Author: Neil Schoenherr

Recent revelations that NBC News’ chief medical correspondent violated an Ebola quarantine after returning from Africa, and that a Dallas health care worker infected with the virus boarded a commercial jet have focused the nation’s attention on Ebola and what can be done to protect citizens. While measures like quarantine do restrict the freedom of exposed individuals, they do so to protect the public’s health, says a Washington University in St. Louis expert on biomedical ethics.

A Q&A with Sean Joe, PhD, the Benjamin E. Youngdahl Professor of Social Development at the Brown School, who came to Washington University in St. Louis this fall from the University of Michigan. His research focuses on black adolescents’ mental health; the role of religion in black suicidal behavior; and the development of father-focused, family-based interventions to prevent black adolescent males from engaging in multiple forms of self-destructive behaviors.

The U.S. Treasury Department has awarded a $1.08 million research contract to the Center for Social Development at the Brown School of Washington University in St. Louis. One of 11 contracts awarded nationally under the Financial Empowerment Innovation Fund, this award will fund research on “My Retirement Accounts.”

Several “blockbuster” cases — including freedom of speech, religious freedoms in prison, pregnancy discrimination and a possible decision on gay marriage — are on the docket for the Supreme Court, which begins its new session this month. But don’t expect any decisions until next June. New research led by the School of Law finds big cases are disproportionately decided just before the court’s summer recess.

Older parents, birth defects, maternal nutrition and childhood exposure to CT scans and pesticides are increasingly being associated with brain tumors in children, according to new research led by Kimberly Johnson, PhD, assistant professor of social work at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

The U.S. Treasury Department has taken action to curb corporate tax inversions, making it more difficult to for U.S. companies to merge with international firms and move abroad to reduce their taxes. This move attempts to combat specific abuses within a flawed framework, according to an international tax law expert at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law.

Medicaid claims are a poor way to identify child abuse and neglect at a population level, according to a study led by Ramesh Raghavan, PhD, associate professor at the Brown School. The study was published online in the August issue of Child Maltreatment.

Corporate tax inversions — reincorporating overseas by transferring assets to a smaller company in a country where the corporate tax rate is lower — have become quite popular with American companies lately, forcing the Treasury Department to issue new rules aimed at curbing them. The benefit of changing a firm’s home base to lower its effective tax rate is obvious, the study, led by Radhakrishnan Gopalan of Olin Business School finds. However, the costs of inversion are not well understood.

Washington University in St. Louis has partnered with the National University of Singapore to establish the Next Age Institute, an international collaboration to design, study and test social innovations. The institute, a program of WUSTL’s McDonnell International Scholars Academy, will address global challenges facing many families and communities, among them aging populations and rising inequality.

On Sept. 10, the Missouri legislature overrode a veto by Gov. Jay Nixon and enacted one of the United States’ strictest waiting periods for women seeking abortion. The law will require a 72-hour delay, and that delay won’t make women safer or improve health outcomes, said two experts on health and family law from the School of Law at Washington University in St. Louis.