Current Research Projects
Health Services Policy Research Group (HSPRG) is a research team comprised of professional staff, graduate students, and affiliated state and nonprofit personnel. HSPRG director Paul Solano, PhD, has 30 years of experience in health economics, public finance, cost benefit analysis, and econometrics. Other members of the team have extensive background in management information systems, epidemiological studies, clinical analysis, and evaluation studies. HSPRG regularly conducts ongoing research and evaluations of health policies and services at the community, state, regional, and national levels. HSPRG has expertise in evaluations of child and maternal heath, disabled and vulnerable populations, health care labor activities, and substance abuse and its treatment.
Forward Together Nonprofit Government Contracting Project Nonprofit and government contracting has become a major way states handle service delivery issues and that makes it critical for both sectors to work together more effectively and in partnership, especially in these stressful financial times. Building a stronger, more effective state-nonprofit partnership is the idea behind the Forward Together Project, a human-service initiative of CCRS. Founded in 2005 with a major grant from the Jessie Ball du Pont Fund, the project got its start out of recognition that there were tensions threatening the working relationship The project used solid on-the-ground research to identify key sources of tension in the working relationship and to clarify issues. Because lack of trust had become an obstacle to the search for solutions, it capitalized on university researchers ability to serve as a collective, neutral “honest broker” to bring both sides together. They facilitated focused exchange on issues, which led to better understanding of each sector's viewpoints and constraints. The Forward Together Project itself has been a partnership, involving not only the University of Delaware, but also the state Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Services for Children, Youth, and Their Families, the Delaware Association of Nonprofit Agencies, and the United Way.
Local TV News Media Project--Local television news remains the most prominent news source for citizens regarding their communities. With that in mind, the Local TV News Media Project at the University of Delaware has been examining local TV news broadcasts since 1990. As part of the College of Education and Public Policy, the project is concerned with local television news content and its impact on the public's perception of their world. Are we more consumers rather than citizens? How does that affect, if at all, civic engagement? Public discourse? Public policy? While the project at the University of Delaware has focused on crime and criminal justice reporting, there are many people who are interested in examining local television news from a variety of perspectives. One problem with accomplishing any examination has been the availability of a sufficient number of stories that are easily accessible for study. To help remedy that situation, we have developed a searchable database of over 10,600 individually digitized local television news stories from across the U.S. Each story is viewable in its entirety. The database is offered here as a public service and provides researchers, the public, the media and others access to all types of stories on local television broadcasts. Click here to go to the database.