Prof. Augsberger & MSW Student Gloria Ng Part of BU Team to Receive Research Award Examining Youth Emergency Mental Health Response

A multidisciplinary team including BU School of Social Work Assistant Professor Astraea Augsberger and MSW/MPH dual degree student Gloria Ng received a 2021 Early Stage Urban Research Award from BU Initiative on Cities (IOC). The team will research youth emergency mental health response in Boston. 

The team’s primary goal is to create a compendium of crisis response resources for Boston Public Schools and community stakeholders. This compendium is intended to help school employees and community stakeholders respond to youth mental health crises without involving emergency services providers, an approach likely to reduce criminal justice involvement and racial inequity.

In order to identify existing local resources that can be used to bolster mental health response in Boston schools and communities, the team will engage community stakeholders in an asset-focused approach called community resource mapping, which relies on local knowledge and feedback to identify existing resources.

In addition to Professor Augsberger and Ng, the research team includes project investigator Jennifer Greif Green, associate professor at BU Wheelock College of Education & Human Development, and co-project investigators Christine Borba, associate professor at BU School of Medicine, and Margaret Carroll, a PhD student at Wheelock College.

The team’s research will advance work begun by the Boston Youth Mental Health Crisis Response Coalition, a group dedicated to examining emergency response services for Boston youth in mental health crises, with a focus on response in schools. The Coalition is composed of researchers from Boston University and UMass Lowell, as well as members of the Boston Public Schools, the Boston Emergency Services Team (BEST), and the Boston Police Department.

To learn more about the team’s plans, visit their project page on the BU IOC website.