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The Abstract
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> By Ashley Winstead, Arnold Ventures
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I hate that I’m opening another AV newsletter with news of a violent tragedy. My heart is with the victims of the Atlanta-area shootings, their families and friends, and the larger Asian American community. This latest violent event — which left eight dead, including six Asian American women — comes amid a spike in hate crimes against the AAPI community.
The same day as the attack, the organization Stop AAPI Hate released a report documenting 3,800 hate crimes against Asian Americans nationwide over the last year. A majority of the incidents reported took place against women, in businesses or public spaces.
Whatever the shooter’s stated motive, it seems clear the Atlanta-area massacre was rooted in anti-Asian racism, which the Asian American Journalists Association says “has remained historically invisible,” though a recent rise in racist political rhetoric has called more widespread attention to it. The massacre is also the latest tragic news amid a harrowing Women’s History Month, which has witnessed the high-profile murder of Sarah Everard, sparking a worldwide conversation about how unsafe many women feel moving through the world, as well as continued allegations of sexual harassment by women against high-profile leaders. The Atlanta-area massacre is also another shooting in a year that has been plagued by gun violence.
Today I’m reflecting on the fact that the six Asian American women who were victims of the shootings were subject to the intersectional harms of racism, misogyny, and gun violence, and this made them deeply and particularly vulnerable. As a member of an organization committed to improving people’s lives — a goal I admire, but recognize is tangled up with vast amounts of privilege — I am reminding myself to always recognize this complexity, so the solutions we advance together are capable of addressing overlapping systems of discrimination.
Below, you’ll find stories about our joint call with NORC to reinstate the FIST gun data program, our priorities for the new administration to address America’s complex health care problems, a look at the promising data on New York’s bail reform (in stark contrast to the fearmongering), and the first of our spotlights on women we work with who deeply inspire us. Here’s to love, respect, and care in words and actions. |
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Lifesaving Gun Policies Start With Data
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By Evan Mintz, Communications Manager
Arnold Ventures and NORC at University of Chicago have issued a joint public letter calling on the Department of Justice to reinstate the Firearm Inquiry (FIST) Program, which has been one of the few federal initiatives charged with collecting information about firearms.
Why it matters: More than 100,000 Americans are killed or injured by firearms each year. Despite this ongoing crisis of public health and safety, policymakers often lack objective information about gun violence in the United States. Without systematic data collection, it is difficult to craft effective and constitutional policies that can reduce the number of firearm deaths and injuries, whether from accidents, violent crime or suicides.
What’s next: Not only should FIST be reinstated, but AV and NORC also call on the Department of Justice to expand the data collected and audit the underlying National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). These changes will help to address problems within U.S. firearms data infrastructure, as discussed in the NORC Expert Panel on Firearms Data Infrastructure report “ A Blueprint for a U.S. Firearms Data Infrastructure.”
Read the story >
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Dear HHS: Top Health Care Priorities For The New Administration
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By Rhiannon Collette, Communications Manager
Now that the Senate has confirmed Xavier Becerra as the new secretary of Health and Human Services, here are four things we’d like to see at the top of the administration’s agenda: drug pricing reform, thoughtful implementation of the new surprise medical billing law, tighter regulation of health care prices, and administrative fixes to Medicare/Medicaid integration to provide better care for people who are eligible for both programs.
Why it matters: As the pandemic lingers and the economy struggles to recover, an increasingly expensive health care system is creating financial hardships for families and employers, as well as local, state and national governments. Drug makers hiked the price tags on more than 500 medicines this year, and the prices charged by hospitals, clinics and providers are also increasing. This leaves families struggling to afford exorbitant hospital bills and rationing lifesaving insulin and other prescription drugs. In a recent survey, employers pegged health care costs as their No. 1 worry, ranking over anxieties about COVID-19’s impact on their business.
What’s next: With President Biden’s health cabinet taking shape, Washington has the opportunity to advance evidence-based reforms aimed at making health care more affordable, accessible, and equitable.
Read the story >
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Despite Backlash, Nothing But Upsides In New York Bail Reform Data
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By Evan Mintz, Communications Manager
Nearly half a million people are detained in jails across the country on any given day, waiting for their day in court. They’re not behind bars because of any specific threat to public safety or skipping town — they simply cannot afford to pay bail. In 2016, New York City implemented a program designed to reduce the number of these pretrial detainees. The program gave judges the option to order supervised release (SR), rather than setting monetary bail. Last year, researchers at MDRC studied the implementation and impact of this program, looking at re-arrest rates, court appearance rates, and overall case outcomes.
Why it matters: The research by MDRC found positive outcomes across the board: 81 percent of people on supervised release avoided recidivism; 89 appeared for their court dates — no substantial change from the status quo; and supervised release reduced the use of money bail by 45 percentage points and post-arraignment detention by 34 percentage points.
These conclusions contribute to a growing body of evidence that shows how counties and states can reduce their reliance on pretrial detention with zero risk to community safety.
What’s next: New York has since passed statewide bail reforms that supersede the program, but the research clearly illustrates how data-driven reforms can shrink jail populations with no measured downside.
“Bail reform has become a very politicized issue,” said Research Associate Melanie Skemer. “You hear people making a lot of claims based on anecdotal evidence and not based on data. Our study was rigorous, it was data-based, and it calls into question a lot of assumptions about bail reform.”
Read the story >
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Women Making History: I-MAK’s Priti Krishtel
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Meet Priti Krishtel, health justice lawyer and co-founder of I-MAK, a nonprofit aimed at building a more just and equitable medicines system.
Krishtel has spent nearly two decades exposing the structural inequities affecting access to medicines and vaccines across the Global South and in the United States. I-MAK’s work examining the intersection between the patent system and prescription drug costs has been repeatedly cited in Congressional testimony, and most recently was featured prominently in hearings held by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. She is a Presidential Leadership Scholar and an Ashoka Fellow.
Read the story >
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A CNN Opinion piece from Katherine Gehl calling for the adoption of “Final Five Voting” to replace party primaries. |
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This look at the “quiet” bail reform in Cuyahoga County in the midst of the pandemic. |
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This article from Pew on where and why ranked-choice voting is picking up steam. |
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A look at why the past five HHS chief technology officers are calling on the Biden administration to enact a Trump-era rule to improve the nation’s organ donation, procurement, and transplant system. |
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An op-ed from Michael Umpierre and Marc Schindler urging an end to solitary confinement for youth. |
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The mission statement of Second Chance Studios, a new nonprofit digital media company that trains and employs formerly incarcerated people. |
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Welcome news that the Colorado legislature will consider a bill establishing a panel of experts to investigate drug cost increases and then set perimeters on prices. |
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This op-ed on Virginia’s decision to join 16 other states and D.C. in allowing pharmacists to prescribe birth control, which improves women’s ability to access the care they need. |
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This article following the latest in the Purdue Pharma opioid case: as of Monday, Purdue has filed a plan to pay $500 million up front to settle hundreds of thousands of injury claims. |
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I-MAK’s recommendations to the Biden-Harris administration to bring changes to the patent system (shout-out to our featured grantee, Priti Krishtel). |
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Short but powerful testimony by actor Daniel Dae Kim to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties on discrimination and violence against Asian Americans.
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I find myself reading (and re-reading) this poem by Ada Limón, selected by Reginald Dwayne Betts and published in The New York Times. Betts writes that Limón’s poem is “a reminder that there is always a chance at being nurtured by the thing that brings you pain — or at least a possibility that it won’t bury you.” I’m finding comfort in that.
The Year of the Goldfinches
There were two that hung and hovered
by the mud puddle and the musk thistle.
Flitting from one splintered fence post
to another, bathing in the rainwater’s glint
like it was a mirror to some other universe
where things were more acceptable, easier
than the place I lived. I’d watch for them:
the bright peacocking male, the low-watt
female, on each morning walk, days spent
digging for some sort of elusive answer
to the question my curving figure made.
Later, I learned that they were a symbol
of resurrection. Of course they were,
my two yellow-winged twins feasting
on thorns and liking it.
Lastly, as you may have noticed, your regular newsletter author Stephanie Getman is out for spring break. She’ll be back gracing your inbox next week. My final inspiration is Stephanie herself, who has led all of Arnold Ventures’ digital communications while balancing her children’s and family’s needs during this very long, hard year of remote learning. To Stephanie and every other parent, from the bottom of my childless-but-still-struggling heart: you have my utmost awe and admiration.
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Our Complex Care team is funding research into how to improve the systems that deliver care to a population of more than 12 million people who are dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid. They are seeking to fund researchers who are guided by the following principles: policy relevance, rigor and independence, and alignment with our strategy. Learn more here.
The Criminal Justice and Evidence-Based Policy teams at Arnold Ventures are teaming up to learn more about what works in criminal justice reform in an ongoing request for proposals for randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that will test programs and practices. There is no deadline for submissions.
The Evidence-Based Policy team invites grant applications to conduct randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of social programs in any area of U.S. policy. Details are here.
View all of our RFPs here
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Have an evidence-based week,
– Ashley
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| Ashley Winstead directs communications strategies for Arnold Ventures' core verticals of criminal justice, health, higher education, and public finance. |
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