The Cornwall Center promotes and conducts scholarly research on a wide variety of issues associated with cities and metropolitan areas. A high priority of the Center is advancing public knowledge on urban policy issues. The Center is a public, nonpartisan organization and carries out its mission in a climate of open dialogue and free inquiry.

The Center is currently involved in the following research projects:

The Greater Newark Health Systems Survey
Greater Essex Council of Child Welfare Collaboratives
Project Evaluation for the St. Matthews NIDA
Program Evaluation of the Newark Literacy Campaign
Program Evaluation for the Stella Wright HOPE VI Project  
Greater Newark Family Services Inventory Survey

The Center completed the following research project: 

Program Evaluation of 9/11 Immigrant Outreach Centers Consortium 
HOPE worldwide Project  

The Greater Newark Health Systems Survey
The Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Studies in partnership with the Roper Group, a privately owned research and evaluation firm, will conduct a health systems assessment for residents of the Greater Newark region—defined in the study as Newark, East Orange, Irvington, and Orange. The project will help identify ways to address health disparities among residents in these municipalities.

The Newark region is rich in health facilities and services, capable of providing care and treatment equal to the best in the world. However, current data and reports show that on average residents of the Newark metropolitan area’s urban core suffer from exceptionally poor health status. Health officials, experts, and professionals acknowledge that the reasons are many, some straightforward and some highly complex. They also acknowledge that any effort to address the differences requires solid and creditable information, and the kind of analysis that can lead to productive and constructive conversations that open possibilities for change.

Recognizing that several worthy projects are already underway at the state and local levels, this project is intended to augment these efforts by addressing health care consumer perspectives in the four target cities. The project will inventory health care facilities and services in the target communities and map them geographically. The team will also conduct surveys, focus groups, and inventory available data sources to identify strengths and challenges in the region’s current health care system. The project will be guided by a broad and diverse advisory panel of community and business leaders, officials, health experts, medical practitioners, and consumers. 

For additional information on this project, please contact Kelly Robinson
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Greater Newark Family Services Inventory Survey
The Greater Newark Family Services Inventory (FSI) is an outgrowth of work begun by the multisite Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (conducted locally by researchers based at the Center for Research on Child Wellbeing at Princeton University) and the Fragile Families in Urban Essex Steering Committee, a partnership of agencies, service providers, funders, and researchers with interest and expertise in child welfare.  The study defines fragile families as those comprised of unmarried parents and their children.  Newark is one of twenty cities across the United States selected for the study.

A major observation derived from the study was that connecting parents and caregivers with necessary services soon after the birth of a child had potential to vastly improve outcomes for these families.  The FSI is designed to connect families with young children—regardless of whether or not they are defined as “fragile families”—to useful resources and services in urban Essex County.  The FSI is a web-based interactive resource that provides up-to-date information that can be accessed by individuals, social service agencies, churches, hospitals, social workers, and others, to assist families with young children in meeting critical service needs.