New Grant Funds UT Research for Community Benefit
The research of Associate Professor Deadric T. Williams, Department of Sociology, is central to a 2024 Institutional Challenge Grant that supports a unique research-practice partnership between the University of Tennessee and Cherokee Health Systems (CHS).
The grant comes from the combined efforts of the William T. Grant Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the Doris Duke Foundation, and the Bezos Family Foundation, awarding $650,000 to help grow the UT/CHS collaboration of community-engaged scholarship that improves outcomes for maternal and child health for young Black and Latina families in East Tennessee.
Williams, named a William T. Grant Scholar in 2022, is a co-investigator for the work done through the new funding, working with principal investigator Kristina Gordon, associate dean for community engagement for both the College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences and the College of Social Work and CHS partners.
“I was asked to be a part of this grant because of my work on Black families, family structure, and racism and race,” he said. “My role will be to contribute to research strategies, reports, and manuscripts for peer review.”
Professor Patrick Grzanka, divisional dean for social sciences within the UT College of Arts and Sciences, sees Williams’s work as vital insight for strategic plans within the grant.
“Williams’s research—exploring elements of systems that maintain an unjust status quo—possesses enormous potential to develop new, critical approaches that improve the quality of healthcare for these young families,” said Grzanka.
In his research and publishing, Williams looks at ways racism affects stress and health in Black families. He has sought to change the narrative of how scholars talk about racial stratification in poverty by incorporating ways that history and policymaking have shaped circumstances.
“There are a few insights I will bring from my ongoing research,” said Williams. “My work examines how, and in what ways, racism undermines Black families’ health, economic wellbeing, and relationship quality. In many ways, my work highlights how historical and contemporary racial contexts influence families.”
Participation through this grant reflects a direct community impact for research within the college.
“The College of Arts and Sciences is excited to have our faculty’s research efforts applied to such valuable work to help people in our region,” said Professor Michael Blum, associate dean for research and creative activity.
Work within the new grant will focus on development of a training program for CHS practitioners and UT students and faculty. Hands-on projects will help participants develop skills relevant to the community’s needs and help CHS deliver services even more effectively. It will likely explore themes highlighted by previous UT-CHS collaborations: the need to incorporate family and community support in health interventions, how to establish health care environments in which women feel empowered to speak up, and how to seamlessly connect women and the community resources available to help them have healthy pregnancies.
“The foundation’s Institutional Challenge Grant provides a forward-thinking mechanism that builds and strengthens the relationship between UT and Cherokee Health Systems to merge research and practice,” said Williams. “This collaborative effort is valuable in its potential to help families living in east Tennessee.”
by Randall Brown