Southern Injury Prevention Institute
Measuring and Evaluating Impact
Our Mission
At SIPI, we are dedicated to reducing injury and violence by helping organizations and jurisdictions measure and evaluate programs, policies, and practices. We provide measurement and evaluation research and consulting services that enable data-driven decision-making and reliable outcomes.
About Us
SIPI was formed in response to needs expressed by grassroots violence prevention organizations, in North Carolina and beyond, for assistance identifying what works and what needs improvement in their programing. This allows organizations to demonstrate progress towards goals and the impacts they are making to communities and funders. At the same time, SIPI is meant to provide a hub for professionals with expertise in public health, data analysis, and community programming. This is a space for those professionals to come together and use our combined talents to improve the safety of communities across the U.S.
Dr. Josie Caves Sivaraman Phd, MSPH, RN
Dr. Sarah Treves-Kagan PhD, MPH
Sarah Treves-Kagan is a social scientist with a focus on structural approaches to preventing violence. Her work has focused on creating safe, stable, equitable and nurturing relationships and environments. She led efforts to prevent childhood adversity and sexual and intimate partner violence at the CDC's Division of Violence Prevention Research and Evaluation Branch for five years. Prior to that she conducted domestic and international quantitative and qualitative research on gender-based violence and HIV prevention at MEASURE Evaluation at UNC Chapel Hill and University of California, San Francisco Center for Prevention Studies. She also managed reentry grants for the City of Oakland's Violence Prevention team; and began her career in communications and development for human rights and environmental justice organizations. Sarah earned her PhD in Health Behavior at the Gillings School of Global Public Health, UNC Chapel Hill; her MPH in Maternal and Child Health at UC Berkeley; and her BA in anthropology and political science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Josie Caves Sivaraman is an injury prevention epidemiologist with subject matter expertise in gun violence research. She is deeply interested in modifiable risk and protective factors for firearm violence, particularly among vulnerable populations. With her background in nursing, Josie is uniquely qualified to ask research questions surrounding health policy and violence prevention. Over the past decade she has measured the effectiveness of policies that limit firearm access for people with a history of juvenile offending and/or mental health hospitalization, studied the implementation of firearm dispossession policy, and identified diagnostic risk factors for suicide. Her quantitative skill set includes pragmatic study design; linking and manipulating large, administrative data for longitudinal modeling; hierarchical modeling; mixture modeling; and ecological modeling with a strong foundation in causal inference theory. She also is versed in mixed methods and qualitative research design and data collection. Prior to SIPI, Josie directed the Center for Evidence-Based Strategies for Reducing Firearm Violence at RTI International. She earned her PhD and MSPH in Epidemiology at the Gillings School of Public Health at UNC Chapel Hill and her BA in English and Environmental Studies at University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Services
Our tailored services are designed to help organizations thoughtfully demonstrate and grow program impacts among prioritized community members.
Measurement
What does success look like for your program?
We help our clients work with their interest holders to identify realistic, measurable program features that can be routinely tracked to quantify and communicate progress.
Evaluation
Is your program successful?
We help our clients develop and implement appropriately rigorous and affordable evaluation plans using appropriate statistical designs.
Grant Writing
How can you grow your success?
We offer a graduated approach to grant writing for community partners who are new to this process. This allows our clients to focus more on the community work that drives their passion and worry less about future funding.
Recent Products
This video describes CVI in North Carolina and was scripted and co-directed by Dr. Caves Sivaraman (produced by partners: RTI, NC Office of Violence Prevention, NC DHHS, and UNC IPRC)
In this blog series by Dr. Caves Sivaraman and colleagues describe an analysis of ghost gun conversations taking place on social media.
This blog by Dr. Caves Sivaraman and colleagues details how data sources may be combined to better explain gun violence trends.