Author: Leslie Gibson McCarthy

A groundbreaking multidisciplinary study on African-American health in St. Louis, ‘For the Sake of All,’ releases its fourth brief. This one examines the long-term effects of how segregation affects access to health-promoting resources and health outcomes such as chronic disease and death.

Close to 3 billion people in the developing world rely on biomass combustion — burning fires in rudimentary stoves — for cooking and heating needs. As a result, 4 million people die each year, and the large amount of black soot created has a staggering negative impact on the poor. This fall, Gautam N. Yadama, PhD, professor and director of international programs at the Brown School and photographer Mark Katzman are taking that issue to a broader audience with the publication of Fires, Fuel and the Fate of 3 Billion: The State of the Energy Impoverished (Oxford University Press 2013), a 152-page collection of photos and essays that tell an eye-opening, insightful story about energy access in the rural villages of India, where the hunt for safe, affordable energy is often a matter of life or death.

Renee Cunningham-Williams, associate dean of doctoral education at the Brown School, leads by example.

Why do some St. Louis neighborhoods rebound while others languish? That’s the question that will be at the forefront of a talk presented by Henry S. Webber, executive vice chancellor for administration at Washington University in St. Louis, and Todd Swanstrom, PhD, the E. Desmond Lee Endowed
 Professor in Community Collaboration and Public Policy at the University of Missouri St. Louis. That lecture, “Neighborhood Change in the St. Louis Region Since 1970: What Explains Neighborhood Success” takes place at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 10, in the Lee Auditorium of the Missouri History Museum.

The Brown School community celebrated its expansion Sept. 24 with a ceremonial groundbreaking for an innovative new building of approximately 105,000-square feet set to open in the summer of 2015. When completed, the new facility will double the Brown School’s footprint on the Danforth Campus and bring the school, as Lawlor said in his remarks, into a “new era.”

Each year in the St. Louis region, thousands of African American students drop out of high school. According to a newly released policy brief — “How does health influence school dropout?” — health and education are closely related, and there are patterns related to health that increase the risk of high school dropout. The brief is the second of five in a yearlong, multidisciplinary study called “For the Sake of All: A Report on the Health and Well-Being of African Americans in St. Louis.” Its author is William F. Tate, PhD, the Edward Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis and chair of the Department of Education in Arts & Sciences.

Low-income youth in developing countries will save their money in a formal account when given the right opportunity. That’s a key point in a groundbreaking study called YouthSave, shared by Lissa Johnson, director of administration for the Center for Social Development (CSD), at the YouthSave Learning and Exchange Event in Washington, D.C., this month. CSD is a research center in the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

The Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, an international leader in educating students in social work and public health, will conduct a groundbreaking ceremony on an innovative new building — east of Brown and Goldfarb halls of approximately 105,000 square feet. The event begins at 4 p.m. today, Sept. 24.

The Brown School’s Rebecca Gernes has been chosen as the only student among eight academic partners selected by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for the 2013-14 school year. Gernes, a native of Des Moines, Ia., is studying the relationship between air pollution and asthma in East St. Louis, Ill., and its surrounding areas – including the city of St. Louis.

The Brown School is launching a new Public Health speaker series titled “Innovative Solutions in State and Local Agencies,” designed to help policy makers grapple with tough public health problems. All lectures are free and open to the public and will take place from noon-1 p.m. in Brown Lounge, Brown Hall. The series kicks off Wednesday, Sept. 11, with “The ‘Long Tail’ and Public Health: New Thinking For Addressing Health Disparities.”