REU Site: Social Network Analysis for Solving Minority Health Disparities

该项目是根据本科生（REU）网站计划，这是一个NSF范围内的计划，虽然每个董事会管理自己的REU网站竞争的研究经验的支持。该计划支持本科生积极参与研究，努力向他们介绍科学研究，以鼓励他们继续参与国家的科学研究和发展事业。REU项目以有意义的方式让学生参与正在进行的研究项目或专门为此目的设计的研究项目。REU计划是NSF发展多元化，具有国际竞争力和全球参与的科学和工程劳动力的目标的主要贡献者。社会，行为和经济（SBE）科学理事会授予这个REU网站授予内布拉斯加大学？林肯（UNL），以激发参与者的兴趣，社会网络分析（SNA）和行为健康，重点是少数民族的健康差距。参与者通过PI项目接受SNA的广泛方法培训，同时接触一系列研究课题和潜在的科学研究领域。与少数民族健康差异倡议（MHDI）一起，他们加入了一个跨学科研究人员和社区卫生工作者的协作社区，这些研究人员和社区卫生工作者来自内布拉斯加州的州和地方机构，负责解决少数民族健康差异问题。 现有的REU少数民族健康差异的扩展是至关重要的，为学生提供多样化的经验，在夏季和扩大学生的数量感兴趣的少数民族健康研究通过创新的方法，如社会网络分析和文化敏感的范式，如基于社区的启发式研究（CBPR）。研究在8个参与实验室内进行，这些实验室位于两个联合国校园的几个部门。暑期课程包括专业培训，并提供个人职业指导和队列活动。 根据UNL现有的招聘策略？S.罗纳德E. McNair Postbaccalaureate Achievement Program是一项旨在招募来自各种背景、家庭机构、年龄、性别和种族的初级和高级本科生的项目，重点是中西部代表性不足的少数民族和女性学生。鼓励参与者追求行为健康科学的职业生涯，并有机会在内布拉斯加州少数民族健康峰会上向其他REU参与者和更广泛的健康从业者观众展示他们的研究结果，少数民族健康差异倡议共同赞助。自20世纪90年代末以来，对社交网络和健康的共同关注对健康研究和社会科学产生了重大影响。SNA已经成为社会学家的一个重要分析透镜，在过去的二十年里推动了关系社会学的快速发展。它还成为一套通用工具和方法，贯穿一系列科学。毫不夸张地说，从事网络研究的研究人员可以自由地选择从计算机安全、病毒学、灵长类动物学和万维网研究等遥远领域发展起来的技术和措施。社会科学和社会网络分析在这样一个跨学科的领域有很大的贡献。SNA是最古老和最严格的网络分析方法之一，具有丰富的经验基础。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研究人员传统上试图从人类的实际互动中提取抽象。这种方法对公共卫生和相关领域的影响潜力已经很明显。现在需要的是更少的借贷，更多的研究人员在新的交叉领域接受培训。在这个项目中，REU参与者学习网络SNA的基本方法，然后在UNL和内布拉斯加大学医学中心（UNMC）的一系列赞助NIH和NSF资助的研究项目中使用这些技能，这些项目专注于少数民族健康和健康差异。 网络培训在为期2周的密集网络科学实习中进行，然后参加为期8周的MHDI附属研究项目。这些项目的共同重点是与少数群体健康和扩大参与少数群体健康有关的基本问题，目前由一系列联邦和州来源供资。该项目由EPSCoR计划共同资助。

This project is supported under the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Sites program, which is an NSF-wide program although each Directorate administers its own REU Site competition. This program supports active research participation by undergraduate students in an effort to introduce them to scientific research so as to encourage their continued engagement in the nation's scientific research and development enterprise. REU projects involve students in meaningful ways in ongoing research programs or in research projects designed especially for the purpose. The REU program is a major contributor to the NSF's goal of developing a diverse, internationally competitive, and globally-engaged science and engineering workforce. The Social, Behavioral and Economic (SBE) sciences Directorate awarded this REU Site grant to the University of Nebraska ? Lincoln (UNL) in order to stimulate participant 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 Minority Health Disparities Initiative (MHDI), they join a collaborative community of transdisciplinary researchers and community health workers from state and local agencies tackling minority health disparities in Nebraska. The expansion of 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). Research occurs within 8 participating laboratories that are housed in several departments across two UN campuses. The summer program includes training in professionalism and provide 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 junior- and senior-level undergraduates from a wide-range of backgrounds, home institutions, ages, gender, and ethnicity, with emphasis on under-represented minority and female students in the Midwest. Participants are encouraged to pursue careers in behavioral health sciences and have opportunities to present the results of their research to both other REU participants and to a wider audience of health practitioners at the annual Nebraska Minority Health Summit, co-sponsored by the Minority Health Disparities Initiative.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 at UNL and the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) 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 an 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. The project is co-funded by the EPSCoR program.