Perspectives

Now is the time for decisive leadership and policy action, informed by the available or new behavioral health science. America might be approaching a tidal wave of despair and our behavioral health systems cannot adequately prepare without prudent federal legislative action, writes Sean Joe.

PhD candidate Mark Beirn, a graduate student fellow in the Center for the Humanities in Arts & Sciences, is familiar with the challenge of keeping travelers safe during a global health crisis. He writes that policymakers dealing with COVID-19 could benefit from reviewing Nairobi, Kenya’s handling of its public infrastructure during the yellow fever scare […]

As a psychiatrist, I understand the realities of the mental health stressors that exist from this global pandemic and the potential for an increase in psychological care needs now and in the aftermath. However, it’s possible that we emerge from this with innumerable positive mental-health outcomes, writes Jessica Gold.

Michael Sherraden and other Brown School faculty members write an article saying the COVID-19 pandemic makes clear the importance of ensuring poor Americans have access to banks and other modern financial tools — and they propose a way to provide such access.

Visualizations that avoid perceptual distortions and play to cognitive strengths can improve public understanding of the evolving pandemic, writes Jeffrey Zacks.

The rampant spread of COVID-19 in the St. Louis region provided a unique opportunity to study the relationship between social and structural determinants of health and adverse outcomes, including death in African Americans and whites infected with COVID-19, writes Will Ross.

We need to reinvest in a coordinated homelessness prevention system, write Jason Purnell and Patrick Fowler. It provides a smart and equitable investment. We dismantled homelessness prevention when the stimulus money ran out and HUD priorities shifted toward serving the most vulnerable. Now, we need to think creatively about pooling regional resources for a rapid and robust homelessness prevention system.

Jason Purnell, of the Brown School, co-writes an article published in the Boston Review about the disproportionate rates at which African Americans are contracting — and dying from — COVID-19. He says nowhere is the situation more stark than in St. Louis.

As part of the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences’ ongoing “Musical Postcards” video series, Beth Huang, a senior studying music, performs Claude Debussy’s “La fille aux cheveux de lin” on the piano.

Now is the time for a prudent national investment to deliver full financial inclusion for all Americans. The reforms proposed here would leverage technology to provide basic financial services for everyone. The U.S. economy will recover more fully and grow stronger over time as a result.