4 minute read
Research Falls Short
Study led by UC Nursing faculty finds lack of federal funding for incarceration-related research.
The United States has the world’s highest incarceration rate, yet few federal funds have gone toward research on this topic, according to a study by University of Cincinnati researchers. UC Nursing Assistant Professor Samantha Boch, PhD, says the lack of investment in researching mass incarceration from a public health lens perpetuates poor health outcomes and racial and economic disparities.
Using data from the Department of Justice, NIH and National Science Foundation, Boch and colleagues found that out of 3.2 million total projects funded since 1985, only 3,540 project awards, or 0.11%, related to “incarceration.” That pales in comparison to funded projects involving other systems, such as education and the military.
“What’s funded at our federal level dictates what our evidence base is, dictates priorities, and this lack of federal focus on incarceration reflects, at best, a large oversight,” Boch says.
Boch partnered with Aaron Murnan, PhD, also an assistant professor in the college, and Jordan “J.P.” Pollard, a psychology doctoral student, to complete the study, which was published in the journal JAMA Open Network.
“We lead the world in incarceration, yet we’re not studying it from a public health lens or from a scientific research standpoint,” Boch says. “I think it relates to structural racism, the business of incarceration, a lack of awareness, a lack of training among health professions and even a lack of justice-health data linkages to adequately analyze.”
Out of the 3.2 million projects examined in the study Boch, Murnan and Pollard conducted, they found only 21 funded projects that related to children who have incarcerated parents, which Boch describes as a shockingly low amount for such a massive system.
Boch says another challenge facing incarceration-related health research is how siloed and disease focused the institutes of the NIH are, with 27 different institutes or centers that focus on body systems or diseases, such as heart, lung, cancer, genome and arthritis, and few institutes acknowledge the incarcerated population care settings in their strategic plans.
Boch’s interest in incarceration related research started when she worked as a staff nurse at several correctional facilities in Ohio, including the Ohio Reformatory for Women, Madison Correctional Institution and Franklin Medical Center from 2012 to 2017. During her postdoctoral fellowship in child health at Nationwide Children’s Hospital Abigail Wexner Research Institute, she led a study using data from the hospital to search pediatric clinician notes for prison-related keywords to examine the connection between children with any type of direct or indirect contact with the criminal legal system and health disorders. Since joining UC, Boch has expanded on her research from Nationwide Children’s with colleagues at Cincinnati Children’s. She received a grant to replicate and refine prison related keyword searches and conduct interviews with adolescents and caregivers on their experiences in health care disclosing parental incarceration to providers.
“One thing that drew me to the UC College of Nursing was their focus on health equity and the fact that Hamilton County has higher jail and prison rates compared to state and national averages,” Boch says. “All nurses are prepared to view the patient ‘in context’ and to serve as a bridge to help educate the patient. So, I feel like I’m still doing those things, but now view public health ‘in context’ of mass incarceration and serve as a bridge to educate the public and policymakers.”
She theorizes that if the U.S. continues to lead the world in incarceration rates, the country will continue to see racial and economic disparities in health and poor health outcomes, unless we start integrating, thinking and researching how this relates. She also says it is important to advocate for initiatives that would decrease incarceration rates broadly and reform bail procedures to better support children whose parents are unable to post bail and are unnecessarily detained longer than wealthy parents.
“It’s frustrating for me in a different way because I used to work inside prisons. I still think about those patients and experiences I had and how poor the care was inside. It’s deeply frustrating,” Boch says. “But I think every little study matters, and I hope that there is more awareness but also change in my lifetime, because it’s been such a longstanding problem.”
