The Thrive Center is dedicated to increasing the capacity of health and mental health, human services, and education systems to create, implement, and evaluate cultural and linguistic competence to address diversity, persistent disparities and equity.
Our teams deploy a research-to-practice approach to improve health outcomes, relationships, and livelihoods of historically under-resourced and marginalized communities locally, nationally and globally.
Current Research
Kalb, L. G., Kramer, J. M., Goode, T. D., Black, S. J., Klick, S., Caoili, A., … & Beasley, J. B. (2023). Evaluation of telemental health services for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities: protocol for a randomized non-inferiority trial. BMC Health Services Research, 23(1), 795.
Key Activities
Technical Assistance
- The Social Norms Exploration Tool (SNET) was developed by the Institute for Reproductive Health, a Health and Gender Strand center, with support from the USAID-funded Passages project and members from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-funded Learning Collaborative to Advance Normative Change. It is a five-phase participatory learning resource that provides actionable guidance and information on how to conduct a social norms exploration, a process for identifying social norms within communities and addressing them within global health and development programs.
- For over 20 years faculty from the GUCCHD have partnered with United Aid For Azerbaijan (UAFA) to provide training and technical assistance on early intervention, inclusion, and deinstitutionalization.
- The Institute for Reproductive Health has been contracted as a subgrantee to Catholic Relief Services for the USAID-supported Girma project in Niger. Girma, which means “dignity, prestige, and growth” in Hausa, the local language, uses a multisectoral, layered, participatory and sensitive approach to gender, youth, persons with disabilities and climate change. The Institute for Reproductive Health provides technical assistance for the integration of fertility awareness-based methods service delivery and the contextual adaptation of GrowUp Smart curriculum into the Girma project.
- Community of Practice on Cultural and Linguistic Competence in Developmental Disabilities
- Cultural and Linguistic Competence Assessment for Disability Organizations: Assessment and Guide
- For the Abu Dhabi Early Childhood Authority, United Arab Emirates, the GUCCHD provides training and technical assistance on a broad range of early childhood topics including child protection, early intervention, and early childhood mental heath.
- As the home to the US Afghan Women’s Council (USAWC), the center brokers, coordinates, and promotes programs that address equity and inclusion issues for the women and girls in Afghanistan.
Workforce Development
- Embedding Cultural Diversity and Cultural and Linguistic Competence … A Guide for UCEDD Curricula and Training Activities
- The Institute for Reproductive Health sits on the Steering Committee of the Learning Collaborative to Advance Normative Change. Made up of a network of experts committed to facilitating collaborative knowledge- and skills-building between organizations and individuals working on adolescent sexual and reproductive health norm-shifting interventions, the Learning Collaborative is working to enhance collective efforts, build knowledge and develop shared tools to strengthen effective social norm theory, measurement, and practice in the social norms field. The Learning Collaborative has also fostered regional communities of practice (COPs), one in South Asia, and one in Francophone Africa, that convene regional networks of practitioners with the objective of building capacity and advancing knowledge-sharing, collaboration, practice and advocacy related to norms-shifting interventions for adolescent and youth reproductive health and well-being.
Community Projects and Clinical Services
- The Institute for Reproductive Health has been contracted by UNICEF-Senegal to develop and test a methodological guide aimed at assisting field-based stakeholders facilitate a participatory dialogue around female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) to increase community awareness and prevent the practice.
Research and Evaluation
- The Passages project is a USAID-funded implementation research that addresses the root of chronic challenges in family planning and reproductive health such as gender-based violence, child marriage, and unintended pregnancy by shifting social norms.
- The Fertility Awareness for Community Transformation (FACT) Project was a USAID-funded research, intervention, and technical assistance project that ran from 2013-2019, implemented by the Institute for Reproductive Health. Building off of earlier work under the USAID-funded Fertility Awareness Methods project, FACT fostered an environment where women and men can take actions to protect their reproductive health throughout the life-course by testing strategies to increase fertility awareness and expand access to fertility awareness methods at the community level.
- The Institute for Reproductive Health is working with partners on the Templeton Foundation-funded Masculinities, Faith and Peace Project in Nigeria, which aims to reduce sexual and gender-based violence, increase healthy timing and spacing of pregnancies, and improve inter-religious relationships. It addresses social norms that shape inequitable gender relations and prevent the use of modern methods of family planning in mixed Christian and Muslim communities in Plateau State, Nigeria.
People
Adjunct Associate Professor of Pediatrics
Associate Professor
GUMC Adjunct — Assistant Professor
Adjunct Assistant Professor of Pediatrics
Research Instructor
Resources
- Community of Practice on Cultural and Linguistic Competence in Developmental Disabilities
- Cultural and Linguistic Competence Health Practitioner Assessment
- Cultural and Linguistic Competence Checklists for MCH Training Programs
- Mentoring – an Evidence-based Strategy to Increase the Number of Students and Faculty from Racial and Ethnic Groups Underrepresented in Maternal and Child Health Training Programs
- Promoting Cultural Diversity and Cultural and Linguistic Competency: Self-Assessment Checklist for Personnel Providing Services and Supports to LGBTQ Youth and their Families
- Transition: Cultural and Linguistic Competence Checklist for Medical Home Teams