Scholarship and Research at the DWC
Research Mission
The Deaf Wellness Center seeks to play a leading role in advancing scholarship in the identification, manifestations, and treatment of psychological and medical disorders that affect deaf and hard-of-hearing people. Our program is committed to research that is innovative, useful, and timely. We promote research that has local, national, or international relevance. In all of our efforts, we are dedicated to furthering the scholarly endeavors and research careers of persons who are themselves deaf or hard-of-hearing.
The Deaf Wellness Center conducts research in a variety of areas, including mental health, sign language interpreting, and public health issues affecting the deaf community (such as intimate partner violence). Click on the links below or to the left to view information regarding some of our larger research projects. These include:
Our new study on Informed Consent, a recently concluded study Factors Influencing Partner Violence Perpetration Affecting Deaf Individuals, Optimization and Dissemination of Proven Reforms in Interpreter Education, an older study sponsored by the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE), the National Center for Deaf Health Research (NCDHR) funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Strong Connections, our videoconference-based sign language interpreter service for remote healthcare settings, funded by the William G. McGowan Charitable Fund, Public Service Announcement Outreach to the Deaf Community: Early Recognition of Mental Illness funded by the American Psychiatric Association, and Addressing partner violence in the Deaf community: Adapting an evidence-based curriculum for use by Deaf service providers sponsored by the University of Rochester Department of Psychiatry
The National Center for Deaf Health Research (NCDHR) is studying the implementation of Deaf Weight Wise (DWW), a healthy lifestyle intervention developed for use with Deaf American Sign Language users. DWW was adapted from an evidence-based healthy lifestyle program at the University of North Carolina and has been tested in two clinical trials with Deaf participants at NCDHR within the University of Rochester.
Through the Integrative Project Funding Program, the DWC will conduct an internal retreat, including URMC department leadership, to get a sense of current needs and goals before conducting focus group interviews with various stakeholders within Rochester’s Deaf communities, the Department of Psychiatry leadership, and the broader medical center referrers.
Finally, a link is provided to a list of many of the publications we have produced, based on our research and scholarship. If you'd like copies of any of the articles listed, just let us know and we'd be happy to mail them to you. Check back to this area of our website frequently, as our research activities are always growing and bearing fruit!