November 2024 Swetland Seminar || Exploring Social Capital Within Coalitions & Communities: Our Approach, Results, and Lessons from Coalitions Focused on Reducing Opioid Fatalities in Ohio

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Exploring Social Capital Within Coalitions & Communities: Our Approach, Results, and Lessons from Coalitions Focused on Reducing Opioid Fatalities in Ohio

Community coalitions are an effective tool for mobilizing response strategies to address public health issues affecting local communities, such as the opioid crisis. The effectiveness of these coalitions is, however, highly dependent on the social capital of coalition members (i.e., the power and resources embedded within) compared to the social capital of people who are not engaged with the. This balance of social capital within and outside of the coalition has the potential to influence the pace and efficiency of community coalitions as they seek to influence changes for public health benefit. We develop a measurement approach to examine how social capital can be measured within nine counties in Ohio implementing the Communities That Care (CTH) intervention. Our presentation will describe how we used ego-centric network maps to systematically capture perceptions of social capital influencing the pace, efficiency, and equity of coalitions and the broader community context. Next, we will examine data across the nine counties to explore variability in perceptions of social capital accessible to increase adoption of EBPs to reduce opioid overdose fatalities. We will share insights into how results from this process can inform pace, efficiency, and equity within coalitions focused on reducing opioid fatalities locally through implementation of evidence-based interventions.

Presenters:

• Emily Nelson, MPH, PhD
  • Emily Nelson is a data infrastructure Research Associate at Case Western Reserve
    University’s Mary Ann Swetland Center for Environmental Health. She earned a Master
    of Public Health from the University of Pittsburgh and a PhD in Health Policy and
    Management from Kent State University. Emily began her work at the Swetland Center in 2022 as a postdoctoral scholar before becoming staff. Prior to that, she worked in a variety of health-related positions including clinical research compliance, medical practitioner training workshops, community coalition building, and teaching undergraduate classes for public health students. Emily specializes in taking complex sets of data and summarizing them through tables, charts, and other visuals, and in this role, she supports several Swetland Center projects, including the HEALing Communities Study, Nourishing Power, and a Produce Path implementation study.
• Owusua Yamoah, PhD, MA
  • Dr. Owusua Yamoah is a Research Scientist and the Community Engaged Research Lead at the Mary Ann Swetland Center for Environmental Health at Case Western Reserve University. She received a PhD in Spatially Integrated Social Sciences from the University of Toledo, a MA in Urban Studies from Minnesota State University and a BSc in Development Planning from the University of Science and Technology, Ghana. Dr. Yamoah’s work is primarily focused on using community-engaged approaches to leverage the lived experiences of low resource communities to inform policy, system, and environmental changes necessary for reducing health
    disparities. For the past three years, Dr. Yamoah has been supporting the HEALing Communities Study, leveraging her experience in community-engaged and participatory research approaches to support the implementation of evidence-based strategies to reduce opioid fatalities across four states in the United States. Dr. Yamoah is currently the co-investigator for the CDC-funded Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH) program in Cuyahoga County and a co-investigator for the Nourishing Neighborhoods Empowering Communities Study.
• Sara Roberts, MSSW, LISW
  • Sara Roberts is the Senior Program Director at Case Western Reserve University’s Mary Ann Swetland Center for Environmental Health. She received a Bachelor’s of Art in Psychology with Departmental Honors from Kent State University, Master of Science in Social Administration from Case Western Reserve
    University. Sara is currently is a Doctoral Candidate in Social Welfare at the Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences at CWRU and a Licensed Independent Social Worker in the State of Ohio for 10 years. With over 25 years of professional experience, Sara has a vast array of experience in direct practice,
    community engagement and organizing. Her career stated in working with a child welfare involved population, where Sara was part of a team out of University Settlement and develop community supports for families in the Broadway and Slavic Village neighborhoods in Cleveland using the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Family to Family model in partnership with Cuyahoga County Department of Children and Family Services (CCDCFS). She went on to work for CCDCFS for 8.5 years, as a social services worker and supervisor. After receiving her social work license, Sara moved into mental health treatment and provided Early Childhood Mental Health Services at Ohio Guidestone in Cleveland, with
    specific training in evidence based trauma interventions. She worked for Family and Community Services as the Associate Clinical Director where she was instrumental in helping to create and develop treatment programming for system involved families, as well as treatment and housing options for adult substance using populations. Sara has served as the State Director of Clinical Services for The Bair Foundation, where she was the administrator for a 40-person statewide team that offered treatment to high-risk families and children. Sara was the Chief Program Officer and Clinical Director and started Hope Village Recovery Center, an outpatient treatment center that serves substance using adults where she developed the programming, treatment model and assisted the agency in achieving certification through Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services. For the past 5 years, Sara has worked in partnership with The Ohio State University as leadership with the Community Engagement
    Core for the Ohio HEALing Communities Study, a community engaged study using local coalitions related to opioids to reduce overdose deaths in 19 communities across Ohio.

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