May 17, 2013  || Vol. 5, Issue 19
SWRnet provides a weekly update about new research funding opportunities, calls for papers and proposals, conferences and trainings, new data and research, and news for the social work research community. 

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Funding OpportunitiesFunding   
Smart and Connected Health
Deadline: October 10, 2013 (varies)
The goal of the Smart and Connected Health (SCH) Program is to accelerate the development and use of innovative approaches that would support the much needed transformation of healthcare from reactive and hospital-centered to preventive, proactive, evidence-based, person-centered and focused on well-being rather than disease. Approaches that partner technology-based solutions with biobehavioral health research are supported by multiple agencies of the federal government including the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The purpose of this program is to develop next generation health care solutions and encourage existing and new research communities to focus on breakthrough ideas in a variety of areas of value to health, such as sensor technology, networking, information and machine learning technology, decision support systems, modeling of behavioral and cognitive processes, as well as system and process modeling. Effective solutions must satisfy a multitude of constraints arising from clinical/medical needs, social interactions, cognitive limitations, barriers to behavioral change, heterogeneity of data, semantic mismatch and limitations of current cyberphysical systems. Such solutions demand multidisciplinary teams ready to address technical, behavioral and clinical issues ranging from fundamental science to clinical practice. Click here for more information. 

 

Child Care Administrative Data Analysis Grants
Deadline: June 24, 2013
The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) plans to solicit applications for Child Care Administrative Data Analysis Grants. These cooperative agreements would fund research and evaluation activities that primarily involve the analysis of child care administrative data. Projects would be led by CCDF Lead Agencies in states/territories/tribes and conducted in partnership with researchers. Successful applicants will pursue research questions of national and state relevance and develop their methodology and research questions in partnership with local and state child care researchers and other stakeholders. Successful project proposals must involve the analysis of child care administrative data (e.g., ACF 801 data, ACF 700 data, licensing data, data collected as part of administering a subsidy program or quality improvement initiative). Projects may involve linking administrative data to other existing data sources (e.g., CCDF Policies Database, state survey data, data from other early care and education programs). Funds from this grant may not be used for data collection. Proposals for collaborative projects exploring common questions across states would be permitted and encouraged. Results from this research are expected to add to our knowledge about the efficacy of child care subsidy policies and quality improvement initiatives in supporting employment and self-sufficiency outcomes for parents, increasing access by low-income families to high quality programs, and promoting positive learning and school readiness outcomes for children. Projects are also expected to inform the field at large regarding administrative data analysis. As such, grantees will be expected to participate in a network of child care administrative data analysis grantees, meeting annually and communicating regularly to share lessons learned, identify opportunities for collaborative analyses, and develop collective expertise and resources to be shared with the field at large. Click here for more information. 
 
FY 2013 Continuation of the Federal Justice Statistics Program
Deadline: June 24, 2013
The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) is the statistics agency of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and a component of the Office of Justice Programs (OJP). BJS is announcing a public solicitation for the continuation of the Federal Justice Statistics Program (FJSP) through a Cooperative Agreement. The FJSP is managed by BJS and serves as the national clearinghouse of federal case processing data. Under this program, data provided by six federal justice agencies are standardized, maintained, analyzed, and archived (currently under Award #2010-BJ-CX-K079).1 The FJSP produces annual, cross-sectional data files (Standard Analysis Files, or SAFs) which represent the stages from arrest and prosecution through pretrial release, adjudication, sentencing, appeals, and corrections. BJS has used these files to report on defendants processed at a specific stage at a point in time. In the late 1990s, the FJSP developed a methodology to link person-case records to improve statistical reporting. Recognizing the greater analytical rigor that linked or "longitudinal" data provides in addressing policy questions, the FJSP created the Dyad Link File System to enable analysis of linked cohorts. The clearinghouse currently contains annual cross-sectional data files and Dyad Link Files from 1994 to 2010. Click here for more information. 

 

Research Connections
Deadline: June 24, 2013
The Administration for Children and Families (ACF) plans to award a cooperative agreement to operate Research Connections. Research Connections is a web-based, interactive database of research documents and public use data sets for conducting secondary analyses on topics related to early care and education. Research Connections houses an increasingly comprehensive collection of research reports, syntheses, and other critical information related to child care and early education, and in particular, children in low-income families; provides researchers access to data from major child care, Head Start, and early education research and evaluation studies; provides technical assistance to researchers and policy makers; provides collaboration and outreach that can strengthen dissemination and use of research by both the research and the policy maker communities, and provides support to the Child Care Policy Research Consortium. The grantee will both sustain and build upon current Research Connections functions. Click here for more information. 
CallsCalls 

Call for Papers

Religion, Immigration, Health, & Human Rights: Challenges and the Way Forward
Deadline: May 30, 2013
As immigrants migrate to industrialized worlds, they are confronted by numerous challenges. African, Middle Eastern and Asian immigrants are noted to particularly face challenges related to domestic violence, human trafficking, amongst a host of social issues. Some have turned to religion for recourse. What policy issues do they confront? What cultural, political and religious factors are involved? Conveners would like to invite scholars, researchers, academics, activists, students and leaders from around the world to gather for an informative discussion of these important issues. This Interdisciplinary International Conference (IIC) seeks to highlight various issues that immigrants face in industrialized countries. Organized and hosted by the Religious Studies Program and affiliate programs at East Carolina University, the focus of this Interdisciplinary International Conference (IIC) is to draw attention to the role of the humanities and social sciences in health care and general development. Papers are invited from experienced scholars and researchers as well as graduate students and community leaders. The conference will be held on September 27 - 29, 2013, at East Carolina University, Greenville NC, 27858. The focus of the conference is to highlight how humanities and social science intersect in matters of immigration, health care and general development. Click here for more information.

 

Call for Papers
Family Relations
Deadline: June 1, 2013
Interdisciplinary Approaches to Strengthening Family and Individual Resilience: Conceptual, Empirical, and Practical Innovations 

The interdisciplinary field of Family Studies has historically focused on "resilience" or strengthening individuals and families thereby enabling them to thrive, rather than just survive. Interest and commitment to resilience is renewing in the wake of the "great recession" and other forces that impose substantial demands on individuals and families. The goal of this special issue is to advance conceptually rich and practically useful scientific inquiry of resilience, both at the level of the family (i.e., family resilience) and at the level of the individual developing within the family context. Click here for more information.  

 

Call for Papers

Asia-Pacific Journal of Social Work & Development
Deadline: July 31, 2013
"Recovery-Oriented Practices in Mental Health - Experiences in Asia & Oceania"
Mental health services in Asia and Oceania are often characterized by a lack of adequate resources and an adherence to traditional medical models. Recovery-oriented practices widely used in North America, Europe and Australia are slowly being adopted in this region; however to be most effective, they will need to be consolidated and adapted to the appropriate cultural contexts. This special issue of Asia-Pacific Journal of Social Work & Development will present the latest in recovery-oriented research, and discuss its relevancy, in Asia and Oceania. Read the full call for papers here. 

 

Call for Papers
Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research
Deadline: September 1, 2013
Reports on Systematic Reviews of Empirical Reseach Special Issue
The Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research announces a special issue dedicated to enhancing the dissemination of scholarly knowledge by issuing a call for papers exploring the methodologies and examining the results of systematic reviews such as those published in the Cochrane Collaboration or Campbell Collaboration Library of Systematic Reviews. Submissions should summarize key findings and discuss applications to social work and public policy. As a part of the same special issue, the journal is seeking papers that will contribute to ongoing scholarly debate regarding the development and use of scientific methods for reviewing and synthesizing research on social and health problems, programs, and policies. For this special issue, we are seeking full-length articles and brief reports on systematic reviews of observation and intervention studies as well as papers on related methodological issues. Interdisciplinary-authored papers are welcome. Click here for more information.  

Conferences & Trainingsconf
Summer Institutes in Statistics

June 3-21, 2013
Lawrence, KS

(corrected link)

The 2013 Kansas University Summer Stats Camp will run from June 3 to 21, 2013, in Lawrence, KS. We are featuring several of our very well regarded courses, Structural Equation Modeling, Longitudinal Analysis, Hierarchical Modeling, and Item Response Theory, along with several new offerings in the use of R and the analysis of missing data. Registration ends soon! Click here for more information.

 

Patient-Centered Medical Home Research Methods Series Now Available
The Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH) Research Methods Series, funded by the Agency for Healthcare and Research Quality (AHRQ), is designed to expand awareness of methods to evaluate and refine PCMH models and other health care interventions. These novel and underused methods can be used by evaluators and implementers to better assess and refine PCMH models and to meet the evidence needs of PCMH stakeholders more effectively. Each of the briefs describes a PCMH method, outlines its advantages and limitations, and provides resources for researchers to learn more about the method. This series was developed with input from nationally recognized leaders in research methods and PCMH models. Click here to access the PCMH Research Methods Series.
Research Publications & Data Resourcesdata 
AHRQ's USHIK 

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)'s USHIK (the United States Healthcare Information Knowledgebase) website is now up-to-date with complete, official 2014 CQM and value set data-- all at one site. Visit the USHIK Meaningful Use Portal Page to access the updated Meaningful Use information and functionality. Meaningful Use Resources: USHIK's Meaningful Use portal acts as a consolidated resource for retrieving data on Clinical Quality Measures (CQM's) and Value Sets as well as information on the Meaningful Use Core and Menu Objectives. For Stage 2, export capabilities, Value Set retrieval, and CQM comparison tools have been enhanced to make the data more accessible and flexible to work with. Click here for more information.

 

Preserving and Enhancing Responsible Conduct of Research Involving Children
Social Policy Report Brief
For the first time in 20 years, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is considering changes to federal regulations governing protections for people who participate in research. The proposed changes to the policy for the Protection of Human Subjects, known as the Common Rule, represent a watershed moment. By providing scientists and institutional review boards (IRBs)-independent ethics committees that review, approve, and monitor studies involving human subjects-updated guidance, a revised Common Rule will provide a framework for protecting human subjects for decades to come. Click here to read the policy brief. 

 
ICPSR New Data
The Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) provides leadership and training in data access, curation, and methods of analysis for a diverse and expanding social science research community. Below is a list of new data collection additions to the ICPSR data archive:  
-21880 Supplemental Mental Health Treatment for Batterer Program Participants in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 2004-2007
-31325 Annual Parole Survey, 2000
-31326 Annual Parole Survey, 2001
-31327 Annual Parole Survey, 2002
-31328 Annual Parole Survey, 2003
-34437 Gates Millennium Scholars Program (GMS) Cohort 2, 2001-2006
-34438 Gates Millennium Scholars Program (GMS) Cohort 3, 2002-2007
-34551 Public Health Law Research Distracted Driving Laws Dataset, 2000-2011
-34578 Eurobarometer 77.2: Economic and Financial Crisis, Helplines for Social Services, Railway Competition, Food Production and Quality, and Cyber Security, March 2012
-34591 CBS News/60 Minutes/Vanity Fair National Poll, January #3, 2012
-34614 CBS News/New York Times National Callback Poll, May #1, 2012
Click here for more information. 
News & Noticesnews  
"There's something happening here, What it is ain't exactly clear"
(From COSSA)
Reflecting Steven Stills' great song, the budget process continues to be a clear as mud! For what it's worth, according to the Budget and Control Act of 1974, the President is supposed to reveal his spending plan for the following fiscal year on the first Monday in February. Although previous presidents have ignored this deadline, particularly at the start of a term, President Obama waited until April 10 to release his proposals for FY 2014. Part of the delay could be attributed to the fact that the FY 2013 appropriations process did not finish until the end of March 2013, six months into the fiscal year. In the meantime, both the House and Senate budget committees passed FY 2014 budget resolutions in mid-March. The problem is that the House set overall discretionary spending at $967 billion and the Senate at $1.053 trillion. Attempts to reconcile this difference have not yielded any results so far. While all this has been going on, the agencies are still reeling from the imposition of the across-the-board cuts known as sequestration, as well as some policy riders attached to the final FY 2013 appropriations bill. The President's proposed FY 2014 budget requests $3.778 trillion in spending, which includes the mandatory programs such as Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, and others not subject to the annual appropriations process, interest on the very large national debt, and discretionary spending. Under the President's proposal non-defense discretionary spending would be at its lowest level as a percent of GDP since the Eisenhower era in the 1950s. The Administration expects the annual deficit to decline significantly to 4.4 percent of GDP. Early indications from the Treasury Department suggest that the FY 2013 deficit may also see a reduction due to increased revenues from the tax increase enacted at the end of 2012. The President also declared that the sequester scheduled for FY 2014 would not occur under his proposed budget. At the same time, over the past year and now into 2013, threats to programs important to the social, behavioral and economic sciences (SBE) community have proliferated. Click here to read more.
About SWRnet
Formerly known as the IASWR Listserv, SWRnet (Social Work Research Network) was launched in October 2009 to continue serving the social work research community by providing regular updates on funding opportunities, calls for papers, conference deadlines and newly published research.

 

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Doctoral Candidate, Interdisciplinary Sociology & Social Welfare Policy
Associate Professor

Boston University School of Social Work