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About the SHINE Study

What are we trying to learn?

  1. We want to understand Durham community members' experiences with and attitudes toward community safety, police, and preferences for alternative first responder programs. 

  2. We are interested in learning about how the Durham community thinks the Holistic Empathetic Assistance Response Team (HEART) program is going, what works well about HEART, and what can be improved.

How will we do the research?
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Interviews

We are interviewing up to 60 stakeholders and lived experience experts about HEART and the ways it does or can meet the needs of Durham.

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Survey and Focus Groups

We plan to survey 800 individuals in Durham about their experiences with police, HEART, and opinions on community safety.

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Community members will be invited to participate in focus groups to interpret survey data.

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What will we do with the research findings?

We are committed to engaging with local communities and organizations to ensure that our research is equitable and inclusive, relevant to the needs of Durham residents, and has a real-world impact.

We will share our findings about HEART and community safety with members of the Durham community to ask for their interpretations and recommendations.
We will provide guidance to DCSD and Durham city officials on how best to support the HEART program and community safety.
We will communicate our findings about HEART with other cities nationwide that have or are thinking of creating alternative response programs.
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