{"682569":{"#nid":"682569","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Ph.D. Student Fills Violence Data Gaps Through Technology","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EAfter\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.jcforiest.com\/\u0022\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EJasmine Foriest\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E was robbed at gunpoint in her hometown of Columbus, Ga., she took note of how much information about the crime fell through the cracks of the ensuing police investigation.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EShe said the police officer who interviewed her was dismissive and neglected to write down details that Foriest found significant. The deficient police report was picked up by local media, which led to news stories that inaccurately described the crime and left out important information.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EForiest said she learned from the incident that incomplete information doesn\u2019t mitigate violence. The perspectives and stories of people who experience violence are essential to reliable data.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe incident guided Foriest as she committed to research that gathers complete and accurate data on multiple types of violence, including violent injury and homicide, intimate partner violence, gender-based violence, and suicide.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EForiest earned a bachelor\u2019s in health science from Columbus State University. She also holds two master\u2019s degrees: one in public health from the University of Southern California, and another in technology leadership and management from Agnes Scott College.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn 2021, Foriest started her Ph.D. in human-centered computing at Georgia Tech to understand how technology influences violence.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cI look at all types of violence as an outcome of how technology affects communication,\u201d she said.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EOne thing she discovered was that even though technology can amplify victims\u2019 voices, it is often used to silence them.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThe same social dynamics that keep people from disclosing their violent experiences to formal reporting sources offline also happen online,\u201d she said.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Ch4\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EBringing the Cardiff Model to the U.S.\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/h4\u003E\u003Cp\u003EBefore arriving at Tech, Foriest worked for eight years as an injury prevention coordinator at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. She implemented a trauma recovery center and Atlanta\u2019s first hospital-based violence intervention program.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWhile in that position, she worked with the\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.cardiff.ac.uk\/documents\/2665796-the-cardiff-model-for-violence-prevention\u0022\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ECardiff Model for Violence Prevention,\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E a public health approach to violence prevention developed by researchers at Cardiff University in Wales.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe Cardiff model\u2019s philosophy is that violence prevention is best achieved when the healthcare and law enforcement sectors combine geographical data to determine where violence occurs in a community.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThe Cardiff model taught Wales there was a lot about violence they didn\u2019t know from police data alone,\u201d Foriest said.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EOne example is that researchers learned an alarming number of hospital patients were brought in from local taverns. This finding informed policymakers to implement new regulations, such as changing licensing requirements and serving alcohol in toughened glasses or non-glass vessels so they can\u2019t be used as weapons.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn 2011, the city of Cardiff reported a 42% reduction in hospital admissions for hospital injuries. It wasn\u2019t long before the researchers in the U.S. began importing the Cardiff model. In 2018, it became an official policy of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe U.S. Department of Justice found in 2022 that 58% of violent crimes were not reported to law enforcement. Sixteen cities that make up the\u0026nbsp;\u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/www.uscardiffnetwork.com\/\u0022\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003ECardiff Model for Violence Prevention National Network\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/a\u003Eare now gathering and mapping patient-reported violent injury data from hospitals to fill that data gap.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAtlanta is one of the cities in that network, and Foriest has been an on-the-ground researcher collecting that data. Her work with the Cardiff model seamlessly integrated into her Ph.D. research as she sought ways to turn technology into a safe avenue of violence disclosure.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWorking with Alex Godwin, a former Ph.D. student at Georgia Tech who is now an assistant professor at American University, she helped develop a user interface and mapping algorithm. The tool allows hospital patients who are violence victims to identify the location of the violent incident they experienced.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EForiest said, \u201cAround the Covid-19 pandemic, we had challenges getting patients screened, and we thought we should explore different options.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cOur interface allows patients to tap down to the degree they\u2019re comfortable on the geographic location where they were injured.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cIt improved our ability to map data tremendously and decreased some of the risks patients face when disclosing violence.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EForiest and Godwin\u0027s paper on the development of the interface tool earned an honorable mention for best paper at the 2025 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) in Yokohama, Japan.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EForiest also co-authored an award-winning paper at the 2024 Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). That paper examined how social media often silences violence victims.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EForiest is also a fellow for Data Science and Innovation at the CDC, where she continues her work on the Cardiff model. She also examines how news media coverage of suicides can often reinforce stigmas about the causes of suicide in that role.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Ch4\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EThriving at Tech\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/h4\u003E\u003Cp\u003EForiest is entering her fifth year as a Ph.D. student, but before she came to Tech, she had no computing experience. She applied to numerous Ph.D. programs but was eventually persuaded that technology could complement her public health expertise and her goal of preventing violence.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cTech was the only place where I could gain a new skill set while doing the things that I wanted to do in research,\u201d she said.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThat felt like the best fit for me, where I would get the most out of my training. I was encouraged by faculty and my peers to recognize that my perspective is valuable, and I can speak from that place and bridge my knowledge with HCI concepts.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":"","format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EInspired by her own experience with a flawed police investigation, Jasmine Foriest is adapting the Cardiff Model\u2014a public health approach developed in Wales\u2014to the U.S. Her work emphasizes the importance of capturing diverse perspectives, particularly from marginalized communities, to create more accurate and actionable data on various forms of violence, including intimate partner violence and suicide.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Jasmine Foriest is using technology to gather complete and accurate data on violence, addressing gaps in traditional reporting methods and developing tools to help victims disclose information safely."}],"uid":"36530","created_gmt":"2025-05-28 17:36:42","changed_gmt":"2025-05-28 17:41:19","author":"Nathan Deen","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","location":"Atlanta, GA","dateline":{"date":"2025-05-28T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2025-05-28T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"677149":{"id":"677149","type":"image","title":"Summit-on-Responsible-Computing--AI--and-Society_86A9671-Enhanced-NR.jpg","body":null,"created":"1748453824","gmt_created":"2025-05-28 17:37:04","changed":"1748453824","gmt_changed":"2025-05-28 17:37:04","alt":"Jasmine Foriest","file":{"fid":"261017","name":"Summit-on-Responsible-Computing--AI--and-Society_86A9671-Enhanced-NR.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/2025\/05\/28\/Summit-on-Responsible-Computing--AI--and-Society_86A9671-Enhanced-NR.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/2025\/05\/28\/Summit-on-Responsible-Computing--AI--and-Society_86A9671-Enhanced-NR.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":85875,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/2025\/05\/28\/Summit-on-Responsible-Computing--AI--and-Society_86A9671-Enhanced-NR.jpg?itok=bNCFsdmy"}}},"media_ids":["677149"],"groups":[{"id":"47223","name":"College of Computing"},{"id":"1188","name":"Research Horizons"},{"id":"50876","name":"School of Interactive Computing"}],"categories":[{"id":"153","name":"Computer Science\/Information Technology and Security"},{"id":"8862","name":"Student Research"}],"keywords":[{"id":"9153","name":"Research Horizons"},{"id":"187915","name":"go-researchnews"},{"id":"173212","name":"Human-Computer Intraction"},{"id":"1814","name":"violence"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39501","name":"People and Technology"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}