About SIG
The Social Intervention Group is a global leader in intervention, prevention, behavioral, and implementation research on communicable and non-communicable diseases.
Since its founding more than 30 years ago, SIG’s evidence-based interventions have been identified as best practices by the Center for Disease Control and UNICEF, and have been disseminated and adapted around the country and around the world.
Mission and Vision
The Social Intervention Group (SIG) develops and implements evidence-based sustainable solutions to emerging health and social issues affecting diverse populations domestically and globally and is training the next generation of scientists from underrepresented affected communities to address these issues.
Our vision is to scale up sustainable effective solutions to emerging health and social issues in low resource underserved communities domestically and globally through state-of-art intervention and implementation science research and to train a cadre of underrepresented researchers from affected communities who can continue advancing our mission.
Partners
The Center for Healing Opioid and Other Substance Use Disorders, led by Directors Nabila El-Bassel, Frances R. Levin, Edward V. Nunes Jr., and Muredach Patrick Reilly, is a crossdisciplinary collaboration focused on directly impacting negative health consequences caused by opioid and other substance use disorders, including drug overdose and overdose deaths, the impaired functioning and lost productivity, co-occurring psychiatric and physical disorders (e.g., PTSD and trauma, HIV, and HCV), and the impacts on family and the community.
A joint project of Columbia School of Social Work, Irving Medical Center’s Department of Psychiatry Division on Substance Use Disorders, and the Irving Institute for Clinical and Translational Research, CHOSEN's leadership team also includes Louisa Gilbert as a co-Director and Tim Hunt and Elwin Wu as Associate Directors.
The Global Health Research Center of Central Asia, led by co-Directors Nabila El-Bassel, Elwin Wu, and Louisa Gilbert, works to advance and scale up evidence-based programs and policies focused on key public health priorities in Kazakhstan and Central Asia. In addition to epidemiological, social, and behavioral studies of infectious and non-infectious diseases, GHRCCA aims to raise new generation of local scholars capable of implementing multidisciplinary studies to solve urgent public health issues.
Training Programs
T32 is a NIDA training program for pre- and post-doctoral scholars on implementation research for criminal justice-involved populations.
T32 provides training for the next generation of pre- and post-doctoral scholars in the prevention, treatment, and care of HIV and drug use among individuals in the criminal legal system with a strong emphasis on individuals involved in alternatives to incarceration and community supervision.
HISTP is an NIMH R25 HIV training program founded in 2007 to train underrepresented scholars from universities across the country on HIV implementation science.
Since 2007, HISTP has strengthened universities, diversified HIV research, and elevated scholars of color across the country. HISTP supports scholars as they use innovative new strategies like hackathons, gamification, and design challenges, to achieve their research goals.
Research Highlights
Throughout 2023, SIG researchers worked to address substance use and opioid overdose, violence against women, HIV, stigma, and reproductive health, as well as health inequities due to race, gender, sexuality, and more. Here are just a few of the highlights:
HEALing Communities Study
The HEALing Communities Study (HCS) is an NIH-funded effort to reduce overdose deaths in New York and three other highly-impacted states. It was built with a multi-agency, multi-disciplinary approach. Community partners include government agencies, non-profits, the medical field, and people with lived experience.
HEALing Communities Study partners in Chautauqua County distribute Narcan at a food bank.
Campaigns around the state have promoted the use of medication to manage opioid use disorder, including this billboard in Yates County.
Safe injection supplies distributed by NY Recovery Alliance in Rochester, NY (Monroe County)
In July, Sullivan County received a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area designation, with support from Senator Chuck Schumer. The program will provide substantial funding for comprehensive programming to help the HEALing Communities Study partners carry out their work.
Can Reimagining the Criminal / Legal System Response Reduce Overdose Deaths?
Nabila El-Bassel and Timothy Hunt examined a new bill in New York requiring prisons and jails to provide access to medications for opioid use disorder, the innovative approach of one county to law enforcement, and the unique ways that HCS has partnered with law enforcement to save lives.
ORCCA and SAMHSA Practice Guides and Menus
The Opioid-Overdose Reduction Continuum of Care Approach (ORCCA) Practice Guide 2023 includes a menu of evidence-based practices for reducing opioid overdose deaths and real-world tips for implementing the evidence-based practices. Ulster County, New York, serves as an example of the efficacy of expanding existing systems and collaboration with a county mental health division and community-based, multiservice organizations, and incorporating peer outreach to provide emergency housing supportive of access into and reentry from treatment for opioid use disorder.
Engaging Community Coalitions to Decrease Opioid Overdose Deaths Practice Guide 2023 was developed in recognition of the need to center community voices throughout efforts to address the opioid overdose crisis recognizing the effectiveness of the collective. The work of the HCS team in Monroe County, New York, is used as an example of how to build an effective coalition that aligns with the community’s priorities, experience, and capacity for opioid overdose prevention, especially to address health disparities.
The HEALing Communities Initiative, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the NIH Helping to End Addiction Long-term (HEAL) Initiative® launched the Opioid Overdose Reduction Continuum of Care Approach (ORCCA): A Guide for Policymakers for Implementing Evidence-Based Strategies that Address Opioid Overdose.
The guide was written as a collaboration between the HEALing Communities Study (HCS) ORCCA expert panel, the HCS Care Continuum Workgroup, the HCS Dissemination workgroup with RTI, and HEAL Connections. Those groups included New York HCS investigators and staffers Nabila El-Bassel, Tim Hunt, James David, Stephanie Marquesano, and Ryan Caldwell.
WINGS
WINGS is an evidence-based screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment service tool, designed to identify intimate partner and gender-based violence among women who use drugs. It was developed by Dr. Louisa Gilbert and her team at SIG in 2008, and has been adapted and implemented around the world, including in New York City, Kyrgyzstan, India, and Ukraine.
Researchers at SIG and beyond continue to expand the scope of WINGS and the way it can be used to address violence against women around the world.
WINGS in Central and Southeast Asia
In collaboration with GHRCCA, and researchers at Center of Scientific and Practical Initiatives, Kazakhstan, and Monash University, Indonesia, WINGS has been adapted to serve marginalized communities, including women who use drugs, women who engage in sex work, women living with HIV, and transgender women. When the project in Indonesia began its work in June 2023, it marked the first time WINGS was evaluated in Southeast Asia, as well as the first time any evidence-based intervention for gender-based violence focused exclusively on transgender women.
Building Social Service Workforce Competencies in Europe and Central Asia
This project, a collaboration between UNICEF and Columbia School of Social Work, works to strengthen interpersonal communication and community engagement to influence and support individual and social change in Europe and Central Asia (ECA) and improve the behavioral and social outcomes of vulnerable individuals, children, families, groups, and communities in ECA, including initially Kazakhstan, Georgia, and Albania. The project has now expanded to nine countries. This is accomplished by expanding the capacity of the social service workforce and competencies utilized in the social services field.
In May, this Europe and Central Asia project and the Uzbekistan project were selected by UNICEF as two of the six practice models for global dissemination. A technical guide from UNICEF SBC, co-authored by Timothy Hunt, includes guidance for developing expertise within government, community service organizations and academia.
In September, Associate Director Tim Hunt spoke at the Social and Behavioral Change Network meeting in Florence. His talk, Strengthening the Social Service Work Force and Allied Professionals’ Competencies to Support Social and Behaviour Change, covered the role of service providers, the limitations they face, and strategies to enhance their competencies.
Training Program Highlights
HISTP
This year, five of SIG’s HISTP fellows attended the 12th annual International AIDS Society Conference (IAS 2023) in Brisbane, Australia, where they presented on their innovative work.
R01 for HISTP Fellow
Dr. Donaldson Conserve, based at George Washington University, was awarded an R01 to implement a status-neutral nurse-led intervention to increase equity in clinical outcomes for male self-testers in Tanzania.
Disseminating Our Work
Throughout 2023, the research and interventions at SIG have been disseminated through peer-reviewed journals, conference presentations, news media, and events.
Peer-reviewed publications
In 2023, SIG faculty and post-docs published more than 20 papers and had their publications cited more than 3,000 times.
Selected Publications
SIG faculty and students were critical to the publication of the following, as well as many other articles:
- Need for Improved Timeliness of Reporting on Drug Overdose Fatalities: The HEALing Communities Study (Public Health Reports)
- Association of gender-based violence with sexual and drug-related HIV risk among female sex workers who use drugs in Kazakhstan (International Journal of STD & AIDS)
- Embedding Big Qual and Team Science Into Qualitative Research: Lessons From a Large-Scale, Cross-Site Research Study (International Journal of Qualitative Methods)
- A Qualitative Study of Health Equity’s Role in Community Coalition Development (Health Education & Behavior)
- Community-level determinants of stakeholder perceptions of community stigma toward people with opioid use disorders, harm reduction services and treatment in the HEALing Communities Study (International Journal of Drug Policy)
- Characteristics of drug-involved black women under community supervision; implications for retention in HIV clinical trials and healthcare (Social Work in Health Care)
Conferences and presentations
In addition to publishing in peer-reviewed journals, SIG faculty, post-docs, students, and affiliates share their work broadly through conferences and presentations. These include academic poster and oral presentations of research studies as well as professional conferences where they can share their work directly with practitioners and government officials.
In 2023, SIG faculty, post-docs, and students made more than 15 presentations at academic conferences, professional meetings, and through other avenues, allowing them to disseminate their work broadly.
ASAP NYS
GLAAD Black Queer Creative Summit
19th European AIDS Conference
At EACS 2023, SIG and GHRCCA staff made 6 presentations, covering promoting sex positivity and health in gay men, increasing the uptake of HIV self-testing and PrEP usage among women in Kazakhstan, and numerous other topics of global relevance.
Conference on the Science of Dissemination and Implementation in Health 2023
At the Conference on the Science of Dissemination and Implementation in Health, multiple presentations from SIG, GHRCCA, and HCS staff highlighted the work of the HEALing Communities study, important work on HIV and anti-retroviral therapy uptake, and more.
Media
In 2023, SIG and the HEALing Communities Study appeared in more than 20 news stories, which shared important developments in HCS counties, provided commentary on research findings, and gave researchers an opportunity to directly address the public.
Selected news articles are featured below:
In April, PBS News Hour produced a 9-minute piece covering the opioid epidemic in Cato, New York, and highlighting the work of Healing Cayuga, the HCS team in Cayuga County.
A Times-Union op-ed by Kitty Gelberg highlighted the timeliness and importance of HEALing Communities Study findings regarding death certificate completion.
The Kingfisher Project
Timothy Hunt appeared twice on WJFF Radio Catskill radio program The Kingfisher Project to discuss the opioid crisis.
Events
HEALing Communities Study Symposia
NIDA HEALing Communities Study Program Director Redonna Chandler, PhD, gave an update on the study's progress and its impact on the expansion of access to evidence-based strategies, the improvement of data availability and timeliness, the reduction of stigma through communications campaigns, and modification of relevant policies to decrease fatal opioid overdoses.
The system dynamics (SD) modeling team of the New York HEALing Communities Study (HCS) and HCS staff from Broome and Chautauqua Counties discussed insights from using SD modeling to inform action planning and data-driven decision making to address opioid morbidity and mortality in their respective communities.
Labor of Love: Experiences of Harm Reduction Workers Using Photovoice
Grounded in a collaboration between members of the Peer Network of New York and doctoral students from the Social Intervention Group, this event featured findings from a photovoice research project that utilized photography and narrative to highlight the needs and assets of peer outreach workers in the South Bronx. Guided by the ‘nothing about us, without us’ ideology, the Peer Workers and students demonstrated how participatory action research can support the harm reduction movement.
Vaccines and Monoclonal Antibodies: New Strategies for Treating OUD
Speakers Marco Pravetoni, Ph.D. and Sandra Comer, Ph.D., presented preliminary preclinical and clinical data, respectively, on the effects of vaccines and monoclonal antibodies as potential treatments for opioid use disorder and overdose. Dana Sacco, M.D. and Edward Nunes, M.D. provided their perspectives and stimulated discussion on the clinical advantages and disadvantage of this approach.
Team News and Accomplishments
Celebrating Pride and building an inclusive workspace: HEALing Communities Study Senior Project Director wrote about how he builds safe spaces in the workplace for his queer colleagues.
International Overdose Awareness Day is annual campaign works to raise awareness of and end overdoses, remember those who die from overdose without stigma, and acknowledge the grief of their loved ones. To mark the day in 2023, SIG gathered resources, opportunities for civic engagement, and new research on the topic.
World AIDS Day 2023: Let Communities Lead
Awards and Accolades
In May 2023, nine Ph.D. and MSW students who worked with SIG on the HEALing Communities Study, E-WORTH, UNICEF projects, and more completed their studies at CSSW.
Center for Justice Associate Director Cameron Rasmussen completed his Ph.D. through the CUNY Graduate Center’s Social Welfare program.
Welcoming New Co-Director Victoria Frye
Professor Frye brings to SIG extensive research experience in the areas of health equity, HIV, intimate partner violence, and structural interventions.
Welcome to our New Doctoral Students
Jimin Sung, a doctoral student at Columbia School of Social Work, joins SIG as a graduate research assistant working with Elwin Wu on his research projects investigating the potential impacts of racism, homophobia, heterosexism, and other issues affecting the well-being of Black men who have sex with men.
Madison Xiaoyao Bogard returns to SIG for her doctoral studies after receiving her MSW from Columbia School of Social Work. Her research delves into the multi-level impact of substance use coercion on drug-using women and seeks to understand the survival and care strategies women engage in when traditional paths to safety are inaccessible.
In Memoriam
Former SIG researcher and PhD student Dr. Bright Elie Sarfo passed away on April 2, 2023. At SIG, he worked on designing culturally tailored interventions, facilitating couple- and group-level interventions and training others on how to best implement those interventions.
After leaving SIG, he continued his research at MEF Associates, where he contributed to their research and analysis supporting systematic change to address inequities.
Peer Worker, activist, and community leader Will Robertson will be remembered for his dedication to harm reduction and his compassion for his community. In addition to being an active member of VOCAL New York’s User’s Union, a recovery coach at Harlem United, an outreach worker with Acacia Network’s Opioid Collective, and a Peer Leader with the Peer Network of New York, Will was an integral member of several SIG-sponsored projects. He was a founding member of the Labor of Love Project, a Community Advisory Board member for the HEALing Communities Study, and a regular guest lecturer for Columbia School of Social Work.
"Will’s acts of radical kindness were a source of inspiration, providing examples to us all on what it means to truly educate and advocate with love. We at CSSW are so fortunate to have called Will a colleague, mentor, and friend, and we will continue to advocate in his name." -- Bethany Medley, Sara Landers, and Mary Russo, on behalf of SIG and the CSSW community