By Frances Dumenci, University Public Affairs Appearing before a United States Senate subcommittee for the second time in as many months, Steven Woolf, M.D., director of the Virginia Commonwealth University Center on Society and Health and professor of family medicine and population health in the VCU School of Medicine, is making a habit of lending…
Recent Posts
Author: societyhealth
A brief published by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation examines how societal factors like race, gender and education can affect health disparities. The brief examines new findings on the topic such as patterns related to geography. The figure shows disparities in life expectancy by race and gender. Hispanic females have the highest life expectancy while…
The MacArthur Foundation recently published a brief examining how a child’s living conditions predict emotional and/or behavioral problems. The brief found that, among the five housing conditions examined, “poor housing quality is the most consistent and strongest predictor of emotional and behavioral problems in low-income children and youth.” The five factors studied were: quality, stability, affordability, ownership, and whether households…
Our staff at the Center on Society and Health recently submitted two proposals to the Knight Foundation as part of their Knight News Challenge. The challenge takes proposals from media innovators and community organizations and awards grants for projects. The challenge awards winners a share of $5 million in funding if their projects are selected….
Members of the Center on Society and Health attended The 6th Annual Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) National Conference held August 22-23 in Bethesda, MD. The two day event featured researchers and public health experts from around the country who conduct community-engaged research and are committed to advancing translational science. One speaker was Christopher…
Spending on health care and education make up about one quarter of America’s economy. Despite spending more than other developed countries, however, our outcomes in both sectors lag behind our peer countries. Budget expert Isabel Sawhill’s post on Brookings asserted that “providers are paid based on what they deliver and not on the outcomes they produce.”…
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) has updated its DC-Metro life expectancy map and has included maps for other areas based on data produced by the Center’s Place Matters study. The maps give a clear example of how life expectancy differs within a small geographic area and how even though we attribute so much of…
A report released by the Urban Institute earlier this month examines the relationship between youth employment and education by racial class. As would be expected, the authors found that graduating high school increases the likelihood of employment and getting more schooling is even better. What they also found, however, was that the impact of getting…
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released a new report detailing the characteristics of the “working poor”, those whose household income is below the federal poverty limit despite working for at least part of the year. According to the report, 10.4 million individuals fell into this category in 2011, nearly a quarter of all those…
The following post is related to the Center’s work on a Health Impact Assessment of a proposed biomass-powered energy facility in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. The facility was proposed as a potential remedy to the issue of nutrient concentration related to trends in livestock production. Each post in the series describes one particular aspect…