Affiliated Projects and Programs
These are long-term, fully staffed projects and programs at UROC that are led by researchers with University of Minnesota Extension or other University colleges. Some of these projects receive staff support from the UROC team.
Projects are coded according to the following UROC research areas:
* Economic & Community Development
^ Education & Lifelong Learning
≈ Health & Wellness
Autonomic and Vascular Mechanisms of Cardiovascular Risks in Women with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder≈
Young women are overlooked when it comes to heart disease, but studies are showing that trauma and particularly the development of PTSD increases this risk. For that reason, this project studies the effects of PTSD on the heart and blood vessels to understand how it increases risk of heart disease.
UROC Research Areas: Health & Wellness
Birth Justice Collaborative ≈
An African American and American Indian-led coalition working to advance maternal health and birth justice in Minnesota communities.
UROC Research Areas: Health & Wellness
Bridges and Connectors ≈
A College of Education and Human Development research project designed to support early career educators and youth workers committed to liberatory practices.
Contact Abigail Rombalski
Building Trust and Reducing the Burden of Stroke in African American Communities≈
This School of Nursing project’s goal is to listen to the community in regard to their perspectives on stroke and health behavior risk factors, and train stroke champions within the community to provide education to the community.
UROC Research Area: Health & Wellness
Center for Antiracism for Health Equity*^≈
Based at UROC, the University’s Center for Antiracism for Health Equity The Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity confronts structural racism with antiracism research, engagement, and narrative change.
UROC Research Areas: Economic & Community Development | Health & Wellness | Education & Lifelong Learning
CIRCLE Project: The Cultural Adaptation of Trauma Systems Therapy for Elementary School-aged Latine Immigrant Youth≈
The Collaborative for Immigrant and Refugee Children’s Leadership and Excellence (CIRCLE) Project will utilize cultural adaptation and implementation science frameworks to tailor the Trauma Systems Therapy for Refugees (TST-R) curriculum culturally and developmentally to newcomer Latine elementary school-aged children, as well as assess the program within the Minneapolis context. The team is especially interested in understanding the implementation mechanisms that will support program adoption and long-term sustainability.
UROC Research Areas: Health & Wellness
Contact Saida Abdi
Cookie Cart Reimagined: A Northside, Youth-led Participatory Evaluation^
This project is using social science curriculum to connect Northside youth associated with Cookie Cart with their capacities to disrupt systemic racism and mobilize knowledge co-creation.
UROC Research Areas: Education & Lifelong Learning
Contact Nathaniel D. Stewart
eHEAT Dataset-based Support Tool for Energy Assistance Implementation in Minnesota*
This Humphrey School of Public Affairs-led project aims to alleviate “energy burden” by implementing energy assistance programs to households in need. It will create tools for community-based organizations to identify needs, allocate scarce resources, implement effective outreach in networks of local actors, and provide support for the neediest families and communities.
UROC Research Area: Economic & Community Development
Contact Gabe Chan.
Envision Communities Planning and Program Evaluation*≈
Envision Community is building a place where all people – including people experiencing homelessness – have what they need to live their healthiest lives. The first community will be in North Minneapolis.
UROC Research Areas: Economic & Community Development | Health & Wellness
Contact William Walsh.
Exploring Fast Food Landscapes in North Minneapolis/UROC Place-keeping Food Hub*≈
These projects unpack the legacies and contemporary impacts of fast-food outlets on the everyday lives of residents in North Minneapolis. It explores the ways Black, Indigenous, and People of Color communities can reclaim their voices to assert political power after having been systematically disenfranchised from the food system.
UROC Research Areas: Economic & Community Development | Health & Wellness
Contact Fernando Burga.
Healthy Youth Development Prevention Research Center≈
The project is dedicated to learning and implementing ways to reduce health disparities that exist among Minnesota's young people though promoting best practices, evaluating program effectiveness, improving policies and systems, building public support for young people, advising community-based organizations, and training educators, public health professionals, sexual health educators, health care practitioners, and youth workers.
UROC Research Area: Health & Wellness
Help-seeking among rural and urban American Indian and Black Women experiencing intimate partner violence during the COVID-19 pandemic in rural and urban Minnesota*^≈
Researchers at the School of Nursing seek to understand the unique health needs of American Indian and Black women across Minnesota who experienced intimate partner violence during the pandemic. This community engaged study helps address health disparities for American Indian and Black women by identifying and minimizing barriers to help seeking following an experience of intimate partner violence.
UROC Research Areas: Economic & Community Development | Health & Wellness | Education & Lifelong Learning
Contact Lucy Mkandawire-Valhmu at [email protected] to learn more.
Immigrant Memory Collaborative≈
This project aims to examine the lived experiences of Black immigrants living with or caring for family or friends living with dementia.
UROC Research Areas: Health & Wellness
Contact Manka Nkimbeng
Impacts of Multilevel Factors and Systemic Racism on Sedentary Behavior Among Black Older Adults with Type 2 Diabetes≈
Black Americans are 6o percent more likely to be diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes (T2D) and two times more likely to die from T2D than non-Hispanic White Americans. Recent research has shown that sedentary behavior (such as sitting or lying down) have a significant negative impact on health. This study looks at ways to reduce sedentary behavior.
UROC Research Area: Health & Wellness
Investing in North Minneapolis*^
A College of Design-led project that engages the North Minneapolis community in developing grassroots urban designs that express residents’ vision for their neighborhood’s future.
UROC Research Areas: Economic & Community Development | Education & Lifelong Learning
LIFT Project*≈
The Leaders Invested in Fostering Trust project focuses on addressing the information and media needs of Black communities in the midwest by utilizing existing information networks and leverage trusted messengers. The project seeks to identify and fill communication gaps in these communities by connecting and networking trusted messengers and thought leaders within the community and within media institutions.
UROC Research Areas: Economic & Community Development | Health & Wellness
Master Gardener Program*^≈
The University of Minnesota Extension Master Gardener Volunteer Program shares research-based horticultural knowledge and practices, cultivates diverse collaborations, supports project-based volunteer activities, and inspires change to promote healthy people, healthy communities, and a healthy planet.
UROC Research Areas: Economic & Community Development | Health & Wellness | Education & Lifelong Learning
Minnesota Family Navigation Project≈
This project explores ways to reduce health and social inequality by engaging and supporting families experiencing barriers access health care and social services.
UROC Research Areas: Health & Wellness
Minnesota Youth Sex Trading (MYST) Project≈
The MYST Collaborative works with communities and youth to co-create actionable knowledge about sex trading, sexual exploitation, and trafficking. The team aims to surface the wisdom of lived experience, drive systems change, and promote wellness among youth.
UROC Research Area: Health & Wellness
Northside Summer Internship Program^
This is an initiative coordinated by the University’s Office of Information Technology’s Data Science Initiative and Research Cyberinfrastructure Champions Network that bridges technology education and community engagement in North Minneapolis. Designed for local high school students, the program emphasizes hands-on experience and leadership development.
UROC Research Areas: Education & Lifelong Learning
Partners4Pain≈
The Partners4Pain Project is a multi-faceted community-based research collaboration funded by the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health through the HEAL initiative. The goals of the project are to increase access to evidence based non-drug and complementary and integrative health approaches to pain, and to help improve pain self-management and overall wellbeing for people with back pain who have been underrepresented and marginalized in research and healthcare.
UROC Research Area: Health & Wellness
Power of Story/Annual Signifying and Testifying Storytelling School Concerts^
The Black Storytellers Alliance sponsors free storytelling concerts for all schools, in addition to holding apprenticeship classes and hosting a public annual master storytellers festival.
UROC Research Area: Education and Lifelong Learning
Project SHINE: Sleep Health Initiative for Equity≈
This School of Public Health, community-engaged research project works aims to address ongoing sleep disparities in the African American community by conducting a mixed methods pilot study to tailor and understand the feasibility, plausibility, and satisfaction of a four-week virtual behavioral sleep program to improve sleep for African American adults.
UROC Research Area: Health & Wellness
Contact Rachel Price.
Racial Identity Processing Groups: Addressing Implicit Bias among Early Childhood Educators^
This School of Social Work community-engaged project aims to analyze data collected from 100 white and black individuals who participated in Racial Identity Processing Groups (RIPGs). The study combines 25 - 30 hours of psychoeducation to process race related issues and equip individuals with the awareness, knowledge, and skills needed to begin to create systemic change.
UROC Research Area: Education & Lifelong Learning
Contact Joan Blakey.
Racial Identity Processing Groups (RIPG): A systemic change response*^≈
Contact: Joan Blakey, Director, [email protected], 773-972-7703
Description: Short-term Goal: Provide individuals with the space and opportunity to process the creation and destructiveness of race and racism. Intermediate Goal: Increase people’s knowledge and skills of systemic racism in preparation to dismantle it. Long-term Goal: Gain the tools needed to work cross racially to dismantle systemic racism.
UROC Research Areas: Economic & Community Development | Health & Wellness | Education & Lifelong Learning
RCC Engagement with UROC and IT^
The University’s Research Cyberinfrastructure Champion Network is working with North Minneapolis community members to establish classes, engagement with youth for information technology (IT) services, and computers for the community. The team aims to create educational and job opportunities in multiple areas of IT, as well as senior computer support for the community.
UROC Research Area: Education & Lifelong Learning
Ready Steady^≈
The goal of this popular School of Nursing-led wellness program and research project is to determine the types of motivational educational strategies that help people integrate more balance-challenging, leg-strengthening, and walking activities into their everyday lives. The program is aimed at fostering mastery and motivation for integrating recommended physical activities for all people who are at least 70 years old.
UROC Research Areas: Health & Wellness | Education & Lifelong Learning
RIDGS Ethnic Studies Initiative^
The goal of this component of the Race, Indigeneity, Disability, Gender, and Sexuality (RIDGS) Ethnic Studies Initiative is comprehensive mixed-methods evaluation of Saint Paul Public Schools' Critical Ethnic Studies course. Through district-wide teacher and student surveys and interviews with teachers, administrators, and current and former students, the research team seeks to gain an understanding of how both students and teachers experienced the course, the impact it had on students' learning and perceptions of themselves and their peers.
UROC Research Area: Education & Lifelong Learning
Contact Jacob Oertel.
Rural-Urban Connections: Opioids*≈
Composed of a collaboration of agencies and organizations from across Minnesota, the Rural Urban Connections: Opioids project team is currently developing ways that communities in Minnesota can work together to address the opioid epidemic. In December 2023, UROC hosted a Critical Conversation based on the work of the team and the idea that rural, suburban, and urban communities share many of the same assets and challenges, even though the context and geography might be different. The conversations developed as a part of this project are continuing through the University of Minnesota Extension's Department of Community Development.
UROC Research Areas: Economic & Community Development | Health & Wellness
The Minnesota Family Navigation Project≈
This School of Social Work’s Minnesota Family Navigation project aims to support communities in meeting the health and social care needs of children and families. The team’s work focuses on the development of individual, community, and system level interventions to promote health and social equity and prevent adverse childhood experiences.
UROC Research Area: Health & Wellness
Contact Jeff Waid.
The Office for Supplier Diversity^
The University’s Office for Supplier Diversity is focused on introducing BIPOC businesses to purchasing services managers, construction management coordinators and individuals with spending needs under $50,000 that do not require formal purchasing RFP processes.
UROC Research Area: Economic & Community Development
University of Minnesota Extension Financial Capability Programming*
The University of Minnesota Extension Financial Capability Team is committed to supporting individuals, families, communities, and organizations through financial literacy and independence by utilizing collective expertise to provide, create, and manage a range of financial resources and programs
UROC Research Areas: Economic & Community Development | Health & Wellness | Education & Lifelong Learning
University of Minnesota Medical School MPact Urban Community Health Course^≈
The Medical School’s MPact Urban Community Health Course is a longitudinal course in which medical students will develop authentic relationships with community members impacted by health inequities. The team examines the structural inequities that most often harm Black and brown communities in Minnesota, as well as their role in these as future physicians.
UROC Research Areas: Health & Wellness | Education & Lifelong Learning
YoUthROC^
YoUthROC is a community and University-connected youth research team that supports the growth of Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) and is committed to youth, kinship, and racial justice in education. The team centers Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) youth and other marginalized communities. The program is affiliated with the College of Education and Human Development and UROC.
UROC Research Area: Education & Lifelong Learning