Description of Services

Research provides an important pathway for identifying effective strategies for improving education, health, and well-being. It enables us to identify needs in the areas of education and public health, helps us know what approaches work best to address those needs, and allows us to identify the best way to tailor these approaches across populations, regions and/or settings.

ETR's multidisciplinary research staff is nationally recognized for its significant contributions to education and public health through applied research, evaluations, intervention development and research syntheses. Our applied focus has established our principal role in bridging research to practice.

At ETR, research is designed and implemented to increase our understanding of informal learning, health behaviors, and social-emotional development among youth, adults and families, and of ways to strengthen these through interventions. We work closely with project stakeholders (e.g., students, teachers, service users, providers, administrators, funders) to appropriately tailor our studies to particular populations.

Funded by federal, state and local agencies as well as foundations, our projects reflect strategic development within and across the following program areas: HIV, STD & Unintended Pregnancy Prevention; Behavioral Health (i.e., mental health, substance abuse, and family violence and neglect); Youth and Girls Development and Chronic Disease Prevention and Management.

As a leading research center, ETR conducts state-of-the-art research and evaluations at the local, state, and national levels. We also specialize in program development and research synthesis at national and international levels.

Our evaluations of local projects build important community-researcher partnerships and help strengthen the capacity of community-based client organizations to implement interventions that effectively support changes at the individual, agency, systems and policy levels.

ETR's projects involve a variety of populations, settings, and methodologies, and span a range of descriptive, exploratory, explanatory and evaluation study goals. We have expertise with underserved communities of color from rural to urban settings, and with public and alternative schools and clinics.