# Supporting Social Connections and Social Infrastructure to Address Youth Violence

> **NIH NIH K23** · UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH AT PITTSBURGH · 2022 · $72,513

## Abstract

In response to NOT-OD-22-057: Administrative Supplement to Recognize Excellence in Diversity, Equity,
Inclusion, and Accessibility Mentorship for PA-20-272 this proposal will 1) enhance K23HD098277 data
collection, 2) enrich Dr. Culyba’s mentorship skills to train interdisciplinary scholars committed to addressing
the impact of racism on adolescent health, and 3) support career development of graduate students and post-
doctoral scholars underrepresented in the health sciences in adolescent health equity research. Violence
prevention research focused on individual risk factors fails to capture the complex ways in which experiences
of racism and discrimination and constrained access to resources and opportunities including those made
available through healthy social networks and safe places help to shape violence involvement. Interpersonal
and community-level factors offer opportunities to move beyond individual risk-based approaches to address
systemic inequities and to reduce the disproportionate burden of violence borne by minoritized youth. The
overall goal of the parent award from which this proposal emerges is to apply social network analysis
techniques to elucidate the structure and quality of adolescents’ adult support networks across family, school,
and community contexts that confer protection from violence in low-resource urban neighborhoods and to
design and test a network-based violence prevention intervention. This administrative supplement will enrich
the descriptive work in K23 Aim 1 by coupling a multimodal social network analysis approach with photovoice
and walking interviews. Supplemental Aim 1 will characterize youth’s social networks and social infrastructure
touchpoints and illuminate how youth’s interactions with people and social spaces may collectively buffer
experiences of racism and discrimination and impact multiple forms of violence involvement. Findings will
enhance development of a stakeholder-engaged community-based social network intervention designed to
strengthen and expand adolescent-adult support networks (K23 Aims 2 and 3). Culyba will pursue advanced
mentorship training supported by this administrative supplement to enrich her K23 career development
objective 3: enhance team leadership skills to support transition to independent investigator. Building upon her
strong track record of mentoring trainees in adolescent health, violence prevention, and social network
research, Culyba will mentor graduate students and post-doctoral scholars committed to careers focused on
adolescent health equity research to carry out Supplemental Aim 1. This will include mentorship in the
proposed social network and qualitative methods, opportunities for trainees to expand mentorship in academic-
community partnerships, and experiential training to support mentees underrepresented in the health sciences
to pursue biomedical research careers. Completion of research and training objectives will support Culyba’s
transition to indepe...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10605390
- **Project number:** 3K23HD098277-04S1
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH AT PITTSBURGH
- **Principal Investigator:** Alison J. Culyba
- **Activity code:** K23 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $72,513
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2019-07-05 → 2024-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10605390

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10605390, Supporting Social Connections and Social Infrastructure to Address Youth Violence (3K23HD098277-04S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-06-01 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10605390. Licensed CC0.

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