Monday, December 22, 2025 12/22/2025

Primed to (re)act: Can changes in procedural language prevent adverse events between police and minority male youth?

Award Number: R01MD015064
ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL CENTER ON MINORITY HEALTH AND HEALTH DISPARITIES
OPDIV: NIH
AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY
AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 01/27/2021
PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 12/31/2025

Group Awards By:

View Award Description

Primed to (re)act: Can changes in procedural language prevent adverse events between police and minority male youth? - PROJECT SUMMARY While researchers continue to study the effects of disproportionate minority contact with law enforcement on a range of health-related outcomes, a recent review of this work questions the methodological validity of most studies on this topic. Many of these concerns focus on (a) unrealistic assumptions about police behavior and (b) poor quality data. This project addresses both by introducing a human development based model of law enforcement officer (LEO) behavior and applying this model to study how LEOs identify with male minority youth (MMY) using a novel publicly available data source: broadcast police communications (BPC). Our long-term goals are (1) to assess the viability of BPC for understanding how LEOs perceive MMY both “in the moment” via the pre-reflective procedural language used before and during LEO-MMY encounters and “at rest” via development of a survey instrument measuring LEO identification with minority youth, and (2) to determine if BPC may be used in lieu of non-public data sources to study police behavior by developing a novel computational strategy for extracting meaningful information from BPC via, among other strategies, a first-of-its-kind automatic speech recognition (ASR) model and large scale (>100 hours) training corpus of transcribed BPC for use by computational social scientists and ASR researchers. Our previous research revealed that a complex set of psychosocial mechanisms govern the developmental trajectories of MMYs, indicating MMYs adopt reactive coping strategies to particular stressful events (e.g. encounters with police) that can be maladaptive (e.g. hypermasculinity) depending on context of interactions. Our work also suggests that all humans are subject to similar processes. Since the outcomes of LEO-MMY encounters are ultimately the responsibility of LEOs, this project seeks to improve the quality of these encounters (i.e. reduce youth trauma) by studying a little acknowledged LEO reactive coping strategy: the character of procedural language used to provide LEOs with incident-specific information via BPC. This conceptual approach derives from our theoretical framing (i.e. Spencer’s phenomenological variant of ecological systems theory, or PVEST) that highlights the development and utilization of reactive coping strategies in response—particularly—to MMY associated stress. It is our premise that BPC can prime LEOs to inaccurately interpret the behavior of MMY as threatening, increasing the potential for adverse events. Such inaccurate assessments are hard to combat since LEOs are acting on the best information available. As a result, the procedural language of BPC pose unacknowledged risks to the well- being of MMY. This study will thus perform a first-of-its-kind analysis of BPC to simultaneously assess its viability for determining racial discrimination in policing and develop a novel survey instrument measuring LEOs ability to identify with MMY for use by researchers and policing organizations across the country.


Issue Date FY	Funding FY	Legal Entity Name	Legal Entity Address	Legal Entity City	Legal Entity State	Legal Entity Zip Code	Legal Entity COUNTY	Legal Entity COUNTRY	Assistance Listing	Award Code	Budget Year	Action Date	Action Type	Action Amount

Issue Date FY: 2025 ( Subtotal = $0 )
2025	2024	UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO	5801 S ELLIS AVE	CHICAGO	IL	60637	COOK	USA	Minority Health and Health Disparities Research	000	4	10/10/2024	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$0
														Subtotal = $0

Issue Date FY: 2024 ( Subtotal = $551,709 )
2024	2024	UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO	5801 S ELLIS AVE	CHICAGO	IL	60637	COOK	USA	Minority Health and Health Disparities Research	002	4	5/29/2024	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$39,814
2024	2024	UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO	5801 S ELLIS AVE	CHICAGO	IL	60637	COOK	USA	Minority Health and Health Disparities Research	001	4	1/5/2024	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$511,895
2024	2023	UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO	5801 S ELLIS AVE	CHICAGO	IL	60637	COOK	USA	Minority Health and Health Disparities Research	000	3	11/8/2023	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$0
														Subtotal = $551,709

Issue Date FY: 2023 ( Subtotal = $650,609 )
2023	2023	UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO	5801 S ELLIS AVE	CHICAGO	IL	60637	COOK	USA	Minority Health and Health Disparities Research	001	3	2/6/2023	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$0
2023	2023	UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO	5801 S ELLIS AVE	CHICAGO	IL	60637	COOK	USA	Minority Health and Health Disparities Research	000	3	12/30/2022	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$650,609
														Subtotal = $650,609

Issue Date FY: 2022 ( Subtotal = $719,441 )
2022	2022	UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, THE	5801 S ELLIS AVE	CHICAGO	IL	60637	COOK	USA	Minority Health and Health Disparities Research	001	2	4/29/2022	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$71,945
2022	2022	UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, THE	5801 S ELLIS AVE	CHICAGO	IL	60637	COOK	USA	Minority Health and Health Disparities Research	000	2	1/18/2022	NON-COMPETING CONTINUATION	$647,496
														Subtotal = $719,441

Issue Date FY: 2021 ( Subtotal = $744,667 )
2021	2021	UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, THE	5801 S ELLIS AVE	CHICAGO	IL	60637	COOK	USA	Minority Health and Health Disparities Research	000	1	1/27/2021	NEW	$744,667
														Subtotal = $744,667

Grand Total All Awards = $2,666,426

Top

All Categories

About

Search

Reports

Data Submission

Award Information

Primed to (re)act: Can changes in procedural language prevent adverse events between police and minority male youth?

Award Number: R01MD015064

ORGANIZATION: NATIONAL CENTER ON MINORITY HEALTH AND HEALTH DISPARITIES

OPDIV: NIH

AWARD CLASS: DISCRETIONARY

AWARD ACTIVITY TYPE: SCIENTIFIC/HEALTH RESEARCH (INCLUDES SURVEYS)

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE START DATE: 01/27/2021

PERIOD OF PERFORMANCE END DATE: 12/31/2025

Federal Websites

Department of Health & Human Services

HHS Operating Divisions

HHS Staff Divisions

Download A Document Viewer