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.

Assistant Professor Kathrine Sullivan and Provost's Postdoctoral Fellow/Assistant Professor Carolina Vélez-Grau have been awarded grants from our Dean’s Upstream Research Seed Fund to support their early research projects that offer high promise of yielding new evidence-based prevention strategies. Dr. Sullivan's study is exploring factors influencing the mental health of military spouses, described as the foundation of resilience processes in their families, to identify avenues for preventing adverse outcomes among service members and their families. Dr. Vélez-Grau is studying interpersonal factors associated with suicidal thoughts among Black and Latinx adolescents in order to inform suicide preventive approaches for this high-risk population. 

Professor and Associate Dean of Research Marya Gwadz and her Heart to Heart 2 study team (pictured here) are using 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. The National Institute of Drug Abuse funded study is the first application of the MOST framework in the field of HIV treatment and prevention. 

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) awarded Assistant Professor Kiara L. Moore a Diversity Research Supplement to Professor Michelle R. Munson’s NIMH-funded randomized controlled trial of a brief intervention aimed at helping young adults develop a positive mental health narrative, feel less discrimination, experience more hope, and ultimately decide to continue a mental health treatment plan that works for them. With the funding and mentorship from Dr. Munson, Dr. Moore is investigating the role that identity and identity development play in minority young adults’ decision to maintain their mental health treatment.

A team of NYU Silver researchers led by Professor Deborah Padgett found that bureaucratic barriers rather than personal intransigence lead many street homeless people in New York City to refuse outreach workers’ offers of shelter. The qualitative study was based on interviews with a random sample of homeless men and women living on the streets in Manhattan neighborhoods with high concentrations of street homelessness. According Dr. Padgett, co-lead of the Grand Challenges for Social Work's End Homelessness Challenge, “Our research indicates if people were really being offered permanent housing, they would take it without hesitation. The allure of living on the streets is a myth.”