In the News
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Ziliak quoted in HuffPost about new stimulus package
UKCPR Director James Ziliak was quoted in a Dec. 17 article in the Huffington Post about the trade off between extended unemployment benefits and stimulus checks, now being considered in a new Congressional relief bill. Read more
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UKCPR affiliates receive inaugural WorkRise grant
A research project led by UKCPR Research Affiliate Bradley Hardy, along with UKCPR Director James Ziliak, and UKCPR Research Affiliate Charles Hokayem is among the inaugural slate of grantees in the WorkRise initiative led by the Urban Institute. Read more.
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Funding opportunity from Tufts and USDA for research on food security measurement
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, in conjunction with Tufts University and the University of Missouri, is sponsoring a funding opportunity in recognition of the 25th anniversary of the Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement. The application deadline is Feb. 19, 2021. The grants program will fund research investigating food security measurement, data, and further research needs. This funding opportunity seeks proposals of up to $50,000 using secondary data or reviews of existing literature and larger projects of up to $100,000 that may include primary data collection and new analysis. Read more.
Mission Statement
The University of Kentucky Center for Poverty Research (UKCPR) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit academic research center established in 2002. Our research informs evidence-based policy on the causes, consequences, and correlates of poverty, inequality, and food insecurity in the United States.
UKCPR is a member of the Collaborative of Poverty Centers sponsored by the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin–Madison with underwriting from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The other member poverty centers are located at Columbia University, Howard University, Stanford University, University of California-Davis, University of California-Irvine, University of Michigan, and University of Washington. The goal of the CPC is to improve the effectiveness of public policies to reduce poverty and inequality and their impacts on the well-being of the American people.
Spotlight
Jennifer Rochussen Havens is an epidemiology professor in the Department of Behavioral Science and holds an appointment at the University of Kentucky Center on Drug and Alcohol Research. She has focused her research on prescription opioid abuse in rural Appalachia, with 10 Kentucky counties ranking in the top 5 percent nationally for HIV and Hepatitis C vulnerability due to proliferation of illicit drug use.
Jennifer has served as principal investigator or co-investigator on nearly 60 sponsored projects since her appointment to UK. Currently, she is principal investigator on three externally funded projects and co-investigator on six others, studying at a range of health issues affecting drug users and public health interventions.
One of her projects focuses on a population of 500 non-injection drug users in Kentucky and employs an analysis of their social networks and individual risk levels. The aim is to understand how networks of these individuals affect risk for infection and better inform intervention strategies to help combat the problem of illicit drug abuse.
Jennifer’s work on this project has led to a variety of peer reviewed publications with her colleagues, in journals such as Addiction, The International Journal on Drug Policy, and the American Journal of Epidemiology.