Columbia Center for Injury Science and Prevention

Contact Information

Mailman School of Public Health, Department of Epidemiology Columbia University
Director: Charles C. Branas, PhD – Gelman Endowed Professor and Chair, Department of Epidemiology
Sonali Rajan, EdD – Adjunct Associate Professor of Epidemiology
Address: 722 W 168^th Street, Room 1508, New York, NY 10032-3702
Phone: 212-305-8755
Email: c.branas@columbia.edu
Website: https://www.cuinjuryresearch.org
Twitter: @Columbia_CCISP
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cuepidemiology

Overview

The mission of the Columbia Center for Injury Science and Prevention (CCISP) is "Accelerating Equity through the Science of Safety." This means leveraging the unique value of scientific inquiry to bring together university, community, and government partners to fast-track injury prevention research and programs that equitably impact the safety and health of historically marginalized communities.

Goals:

1. Strengthen our existing infrastructure by bringing together scientific expertise, policy, and practice.
2. Produce an inclusive and diverse injury prevention workforce.
3. Foster interdisciplinary collaborations and far-reaching partnerships across our university, city, region, and other ICRCs to advance the field of injury prevention with a focus on equity and social justice.
4. Reduce morbidity and mortality from injuries through creation, dissemination, and translation of scientific knowledge, development of innovative and multi-level training programs, and promotion of equitable best practices and evidence-based interventions.
5. Provide a host of scientific and technical support services and develop and deliver multifaceted injury prevention research and training programs.
6. Integrate and successfully complete four specific aims—leadership, research, outreach, and training.
7. Engage in bidirectional sharing of expertise with global, national, state, and regional policymakers, government agencies, community partners, and researchers from a diverse array of stakeholder groups, individuals, scientific disciplines, and practitioners to meaningfully translate injury science into action and publicly elevate the field of injury prevention through an equity and social justice lens.
8. Build a new generation of injury scientists and practitioners in one of the world's leading training programs that prominently includes trainees at many levels from citizen-scientists and policymakers to local community college students, graduate students, clinical trainees, and postdoctoral fellows from diverse backgrounds.

Active research is ongoing in the areas of:

• adverse childhood experiences,
• transportation safety,
• opioid overdose, and
• suicide

2024 ICRC Grantee Research Projects - CCISP

Core Research Projects

• Adverse Childhood Experiences — The impact of structural environmental racism on adverse childhood experiences and injury outcomes in disproportionately affected communities. Using data science and causal inference to estimate community-level impact of policing on injuries and adverse childhood experiences
• Transportation Safety — Physical environmental strategies to reduce road traffic crash risks and health inequities for vulnerable road users
• Opioid Overdose and Suicide — Forecasting emerging racial inequities in US injury epidemics: Identifying the causes and predictors of changing racial patterns in urban overdose and suicide

Outreach Core

The primary objectives of the CCISP Outreach Core promote and support identification, development, dissemination, and scale-up of effective injury and violence prevention programmatic efforts. The goal is to reduce related injury and mortality in all communities—particularly those with marginalized or vulnerable populations impacted by disproportionately high rates of injury and violence. Our outreach objectives promote accessibility and scaling of known injury prevention modalities and identify and support those working to close gaps in injury prevention knowledge and translation.

Training and Education Core

The Training and Education Core (TEC) will meet Center objectives through 13 focused injury-related training activities. The TEC will fully integrate a justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion perspective in its training efforts linked directly to research and outreach agendas. A key goal of the TEC in the next five years is to obtain a new federal training grant. This grant will support injury-related research and training built on a solid understanding of health disparities, metrics, and health equity frameworks. Other planned training activities include further expanding our injury cluster seminars and interdisciplinary works-in-progress meetings with injury practitioners and researchers outside of Columbia to further promote collaboration and data sharing.