The idea for UVA Batten assistant professor Derek Wu’s research had been brewing for years, but it was a “fortuitous” meeting with current Richmond Mayor and former head of the Virginia Department of Social Services Danny Avula that gave him the access he and his co-author Neil Cholli needed for a project that has been awarded a 2025 Russell Sage Foundation Pipeline Grant.

“In August 2023, he visited Batten to talk with students and the organizers asked me if I wanted an hour with him,” Wu said. “I talked to him about my research around safety net programs, and at the end he offered to help facilitate access to some administrative data.”

This initial conversation led to working with the Virginia Department of Social Services to gain access to data on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and Medicaid program participation spanning multiple decades, as well as data on earnings and crime. The combination of these data allows Wu and Cholli to analyze the characteristics of and outcomes for people who are enrolled in two or more social safety net programs. 

“There’s been a lot of work on the impact of particular programs, and I think a feature of that work has tended to favor looking at programs in isolation from other programs,” Wu said. “But we actually care about that interaction and the broader functioning of the social safety net, because it really is a tapestry of different nets.”

Their work will leverage the 2012 launch of CommonHelp.gov, an online platform that allows Virginia residents to easily check their eligibility and apply for programs like SNAP, TANF, and Medicaid. They will examine the platform’s role in reducing burdens to application and the impact that it has had on participation in multiple programs, with the goal of evaluating the efficacy of such participation and government efforts to promote it.  

This novel focus is how Wu and Cholli earned the Russell Sage Foundation Pipeline Grant. According to its website, the foundation was established by Margaret Olivia Sage in 1907 for “the improvement of social and living conditions in the United States. It dedicates itself to strengthening the methods, data, and theories of the social sciences in order to better understand societal problems and develop informed responses.” 

“I’m really excited to receive this grant in large part because it signals the value that others see in the work,” Wu said. “It’s invigorating to have the opportunity to continue this research, both because I find it personally meaningful and because I hope it will contribute to designing safety net programs that more effectively reach the neediest populations.”

Each year since March 2020, the foundation has awarded Pipeline Grants to early-career scholars for “innovative research on economic mobility and access to opportunity in the United States.” For Wu and Cholli, the grant will support the costs of securely storing the confidential data they’re using as well as working with a Batten predoctoral scholar and other research assistants in the 2025-2026 academic year. 

“Through this grant, we’re able to engage with Batten students as a valuable part of our work,” Wu said. “It allows us to work with the next generation of researchers and continue to add to the richness of the research environment at UVA.”

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