CICM (Center for Innovation in Maltreatment Research, Policy, & Training)

The Center for Innovation in Maltreatment Research, Policy, & Training (CICM) was funded in 2018 as a research center that seeks to “advance transdisciplinary science and creative dissemination and training approaches to prevent child maltreatment and promote healthy development for victims of abuse and neglect.”

A key aspect of the CICM is the Scientific Learning Collaborative (SLC), which is a collective of researchers, policymakers, and practitioners who are working together across multiple years. At the first SLC meeting in 2019 at the Brown School, the SSDL facilitated a 1.5-day group model building workshop that generated a preliminary synthesis causal loop diagram of the interconnections between system drivers of child maltreatment. In the second SLC meeting conducted virtually in June 2020, the team presented a revised synthesis diagram and proposed a set of thematic clusters to form working groups that may explore topics related to the mission of the CICM. The most recent SLC was also held virtually in June 2021 and it was used as an opportunity to work on products to help inform priority areas that were identified in the previous session.

This project is funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Project Lead

SSDL, GMB Lead: Ellis Ballard, MSW MPH

CICM PI: Melissa Jonson-Reid, PhD

SSDL Team:

Start-End Date

2018-2023

Location:

St. Louis, Missouri, USA

Project Goals

  • Use a systems perspective to synthesize and prioritize gaps in knowledge about child maltreatment that hinder prevention and intervention efforts.
  • Facilitate a transparent exchange of ideas that helps incubate projects in the near term while building a publicly accessible ‘map’ of knowledge.
  • To assure ongoing feedback between the applied world of policy and practice with ongoing research.

Resources

CICM Website