Research center
Since our inception, research has been at the core of We Got Us. Below, you can find our current research projects alongside research articles published in collaboration with our organization. As we continue to evolve, we are committed to conducting timely and accurate research to better understand and address the challenges Black Bostonians face in their communities. For more information about our research and methodology or to get involved, please contact our Director of Research below.
Current Research Projects
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Current Research Projects •
Youth for Youth Text Message Survey
Partners: BMC CEAL
About:
Effective public health initiatives cannot be created without the input from the communities that the initiatives aim to support. While there are clear disparities in the health outcomes between youth of color and their white counterparts, there is a lack of research that engages youth of color to better understand their perspectives on relevant health issues. The Youth for Youth Survey aims to reduce this void by engaging with youth of color in the Boston area to better understand their concerns and thoughts about health in order to have the data needed to create effective policies and interventions.
How it Works:
Youth of color (aged 14-24) who live in the Boston Area can sign up to join our survey. Once a week for 5 weeks, participants will be sent a set of short questions to answer over text. Topics include COVID-19, mental health, relationship with the healthcare system, and more! Participants receive money for the completion of every week’s survey and can earn up to $15 for their participation.
How to get involved:
If you would be interested in participating in the survey, join via the button below.
Empowerment session Focus Group
Partners: MGH CARE Team
About:
At We Got Us, we believe that in order to make our programming effective, we must continually listen to feedback from the community and make adjustments to fit people’s preferences and concerns. In order to make our Empowerment Sessions most impactful, we launched a series of focus groups to understand how our Empowerment Sessions impacted people’s perception of COVID-19 and the vaccines.
How it Works:
In the focus groups, former Empowerment Session participants will respond to question prompts from a host, who is guiding the discussion. The focus group is an opportunity for everyone to share their thoughts about the Empowerment Sessions and respond to other ideas that are shared. Focus groups will last for a maximum of 60 minutes and participants will receive $20 gift card as compensation!
How to get involved:
Have you recently participated in one of our Youth Empowerment Sessions? Sign up to join a focus group via the button below.
Community Projects Supported by the Research Team
Telehealth Pilot Program for Unhoused Individuals
Community Project Leader: Housing = Health
Partners: Housing = Health, BMC, Boston Healthcare for the Homeless
The City of Boston has a sizeable community of unhoused individuals, and despite myriad hospital and community-based primary care practices and health care for the homeless program, there are many who still have unmet health needs. Failure to provide Telehealth access to people experiencing homelessness without a residential address is only one of the structural forces driving health inequities for this extremely vulnerable part of our community.
The telehealth pilot program seeks social change for unhoused individuals by providing equitable access to medical care and addressing historically and socially formed structural/institutional medical inequity. There are government programs that currently exist, providing free telehealth-capable smartphones with unlimited mobile data and hardware for video conversation. However, unhoused individuals without a residential address are disqualified from such programs. Given that Telehealth improves care, this pilot program is meant to be a model for connecting unhoused patients to continuous instead of episodic care using telehealth and community support. The program will collect qualitative data through surveys, as well as quantitative data from the electronic health record, which will be used to analyze this community support model of the possibility of permanent telehealth care for the unhoused community keep patients engaged in care instead of just providing access.