Introduction

Sitting around six tables in a bright room, about forty-five civil servants from the Minnesota’s Department of Human Services joined a day-long planning session of a new policy initiative that aims at advancing two-generation approaches that improve outcomes for children and parents altogether — the Minnesota 2-Generation Policy Network. Some of the participants were apprehensive as they often got many emails and invitations…

Minnesota ranks third in the United States for crop production totaling $14.6 billion with nearly half of all lands dedicated to crops. Improving data availability for farmers, government agencies, and researchers will inform decisions in improving conservation practices and crop yields. This project will create and disseminate the first open map of Minnesota farm fields, and produce several examples to demonstrate to policy makers and stakeholders how the farm field data can be used to improve conservation practices and crop yields. We will use satellite imagery and rigorous, reproducible, and robust geocomputational methods running on supercomputers to delineate and map each field. The…

School based mental health programs (SMHP) provide critical services to students in order to mitigate the myriad of negative outcomes associated with mental health problems. However, limited applied, evaluative research has been conducted examining the effects of such programs on student outcomes. In particular, problems exist regarding the measurement of student mental health (needs in school settings. The purpose of this project is to improve measurement of SMH needs by engaging in two related studies. The first study will investigate the psychometric properties of the Minneapolis Public Schools (Behavior Screener Checklist 3 (BSC), which holds promise as a critical indicator of SMH…

Tracking the Trust Building Process in the Minnesota Two Generation Policy Network

How can human service agencies and nonprofits work together for better results? A promising model is the collaborative governance model, which enables state/local/nonprofit organizations to engage in shared decision making. This project is situated in the Minnesota Two Generational Policy Network, a system level service integration and innovation project led by the MN Department of Human Services and its partner organizations to support children and families. Taking a mixed methods longitudinal study approach, this research aims to study how the shift from the contracting model to the collaborative…