Lisa Werkmeister Rozas, PhD, Associate Professor, and Caitlin Elsaesser, PhD, Assistant Professor, were each recently awarded prestigious InCHIP Seed Grant Awards from the UConn Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy.

Dr. Werkmeister Rozas received a $15,000 faculty seed grant for her study “Innovative Diabetes Prevention & Disease Self-Management Intervention for Latino Families.” This highly scored application uses a Community Based Participatory Research approach and works through neighborhood churches to develop innovative interventions to address Type II Diabetes, a highly prevalent problem in inner city, minority populations.  According to the UConn SSW Associate Dean for Research, Michael Fendrich, “this proposal is highly innovative and has the potential to move the growing area of health social work forward in a crucial direction. This project involves impressive collaborations with Hartford community partners and with the UConn School of Nursing.” Dr. Werkmeister Rozas is an Associate Professor and a member of the Puerto Rican and Latin@ Studies Project in the School of Social Work.

Dr. Elsaesser received a Junior Faculty Summer Stipend, which carries $2500 of support for building grant funded research. Funding will support secondary analysis of data that will address the linkage between violence victimization exposure and health in adolescents. This project, titled “Exposure to Multiple Forms of Victimization and Health Outcomes: An Integrative Approach,” builds on Dr. Elsaesser’s expertise and experience in complex multivariate modeling and her substantive focus on urban violence. Dr. Elsaesser is completing her first year as an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work.