REACHJustice

REACH Justice was funded as a five-year study (2024–2029) by the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR) and was prematurely terminated before the completion of its planned aims. The suspension of federally funded research projects outside of standard scientific timelines raises important concerns regarding funding stability, continuity of evidence generation, and the capacity of research to inform health equity–oriented policy. REACH Justice was designed to investigate how criminal legal and housing policies shape health, recognizing these policy domains as powerful interventions that can either advance or erode health equity when considered independently or in concert. This research project sought to understand how policies related to the criminal legal and housing systems are associated with health and as such, represent interventions that, both independently and together, can promote or undermine health equity goals. By examining policies in the domains of housing and mass incarceration and the way that populations and individuals experience these policies, directly and indirectly, we hope to offer new perspectives on how to promote individual and population health. In turn, this research will demonstrate how policy reforms and/or other strategies to achieve justice in these domains will, in turn, promote better health for all.

At the national level: We will create measures of the criminal legal and housing policy climates across US states with the greatest potential for affecting health equity (either negatively or positively) and analyze their impacts on the health of state populations.

At the state level: We will assess the different ways that individuals are exposed to the housing and criminal legal systems and the policies that affect this exposure. Specifically, with data collected in collaboration with DataHaven’s Community Wellbeing Survey we will investigate the relationship between system exposures and self-reported health outcomes among individuals in Connecticut.

At the local level: In collaboration with our research partners at Health Equity Solutions we will follow the implementation of two recent Connecticut policies: Right to Counsel (which seeks to protect housing access) and Clean Slate (which aims to reduce the negative effects of having a criminal record). Our focus will be on the potential for these policies to impact health equity.

Our study team includes researchers at: American University (Kim Blankenship, Manissa Maharawal, Molly Dondero), Yale School of Public Health (Danya Keene), New York University (Jonathan Purtle, Saba Rouhani), and Drexel University (Allison Groves).

If you are interested in learning more about this project please email us at reachjusticeproject@gmail.com or penelope.schlesinger@yale.edu.