Community Engagement

Policy Brief and Outreach

Immigrant well-being is not only a transdisciplinary shared vision but an opportunity for community growth. With this notion in mind, our center seeks to network with community stakeholders, USF faculty and students, as well as with institutes and faculty from other universities, to open opportunities for the effective dissemination of evidence-based knowledge through research briefs geared to local and national policymakers, mass media publications, and the center’s biennial academic conference.

Based on this mission, Dr. Elizabeth Aranda, center director, and Dr. Elizabeth Vaquera, spearheaded an effort to make the findings from one of their research papers more accessible to the public and to also inform policy-makers. Based on the peer-reviewed article, “Undocumented Again? DACA Rescission, Emotions, and Incorporation Outcomes among Young Adults”, they created a “one-pager ” that summarizes the findings of their research for a lay audience. In addition, they created a “narrative toolkit", designed for policy-makers and members of the media, so they could take a deeper dive into the research findings.

With their co-authors, Dr. Heide Castañeda and graduate student Girsea Martinez Rosas, the group, along with two participants from their research, held a virtual briefing on November 1st, 2022, presenting the highlights of their article to congressional staffers, advocacy groups, members of the media, and the public at large. A video of this briefing can be found here. The briefing was the subject of a Tampa Bay Times front-page story on their research findings.