Congratulations to Lori Zoellner and Shannon Dorsey, who were among the winners of the University of Washington Population Health Initiative pilot research grants.
The Psychology Department is proud to announce that our very own Lori Zoellner and Shannon Dorsey are collaborators on two of five interdisciplinary teams that were awarded inaugural pilot research grants from the UW Population Health Initiative. Awardees were selected from a pool of 60 applications and represent “interdisciplinary collaborations among investigators for projects that address critical components of the grand challenges the UW seeks to address in population health”.
Both Zoellner (PI) and Dorsey, with their collaborators at the Somali Reconciliation Institute (Duniya Lang, Founder and Director) and in Psychiatry and Near Eastern Languages & Civilization, worked on the team awarded a $50,000 grant for “Islamic Trauma Healing: Somalia Feasibility Study”. This program is a lay-led trauma-focused program that incorporates principles from empirically-supported interventions and the Islamic faith and “has the potential to provide a low-cost, self-sustaining model of a faith-based intervention that can address the psychological wounds of trauma”.
Shannon Dorsey, together with colleagues in Psychiatry, Social Work, and Computer Science and Engineering, was awarded a $50,000 grant for “Behavioral Health Workforce Development” (Pat Arean, PI). The project aims to disseminate Evidence-Based Psychosocial Interventions (EBPI), the preferred treatment for mental health problems, particularly in underserved communities, by finding mechanisms to effectively and efficiently train lay counselors using an innovative, technology-based educational tool developed at UW.
The Psychology Department is proud to be home to innovative, interdisciplinary projects like these that promote healthy communities around the world. Learn more about the awardees here . Congratulations, Lori and Shannon!