The Translating Innovative Ideas for the Public Good (TIIP) Awards, a key initiative under Innovate Carolina’s Design and Innovation for the Public Good (DIPG), announces the first cohort of award recipients. The TIIP awards support innovative projects that embody the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s mission to drive research, invention and innovation for public benefit with up to $50,000 in funding support per project.
The award recipients represent Carolina faculty from across departments, each leading a project that transforms academic insights into real-world impact. These projects cover critical areas such as mental health support for adolescents, interventions in the case of high-risk alcohol use, community health initiatives and financial literacy programs for juvenile offenders.
“We are thrilled to invest in the development and scale of these critical projects through the TIIP Awards,” says Bill Romani, Ph.D., Director of DIPG. “These projects are poised to significantly impact public health, social work and community development, showcasing the University’s dedication to transforming innovative ideas into tangible societal benefits.”
“We are thrilled to invest in the development and scale of these critical projects through the TIIP Awards. These projects are poised to significantly impact public health, social work, and community development, showcasing the university’s dedication to transforming innovative ideas into tangible societal benefits.”
Bill Romani, PhD, Director of DIPG, Innovate Carolina
These newly awarded projects demonstrate potential to resolve many pressing societal challenges through human-centered design and innovative approaches.
2024 TIIP Awards
- Community Co-Design for Street Medicine in Burke County,
William Oscar Fleming, Ph.D., Gillings School of Global Public Health
Dr. Oscar Fleming is an assistant professor in the Department of Public Health Leadership and Practice at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. His focus is on building the public health workforce’s capacity to understand complex systems and collaboratively develop public health innovations. Alongside his teaching role, Fleming leads the Evidence-Based Decision-Making Core for the National Maternal and Child Health Workforce Development Center at Gillings.
Fleming’s “Community Co-Design for Street Medicine in Burke County” initiative involves a collaborative approach to developing healthcare solutions for unhoused populations. The project aims to create sustainable and effective street medicine practices by engaging the community in the design process.
“The goal of the project is to engage a diverse range of county leaders and community members, most importantly people experiencing homelessness, in re-designing a ‘street medicine’ program,” says Fleming. “An earlier model was successful in extending high-quality primary care to people experiencing homelessness by providing services in accessible sites, like parks and encampments. Unfortunately, this ‘pilot’ effort struggled to sustain itself and had to be put on pause due to staffing needs.”
“With Innovate Carolina, we aim to collectively re-design the model in a way that still brings accessible health care to people experiencing homelessness while also being staffed and resourced by a larger range of partners. By early 2025, we aim to have an initial model of the new approach ready for testing and ongoing improvement.”
- Supporting adolescents with mental health concerns through user-centered development of a mindfulness-based parenting resource
Desiree Murray, Ph.D., UNC Center for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention
Dr. Desiree Murray, a clinical psychologist and prevention scientist, promotes positive youth development, especially for those facing adversity, by enhancing supportive environments at home, school, and in the community. Murray’s project focuses on supporting adolescents with mental health concerns through the user-centered development of a mindfulness-based parenting resource. This initiative seeks to equip parents with tools to better manage and support their children’s mental well-being, fostering resilience and healthier family dynamics. Murray works to improve educators’ capacity for co-regulation with adolescents and studies the impact of stress on emotion regulation in schools. Murray also leads the interdisciplinary research group UPSIDE Team.
- Building an Adaptive Mobile Intervention to Address High-Risk Alcohol Use
Melissa Cox, Ph.D., Gillings School of Global Public Health
Dr. Melissa Cox is a behavioral scientist whose research focuses on the social ecology of youth and young adult alcohol misuse. She primarily explores the complex relationships and environments that influence alcohol use behaviors among young people. Cox is working on building an adaptive mobile intervention to address high-risk alcohol use. Her project leverages mobile technology to provide personalized interventions, aiming to reduce the incidence of alcohol-related harm through timely and targeted support.
“The overall goal of the project is to build a mobile health intervention that will help to reduce alcohol consumption and alcohol-related harms among young adults,” says Cox. “The intervention will deliver real-time support during a drinking event to ensure to ensure feedback is tailored to what the person needs, at the time they need it most. We anticipate that the structure of the mobile health intervention could be used for adaptive interventions for other behavioral outcomes beyond alcohol misuse.”
- Enhancing Juvenile Offender’s Reintegration into Communities through Prison-based Financial Interventions: A Pilot Study
David Ansong, Ph.D., School of Social Work
Dr. David Ansong is an Associate Professor at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Social Work. Ansong’s project is dedicated to enhancing the reintegration of juvenile offenders into communities through prison-based financial interventions. This pilot study seeks to improve financial literacy and stability among young offenders, providing them with crucial skills to facilitate successful reintegration and reduce recidivism. Ansong is also a faculty fellow with Global Social Development Innovations and the faculty director of the Global Asset Building program at the Center for Social Development, Washington University in St. Louis.
The TIIP Awards are open to any UNC-Chapel Hill faculty, staff or venture that is developing an idea, project or company that will translate the University’s best ideas to benefit the state of North Carolina and beyond.
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