Melinda Butsch Kovacic
Biographic Data
| ID | 7864209 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Melinda Butsch Kovacic |
| GIVEN NAMES | Melinda Butsch |
| FAMILY NAME | Kovacic |
| SIGNATURE | KOVACIC M B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6907-1446 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 0 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 11 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 0 |
Integrating family-based interventions into specialty court programs
BACKGROUND: The intersection of sex trade involvement and substance use disorder is a deeply complex and tragic issue for many women, as decades of research reflect that traditional substance use treatment modalities often fail to meet many of these women's unique needs. Sex trafficking specialty court programs constitute a unique and promising avenue to deliver evidence-based practices to treat substance use disorders and to support health and w…
Characteristics, Experiences, and Perceptions of Family Members of Sex Trafficking Specialty Court Participants
15) identified as supportive by women participating in a sex trafficking specialty court program, a qualitative study was conducted. Findings reflect that family members, especially those with their own experiences with substance use and sex trade involvement, demonstrated empathy, resilience, and strong desires to support participants' treatment success. Despite complex relational histories, participants presented with several protective charact…
Graphic-style stories to engage limited resource communities and promote health
Introduction: People with lower health literacy and those living in limited-resource communities often experience poorer health outcomes. Leveraging stories for health promotion can be particularly beneficial as stories are more engaging and memorable than other outreach materials. Co-designing health-promotion stories with representatives from target communities ensures their cultural relevance. Methods: We Engage 4 Health (WE4H), a 20 + member …
Cultural Insiders and Graphic Stories to Promote Research Readiness Among the South Asian Community
South Asians living in the United States are frequently underrepresented in health research. Their lack of participation limits the generalizability of research to them and keeps them from receiving the high-quality care and innovation that some studies may offer. "Research Ready" is a five-panel, community co-created graphic-style story that encourages discussion around the purpose of research, safety/protection while participating, and why dive…
Promoting Community Health and Understanding of Science Topics by Reading Graphic-Style Stories Aloud Together
Limited health literacy and access to engaging, relevant, understandable health promotion and disease prevention materials are barriers to achieving and maintaining health. The We-Engage-4-Health program co-created the graphic-style story “Foamy Soap Fun” with community members to reinforce the importance of the primary preventive strategy—handwashing—in limiting spread of COVID-19. Pre/postsurveys were administered, and a modified focus group wa…
Environmental Health Knowledge Does Not Necessarily Translate to Action in Youth
Environmental challenges pose serious health problems, especially for children, and lay public action is lacking. This study sought to characterize the relationship between environmental health knowledge and behavior in youth. A cross-sectional, descriptive survey with quantitative and qualitative questions was conducted. Open-ended questions were coded to generate themes/subthemes. Subscales' scores were presented as mean ± SD or median and inte…
The Eyewitness Community Survey
Many youths and young adults have variable environmental health knowledge, limited understanding of their local environment's impact on their health, and poor environmentally friendly behaviors. We sought to develop and test a tool to reliably capture data, increase environmental health knowledge, and engage youths as citizen scientists to examine and take action on their community's challenges. The Eyewitness Community Survey (ECS) was developed…
Co-Designing a Program to Lower Cardiovascular Disease Risk in Midlife Black Women
Midlife Black women suffer disproportionately from heart disease and stroke in comparison to White women of similar age and demographic. Risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and stroke is largely considered to be modifiable yet CVD prevention and awareness campaigns have been less effective among Black women. Decreased awareness of personal CVD risk is associated with delays in the presentation of women to the emergency room or health care provi…
Covid-19 Vaccine Hesitancy
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a devastating, global public health crisis. Public health systems in the United States heavily focused on getting people to adhere to preventive behaviors, and later, to get vaccinated. January through May of 2021 was a critical and volatile time period for COVID-19 cases, deaths, and expanding vaccination programs coinciding with important political and social events which will have a lasting impact on how the publ…
Building a Population Representative Pediatric Biobank
Background: Biobanks can accelerate research by providing researchers with samples and data. However, hospital-based recruitment as a source for controls may create bias as who comes to the hospital may be different from the broader population. Methods: In an effort to broadly improve the quality of research studies and reduce costs and challenges associated with recruitment and sample collection, a group of diverse researchers at Cincinnati Chil…
Beginning a Partnership with PhotoVoice to Explore Environmental Health and Health Inequities in Minority Communities
Research informs action, but the challenge is its translation into practice. The 2012-2017 National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Strategic Plan emphasizes partnership with community stakeholders to capture critical missing information about the effects of environment on health and to improve translation of study results, a daunting task for many traditionally-trained researchers. To better understand economic and neighborhood contex…
No prominent works on this page.
Beginning a Partnership with PhotoVoice to Explore Environmental Health and Health Inequities in Minority Communities
Research informs action, but the challenge is its translation into practice. The 2012-2017 National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Strategic Plan emphasizes partnership with community stakeholders to capture critical missing information about the effects of environment on health and to improve translation of study results, a daunting task for many traditionally-trained researchers. To better understand economic and neighborhood contex…
Building a Population Representative Pediatric Biobank
Background: Biobanks can accelerate research by providing researchers with samples and data. However, hospital-based recruitment as a source for controls may create bias as who comes to the hospital may be different from the broader population. Methods: In an effort to broadly improve the quality of research studies and reduce costs and challenges associated with recruitment and sample collection, a group of diverse researchers at Cincinnati Chil…
Co-Designing a Program to Lower Cardiovascular Disease Risk in Midlife Black Women
Midlife Black women suffer disproportionately from heart disease and stroke in comparison to White women of similar age and demographic. Risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and stroke is largely considered to be modifiable yet CVD prevention and awareness campaigns have been less effective among Black women. Decreased awareness of personal CVD risk is associated with delays in the presentation of women to the emergency room or health care provi…
Covid-19 Vaccine Hesitancy
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a devastating, global public health crisis. Public health systems in the United States heavily focused on getting people to adhere to preventive behaviors, and later, to get vaccinated. January through May of 2021 was a critical and volatile time period for COVID-19 cases, deaths, and expanding vaccination programs coinciding with important political and social events which will have a lasting impact on how the publ…
Promoting Community Health and Understanding of Science Topics by Reading Graphic-Style Stories Aloud Together
Limited health literacy and access to engaging, relevant, understandable health promotion and disease prevention materials are barriers to achieving and maintaining health. The We-Engage-4-Health program co-created the graphic-style story “Foamy Soap Fun” with community members to reinforce the importance of the primary preventive strategy—handwashing—in limiting spread of COVID-19. Pre/postsurveys were administered, and a modified focus group wa…
Environmental Health Knowledge Does Not Necessarily Translate to Action in Youth
Environmental challenges pose serious health problems, especially for children, and lay public action is lacking. This study sought to characterize the relationship between environmental health knowledge and behavior in youth. A cross-sectional, descriptive survey with quantitative and qualitative questions was conducted. Open-ended questions were coded to generate themes/subthemes. Subscales' scores were presented as mean ± SD or median and inte…
The Eyewitness Community Survey
Many youths and young adults have variable environmental health knowledge, limited understanding of their local environment's impact on their health, and poor environmentally friendly behaviors. We sought to develop and test a tool to reliably capture data, increase environmental health knowledge, and engage youths as citizen scientists to examine and take action on their community's challenges. The Eyewitness Community Survey (ECS) was developed…
Cultural Insiders and Graphic Stories to Promote Research Readiness Among the South Asian Community
South Asians living in the United States are frequently underrepresented in health research. Their lack of participation limits the generalizability of research to them and keeps them from receiving the high-quality care and innovation that some studies may offer. "Research Ready" is a five-panel, community co-created graphic-style story that encourages discussion around the purpose of research, safety/protection while participating, and why dive…
Graphic-style stories to engage limited resource communities and promote health
Introduction: People with lower health literacy and those living in limited-resource communities often experience poorer health outcomes. Leveraging stories for health promotion can be particularly beneficial as stories are more engaging and memorable than other outreach materials. Co-designing health-promotion stories with representatives from target communities ensures their cultural relevance. Methods: We Engage 4 Health (WE4H), a 20 + member …
Integrating family-based interventions into specialty court programs
BACKGROUND: The intersection of sex trade involvement and substance use disorder is a deeply complex and tragic issue for many women, as decades of research reflect that traditional substance use treatment modalities often fail to meet many of these women's unique needs. Sex trafficking specialty court programs constitute a unique and promising avenue to deliver evidence-based practices to treat substance use disorders and to support health and w…
Characteristics, Experiences, and Perceptions of Family Members of Sex Trafficking Specialty Court Participants
15) identified as supportive by women participating in a sex trafficking specialty court program, a qualitative study was conducted. Findings reflect that family members, especially those with their own experiences with substance use and sex trade involvement, demonstrated empathy, resilience, and strong desires to support participants' treatment success. Despite complex relational histories, participants presented with several protective charact…
Medicine (6 works) · Public health (5 works) · Political science (4 works) · Psychology (4 works) · Public relations (4 works) · Environmental health (3 works) · Applied Psychology (2 works) · Applied Psychology (2 works) · Community engagement (2 works) · Community-based participatory research (2 works)