On August 20, HOME PIs Drs. Rebekah Levine Coley and Samantha Teixeira, along with graduate student Yilin Wang, were invited by Connected Communities to present at a professional development meeting for community coordinators across the country. During the session, Dr. Coley provided an overview of the HOME study, and Yilin shared findings from her paper on neighborhood child-friendliness and parenting strategies. More than 80 community coordinators attended the meeting and were engaged in a lively discussion with questions on participant engagement and project funding.

On July 26, the HOME team had the pleasure of attending Community Unity Day 2025 at Mary Ellen McCormack. Project coordinator Maria Paula Jimenez Saenz, along with graduate students Lindsay Lanteri and Elizabeth DePentu, represented the project at this annual celebration. Unity Day is a vibrant tradition honoring the history, strength, and resilience of the Mary Ellen McCormack community. The event brought neighbors together for a day of family-friendly activities and meaningful connections with local organizations. The HOME team had the chance to speak with residents, share information about our study, and recruit children for our ongoing social mobility research.

Throughout June and July, HOME Principal Investigator Dr. Rebekah Levine Coley shared HOME project findings at three international academic conferences. In June, she presented research exploring how children interpret housing and community cues when thinking about social mobility at the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition Conference in Ireland. In July, during two invited talks at the University of Queensland and the University of Sydney in Australia, she discussed how poverty shapes children’s educational outcomes and introduced a framework for understanding poverty’s impact on child development. These presentations brought the HOME project’s insights to global audiences and advanced conversations on how poverty, housing, and neighborhood environments shape children's development.

We are excited to share that Wave 2 of HOME data collection officially began in June! Wave 2 focuses on understanding residents’ neighborhood experiences, health, and well-being since the start of the Mary Ellen McCormack redevelopment. In this round, we aim to speak with 750 participants from 500 households. Surveys will be conducted in English, Spanish, and Cantonese/Mandarin. Data collection will continue throughout the summer and fall. We look forward to connecting with residents and hearing their stories and experiences!

From May 1 to May 3, 2025, the HOME Team PI, a former postdoctoral researcher, and graduate students presented their work at the 2025 Society for Research in Child Development (SRCD) Conference. Dr. Jane Leer, a former HOME postdoc and current Assistant Professor at San Diego State University, co-chaired a panel with Lindsay Lanteri, titled Beliefs About Economic Inequality and Social Mobility Among Parents and Children in Diverse Cultural Contexts. Lindsay presented her work on parent and youth perceptions of social mobility, sparking insightful feedback and engaging conversations with the audience. Additionally, Sarah Her, a second-year PhD student from Boston College, presented her poster on the relationship between neighborhood problems, collective efficacy, parenting, and child behavioral adjustment, co-authored with HOME PI Dr. Rebekah Levine Coley and the graduate student Yilin Wang.

On May 2, 2025, Mariam Abdelhalim, a senior at Boston College studying Global Public Health and the Common Good and an undergrad RA of the HOME project, presented her poster titled From Public Housing to Higher Education: Identity, Motivation, and Sense of Belonging in College at the BC Hamilton Symposium. Developed using focus group data from college students, this study aims to understand how identity shapes students' motivation to attend and persist in college, as well as their sense of belonging within the academic environment. 

On April 17-18, 2025, the HOME Team PIs and a graduate student presented three ongoing qualitative studies at the 2025 International Conference on Urban Affairs. In a panel titled Putting People Back in Place-Based Policies: Centering Resident and Stakeholder Perspectives in Housing and Neighborhood Transformation Efforts, moderated by HOME PI Dr. Rebekah Levine Coley, two qualitative projects were presented: HOME PI Dr. Samantha Teixeira shared her work on public housing residents’ perceptions of housing and the neighborhood environment, and Co-PI Dr. Lacee Satcher specifically focused on Black residents and their place attachment. In addition, Lindsay Lanteri, a graduate student working on the HOME team, presented a research brief on parent and youth perceptions of social mobility. 

On April 12, 2025, the HOME Team presented three studies at the Boston Area Research Initiative (BARI) 2025 Insight-to-Impact Conference, including youth and parents' perceptions of social mobility (led by Lindsay Lanteri), the relationship between housing quality and adult mental health (led by Zhirui Chen), and parents' perceptions of neighborhood child-friendliness (led by Yilin Wang). These studies were conducted under the mentorship of HOME project PIs Drs. Rebekah Levine Coley and Samantha Teixeira, and featured interdisciplinary collaboration across multiple institutions. The HOME Team’s works sparked meaningful discussions with researchers, community planners, and other practitioners.

On March 1 and March 14, 2025, the HOME Team returned to the community to distribute postcards to over 600 households. These postcards, available in English, Spanish, and Chinese, highlighted key insights from the first wave of the HOME study—including community strengths and local concerns. We had great conversations with residents and are excited to return to the field this summer!

On January 17, 2025, Jenna Strauss, the third-year graduate student working on the HOME project, presented her poster, "The Neighborhood Social Environment and Early Adolescent Student Engagement: A Scoping Review," at the 2025 Society for Social Work Research (SSWR) conference. This study, co-developed with the HOME project PI Dr. Samantha Teixeira, aims to understand the relationship between neighborhood social environment and early adolescents' school engagement.

On November 17, 2024, Dr. Rebekah Levine Coley gave a talk at the Lynch School of Education and Human Development at Boston College, titled “Multiple Methods for Evaluating Policies to Improve Housing Quality and Stability.” In her presentation, Dr. Coley shared findings from a series of research projects focused on evaluating policies aimed at enhancing housing stability, affordability, and quality for low-income families. She also provided an update on the ongoing progress of the HOME project.

On October 14, 2024, Dr. Coley presented her new conceptual framework on how poverty affects the key contexts in which children's development unfolds, including home contexts, neighborhoods, and schools, for the Institute of Human Development/Developmental Psychology Colloquium at the University of California, Berkeley. This work, derived from an integrative conceptual review conducted with Dr. Dana McCoy and Sarah Hatch of Harvard University, builds on work from the HOME study and other research to delineate structural and social features in home, neighborhood, and school contexts that constrain and enhance the development of children in poverty.