The Capacity Building Core, which is part of JCOIN’s Coordination and Translation Center (CTC), has launched the Learning Experiences to Advance Practice (LEAP) education program to support investigators and scholars with training and knowledge to conduct research and build research capacity within justice and health settings.

The LEAP program is a 1-2 year pilot education program that aims to advance the capacity and diversity of high impact research for populations involved with the health and criminal justice systems through specialized training and skill-development curriculums. Specifically, the goals of the program are to:

1. Grow the research workforce with the knowledge and skills needed to conduct ethical, rigorous research including partnering with justice and health agencies to conduct rigorous studies, recruitment and enrollment of subjects, use of informed consents, and problem solving in a variety of health, community, and justice settings.
2. Enlist an array of community, health, and justice leaders to value and implement research findings in practice and to engage in collaborative research teams on the conduct of research.
3. Motivate these learners to champion completion of research projects and fidelity of planned projects given the challenges of day-to-day operations.
4. Expand and/or develop a pipeline of independent criminal justice and health researchers for the field that can work in multidisciplinary teams.

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LEAP Program Tracks:

LEAP Investigator Track: The Investigator track is designed for individuals interested in a career as an independent investigator and will focus on a project to be designed and carried out over the next two years. This track will emphasize research proposal writing, grant management, mentorship and advanced research skills needed to be successful in criminal justice settings.

LEAP Scholar Track: The Scholar track will support clinicians, criminologists and analysts interested in collaborating on research in justice settings and will be one year in duration, focusing on the conduct of research in justice settings, formulating research questions, understanding elements of research design, ethical issues concerning research in justice settings, and collaborator roles to ground and translate the conduct of research in justice settings.