Humanities & Society

Jin Huang, the Irving Louis Horowitz Professor in Social Policy at the WashU Brown School, has been appointed to serve on the advisory board of the Katherine A. Kendall Institute for International Social Work within the Council on Social Work Education.

As Americans work longer than previous generations, employers have an opportunity to create workplaces that support employees of all ages, according to a new article by Cal Halvorsen, associate professor at the WashU Brown School.

Jason Jabbari, an assistant professor at the WashU Brown School, has received a one-year $300,000 grant from the Popolo Family Foundation to study why some students with limited resources persist and thrive in college while others leave before earning a degree.

Fewer than half of Americans, around 49%, believe that all people in this country have the ability to achieve the American Dream, according to a recent survey from the Public Religion Research Institute. Among those under age 30, it falls to 36%. This should serve as a wake-up call for all of us, says WashU’s Mark Rank.

Researchers at the WashU Brown School have received a $311,796 grant from the Brady Education Foundation to continue a landmark 18-year study examining how early asset-building policies influence children’s educational success.

The WashU Brown School’s Social System Design Lab has received a $75,000 Spencer Foundation grant to study pathways from high school to careers in St. Louis. 

Mitra Naseh, an assistant professor at the WashU Brown School, has received a $612,000 grant from the Missouri Foundation for Health as co-principal investigator on a new project titled “Community-Driven Solutions for Sustainable Systems Change.”

As voters are increasingly asked to decide complex health policy questions at the ballot box, new research from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis finds that healthcare-related ballot measures draw more voters to the polls and are more likely to pass than other initiatives — but they’re also especially sensitive to opposition spending by special interest groups.

A new paper published in the Harvard Data Science Review outlines complementary models for rethinking how data is used in the social sector, emphasizing that technical expertise alone is not enough to ensure fair and effective outcomes. 

Cal J. Halvorsen, a gerontological social work scholar and an associate professor at the WashU Brown School, will step into a new leadership role this summer as co-director of the Harvey A. Friedman Center for Aging.