Research

UWPRC faculty and staff conduct and support prevention research across the UW-Madison campus and engage with our community partners across Wisconsin. The current UWPRC research projects are:

Addressing Postpartum Depression in Wisconsin Home Visiting Programs
This project is the Core Research Project for the UWPRC and uses a novel community-based approach to reduce the risks associated with maternal depression. To address the critical gap in access to evidence-based, trauma-informed depression treatment, Dr. Roseanne Clark has developed and pilot tested the incorporation of the Mother-Infant Therapy Group (M-ITG) into federally-funded home visiting programs within urban, rural and Tribal communities in Wisconsin. The Core Research Project is led by Co-PIs Dr. Roseanne Clark and Dr. Jane Mahoney. Working closely with families and UWPRC stakeholders, the project Co-PIs will adapt M-ITG for widespread implementation within home visiting programs. By the end of this project, M-ITG will have been translated for scalable implementation so that it may be readily adopted across the country, reach a high percentage of women experiencing depression in the postpartum period, and be effective and sustainable. Learn more about “Addressing Postpartum Depression in Wisconsin Home Visiting Programs” here.

Building a Public Health Reserve with Community Health Workers
The goal of this project is to design and pilot test a sophisticated, culturally-appropriate strategy to support the rapid scale-up of COVID-19 testing, contact tracing, and ultimately vaccination. This will be accomplished with the already existing infrastructure of community-based programs supporting families with young children who face higher rates of poverty. Many of these programs use a variety of community health worker (CHW) models including home visitors, promotoras, and doulas. At the end of this project we expect to have a tested strategy that can be scaled up across Wisconsin, adapted for other populations, and inform public health strategies nationally.
Learn more about “Building a Public Health Reserve with Community Health Workers” here.