Pioneering Research

NYU Silver faculty and students conduct an extraordinary range of innovative, high-impact research, with a focus on proactive services and preventive interventions that transform lives. Current faculty projects funded by the National Institutes of Health include studies that are seeking to optimize an intervention for vulnerable populations living with HIV; investigating the role that ethnic identity plays in marginalized young adults’ mental health service use, identifying modifiable determinants of child neglect, and testing a novel intervention to keep Black adolescents engaged in depression treatment. These are just a few of the ways NYU Silver is harnessing science for public impact.

With a grant from our Constance and Martin Silver Center on Data Science and Social Equity, Drs. Nicholas Lanzieri and Anne Dempsey are partnering with colleagues from NYU Tandon School of Engineering and NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development to develop and test an AI-powered, virtual reality simulation template that is designed specifically to enable students to gain and apply social work skills.

Professor and Associate Dean of Research Marya Gwadz and her Heart to Heart 2 study team (pictured here) used the multiphase optimization strategy (MOST) framework, developed by Co-Principal Investigator Dr. Linda M. Collins, to design an optimized intervention to foster engagement along the HIV care continuum for Black and Latinx people living with HIV who are neither taking antiretroviral therapy nor well engaged in HIV primary care. Their National Institute of Drug Abuse funded study was the first application of the MOST framework in the field of HIV treatment and prevention. 

Racial and ethnic minority young adults in the U.S. with serious mental illness (SMI) face increased risk of ending their treatment prematurely. With a four-year, nearly $740,000 grant from the National Institute of Mental Health, Assistant Professor Kiara Moore is partnering with minoritized young adults with SMI to adapt and test a mental health engagement intervention to address this disparity.

School-age children in China’s remote and poor areas often experience malnutrition and stunted growth. Clinical Associate Professor Minchao Jin studied the effectiveness of a nonprofit initiative that gave children in underdeveloped Chinese villages a hardboiled egg each school day. Findings, which included significant increases in the children’s height, weight and body mass, helped the ongoing One Egg Program gain wider support.