Magrath Community Engagement Award Spotlight: The University of Pittsburgh

In recognition of their extraordinary community outreach initiatives, four APLU member institutions have been selected as regional recipients of the 2023 W.K. Kellogg Foundation Community Engagement Scholarship Award. As regional award winners, North Carolina State University, The Ohio State University, the University of Pittsburgh, and Texas A&M University will compete for the national C. Peter Magrath Community Engagement Scholarship Award, which will be announced during the APLU Annual Meeting in November. In this post, APLU spotlights the University of Pittsburgh.

As the nation’s largest longitudinal research program investigating child thriving in a fully community-partnered approach, the University of Pittsburgh, UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, and multiple community partners launched the Pittsburgh Study (TPS) in 2017 to address the racial discriminatory barriers to thriving among children and adolescents across Allegheny County.

Co-led by pairs of community and university investigator research teams, TPS has developed age-appropriate—from infancy through adolescence—interventions that attend to structural racism, promote equity, and build individual, family and community resilience. TPS also offers mentorship and leadership training in community-engaged scholarship for students, trainees, community fellows and faculty, and a child health data hub to share results connecting science to action.

TPS has engaged more than 240 community collaborators and 2,050 children and adolescents and hopes to involve more than 8,000 children and adolescents over the lifespan of the study.