The Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) has partnered with Research in Action to develop an evaluation survey for the state child support program guided by parents’ lived experience. This work is one component of a 12-state consortium under the Advancing Equity in Child Support Grant — a federally funded opportunity to study issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the child support program and identify barriers to the receipt of services by historically underserved populations.

Research in Action partnered with the Minnesota Department of Health’s Overdose Prevention Unit to conduct a landscape assessment on Black and Indigenous populations’ barriers to accessing and using medications for opioid use disorder (MOUDs). With this landscape assessment, our partners hope to directly address community-identified barriers and identify intervention points for future work on MOUD use and access.

With funding from the Bush Foundation, the Equity in Action Way Foundation has contracted with Research in Action to lead an initiative to develop a first-of-its-kind assessment tool to better understand how structural and systemic violence impacts Black women girls, and femmes—and how public systems can be held accountable.

The Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation partnered with Research in Action to connect with directly impacted residents to understand how its East Metro Pulse survey reflects their experiences. Community members also identified how they would like to see the data used in ways that are equitable, transparent, and accountable to community. 

Hennepin County, the NAACP, Village Arms, Adult Representation Services-Hennepin County, Harriet Tubman Center, and the Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare are partnering with Research in Action to explore how to prevent family separation and develop systems that support the reunification of Black and Native families. 

RIA created a survey instrument to measure older adults’ prevailing legal needs, particularly those who face systemic barriers due to income, race, language, disability, or rural isolation. Informed by participatory action research and a racial justice framework, this project centers the lived experiences of older adults and aims to strengthen the responsiveness and accessibility of legal services.

In 2022, Research in Action published the nation’s first comprehensive state-level report on the epidemic of missing and murdered Black women and girls.This led to the creation of the nation’s first Office of Missing and Murdered Black Women and Girls (MMBWG) and the introduction of federal legislation in 2023.

Research in Action is partnering with Constellation Lab (CoLab) to lead a study on solutions to poverty to enable communities to thrive. Working with Co-Lab staff and community organizations, RIA is collaborating with youth and families with lived experiences of poverty to shift investments from philanthropy to align with the visions of directly impacted communities and end intergenerational poverty?

In 2021, the Bush Foundation awarded $100 million to seed two community trust funds for Black and Indigenous individuals facing wealth disparities due to historic racial injustices. Nexus Community Partners is responsible for distributing $50 million to Black individuals living in Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Research in Action is working with Nexus to provide guidance on decolonizing evaluations processes to the group’s Advisory Committee, as well as create and execute an Evaluation Plan for the Community Trust Fund.

The Healing Streets Program (HSP) was created in 2019 to address the cycles of gun and group violence impacting youth and their families in Ramsey County. Currently administered by Ramsey County Public Health, HSP follows a three-pronged programmatic approach to achieve its mission of healing youth, their caregivers, and community members: prevention activities, Intervention efforts, and healing practices. In 2023, Ramsey County contracted with Research in Action (RIA) to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of Healing Streets programs.