The Death Certifier Education Project was featured recently in the Penn State News. This Penn State-led project is educating coroners, medical examiners, and others in the death-certifier community in Pennsylvania about the reporting of substances associated with accidental overdose. The Death Certifier Education Project, is a collaborative effort with the Pennsylvania Department of Health. It aims to address issues that can occur with the death reporting process that can place communities and residents at risk from misinformation.
The project is led by principal investigator Glenn Sterner, assistant professor of criminal justice, a faculty affiliate of the CJRC, and a founding member of the Consortium on Substance Use and Addiction. The project team consists of Elaine Arsenault, a researcher at the Criminal Justice Research Center; Yunfeng Shi, associate professor of health policy and administration; Jennifer Kraschnewski, Project ECHO director; Erica Francis, Project Manager at Project ECHO; Emily Kane and Kristine Gonnella with National Nurse-Led Care Consortium, NNCC, and Kelly Wolgast, assistant dean for outreach and professional development in the College of Nursing. The team also engaged two undergraduate research assistants to promote high impact learning for students at the institution.
The DOH provided funding for this project. The CJRC and the Social Science Research Institute provided pilot funding that led to this project.