Author: Leslie Gibson McCarthy

The 24th annual Pow Wow, a festival of American Indian cultures at Washington University in St. Louis, will be held Saturday, April 5, in the Field House on the Danforth Campus. The event, hosted by the Kathryn M. Buder Center for American Indian Studies at the Brown School, is free and open to the public.

Washington University graduate student De Andrea Nichols has been chosen to help open the 2014 CGI U meeting as one of five students featured at the opening plenary session that begins at 8:30 p.m. (CDT) Friday, March 21, at Arizona State University.

Getting Congress to pass the Affordable Care Act, the landmark health insurance legislation, in 2010, was challenging — but not nearly as challenging as implementing it. With the deadline for first-time enrollment looming March 31, research from Matthew W. Kreuter, PhD, and the Brown School’s Health Communications Research Laboratory is helping. 

On March 6, the state of Maine became the first in the United States to make college savings for newborns universal and automatic, putting into practice research pioneered by Michael Sherraden, PhD, the George Warren Brown Distinguished University Professor and director ofthe Brown School’s Center for Social Development at Washington University in St. Louis.

Last fall, researchers in St. Louis released five policy briefs in a groundbreaking study on the health and well-being of African Americans in the region. Now it’s time for the community to weigh in on “For the Sake of All: A Report on the Health and Well-Being of African Americans in St. Louis.” A Community Feedback Forum will take place from 2-5 p.m. Monday, March 3, in the Learning Lab at the Forest Park Visitor Center, 5595 Grand Drive on the north side of Forest Park near the Missouri History Museum.

Lainie Friedman Ross, MD, PhD, of the University of Chicago, addresses the panel at the Policy Forum program “First, Do No Harm: Genetic Privacy in the Age of Genome Sequencing” in Brown Hall Feb. 25. Among other topics, panel participants addressed the ethical implications of genetic privacy and incidental findings that may occur because of genome testing. 

Half of parents in the United States would consent to have their children receive the flu vaccine in school, according to a survey from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. It is among the first to provide national data on parent preferences on school-administered flu shots. “This study shows the potential to use schools for large-scale influenza vaccination programs in the U.S.,” said Derek S. Brown, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School and lead author of the study.

Sean B. Carroll, PhD (left), vice president for science education at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a WUSTL alum (AB ’79) and one of the country’s foremost experts on evolutionary developmental biology, returned to campus to help the Institute for School Partnership celebrate its annual Darwin Day event for area high school teachers. Instrumental in Carroll’s appearance was mentor and teacher David Kirk, PhD (right), professor emeritus of biology in Arts & Sciences, who called Carroll one of the most “distinguished graduates in biology the department has had.”

A college savings account in a child’s name not only gives parents hope for the future, it also results in improved social-emotional health for their children. That’s the result of a new study released Jan. 27 online in JAMA Pediatrics. The study, led by Washington University in St. Louis’ Center for Social Development in collaboration with the state of Oklahoma, began in 2007 as SEED for Oklahoma Kids, an innovative policy experiment to invest in children at birth. The program automatically opened and deposited $1,000 in an Oklahoma college savings plan account for 1,360 newborns.

Experts and key strategists on charter schools in Missouri were in Brown Hall Dec. 11 for another event in the Brown School Policy Forum’s Child Well-being series, an ongoing public discussion on child welfare in Missouri. “Charter Schools in Missouri: The Emergence of Reform” examined state charter school policy both past and present and how the development of charter schools affect school choice and education reform strategies.