Victim Researcher Profile

BIO

I am member of and on the Board of Directors for the Long Island Applied Research Center (LI-ARC; https://liarc.org). LI-ARC is an interdisciplinary network of faculty and students conducting research within and for nonprofit and public agencies. I am currently working on projects with two victim and trauma related agencies: the Safe Center, LI and the Empowerment Collaborative of Long Island (ECLI). The Safe Center collaborated with a group of researchers from Dominican College and Long Island University to better understand the relationship between trauma, treatment, and health. The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study conducted by the CDC has shown that adverse childhood experiences can lead to a host of negative health outcomes - from obesity, to diabetes, to substance abuse. The Safe Center staff wanted to understand how their services for trauma survivors might alleviate some of these negative outcomes. Are their services associated with client health? Are their trends in which services are most effective? Are their certain populations that improve more from treatment? More broadly, we want to enhance professional service provides (e.g., social workers, mental health counselors, psychologists, etc.), organizational leaders, and policy-makers' understanding of interventions that strive to improve health outcomes for trauma victims. The Empowerment Collaborative of Long Island is a similar human service agency dedicated to reducing the incidence and impact of abuse. I have assisted their agency revise intakes forms, set up a database, and develop a research agenda for a variety of topics including, but not limited to, sex trafficking, mental health, substance abuse, domestic violence, and the relationship between strain and prison visitation. Currently, I am a research consultant on a Department of Justice grant which aims to develop a multidisciplinary human trafficking task force to create and implement victim-centered, collaborative, and sustainable approaches to identifying victims of all types of human trafficking within Suffolk County, New York, and to create strategies and protocols to provide comprehensive services that recognize the individual needs of trafficking victims, as well as to facilitate proactive victim-centered investigations and prosecutions of sex and labor trafficking offenses at the local, state, tribal, and federal levels.

VICTIMIZATION FOCUS

Child Abuse and Sexual Abuse, Child Trafficking and Exploitation, Domestic and Family Violence, Physical Assault (other than domestic violence or elder abuse), Sexual Abuse or Violence (other than campus sexual assault), Stalking, Trafficking in Persons

SPECIAL POPULATIONS

Child victims, Formerly incarcerated victims

RESEARCH EXPERTISE

Action research, Community-based participatory research, Data collection, Descriptive studies, Needs assessment, Program evaluation, Qualitative studies, Quantitative studies, Quasi-experimental studies

VICTIM RESEARCH EXPERIENCE

Action research, Community-based participatory research, Data collection, Descriptive studies, Needs assessment, Program evaluation, Qualitative studies, Quantitative studies, Quasi-experimental studies