Social Embeddedness

2023: ASU Helios Decision Center for Educational Excellence

The ASU Helios Decision Center for Educational Excellence catalyzes innovative collaborations with students, school leaders and communities across Arizona. Their postsecondary initiative includes four key projects to increase college access and attainment:

• Enabling communities to set college-going goals with the high school outcomes visualization.
• Giving schools feedback on preparation for college-going through postsecondary feedback reports and visualizations.
• Reaching students through proactive personalized admission.
• Sharing the expertise of teachers through the first cohort of the ASU Impact Corps.

“This is a fantastic project in which we're attempting to use every tool, every insight, every perspective, every technology to help more kids in Arizona to graduate from high school, to go on to postsecondary education, to find a pathway to overcome whatever the past is,” Crow said.

“We’re working with more than 200 school districts across the state, working to take care of young people so that they can really have access to whatever they want.”

2023: Maryvale One Square Mile Initiative

The Maryvale One Square Mile Initiative began through a donation by ASU donors Mike and Cindy Watts, who grew up in Maryvale. The initiative aims to facilitate collaborative efforts between the university and the Maryvale community to address complex community issues and promote comprehensive change. The work is focused on leveraging university resources to support the community’s hopes and dreams for themselves and their families. In addition, all projects are focused on providing opportunities for:

• ASU students, faculty and staff to learn about the community and use best practices for authentic community engagement based on community voice.
• Increased collaboration and connection between youth service providers in Maryvale.
• Increased youth participation in extracurricular activities in sports, arts and culture.

“If you just took one square mile of a neighborhood, or you took the core of a neighborhood, could you, through all of the things that we do, find pathways for the outcomes of that community to be enhanced or the pathways for the people that live in that community to be enhanced?” Crow said. “That's what this team has been working on, under the assumption that if you can do that in one neighborhood, then (you can do that in) the next neighborhood, then the next neighborhood, then the next neighborhood, and the next neighborhood, particularly picking complicated, socioeconomically complicated neighborhoods to start with.”

2023: Targeted Investments Program Quality Improvement Collaborative

Arizona has some of the greatest health disparities in the nation for health care outcomes, life expectancy and quality of life. The Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, or AHCCCS, is the Arizona Medicaid Program that provides health insurance coverage for more than 2.5 million of Arizona's highest-risk and underserved populations. The ASU College of Health Solutions team partnered with AHCCCS to help improve equity for Medicaid patients. This was accomplished by building capacity with 17 hospital systems, more than 570 primary care and behavioral health clinics, five law enforcement agencies, as well as over 2,000 physicians and behavioral health experts and their patients throughout Arizona.

“In Arizona, we’re still in the bottom third of states in terms of our health outcomes,” Crow said. “During the pandemic, we ranked second in per capita deaths for lots of different reasons, all of which are exemplars of the problems that we have. (This team) is helping us figure out how to attack this problem. … So, I just want to say thank you on behalf of the university and the people of Arizona for continuing to work on big issues and big audacious problems like this one.”

2022: ASU Bridging Success

The ASU Bridging Success program is to support students who have experienced foster care, homelessness, or other forms of out-of-home care. The program aims to assist these students in successfully transitioning to and thriving in higher education.

The Bridging Success program provides a range of comprehensive support services to help students navigate various challenges they may face. These services include academic advising, financial assistance, housing resources, life skills development, mentorship programs, and access to community networks. The program aims to address both the academic and non-academic needs of students to ensure their success and well-being throughout their college journey.

2022: Libraries as Community Hubs for Citizen Science

ASU's Libraries as Community Hubs for Citizen Science program leverages the resources and expertise available within the university's libraries to facilitate citizen science projects. These libraries serve as spaces where community members can access scientific tools, data, and information, as well as receive guidance and support for their participation in citizen science initiatives.

The program may offer various services and activities, including:

1. Workshops and training: Libraries may organize workshops and training sessions to educate community members about citizen science, research methodologies, and data collection techniques.
2. Project facilitation: The program may assist in connecting community members with ongoing citizen science projects, both at ASU and beyond. They can help individuals navigate projects, access relevant resources, and contribute to research efforts.
3. Data management and analysis: Libraries can provide support in data management, analysis, and interpretation, ensuring that collected data is properly stored, analyzed, and utilized for scientific purposes.
4. Collaboration and networking: The program may facilitate collaborations between community members, researchers, and organizations involved in citizen science, fostering a network of individuals with shared interests and goals.

2022: Project Cities

Project Cities program aims to connect communities with ASU students and faculty to collaborate on projects that address real-world challenges.

The program involves partnerships between ASU and local governments, where students and faculty work with community stakeholders to develop innovative solutions for various issues. These challenges can range from sustainability and urban planning to transportation and social equity. ASU's Project Cities initiative provides a valuable learning experience for students while also benefiting the partner communities.

2022: STEM and Social Capital: Advancing Families through Learning and Doing

Advancing Families through Learning and Doing (SSCAFLD), brings together seven ASU colleges/schools, ASU Outreach, and four local ethnic community-based organizations(ECBOs). ECBOs referred as“refugee organizations” and our partner ECBOs serve the local Burundian, Congolese, Somali, Syrian communities. SSCAFLD focuses on developing the STEM career aspirations of students in grades7-12 who have refugee backgrounds. SSCAFLD works to achieve its goals through parents and their children learning and engaging inexperiences together. SSCAFLD activities include families

• Participating in a “college knowledge” program led by trained community leaders,
• Engaging in STEM career activities facilitated by ASU faculty and students
• Visiting ASU campuses on STEM-focused field trips,
• Discussing videos featuring STEM professionals who were refugees; plus students
• Connecting with STEM mentors drawn from their own communities,
• Creating digital stories depicting their future STEM selves.

2022: ASU Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program

The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program is an initiative that brings together college students and incarcerated individuals to engage in transformative learning experiences inside correctional facilities. Through this program, college students attend classes alongside incarcerated students, creating a unique and inclusive learning environment.

The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program promotes personal growth, critical thinking, and social responsibility among all participants. It also aims to raise awareness about issues related to the criminal justice system and create positive social change through education.

2021: Guadalupe COVID-19 Community Response Team

The Guadalupe COVID-19 Community Response Team, formed in June 2020, brings together ASU faculty, staff, students and community partners to lessen the impact of COVID-19 in Guadalupe. The team provides a wide range of services designed to slow the spread of the virus and serve those in need. During the team’s time working in the community, rates of new cases in Guadalupe have declined from 5.5 times higher than the Maricopa County average to be in line with the rest of the county.

A field epidemiology group of more than 250 ASU students, staff and volunteers conducts case investigations and contact tracing seven days per week in Maricopa County. Jehn’s Student Outbreak Response Team, which has operated as a hands-on training program for global health students for the past six years, quickly pivoted and expanded to a large rapid-response team during the initial surge in COVID-19 cases. The team deployed to Guadalupe and has completed hundreds of case interviews there.

The Community Response Team also provides at-home testing; vaccination events; support for those isolating; culturally, linguistically and geographically appropriate health education; and a weekly community food drive. The team has supported more than 300 households through home isolation, conducted door-to-door case investigations and contact tracing, and engaged students and community volunteers to provide a surge public health workforce.

2021: School Participatory Budgeting

As School Participatory Budget (School PB) engages K–12 students in deliberation and decision-making processes concerning school budgets, the initiative also nurtures collaboration, problem-solving skills and critical thinking. School PB in Arizona empowers historically underrepresented students and communities, with the majority of participating schools receiving federal funding under Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

In the School PB process, students form a student steering committee whose members fan out on their campuses to gather hundreds (sometimes thousands) of ideas from classmates about what their school needs and what it might take to fulfill those needs. The ideas are researched to decide how feasible they may be.

Then a final list of proposals is prepared and sent to a ballot in a campus election where students decide which one should receive funding. Finally, students decide how the proposal with the most votes should be implemented and write an evaluation process to gauge how well it will work over time.

Students who are eligible to vote in actual federal and state elections are given the opportunity to register in the next one at School PB Vote Days through community partnerships with the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office and local voter registration groups.

2021: Thrive in the 05

Thrive in the 05 initially was established in 2017 to help connect community members to holistically address safety concerns in the area but quickly expanded to seek out the root drivers of crime and improve social determinants of community health.

Since then, the office’s staff and its community partnerships have expanded the initiative’s focus to include efforts to develop high-quality affordable housing, increased educational opportunities, more options to achieve greater economic mobility and increased access to livable-wage career opportunities, Through partnerships, ‘Thrive in the 05’ has been able to reactivate neighborhood associations and engage in creative placemaking initiatives relating to improving and revitalizing neighborhoods and parks.Several interventions also promote youth empowerment toward eliminating substance abuse and foster resiliency through training in wellness skills.

Thrive in the 05 also includes a digital equity project designed to bring internet access to more 85705 residents as well as help older adults achieve digital literacy through technology training and support.

2020: Survivor Link

Survivor Link is a team of ASU educators, students, faculty members, and community volunteers who work under the guidance of the AmeriCorps mission "to strengthen communities and build leaders through team-based national and community service." 

Survivor Link takes a multi-pronged approach to end the epidemic of domestic violence, through providing direct services to domestic violence survivors, building capacity in organizations that serve survivors, conducting research to better meet the needs of survivors, and promoting healthy relationships and domestic violence prevention in the community. 

Survivor Link has engaged 340 ASU student interns in service-learning opportunities. These students have been trained as victim advocates, engaged in over 186,000 hours of service across 70 community partners, earned nearly $1.2 million in scholarship funding from Survivor Link, and implemented 961 risk-informed safety plans with domestic violence survivors.

Survivor Link has also provided training on the most up-to-date, evidence-based practices to over 1,000 community-based professionals.

ASU Partners 

• ASU - Center for Applied Behavioral Health Policy
• ASU Center for Child Well-Being
• ASU Office of Sex Trafficking Intervention Research

 2019: ¡Viva Maryvale!

Obesity and Type 2 diabetes disproportionately affect Latino children, families and communities. ¡Viva Maryvale! is a solution-oriented, multilevel, multisector collaborative approach that leverages individual, social, cultural and community-level resources to support health promotion and diabetes prevention among high-risk Latino families living in Maryvale, Arizona.

¡Viva Maryvale! brings together a network of collaborating partners that include the ASU Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention, the St. Vincent de Paul Family Wellness Program, the Watts Family Maryvale YMCA, the Maryvale branch of Mountain Park Health Center, and the Diabetes Prevention and Control Program at the Arizona Department of Health Services. 

By developing a shared mission and vision, ¡Viva Maryvale! enhanced the collective capacity of the partners to address diabetes-related disparities among vulnerable and underserved families in Maryvale. The impact of the enhanced capacity is substantiated by significant reductions in diabetes risk factors and increases in quality of life among participating families. A paper describing the development, implementation, and results of ¡Viva Maryvale! was published in the January 2019 issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

2018: ASU Polytechnic - The Austin Centers for Exceptional Students Inc. North Desert Village Project

ASU Facilities Development and Management at the Polytechnic Campus, in partnership with the Austin Centers for Exceptional Students (ACES), developed a mentorship program for students with autism, emotional disabilities and intellectual disabilities. Students worked alongside ASU grounds staff to beautify two acres of common area in North Desert Village. ACES designed a structured lesson plan for students to follow while ASU grounds staff provided mentorship and guidance to students. Through the groundwork and mentorship, students learned vocational skills and life lessons in responsibility, accountability and leadership, preparing them for the workplace after they have left school.

2018: America Reads

The ASU America Reads Program partners with community organizations to offer tutoring to children from kindergarten through eighth grade who are living in low-income areas. Children are matched with an ASU student as their academic tutor and college role model, who helps them develop skills in time management, positive decision-making and self-esteem. ASU students are responsible for facilitating programs and activities that correspond to the Arizona College and Career Readiness Standards in reading, writing and math. ASU students obtain real-world job skills while tutoring and increasing academic opportunities for children in the community.

 2017: CarePRO: Care Partners Reaching Out

CarePRO is an evidence-based, psycho-educational skills-building intervention for family caregivers of people with dementia. It fosters caregiver empowerment and reduces caregiver stress and distress and enhances positive coping and emotional well-being. Offered in English and Spanish, CarePRO has been successfully embedded into local Alzheimer’s Association chapters across Arizona and Nevada since 2009.

Findings show over 95 percent of CarePRO participants saying they benefitted from the program with an increased understanding of memory loss and its effects on people, gained greater confidence in dealing with their loved one's problems and developed an enhanced ability to provide care.

2016: FitPHX Energy Zones: A Partnership for Health

One of the most successful of these projects is FitPHX Energy Zones. Developed in partnership with the Phoenix Mayor’s Office and the Department of Parks and Recreation, FitPHX Energy Zones repurpose the city’s public libraries as spaces where kids can go after school to learn from ASU student interns about nutrition and healthy living.

Energy Zones offers two free weekly sessions for middle school students that cover a wide range of topics, including fitness, nutrition, portion size, body image and stigma. The participants gather to get active, make friends and form healthy habits.

The Energy Zones are facilitated by ASU interns who are typically majoring in global health, nutrition or other related fields. There are three interns per site who help plan icebreakers, discussion topics, activities, a snack and a “challenge” for the coming week.

2015: University Service-Learning

This program connects ASU students with community agencies through academic coursework. Students in these courses complete 70-100 hours serving non-profits, high-needs schools and government organizations in the greater Phoenix area.

ASU Partners

• Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College

2015: Your Sleep/Your Life: Su Sueño/Su Vida

ASU has been collaborating with the University of Guanajuato for more than 10 years in the area of research and capacity building. This partnership received the 2015 ASU President's Medal for Social Embeddedness for the Your Sleep/Your Life project. A bi-national team from the ASU College of Nursing and Health Innovation and community partners from the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization, Harvard Division of Sleep Medicine and the University of Guanajuato, successfully developed, implemented and evaluated an evidence-based bilingual (English/Spanish) sleep health training program tested with ‘promotores’ (Hispanic lay health workers), ASU nursing students, and health professionals in Mexico. The team continues to evaluate and expand the sleep training program to assist with binational capacity building of promotores, upgrade sleep learning, assessment and intervention skills in academic and community-based health settings, and support outcomes research for effective community-based and clinical health care delivery.  

2014: Nursing Performance Evaluation

A team from Arizona State University’s College of Nursing and Health Innovation (CONHI), Scottsdale Community College’s (SCC) Nursing Program and the Arizona State Board of Nursing (ASBN) has developed a testing process to support healthcare patient safety by assessing the continued competence of registered nurses.

The team conducted externally funded research evaluating nursing performance in simulation settings and developed a valid and reliable process of testing nurses being investigated for reports of unsafe practice.

Now, participants referred by the ASBN for performance testing provide basic nursing care to lifelike high-fidelity mannequin patients within a realistic healthcare environment in the ASU CONHI or SCC simulation laboratories. Nurse raters review the videotaped care performances and health record documentation.

A summary of the performance findings is delivered to the ASBN investigators for use in case deliberations and remediation plans.

This collaborative Nursing Performance Evaluation process in Arizona serves as a national and international model of evidence-based nursing regulation.