Research
Current Projects
Nuclear Behavioral Readiness™ Framework
The advanced nuclear buildout will require hundreds of thousands of new workers over the coming decades, yet the sector still measures cognitive performance mainly after incidents occur and screens for impairment only at the point of hire. We are developing the Nuclear Behavioral Readiness Framework, a individual-level approach to workforce cognitive readiness that is grounded in established behavioral science and designed from the start for worker protection and trust. The work is underway, with research and stakeholder engagement advancing in New York State.
Mental Health Under Surveillance:
Neighborhood Voices NYC
Neighborhood Voices is a community-based study examining how expanding surveillance technologies affect the daily lives and mental wellbeing of New Yorkers. Through surveys and data analysis, the project measures how residents experience safety, privacy, and trust as monitoring tools spread citywide.
Clinical Decision Support for PTSD Screening
Building on our published recalibration work, this R&D effort designs a clinical decision-support layer that helps frontline clinicians interpret standard PTSD screeners and prioritize follow-up. The tool is in design and development, intended to reduce missed cases and false positives at the point of intake, and is being pursued in collaboration with academic trauma-research partners.
Consistency and Variance in Immigration Adjudication
This study examines whether immigration adjudication outcomes vary with factors beyond the legal merits of a case, such as applicant background or adjudicator caseload. It is currently in protocol and design phase, pairing a structured evidence review with a planned method for detecting and documenting such variance. The goal is to give agencies transparent, defensible tools for identifying inconsistency in high-volume decision-making.
Completed Research
Housing as Suicide Prevention for U.S. Veterans
This research finds that stable housing reduces veteran suicide risk by providing both physical safety and continuity of care. The results position housing security as a frontline suicide-prevention strategy and a public-health priority, not solely a social service.
Senior Homelessness Research
Commissioned research on homelessness among older adults, contributing evidence on housing instability, health, and aging to the federal housing-policy literature.
Loneliness, Cognitive Lapses, and Suicide Risk in Older Adults
Ongoing fieldwork in Brownsville, Brooklyn tracks daily patterns of loneliness, memory lapses, and mood among older adults living alone. Early observations indicate that cognitive lapses often precede increases in suicidal thinking. The study combines digital check-ins with in-person contact to test practical ways to detect warning signs before a crisis point.
Police Response and the 911 Service Gap
THRESHOLD is accountability and policy study, currently in design, examining whether New York City's 911 system actually delivers police response in Brownsville and Ocean Hill. The design pairs a resident survey with public 911 dispatch and complaint data to surface three things the City's own data does not: calls that never receive a response, incidents that go undocumented, and response that varies by block, including between NYCHA developments and the surrounding streets. A distinctive aim is reaching residents who have stopped calling 911 altogether, a group absent from every administrative record. The goal is a clearer public picture of police service delivery and a stronger case for call-level transparency in how the city accounts for emergency response.
Recalibrating PTSD Screening and Prediction
Published in the Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice (2026), this study shows that widely used VA PTSD screening tools frequently miss true cases while generating unnecessary false positives. It demonstrates that integrating behavioral and contextual markers sharply improves accuracy, and it sets a pragmatic standard for evaluating bias and over-claiming in emerging PTSD risk algorithms before they are deployed.
Citation, Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 2026. DOI 10.1111/jep.70496.
Parental Personality Disorders and Intergenerational Risk
An initial review of the research on how parental borderline and narcissistic personality disorders affect children, with a focus on daughters. Current evidence indicates elevated risk of depression, anxiety, and longer-term identity difficulties, and points to the value of targeted, family-focused prevention. A full living systematic review is in development.
Integration of Data Analytics in Federal Mental Health Policy
A policy review of how federal agencies integrate data analytics into mental health policy and program design. Drawing on initiatives at the CDC, SAMHSA, the VA, and HHS, it examines real-time population monitoring, predictive analytics for suicide prevention, and the shift toward evidence-based policymaking, along with the interagency coordination and data-sharing barriers that shape how these tools are implemented. The review weighs those gains against the privacy, security, and ethical safeguards that responsible use of sensitive mental health data requires.