CTSI awards community partnership grants

University-community partnerships focused on food literacy initiatives in schools and on research alliances to combat early childhood lead poisoning are the focus of two unique projects awarded UB Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) funding from the CTSI Community Partnership Development Seed Grant Program.

This partnership between Health Sciences Charter School and UB researchers aims to improve food literacy among Buffalo high school students and their families.

Leading the project from UB are Amanda M. Ziegler, research assistant professor, Department of Family Medicine, Primary Care Research Institute, Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences; and Jill Tirabassi, clinical assistant professor, Department of Family Medicine, Primary Care Research Institute, Jacobs School.

Diamonique Pettway, director of community, events, and marketing for Health Sciences Charter School, is the community lead.

In 2024, UB partnered with Health Sciences Charter School on a program that engages teen wellness leaders to help identify priority knowledge and skills they want to learn before graduating high school. The seed grant-awarded project will sustain and expand this community-academic partnership.

“The main goal is to work with teen leaders and local health professionals to develop and pilot interactive, school-based food literacy sessions that empower teens with the knowledge and skills to be engaged in their food choices and the impact on their health,” Ziegler says.

The project team identified many barriers to food literacy in the community, including limited access to fresh, healthy food as well as generational reduced role models for healthy eating.

Pettway says that the seed grant provides essential funding to cover costs for interactive sessions that build food literacy: “The grant supports both immediate needs and long-term goals, ensuring the project's success and continued growth. By engaging both teens and their families, this project will create a lasting impact on health and wellness.”

Tirabassi adds that the funding is particularly important because the project involves experiential learning, which requires dedicated time and supplies.

“This grant will allow us to develop and pilot small group and school-wide food literacy sessions and provides resources to support local community members’ time and expertise to share their food literacy and culinary skills,” Tirabassi says. “Through this grant, we foresee developing a pilot food literacy curriculum that is both pragmatic and evidence based, and that could be scaled for use in other school settings as we grow our programming and research initiatives.”

Establishing a robust community-academic partnership to tackle lead poisoning in Buffalo is the goal of this project, which brings together the LEAD716 program and UB.

Project leaders are focusing on mitigating the long-term neurodevelopmental and academic challenges faced by young children exposed to lead through early intervention and related education.

Kim Diana Connolly, professor and vice dean for innovation, interdisciplinarity and community impact in the School of Law, and Leah Bartlo, a PhD candidate in the Department of Learning and Instruction in the Graduate School of Education and a research fellow with the Community Health Equity Research Institute, are leading this project for UB.

The community leads are Marc Hennig, deputy executive director, Beyond Support Network, and Breana Hargrave, program coordinator for LEAD716.

CTSI seed grants support the planning of community-based participatory research partnerships and engagement of communities in research. CTSI Community Engagement Core Director Laurene M. Tumiel-Berhalter, director of community translational research in the Department of Family Medicine, Jacobs School, says that each partner — community and academic — plays an essential role in the awarded project.

“These academic-community partners co-lead all activities, bridging research with lived experience,” she says. “This approach results in more relevant research that positively impacts our communities.”

Visit the CTSI website for a complete list of current and past CTSI Community Partnership Development Seed Grant awardees.