REU Site: Social Network Analysis for Solving Minority Health Disparities

该项目由SBE理事会的本科生研究经验(REU)站点计划资助。它兼具科学和社会效益，集研究和教育于一体。这个网站激发了本科生对社会网络分析(SNA)和行为健康的兴趣，重点关注少数族裔的健康差异。参与者通过PI项目在国民账户体系中接受广泛的方法培训，同时接触到一系列研究主题和潜在的科学研究领域。与社区卫生研究、评估和分析实验室(REACH)和少数民族健康差距倡议(MHDI)一起，他们加入了一个由跨学科研究人员组成的社区，以解决内布拉斯加州的少数民族健康差距问题。通过社会网络分析等创新方法和基于社区的参与性研究(CBPR)等文化敏感范式，将现有的REU扩大到少数群体健康差距，对于在暑期为学生提供多样化的体验和扩大对少数群体健康研究感兴趣的学生数量至关重要。暑期项目包括专业精神培训，并提供个人职业指导和队列活动。该项目以UNL罗纳德·E·麦克奈尔学士后成就项目采用的现有招聘策略为基础，招募来自不同背景、家庭机构、年龄、性别和种族的本科生，重点是中西部代表性不足的少数族裔学生。鼓励参与者追求社会和行为健康科学的职业，并有机会在研究生院主办的一年一度的夏季研究研讨会上向其他REU参与者和更广泛的教职员工展示他们的研究结果。自20世纪90年代末以来，对社会网络和健康的综合关注对健康研究和社会科学都产生了重大影响。SNA已经成为社会学家的关键分析视角，在过去的二十年里推动了关系社会学的快速发展。它还作为一套贯穿一系列科学的通用工具和方法出现。毫不夸张地说，从事网络工作的研究人员可以在计算机安全、病毒学、灵长类动物学和万维网研究等领域开发的技术和措施中自由选择。在这样一个跨学科领域，社会科学和社会网络分析可以做出很大贡献。SNA是最古老和最严谨的网络分析方法之一，也是一种具有丰富经验基础的方法。虽然物理学家将人类网络建模为更基本的物理材料的隐喻，但SNA的研究人员传统上试图从人类的实际交互中提取它们的抽象概念。这种方法影响公共卫生和相关领域的潜力已经很明显。现在需要的是更少的借款，更多的研究人员在新的交织领域接受培训。在这项计划中，REU参与者学习建立SNA网络的基本方法，然后将这些技能应用于一系列由NIH和NSF资助的关注少数群体健康和健康差距的研究项目。网络培训在为期两周的密集网络科学实践中进行，然后参加REACH/MHDI附属的研究项目，为期8周。这些项目通过集体关注与少数群体健康相关的基本问题和扩大对少数群体健康的参与而团结在一起，目前由一系列联邦和州来源资助。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project is funded from the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Sites program in the SBE Directorate. It has both scientific and societal benefits, and integrates research and education. This site stimulates undergraduate students' interest in social network analysis (SNA) and behavioral health with a focus on minority health disparities. Participants undergo an extensive methodological training in SNA by the project PI while gaining exposure to a range of research topics and potential science research fields. In conjunction with the Research, Evaluation, and Analysis for Community Health (REACH) Lab and the Minority Health Disparities Initiative (MHDI), they join a collaborative community of transdisciplinary researchers tackling minority health disparities in Nebraska. The expansion the existing REU to Minority Health Disparities is critical for providing students diverse experiences during the summer and expanding the number of students interested in minority health research through innovative methods like social network analysis and culturally sensitive paradigms, such as Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR). The summer program includes training in professionalism and provides individual career mentoring and cohort activities. Building off of existing recruitment strategies employed by UNL's Ronald E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program, the project recruits undergraduates from a wide-range of backgrounds, home institutions, ages, genders, and ethnicities, with emphasis on under-represented minority students in the Midwest. Participants are encouraged to pursue careers in social and behavioral health sciences and have opportunities to present the results of their research to both other REU participants and to a wider audience of faculty and staff at the annual Summer Research Symposium that is hosted by Graduate Studies.Since the late 1990s, a combined focus on social networks and health has had a significant impact on both health research and social science. SNA has emerged as a key analytical lens for sociologists, pushing relational sociology forward at a rapid pace in the last two decades. It has also emerged as a set of general purpose tools and approaches which cross-cut a range of sciences. Without exaggeration, researchers working on networks choose freely among techniques and measures developed from fields as distant as computer security, virology, primatology, and studies of the world-wide-web. Social science and social network analysis have much to contribute in such a transdiciplinary realm. SNA is among the oldest and most rigorous approaches to network analysis, and one with a rich empirical base. While physicists model human networks as metaphors of more basic physical material, SNA researchers have traditionally sought to draw their abstractions from the actual interaction of human beings. The potential of this approach to influence public health and related fields is already apparent. What is needed now is less borrowing, and more researchers trained across newly interwoven fields. In this program, REU participants learn basic approaches to network SNA and then employ these skills in a range of sponsoring NIH- and NSF-funded research projects that focus on minority health and health disparities. Network training takes place in a 2-week intensive network science practicum, followed by 8 weeks of participation in a REACH/MHDI-affiliated research project. These projects are united by a collective focus on fundamental questions related both to minority health and to broadening participation in minority health, and are currently funded by a range of federal and state sources.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.