Two earn 2023 Engaged Scholarship Prizes

Dane Emmerling, assistant professor in the health behavior department at the Gillings School of Global Public Health, and Elana Jaffe, a medical student, were recognized at the North Carolina Campus Engagement 2023 PACE Conference at High Point University in February for how they applied their research and engaged with North Carolina communities.

The Engaged Scholarship Prizes, awarded by NCCE, recognize one full-time faculty member and one graduate student whose scholarship seeks to address public issues and engage communities in collaborative processes that produce or apply knowledge. As winners, Emmerling and Jaffe were also noted by NCCE for advancing service-learning and civic engagement in higher education and disseminating their work to a broader public.

NCCE is a collaborative network of 38 colleges and universities committed to educating students for civic and social responsibility, partnering with communities for positive change and strengthening democracy.

Emmerling, who received the $1,500 faculty prize, has conducted research on potentially effective interventions aimed at public health practitioners and policy makers to recognize and eliminate health disparities. In combination with the Racial Equity Institute, based in North Carolina, Emmerling has conducted community-based participatory research to evaluate diversity and antiracism training, exploring its effectiveness in impacting the attitudes and behaviors of individuals and institutions regarding their participation in unjust systems.

Among their findings, Emmerling and his collaborators at REI found that REI’s Phase 1 training has an influence on individuals’ knowledge, attitudes and behaviors — research that contributes to the emerging focus on the benefits and limitations of antiracism training for individuals, organizations and systems. Emmerling and his coauthors are currently writing three peer-reviewed articles that will be published in public health journals.

Jaffe, the winner of the $500 graduate student prize, has focused her work on evidence-based care for women’s health, particularly in carceral settings, a topic of interest because of the increasing number of middle-aged women incarcerated in the United States.

Since 2019, Jaffe has researched the experiences of menopausal women and their access to menopause resources in carceral settings. Using a Community Engagement Fellowship from the Carolina Center for Public Service, Jaffe — with the support of her mentor, Dr. Andrea Knittel, the medical director for Incarcerated Women’s Health at Carolina — has partnered with community organizations to conduct a pilot study of women who have undergone the menopause transition while imprisoned.

The study’s interviewees reported concerning and disruptive symptoms and a lack of adequate resources for treatment. Additionally, interviewees reported a lack of information and social support and said they had received extra punishment for attempting to manage symptoms.

Jaffe has published and presented her findings in various settings and also received the 2020 Master’s Research Award in the Aging & Public Health section at the American Public Health Association’s annual conference.