Brown School

South Dakota is poised to become the first state to require transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms of their birth sex. The proposed law is already impacting the health and well-being of transgender Americans and their loved ones, said Vanessa Fabbre, assistant professor at the Brown School and an expert on gender transitions, especially later in life.

More than 100 local community leaders will convene Feb. 19 at the Brown School to help lay the groundwork for implementing strategies put forth by For the Sake of All, the multi-disciplinary project on the health and well-being of African Americans in St. Louis.

Jason Purnell, assistant professor in the Brown School, has been named recipient of the 2016 FOCUS St. Louis Leadership Award for his work on the For the Sake of All project.

Mary McKernan McKay, the McSilver Professor of Poverty Studies and director of the McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research at New York University’s Silver School of Social Work, has been appointed dean of the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, effective July 1, according to Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton.

In the United States, there are more than 32,000 deaths per year from gun violence. More than 60 percent of those are from suicides. These issues and more will be discussed during “Guns, Suicide and Safety: A Community Forum,” at 3 p.m. Monday, Feb. 15, in Hillman Hall’s Clark-Fox Forum.

Each year, more than 16 million people in the U.S. dial 2-1-1 for help with both emergency services requests and basic needs. The Brown’s School’s 2-1-1 Counts is the first tool to provide real-time, searchable and visual presentations of data from call centers across the nation.

Washington University in St. Louis and the Peace Corps have announced the launch of a new Paul D. Coverdell Fellows Program that will provide graduate school scholarships to returned Peace Corps volunteers working toward master’s degrees in social work or public health at the Brown School.

Hillman Hall has received LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum certification from U.S. Green Building Council. Hillman is the university’s second LEED Platinum project, and the first on the Danforth Campus.

Breast cancer takes a daunting toll on all women, but it hits younger women especially hard, finds a new study from the Brown School. Women aged 18-44 with a history of breast cancer reported a lower health-related quality of life than older survivors, highlighting the impact of breast cancer on the physical and mental health of younger women.

The Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis has announced a master of social policy and master of arts dual degree program with Xi’an Jiaotong University in China.