October 25, 2010

School of Public Health receives $2.4 mill high school safety grant

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health will receive $2.4 million from the U.S. Department of Education over the next four years as part of the Safe and Supportive School Grants program. Under a $13.2 million grant awarded to the Maryland State Department of Education, researchers from the Bloomberg School and Sheppard Pratt Health System will help support research, data collection and school safety training at Maryland high schools with the greatest safety needs.

Catherine Bradshaw, associate professor in the Bloomberg School’s Department of Mental Health and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for the Prevention of Youth Violence, will serve as principal investigator and research director for the initiative. Philip Leaf, professor and director of the Center for Prevention of Youth Violence, will serve as co-investigator.

“This project builds on a 10-year collaboration between the Maryland State Department of Education, Sheppard Pratt Health System and Johns Hopkins,” Bradshaw said. “The collaboration has already provided training in evidence-based prevention programs to over 800 Maryland schools and launched two federally funded randomized, controlled research trials. This new project illustrates the collaboration’s commitment to conducting sound research, as we were very excited to build a randomized trial into the study design,” she said.

The grant is designed to help with the development and administration of a sustainable measurement system to assess school safety, student engagement and the school environment. Schools with high levels of incidents will receive on-site training and assistance to improve school safety.