Brown School

The National Rural Health Association (NRHA) honored Timothy D. McBride, PhD, associate dean for public health at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, with its Outstanding Researcher Award April 19 during the NRHA’s 35th annual Rural Health Conference.

The Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis will award a Distinguished Faculty Award and three Distinguished Alumni Awards during its annual alumni awards celebration at 6 p.m. Wednesday, May 2, at Steinberg Hall Auditorium. A reception will follow at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum. Register to attend the event and catch a glimpse of current “heroes in training” through a series of videos from the Brown School at brownschool.wustl.edu/DAA2012.

What is the American Dream’s role in today’s society? Experts from Washington University in St. Louis will explore this question in a panel discussion at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 18, in Brown Hall Lounge on the Danforth Campus. Panelists are Steven Fazzari, PhD, professor of economics in Arts & Sciences; Carter W. Lewis, playwright-in-residence in the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences; and Mark R. Rank, PhD, the Herbert S. Hadley Professor of Social Welfare at the Brown School.

What is the Burrito Index? Can marriage impact cancer survival rates? Washington University in St. Louis students in social work and public health will explore these and many other topics at the Brown School’s inaugural Research Without Walls Student Research Symposium at 4 p.m. Thursday, April 19, in Brown and Goldfarb Halls on the Danforth Campus.

If you were a wandering shepherd and suddenly the government began parceling out land your flock grazed to your fellow citizens, would you be better off as a landowner instead? That’s the question that Carolyn Lesorogol, PhD, associate professor of social work, pondered when Kenya began to distribute property in the land registration movement of the 1970s.

Winners of the seventh annual YouthBridge Social Enterprise and Innovation Competition were announced April 11. Winning teams represented community and WUSTL social entrepreneurs, including students, alumni and faculty. Their social venture ideas ranged from teaching teens about entrepreneurship through beekeeping to providing education to kidney transplant patients.

It can take decades for research discoveries to make their way into public health settings. The emerging field of dissemination and implementation (D&I) research seeks to narrow the gap between evidence-based research and routine practice. To help propel this crucial field forward, leading D&I scholars and researchers at Washington Univeristy have contributed to Dissemination and Implementation Research in Health: Translating Science to Practice, a new book published by Oxford University Press.

John C. Morris, MD, the Harvey A. and Dorismae Hacker Friedman Distinguished Professor of Neurology and director of the Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center, will deliver the 2012 Friedman lecture at 3 p.m. April 30, in Graham Chapel. His lecture is titled “The Aging Mind: Realities and Myths.”

The Supreme Court’s ruling on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will have a major impact on the presidential campaign, says Timothy D. McBride, PhD, health economist and associate dean for public health at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. “The health reform legislation was the signature piece of social legislation passed by President (Barack) Obama’s administration in his first term,” he says. How the court’s decision will influence the election could be quite complex, says McBride. The court is hearing arguments in the case March 26-28

The 22nd annual Pow Wow at Washington University in St. Louis, a festival of American Indian cultures, will be held Saturday, March 31, in the WU Field House. This event, hosted by the Kathryn M. Buder Center for American Indian Studies at the Brown School of Social Work, is free and open to the public. Visitors and participants will be able to enjoy dancing, singing, drumming, arts, crafts and food. Grand entries will take place at noon and 6 p.m. Traditional arts and crafts booths and community information booths open at 10 a.m.