Community Partnerships Initiative

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Science and technology have tremendous power to make our lives better. Decisions made by humans in the past are now often made by sophisticated machines, but those machines do not necessarily do a better job. The benefits and harms of new technologies are not distributed equally. People in historically excluded groups across race, gender, ability, sexual orientation, and income level are more likely to be affected by decisions about science and technology and less likely to benefit from them.

The public often has important knowledge about how to make certain that science and technology will benefit their community and be fair. STPP respects and values this expertise and is dedicated to integrating these voices into public and policy conversations about science and technology. We listen and learn from communities. Then, we provide you with tools to engage in technical and policy advocacy.  Our work falls into two categories. 1) Helping our partners respond to tech challenges, and 2) Horizon scanning, identifying emerging technologies that have potential impacts on our partners.

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If you are in Michigan and would like to discuss how we might work together, please contact Kristin Burgard at [email protected].  

 

Featured Project

Creating more equitable partnerships

Based on real-world experiences, the Community Partnerships Playbook aims to improve collaborative experiences for community organizations, technologists, and researchers and help create more equitable technologies that serve the public interest.
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Horizon Scanning

STPP reviews and assesses emerging technologies, to help inform our partner organizations about future concerns and potentially valuable tools.
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Partnerships Publications

STPP students work with community partners to produce policy briefs on specific, relevant technologies or policies.
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Student Research Corps

Undergraduate and graduate students from across U-M conduct applied research to respond to the needs of our community partners.
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Recent Publications:

Nice Streets, Mean Streets: Mapping Transportation Accessibility in Southeast Michigan

STPP collaborated with the Program to Educate All Cyclists (PEAC), a nonprofit advocating for transportation equity for Michiganders with intellectual disabilities, to leverage Strava Metro's dataset of bike trips in Washtenaw County to shape the future of active transportation, infrastructure, and sustainability.
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The Vote, the Truth & the AI: How to Spot AI Election Threats

This zine outlines ways in which AI can disrupt elections and recommends places to find the truth.
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American Moneyline: Protecting Consumers in the Age of Online Gambling

Our recommendation is that state regulators move beyond the traditional paradigm of information provision and towards a structural, population-level approach that universally restricts access to the most dangerous and addictive features of online gambling platforms.
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