two new labs for 2014-15 will focus on access to healthy food and on climate change and environmental justice. Faculty and students will work with local and statewide organizations and agencies to research and address these issues.
The announcement of the new labs came during an open house at TRI-Lab’s new office space at 10 Davol Square. Brown University President Christina Paxson, Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee, and Allen Hance, director of the TRI-Lab Program all made remarks.
“The integration of scholarship and public engagement that is central to Brown’s mission and culture is the heart of the TRI-Lab program,” Paxson said. “The partnerships created through TRI-Lab bring faculty, students, and community organizations together to address pressing social issues affecting many people in Rhode Island and beyond. Participants have already done great work investigating health and early childhood development, and I look forward to the innovative ways in which they tackle these next labs on climate change and healthy food access.”
The lab on access to healthy food will investigate community-based approaches to increasing access and reducing food insecurity. It will be co-chaired by Kim Gans, professor of behavioral and social sciences at Brown’s School of Public Health and director of the Institute for Community Health Promotion, and Courtney Bourns, senior program officer at the Henry P. Kendall Foundation.
Timmons Roberts, professor of sociology and environmental studies at Brown, and Robert Vanderslice of the Rhode Island Department of Health will co-chair the lab on climate change and environmental justice. This lab will draw on Brown and partner organizations’ strengths in climate modeling, environmental sociology, and public health to investigate the potential impacts of climate change and sea-level rise on vulnerable communities in Rhode Island.
“Improving access to healthy food and addressing climate change are key challenges that we, as a state, must confront to create healthier and more sustainable communities,” Chafee said. “Through partnerships and programs such as TRI-Lab, community organizations, together with faculty and students of Brown University and other institutions of higher learning, will be key drivers of positive social change.”
Paxson also announced the award of an inaugural $5,000 TRI-Lab planning grant to the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights. The center will work with Brown faculty and community partners to develop a lab focused on issues of incarceration, race, criminal justice, and health.
TRI-Lab was piloted in the 2013-14 academic year with a focus on healthy early childhood development. That inaugural lab, which is still active, is co-chaired by Stephen Buka, professor and chair of the Department of Epidemiology at Brown’s School of Public Health, and Elizabeth Burke Bryant, executive director of Rhode Island KIDS COUNT.
At the open house, Buka spoke about the lab’s assessment of Rhode Island’s healthy early childhood development system and its identification of key leverage points to make that system more responsive to the needs of Rhode Island’s most vulnerable children. Aimee Mitchell, senior vice president of Children’s Friend, who is also participating in the current lab, spoke about the benefits of such research partnerships for community organizations.
Buka also introduced the members of the lab’s newly formed advisory panel. The group will serve as a leadership and advisory board for the lab and help to advance as well as to think more broadly about how Brown and other academic institutions in Rhode Island can develop research partnerships with community organizations and government agencies to improve the health, school readiness, and overall well-being of young children in Rhode Island. Members include Brown faculty as well as several community leaders.
TRI-Lab takes an innovative, multiyear approach to addressing social issues. At the heart of each lab is a year-long seminar in which participants explore the framework and context of the issue and develop ideas for collaborative work. Prior to the seminar, labs sponsor conferences and events that connect the University and community around a social issue and cultivate interest. As part of this phase, Brown faculty and community experts may partner to develop and teach a course for first- and second-year students that provides a foundational framework for an upcoming TRI-Lab topic. Student participants may also be matched with internship or research opportunities with faculty or community partners to gain a better understanding of the social issue they will examine. In the year following the seminar, lab cohorts can apply for seed funding to continue to work together to build practice and knowledge around solutions.
“TRI-Lab is significant because it places students and faculty in dialogue with community leaders with a goal of grounding both teaching and research in real-world problems and coming up with solutions that work for those communities,” said Allen Hance, the TRI-Lab director. “It’s also about taking on complex and pressing social problems, and that’s why we’re expanding our work from early childhood development to the issues of hunger and food insecurity and how Rhode Island responds to threats posed by climate change.”