First-of-its-Kind Gathering Focused on Advanced Evidence‑Based Solutions for RI’s Justice System
The Center for Health & Justice Transformation (CHJT) at Brown University Health recently convened an inaugural Health and Justice Research Symposium to identify research‑driven solutions that improve how the health care system and criminal legal system work together. The community forum brought together researchers across Brown University’s schools of public health, medicine, and social sciences alongside clinicians, community organizations, policymakers, and people with lived experience of the justice system.
Held at South Street Landing in Providence, the unique symposium highlighted both Rhode Island’s national leadership in health‑justice innovation and the urgent need for interdisciplinary, people‑centered approaches to incarceration, reentry, and the systems people rely on to stay healthy, housed, and out of the criminal legal system. Francesca Beaudoin, MD, PhD, Dean of the Brown University School of Public Health and keynote speaker, underscored the role of rigorous science in informing more humane and effective justice policy. Panels addressed community reentry, juvenile detention, and diversion programs – and participants worked together to examine successful RI initiatives while identifying persistent barriers and future research and policy priorities. Speakers across sessions emphasized the importance of aligning health systems, courts, and community‑based supports to improve outcomes for justice‑involved individuals.
“This symposium brought top researchers across disciplines from all over the Brown University campus, and this research must be informed by the people it aims to serve — that's the principle that guided this symposium. Panelists with lived experience of incarceration and reentry offer something data alone can't capture,” said Justin Berk, MD, MPH, director of the Center for Health & Justice Transformation.
During a series of “speed talks,” researchers presented findings with direct implications for practice and policy, including:
· A randomized trial focusing on safety planning, or coping strategies, led by Lauren Weinstock, PhD, clinical psychologist at Brown University, demonstrating a 50-percent reduction in suicidal events among individuals released from jail;
· Economic analysis from Anna Aizer, PhD, Brown University professor of economics, showing that juvenile detention reduces high school graduation rates to below one percent; and
· A statewide study presented by Michelle Suh, MD, a Brown University Health emergency medicine physician and co-author, revealing that nearly 90 percent of RI nursing homes are effectively unavailable to older adults seeking compassionate release from prison.
Presentations also spotlighted RI’s national firsts, including a statewide medications for opioid use disorder program in correctional facilities and the country’s first legislatively authorized overdose prevention center.
"Rhode Island is continuing to demonstrate what becomes possible when rigorous research, lived experience, and cross-sector collaboration work together. The state has been a leader in the field of health and justice and we can see where evidence continues to point to the next solutions and how these partnerships are needed to move that evidence into policy and practice,” Berk added.
The Center for Health & Justice Transformation will publish the symposium’s findings in a conference proceedings article and accompanying white paper to inform future research, policy development, and implementation efforts.