Matthew Gabel is working with Andrea Denny in the Knight ADRC to develop and evaluate a strategy to improve recruitment and retention of study participants in Adult Children Study (ACS) in the Knight ADRC. The main focus of the project is to increase participation and retention of African Americans in the St. Louis region. The strategy is based, in part, on Professor Gabel’s research describing and assessing how African Americans view their participation in four Alzheimer Disease Research Centers around the US.
In addition, he (with Brian Crisp, Jonathan Rodden, and a couple guys at UMSL) has a project designed to describe and explain why the racial composition of municipal government and school boards in St. Louis county has responded (or not) to racial migration in the region since the 1960s. To do that, they are assembling a comprehensive database of school board and city council elections in St. Louis. The team has arranged with the Wash U library and the county Board of Elections for Wash U to host and curate the official website where all such election information will be stored and updated. The hope is that this data can engage several interesting research questions about electoral rules, racial representation, and the political consequences of racial migration in metro US cities. They also hope the research from the project will inform local discussions of institutional reform, racial justice, and electoral politics in St. Louis County. At the suggestion of Chancellor Andrew Martin, Professor Gabel has met with Nicole Hudson to ensure that the project is coordinated with any related activities or projects on campus.