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The Abstract
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> By Stephanie DiCapua Getman, Arnold Ventures
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My 10-year-old daughter got a surprise in the mail this week: an actual handwritten letter. It was from her dear friend and classmate, someone she communicates with almost every day over some sort of electronic device. Their virtual contact has become a social lifeline in five months of pandemic-driven isolation, so I was struck by the shift to pen and paper as a source of comfort and connection in an increasingly chaotic world. What also struck me was the empathy that comes through in this correspondence — her motivation was to “bring you as much joy as writing it brought me” — and that it came from a child: “Because of Covid-19,” she writes, “we have been forced to quarantine. We stay at home. We do school from home. We are home all day every day (except for essential workers), but we can make the best of it. Sleep in late, not brush our hair or teeth, do school in our pajamas, watch a lot of TV, catch up on our reading, play online games, or maybe write a motivational letter to our friends as I am doing now. Just remember this situation is utterly, horribly terrifying and treacherous...But there is always a silver lining. Stay strong.”
This week, her letter was my silver lining. Their fourth-grade language arts teacher would be proud. (And for the record, my kid is brushing her teeth every day. I plead the fifth on the rest.)
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By Rhiannon Meyers Collette
Amid a pandemic, the pharmaceutical industry has ramped up efforts to rehabilitate its image among Americans who have long soured on high drug prices. Pharma companies are showering Congress with cash, blitzing the airwaves with advertising, and even developing their own reality television show (hosted by Lisa Ling, above).
In spite of the expensive PR campaign, the truth is, Americans want change. Polls in the past few months confirm that voters still want the government to take action to lower drug prices — and if anything, their desire for reform has gotten more aggressive.
Bottom line: Congress has been debating a number of different policy solutions aimed at lowering drug prices, but legislative momentum has slowed during the pandemic. With both a health and economic crisis underway, the need for action is urgent. “Americans were worried about their drug prices before COVID, with many people struggling to afford their cancer drugs, insulin, and other medicines needed to manage chronic disease,” says Mark Miller, AV's Executive Vice President of Health Care. “The pandemic hasn’t changed that worry — if anything, they are more concerned.”
Read the story >
Related: How pharmaceutical companies use “drip” to keep their lock on patents and drive up drug prices, via this Medium post by AV grantee I-MAK.
Related: Pharma is vigorously fighting state attempts to cap insulin prices for insured and uninsured patients, reports NBC News.
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With back-to-school in full swing at college campuses across the country, it’s a good time to remember the thousands of students who have been left in debt and with a worthless degree — and little recourse — by predatory, for-profit colleges. Students like Stephanie Porreca, who learned just after graduating from the Illinois Institute of Art that the school had lost its accreditation — information it failed to share with students.
What’s happening: A new report from the Student Borrower Protection Center shows how a web of players and practices target and victimize students — many from low-income and historically marginalized backgrounds. Institutions are routinely dishonest with students earning degrees in fields like nursing, truck driving, or cosmetology, where wages are typically too low to repay the high “shadow” debt students accumulate.
Bottom line: There is little federal and state oversight. The current administration has overturned or stalled on regulations meant to protect students. “We as a public are just letting it happen,” says Kelly McManus, AV’s Director of Higher Education. “We have made the active policy choice that this is okay, and to me that’s deeply wrong and offensive.”
Read the story >
Related: For-profit colleges have already started ramping up efforts to target students looking for more skills training or a new job amid the pandemic. The Century Foundation explains how these schools are taking advantage of the COVID-19 economy.
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Who's Minimizing Injustice
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Communities building inclusive public spaces and shifting the role of police to better support people forced to live outside. After leaving an abusive relationship, Trina lost her home in rural Virginia, followed by her car and her job. She was living in a field when police confiscated her belongings and told her to move along or be cited for trespassing. Her search for shelter and support amid COVID-19 hit a dead end, leaving her among the many with few options but to live in a public space.
Police are often called to respond to such situations, exacerbating the homelessness-jail cycle. The Urban Institute offers three strategies communities can adopt to help people like Trina and improve everyone’s quality of life: reimagining the role of public spaces to accommodate unsheltered people, educating the public on what needs to be done, and taking police out of the equation.
Read the story >
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Who's Maximizing Opportunity
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- Michigan, which randomly selected 13 citizen commissioners to redraw congressional and state legislative district lines. This is the culmination of work by Voters Not Politicians to pass redistricting reform in 2018 and exemplifies what redistricting reform campaigns around the country are fighting for: For the first time, voters in Michigan will get to choose their politicians, not the other way around.
- The Missouri judge who threw out November ballot language crafted by Republican lawmakers, saying it misled voters on the Clean Missouri effort to empower a nonpartisan state demographer to oversee redistricting. “The ballot language written by politicians for Amendment 3 was full of objective falsehoods and misleading language designed to trick voters and hide the true intention of the measure — to overturn voter-approved redistricting reforms, and install a new gerrymandering plan in the state constitution that would allow lobbyists and political operatives to draw maps designed to protect incumbents.”
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By Rhiannon Meyers Collette
The multiple sclerosis drug copaxone has faced competition from a cheaper generic drug since 2015, and yet it continues to maintain its grip over the Medicare Part D market, capturing 82 percent of sales in 2018, according to a new study by researchers with 46Brooklyn. How could that be?
What’s happening: Expensive specialty brand name drugs continue to dominate Medicare Part D sales — even though cheaper drugs are available — underscoring a distortion in the market that shows why we need Medicare Part D reform.
Why it matters: For drugs like copaxone, the warped incentives of Part D mean that patients and plans may favor more expensive brands over generics because they help shift more costs onto the federal government and taxpayers. Copaxone is also a “canary in the coal mine,” 46Brooklyn argues, noting that specialty drugs like copaxone will face more generic competition in the coming years, but this competition alone won’t be enough to drive down drug prices. This report shows why national drug pricing reform is so necessary to restore balance to the market.
What’s next: Part D reform is a key component of several bipartisan legislative proposals, but with the pandemic raging, it seems likely that Congress will wait until at least next year to entertain meaningful legislation. Meanwhile the federal government this week announced an investigation into copaxone’s drugmaker, Teva, for creating an elaborate scheme to provide copay assistance while hiking the drug’s price, bilking Medicare and taxpayers.
Read the story >
Related: A Chicago nurse describes her struggle with the cost of copaxone after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. “If my copaxone were affordable, it wouldn’t have been easy, but I would’ve been able to keep fighting to keep my life in order and protect my memory.”
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Activists and experts arguing in USA Today that systemic reforms — and not just more police officers on the streets — are necessary to reduce the violence in U.S. cities. AV's Vice President of Criminal Justice Walter Katz says that in Chicago, for example, the work of community “violence interrupters” was stalled by the pandemic, potentially playing a role in the increase in violence.
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A new COVID-19 tracker that follows the money: every major action taken by Congress, the Federal Reserve, the executive branch, and various federal agencies in response to the pandemic and economic crisis.
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A critical view of New Hampshire’s juvenile justice system, where youth often get inexperienced lawyers and parents suffer “insurmountable debt” from fees for lawyers and diversion services. The story is based on this report from the National Juvenile Defender Center.
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A data-driven look at the steep losses that cities in both blue and red states are facing. “These numbers give a sense of the possible economic pain for cities if Congress and the White House fail to agree on a new relief package that includes aid to state and local governments. It also rebuts some of the prevailing, largely Republican arguments that have stalled those negotiations: that federal help will bail out only blue cities and those that have mismanaged their finances.”
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This Philadelphia Inquirer op-ed connecting the dots from fees and fines to police violence.
Related: A closer look at the revenue side of the criminal justice system, via the Tax Policy Center. Data on fees and fines show a disproportionate impact on communities of color.
Related: A new resource from PFM’s Center for Justice & Safety Finance outlines steps counties can take to reform fees and fines policies — work that is all the more urgent as low-income communities are hit hard by the economic recession.
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Are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future of the social contract in America? That was the question posed by AV’s Executive Vice President of Criminal Justice Jeremy Travis to the latest Square One Justice roundtable. Read their answers.
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How California's push on police reform could shift the national conversation, via Politico.
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“Sounds Like Hate,” a new podcast series from the Southern Poverty Law Center about those who lead a life of extremism — and decide to get out. The first two episodes follow a woman named Samantha and her involvement in the white supremacist group Identity Evropa. It's a grim behind-the-scenes look at the fear tactics used by the the alt-right to gain supporters. Samantha talks about why she decided to leave the group — and what she learned about herself and the harm she had caused when she did.
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Our grantee Topeka K. Sam, Founder and Executive Director of The Ladies of Hope Ministries, speaking powerfully about her mission for racial justice and decarceration — and how all of our voices can be used for change — on the World of Speakers podcast. “This is not a time or a moment in history where we can be timid. It’s all of our responsibilities to utilize the platforms we have in order to amplify messages that will change this country and the way that people think.”
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I’ve just started “Outcry,” a five-part Showtime documentary that tells the story of Texas high school football star Greg Kelley, who was wrongfully convicted of child sexual assault and sentenced to 25 years in prison. (H/T to JAN's Holly Harris, who mentioned it in the podcast I wrote about in last week’s newsletter.) The crime is heart-wrenching, and even more so when you realize justice may never be served. You might recognize Patricia Cummings, Kelley’s defense attorney, who also worked to secure the exoneration of Michael Morton (this two-part Texas Monthly story is a must-read on his case) and was featured in a case on “The Innocence Files.” Morton later criticized how both Williamson County prosecutors and Cummings were portrayed in the series (for very different reasons).

Also: The New York Times celebrated the centennial of the 19th amendment with “Finish the Fight,” a virtual play from Ming Peiffer that brings to life the stories of the Black, Asian, Latinx, Native American, and queer women who fought for voting rights but did not get the recognition they deserved. It’s a spare but effective retelling of some of history's lesser-known boss ladies and a powerful reminder of how far we’ve come.
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Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics
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By Stuart Buck, Vice President of Research
This week, NIH Director Francis Collins tweeted that an NIH-funded study found that “teens & young adults who use e-cigarettes...were 5 to 7 times more likely to be diagnosed with COVID-19 than their peers who did not vape.”
Quite a disparity in risk! Perhaps vaping is deadly after all. But not so fast. Let’s look at the actual article.
First, an initial sign of trouble was pointed out by Nick Brown on Twitter: Some of the basic descriptive numbers just aren’t possible. For example, the respondents were asked about their mother’s level of education, and 609 said that their mother had “started college” (but not graduated). Of these 609, 48% were never-users while 52.0% had vaped.
But that’s impossible: 48% of 609 is 292.32, while 52% is 316.68. People exist in integers — 1, 2, 3, etc. — and there’s no such thing as someone who has .32 or .68 of a mother. (If the researchers had rounded the numbers, that still wouldn’t explain the results here.) Similar impossible numbers can be found elsewhere.
As Brown says, this is a warning sign: If researchers can’t do something as simple as calculate the percentage of people in their study who answered a certain way, what can you really trust about their numbers?
Second, the reported risk here doesn’t make sense. If you look at Table 1 of the study, 17.5% of the vapers claimed to have gotten a COVID-19 test, compared to 5.7% of the non-vapers. Then, Table 1 says that 2.3% of vapers had a positive COVID-19 diagnosis, compared to .8% of the non-vapers.
This actually works out to a roughly equal rate of COVID in both groups! Sure, the vapers were more likely to say they had a positive COVID-19 test, but they were also more likely to say they got tested at all. Thus, a roughly equal number of vapers and non-vapers tested positive for COVID-19 if they got tested at all.
Third, do we trust those numbers in the first place? The study claims that it surveyed people via a “survey Web link on gaming sites, social media, customer loyalty portals, and through website intercept recruitment.” For all we know, teens and young adults who vape might have been more likely to say that they got a COVID-19 test or that it was positive.
Fourth, it isn’t believable that 17.5% of vapers had been tested for COVID-19. If 17-18% of people were getting tested, there would have been nearly 58 million tests nationwide at that time, which is about five times more than had actually occurred! This indicates a significant bias in who was responding to the survey.
All told, this doesn’t seem like a reliable study. Vaping might be bad for you, but this study doesn’t show it.
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What’s poppin’? Performances from two amazing teachers — Mrs. Evans and Mrs. Williams — who put in all the effort to get their students excited for the new year. (Now I’m excited for their school year.)
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For all you pandemic-inspired chefs, The Sifter is an online collection of historical cookbooks searchable by recipe, region, cookbook, and chef. (H/T to my colleague Carl Hamad-Lipscombe for this great foodie find.)
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Have an evidence-based week,
– Stephanie
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Stephanie DiCapua Getman develops and executes Arnold Ventures' digital communications strategy with a focus on multimedia storytelling and audience engagement and oversees daily editorial operations and design.
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