UA Student Assists Disability Advocacy Program, Enters Project in Research Competition

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — A University of Alabama nursing and Computer-Based Honors Program student is striving to give a state disability advocacy program a means to better explore incidents with youth occurring in treatment facilities.

The point of Erin Jacobs’ research project is to update an information database for the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program to compile reports from treatment facilities serving youth.

“I wanted to work with a program that related to healthcare because I’m in nursing,” Jacobs says. “I was most interested in the psychiatric and clinical side of ADAP.”

Jacobs, a 20-year-old sophomore at UA, plans to enter the project in UA’s April 15 Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity Conference competition. Her project is one of some 260 projects scheduled for entry.    

Jacobs says the goal of the updated database is to give ADAP the chance to compare reports about youth injuries, suicide attempts or deaths in treatment facilities across the state in order to determine causes or prevention measures for such incidents. The code for the database was written in Access, a Microsoft Works software that allows users to create their own database.

In the Computer-Based Honors Program, students are required to enter the Undergraduate Research Competition as part of its spring curriculum for sophomores, juniors and seniors. Each student must create their own abstract to submit. Jacobs says she found her inspiration for her research topic through her nursing major.

ADAP is a federally mandated program housed in Martha Parham Hall on the UA campus to provide legally based advocacy services to Alabamians of all ages with disabilities to protect, promote and expand their rights.

ADAP was in need of a system that would be able to detect systemic issues related to facilities that reported incidents involving youth being treated. Jacobs says her version of the computer program will be able to solve that issue.

“We don’t have enough data in the database to detect anything yet,” Jacobs says. “But that’s the most exciting thing to find out.  ADAP will be able to run reports for their funding and have one central location to find everything.”

In June, Jacob’s faculty mentor, Christa Hackney, a senior case advocate, will present Jacob’s abstract to the Training and Advocacy Support Center Annual Conference, co-sponsored by ADAP’s parent organization, the National Disability Rights Network. Jacobs says although the database has just been enacted, it is on the brink of producing results.

Undergraduate students of all majors were invited to participate in UA’s annual Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity Conference. The event gives students the opportunity to compete for cash prizes and earn practical experience in performing their work before judges.