Ariel Rainey helped four mothers bury their children this summer; each child the victim of gun violence, each mother a victim of immense trauma.
“The women we work with are very vulnerable and are often forgotten about when it comes to policy work and mental health,” says Rainey, founder and CEO of Hustle Mommies, a nonprofit organization dedicated to mothers who have limited access to personal and professional development opportunities. “These moms are living in trauma-filled communities, and the stress they inherit often affects their ability to provide their families with healthy homes.”
Hustle Mommies was recently awarded one of three Research Pilot seed grants from Northwestern’s Alliance for Research in Chicagoland Communities (ARCC). The project “Examining the Emotional Wellness of Chicago's Inner-city Mom,” will occur in collaboration with NUCATS member Inger Burnett-Zeigler, PhD, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.
“I am so excited to be working with Dr. Burnett-Zeigler on this project as we are both passionate about the mental and emotional wellness of Black women,” says Rainey, who earned a master’s degree in public policy and administration from Northwestern. “There are currently no mental health clinics or programs centered on urban moms and their families, where issues such as drug addiction, postpartum depression, PTSD, or gun violence are addressed. This research will help us understand the various micro-theories that affect the moms we serve.”
ARCC Research Seed Grants are designed to advance the work of existing community-academic partnerships to collect and analyze data and conduct additional research activities. The 2020 awardees also included:
“We are thrilled and honored to continue to receive support from ARCC,” says James, GIPPCC executive director. “Throughout this time of uncertainty and ever-changing landscape, we have been very grateful for the collaboration and networking that this grant supported through the work of Missing Pieces, a coalition of multi-disciplinary organizations and individuals dedicated to providing support following the death of child. Our partner organizations have been able to share resources, network and problem solve as we learn together how to navigate the impact of COVID and continue to support grieving families.”
The ARCC Seed Grant program has been revised this year to have a stronger focus on racial equity and addressing root causes of inequities.
GIPPCC is a coalition of hospital systems, hospices, families, and supporting organizations dedicated to optimizing the quality of life for every child in Illinois living with chronic, complex, and/or life-threatening illness, their families, and the teams that care for them.
“This community-academic partnership has guided strategic vision, instructed the group on how to use data to inform project design and evaluation, and given us access to organizations across the spectrum of care,” says James.
Established in 2008, the Alliance for Research in Chicagoland Communities supports authentic community-academic research partnerships between Chicagoland communities and Northwestern University to improve the health and equity within those communities. ARCC advocates for a collaborative approach to research that honors, is driven by, and shares power with communities, as local, cultural, and lived experience experts. The program is a collaborative effort supported by the Northwestern University Clinical & Translational Sciences (NUCATS) Institute and Northwestern’s Institute for Public Health & Medicine. The seed grant program is a partnership between ARCC, NUCATS, and Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
ARCC also recently awarded eight Partnership Development Seed Grants, which support newly developing partnerships in relationship building, creation of partnership structures, exploration of shared areas of interest, and research capacity development.
“I am extremely excited to explore potential research collaborations with Northwestern,” says Mary Roberson, founder and executive director of the Northern Illinois Recovery Community Organization, a nonprofit dedicated to promoting addiction recovery principles for individuals and families. “There is such a limited perspective on what recovery means across multiple spectrums of society, and my hope is that this research collaboration can increase our knowledge through data.”
This year’s Partnership Development Seed Grants were awarded to:
“These types of awards are amazingly helpful, and we are excited to explore the many opportunities involving research that will help us better understand how to support the communities we work with,” says Townsend, who co-founded Sexpectations in 2018 to bridge the gaps in sexual education that youth receive in school. “I am personally very grateful to have received this award. It is certainly pushing Sexpectations in the right direction to learn, grow, and share what we know with our academic partners.”
During 13 rounds of seed grant funding, ARCC has distributed more than $1 million to more than 80 community-academic partnerships. These funded partnerships have led to increased community and academic capacity for engagement and research, new health discoveries and policy changes, more than $18 million in subsequent grant funding, and more than 40 peer-reviewed publications. The Request for Applications for ARCC 2021 Seed Grants can be viewed here.
Written by Roger Anderson
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