Humanities & Society

What happens to young adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) once they graduate high school and are no longer entitled to services? In a first-of-its-kind study, Paul Shattuck, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, looked at rates of service use among young adults with an ASD during their first few years after leaving high school. He found that 39.1 percent of these youths received no speech therapy, mental health, medical diagnostics or case management services. Shattuck also found that the odds of not receiving any services were more than three times higher for African-American young adults compared with white young adults and more than five times higher for those with incomes of $25,000 or less relative to those with incomes over $75,000.

Commercials during the Super Bowl may be some of the most watched ads on broadcast T.V., but Olin marketing professors say social media has changed the game. Advertisers need to engage the audience before, during and after the game with strategies that include everything from smartphones to Twitter.

Students from the WUSTL chapter of Relay For Life, the signature fundraiser of the American Cancer Society, will be hosting a survivor and caregiver social at 3 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 12, in McMillan Café. This year’s Relay For Life event will be held from 6 p.m. March 5 to 6 a.m. March 6 at Francis Field.

Former First Lady Rosalynn Carter will speak about her vision for ending the mental health crisis at 2 p.m. Monday, Feb. 14, in Graham Chapel at Washington University in St. Louis.  In her recent book, Within Our Reach: Ending the Mental Health Crisis, Carter and co-authors offer an insightful, unsparing assessment of the state of mental health. Carter describes a system that continues to fail those in need, despite recent breakthroughs in treatment that can help most people with mental illnesses lead productive lives. A panel discussion with local and state representatives of the mental health community will follow Carter’s remarks.

Yvonne Sparks, senior manager of community development for the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, delivers the keynote address for the fifth annual “Financial Freedom Seminar: Recovering From the Recession, Reaching for the Future,” on Jan. 22, in Brown Hall. The Society of Black Student Social Workers at the Brown School hosted the seminar in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.

The Crimes Against Humanity Initiative at the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute of Washington University in St. Louis School of Law recently released the text of a proposed multilateral treaty on the prevention and punishment of crimes against humanity. Leila Nadya Sadat, JD, director of the initiative, says that this is the first time that such a convention has been drafted.

Strobe Talbott, president of the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., and former deputy secretary of state from 1994-2001, will present “Angels of Our Nature: Polarization in America and Its Challenge to Universities and Think Tanks” at 4 p.m. Monday, Feb. 7, in Whitaker Hall Auditorium at Washington University in St. Louis. Talbott’s policy address will focus on the challenge of polarization in American politics, considered by many to be at its worst level since the late 19th century. He will reflect on the role of universities and think tanks, bastions of fact-based research and academic freedom, as antidotes to the current maladies of America’s political climate.

In a marriage of two disciplines that don’t often overlap — politics and medicine — a study by Matthew Gabel, PhD, professor of political science in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, finds that group consensus is an effective method for diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease.

Bryan Stevenson, JD, prominent death penalty defense attorney and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, kicks off the second half of the School of Law’s 13th annual Public Interest Law & Policy Speakers Series Thursday, Feb. 3, with the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Lecture on “Poverty, Incarceration, and Injustice in America.” The yearlong series “Access to Justice: The Social Responsibility of Lawyers” brings to WUSTL prominent experts in such areas as civil rights, racial justice, the death penalty, social justice, clinical legal education and free speech.

Health 2.0 and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) recently named Ozioma, an online cancer information tool from the Health Communication Research Laboratory (HCRL) at Washington University in St. Louis, one of two winners of a national contest. The Ozioma News Service was chosen a winner of the Enabling Community Use of Data for Cancer Prevention and Control Challenge, a part of the 2010 Health 2.0 Developer Challenge. The Ozioma tool helps reporters and media relations professionals create localized cancer stories for specific populations in specific communities.