About STAR Research Collaborative

The STAR team is a group of dedicated clinicians, researchers, scholars and advocates working to to 1) understand the risk and protective factors involved in the healthy development of children, families and communities exposed to trauma and adversity and 2) develop, implement and evaluate evidence-based, culturally-responsive behavioral health programs and prevention services for children, families and communities experiencing stress, trauma and adversity. Much of our current work is focused on implementing behavioral health approaches in pediatric healthcare settings, as well as other community settings.

STAR stands for Stress, Trauma, Adversity and Resilience. While there are many different definitions for these terms, here are a few we use in STAR Lab.

“Stress can be defined as a state of worry or mental tension caused by a difficult situation” – WHO. While stress is often an adaptive and normal part of every day life, ongoing or overly demanding stress “cause mind–body changes… [and] contribute directly to psychological and physiological disorder and disease and affects mental and physical health, reducing quality of life.” – APA, adapted from the APA Dictionary of Psychology

“Trauma refers to experiences that cause intense physical & psychological stress reactions. It can refer to a single event, multiple events, or a set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual and perceived as physically & emotionally harmful or threatening, and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being.” – SAMSHA It is also important to understand that “traumatic or potentially traumatic events are those that “undermined one’s sense of safety and security.” – NCTSN

Adversity often refers to “negative environmental experiences that are likely to require significant adaptation by an average child [or individual] and that represent a deviation from the expectable environment.” This often reflects either the presence of an unexpected event or context (ex. exposure to violence) or lack of some type of expected input (ex. lack of a primary caregiver, lack of access to healthcare or adequate community resources). –McLaughlin, 2016

When considering adversity, you are likely to run into two related concepts. Adverse Childhood Experiences, or potentially traumatic experiences that occur before age 18. For more information specifically on ACEs, see this CDC webpage. Adverse community experiences refer to potentially stressful or traumatic experiences associated with living or working in communities that may lack important resources such as safe and affordable housing, community space, access to healthcare, economic, academic and social supports and may have higher rates of community violence (see Ellis and Dietz, 2017).

It is important to note that concepts such as ACEs represent some, but not all of the the potential adversities an individual may experience. In the STAR Research Collaborative, we understand that there are many different types of trauma, stresses and adversities and that everyone has their own unique reaction to a potentially traumatic experience.

Resilience is often used as a “buzz word” in the media and pop culture these days. There are many different ways in which we can define resilience. In the STAR lab, we consider the concept of resilience to be a process that can change overtime, in which children, families and communities utilize and build on their own strengths and supports in order promote healthy development, thrive and meet their own unique goals despite the potentially stressful, adverse or traumatic experiences they have had. Therefore, the definition of resilience used most often by the STAR collaborative is: “a dynamic process encompassing positive adaptation within the context of significant adversity” – Luthar, Cicchetti, and Becker, 2000, pp. 543.

We call ourselves a research collaborative, as we believe quality research is best conducted through working collaboratively with others. STAR team members are dedicated to establishing true partnerships throughout the development, implementation and dissemination of our research projects. As clinical psychologists, we believe it is essential to be strong researchers, clinicians and advocates for the patients and communities we work with. While our name emphasizes the collaborative nature of the work we do, you may often hear us refer to the STAR Research Collaborative as “STAR LAB” for short!

The term community-driven has its roots in community based participatory research or CBPR. Community-driven research and program development starts with a research idea, topic or problem that is important to the community for which this idea impacts. STAR collaborative projects aim to answer questions, build programs and disseminate evidence-based information that are important to the communities we partner with. Our work is based on the concept that effectively preventing and treating trauma and adversity requires true understanding of the strengths, needs and priorities of the community or communities we serve.

The term provider informed is best aligned with the field of implementation science, an area of research with focuses on understanding how evidence-based practices can be best implemented into routine care. Researchers currently estimate that it takes 17 years for evidence-based programs to be used in clinical and health settings and that only about 14% of evidence-based programs are used in routine care (for more information on this see Grimshaw et. al., 2012 and Glasgow et al., 2002). Implementation science research focused on understanding the facilitators and barriers to implementing evidence-based practices in real world settings. In STAR Lab, we utilize implementation science ideas in multiple ways. Our approach focused on partnering with clinical providers (psychologists, doctors, nurses), health systems, other types of service workers (ex. peer and paraprofessionals, teachers, case workers, etc.) to understand their needs and perspectives. When work is provider-informed, it produces research and programs aligned with the needs and perspectives of those who will utilize it and therefore is more likely to implemented and sustained in real world settings.

Interested in partnering?

As a part of our mission, we want to hear from you. Please reach out to discuss partnerships, opportunities for training or public speaking or to learn more about the work we do.