Brown School

Students from WashU’s Brown School recently took their classroom lessons to the frontlines of local policy, offering public testimony on a bill aimed at expanding nontraditional housing options in St. Louis.

Husain Lateef, assistant professor at the Brown School, has been awarded a two-year, $49,821 grant from the Brady Education Foundation to study the influences of Afrocentric cultural strengths in Black youth education.

COVID-19 reshaped mobility patterns worldwide, affecting walking, driving and public transit use, finds a new study published in The Lancet Public Health. The research, led by an international team including some Brown School researchers, analyzed data from nearly 300 cities to understand how urban transportation habits adapted during the pandemic.

Cal J. Halvorsen, an associate professor at the Brown School, has been awarded a visiting scholar grant to spend 10 weeks at the renowned Karolinska Institute in Stockholm in summer 2025.

Tyriesa L. Howard, an assistant professor at the Brown School, has received a 2024 Changemakers in Family Planning grant from the Society of Family Planning. The $84,000 grant will support her research project, which examines the impact of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision on adolescents and young adults’ autonomy over their bodies.

The Brown School has ushered in a new era of social policy marked by key initiatives in social policy education, research and community engagement.

Missouri’s Medicaid program now covers doula services statewide, an effort led by CAHSPER and community health leaders. The measure addresses the state’s alarming maternal mortality rates.

Enrollment in Medicaid was associated with higher risk of death from a central nervous system (CNS) tumor, with an almost two-fold higher risk for young CNS tumor patients enrolled at diagnosis, finds a study from the Brown School at Washington University.

The U.S.’ D- grade for children and youth physical activity offers an opportunity to address the problem of insufficient physical activity, said Elizabeth Dodson, research assistant professor in the Brown School and a member of the Report Card Research Advisory Committee. 

The Prevention Research Center is tackling health disparities with evidence-based solutions that improve outcomes in underserved communities. From expanding Brazil’s “Academia da Saude” to over 1,000 cities, to training 4,000 public health professionals worldwide, the center is driving lasting improvements.