Editor’s note: Simona Canale was part of GLOW’s Summer 2026 Health-AI-Impact Lab, an 8-week virtual program where students use systems thinking, evidence-based research and AI to tackle public health challenges. This cohort focused on youth aging out of the foster care system. Simona worked on the Research Proposal team, which designed a 50-state study of which supports for youth aging out of foster care lead to better outcomes. Below, she reflects on what the research taught her.
At the beginning of this program I knew that aging out of the foster care system was complicated, but I didn’t know the challenges these young people actually face when they have to transition into adulthood. I knew that housing instability was one of the main issues, but I hadn’t thought about what led these young people into this major problem. I also thought that part of the problem was that there were not enough programs or resources available. When we began to research more, I realized that programs and benefits already exist to support young people aging out of foster care, but not everyone who needs them knows they exist or knows how to access them. That changed how I thought about the problem. Instead of trying to make a new program to help the youth aging out of foster care, we started looking at it as finding ways to let more kids know about the existing benefits.
I also underestimated how long research takes before you get to the point of answering a question. I thought we would start with a broad problem, find information about it, and arrive at a solution. Instead, we had to keep narrowing our questions down, sorting through information, and figuring out what was actually important to investigate. I came into this program thinking research was mostly about finding answers by learning more about the topic and its effect on people. I am now understanding that a large part of research is learning how to ask the right question in the first place.
A moment that I thought was important is when we realized that the question we should be asking isn’t “what programs and benefits can we make to help support foster youth” but “How can we help more kids know about these benefits before aging out?” It helped change the perspective of the research project. Before researching, making something new seemed reasonable, but now I realize that from the perspective of someone who has the resources available to them but doesn’t know where to find them, helping to guide them towards those resources can be more helpful. This moment helped me understand why research takes so much time and why narrowing down the question matters so much. We needed to look at the problem from different perspectives before we could figure out what question we actually needed to answer.
Going forward, I think that this experience will change the questions I ask when I work on research or projects. I want to pay more attention to the gaps between a resource existing and someone being able to actually use it and know about it. I am interested in learning more about how information reaches young people and what makes it easier for them to find and understand the support available to them. This summer made me want to work on more projects where I can use research to understand what the problem is and why existing solutions are not always as impactful as they should be for the people that need it. I want to carry forward the idea that before solving a problem I should make sure I understand it from the perspective of the people that are experiencing it.
About the author: Simona Canale is a member of GLOW’s Summer 2026 Health-AI-Impact Lab, where she worked on the Research Proposal team.
Read more from the 2026 cohort: Asking the Right Questions by Ved Srinivasan
