Joe Cohen | associate professor, psychology
Joe Cohen is an associate professor in the department of psychology. His research focuses on how and why certain children and adolescents go on to develop internalizing symptoms, examining the prospective interplay between cognitive, interpersonal, and physiological vulnerability factors and the onset and maintenance of depression.

In this interview, Cohen shares his experience as a CSBS Small Grant recipient for his research project, Developing a Single Session Intervention for Adolescent Trauma Related Distress.

Tell us briefly about your research project.

For this project, we sought to develop a digital tool schools can use to provide an initial dose of therapy to youth who may need trauma-focused mental health services. Based on a cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT)-framework, we created an initial prototype of a digital single session intervention (called RENEW) and then worked with community and school-based partners to refine the prototype into something that is both culturally and developmentally informed and feasible to implement. It is our goal that RENEW will become an intervention that promotes engagement with available school-based mental health services, while simultaneously attenuating short-term trauma-related distress.

In what ways did the CSBS Small Grant Program help you to connect with interdisciplinary collaborators or new community partners at Illinois?

The CSBS Small Grant put me in touch with a collaborator in Social Work, Dr. Kevin Tan, who was instrumental in helping the project get connected to the community. While I had the relevant expertise in the content of the intervention itself, Dr. Tan had relevant partners in the surrounding school districts based on his own community-based program of research. Thus, the project only came together once CSBS put us in touch, and we were able to approach local school leaders together.  

What did the collaboration or partnership allow you to do that you would not have been able to do on your own or with collaborators from your own discipline?

Although both clinical psychology and social work develop, disseminate, and implement trauma-informed services for school-based settings, the methods and theoretical principles used to test and deliver these interventions can be quite different. I believe this partnership highlights the strengths of both approaches in order to bring the community an effective, equitable, and affirming, digital intervention for those exposed to potentially traumatic events.

How did the initial CSBS Small Grant funding aid in the development of a novel research project?

The CSBS funding was crucial in getting this project off the ground. First, it allowed us the time and resources to develop an initial digital prototype of RENEW. Second, the project made it possible for us to recruit school personnel, caregivers, and adolescents to provide initial feedback on our project. Finally, thanks to the CSBS Small grant we are in the process of forming a local advisory board to ensure community feedback can continue to be incorporated as RENEW is hopefully disseminated and implemented in local middle schools. All of these steps were necessary before we applied for federal funding, which will hopefully build the evidence base for our intervention and sustain its deployment in schools.  

What advice do you have for Illinois faculty who may be interested in applying for a CSBS Small Grant?

I never realized the support you can get from an intramural project. Typically, my interactions with funders on studies consists of submitting progress reports (and related deliverables) and asking logistical questions. But with CSBS, it has felt like I have had partners who were invested in the study. Both Eva Pomerantz and Elsa Augustine have been very hands on, and my ability to communicate with them and adapt the project to maximize the potential of our study, has been instrumental in us having the success we are having. So, I really encourage both junior (and more senior!) faculty to apply for a Small Grant because what I did not realize is how much support you can get from the CSBS itself!