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The Abstract
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> By Stephanie DiCapua Getman, Arnold Ventures
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Americans are seeking solutions to our nation’s epidemic of gun violence in the wake of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 19 students and 2 teachers — the second deadliest school shooting in U.S. history. It came on the heels of a racist massacre at a supermarket in Buffalo that killed 10 people and preceded a Memorial Day weekend that saw at least 12 mass shootings that left 8 people dead and 55 injured. This week, the slaughter continued, with yet another deadly mass shooting at a medical building in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
About 40,000 Americans die every year from gun violence. A majority of these deaths are suicides, and more than a third are homicides, with veterans and Black men particularly at risk. Guns are now the leading cause of death for U.S. children and teens.
Gun violence is a public health epidemic, but addressing this problem is made all the more difficult because we know so little about it. America spends more money studying peptic ulcers than it does studying gun violence.
Gun policy in America has been intentionally understudied for the past two decades, so we lack access to data that would allow us to address the epidemic with policies based on a shared set of facts.
In a new video, Arnold Ventures explains the current landscape of gun violence in the U.S. and the three things we can do right now to save lives while preserving Second Amendment rights: adequately fund gun violence research; follow the evidence we do have about how to reduce gun deaths; and support new approaches to reducing gun violence.
Bottom line: We need to stop just talking about gun violence. It’s time to invest in saving lives.
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By Torie Ludwin, communications manager
The U.S. Department of Education has forgiven $5.8 billion in loans for 560,000 students from Corinthian Colleges. This is fantastic news — now let’s talk about the issues that allowed that debt to happen. Student debt is out of control in this country, and the long-term answer to it is policy reform. If predatory and low-quality colleges like Corinthian continue to operate as they do, debt and valueless degrees will continue to accumulate — to the detriment of students and taxpayers everywhere.
What’s Happening: The good news is that the Biden administration is in the process of finalizing new rules on federal financial aid to help students who have been preyed upon and to hold schools accountable for their actions. In addition, further reforms are afoot.
There are three areas of policy where changes will have the biggest impact: We need to raise the bar on accountability for schools, so we know that they are providing quality education that leads to gainful employment. Part of accountability for schools is having a data network that shows how students are doing at different programs across the country. This kind of data is part of the College Transparency Act, which passed in the House in February as part of the America COMPETES Act and is on its way to the Senate. Finally, we need funding for evidence-based college completion programs that support students all the way to graduation, so that their hard work and tuition dollars result in degrees that lead to good jobs.
Why it Matters: Students deserve a quality higher education system that provides valuable credentials that lead to better jobs, better opportunities, and economic stability. Student debt is one symptom of a poorly functioning system. And the system can be remediated.
What’s Next: The U.S. Department of Education will finalize its rules, the Senate will review the inclusion of the College Transparency Act in the America COMPETES Act, and Congress will decide whether to appropriate significant funding to roll out evidence-based college completion programs. Stay tuned.
Related:
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AV Launches Research Agenda, RFP on Violence Reduction
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By Evan Mintz, director of communications
Arnold Ventures has announced two new developments in its ongoing work to reduce violence: a research agenda and request for proposals (RFP) to support research. This work will build on earlier investments with a commitment to scaling up the research necessary to match the urgency of our time.
What's Happening: The research agenda features three pillars: 1) Address immediate crises of violence; 2) Identify and address the underlying causes of violence; and 3) Promote effective police investigations to solve violent crime. The RFP focuses on the first pillar, with a goal of advancing research that improves the design, implementation, and efficacy of violence reduction interventions. Projects conducted by diverse research teams, including those who have life experiences related to the issues being studied, are particularly welcomed.
Why it Matters: Over the past two tumultuous years, cities around the country — regardless of their size, geographic location, or political leanings — have confronted a significant increase in gun violence. The distribution of these violent incidents remains predominantly concentrated in communities that have been subject to chronic underinvestment. Identifying interventions that can reduce violence — which strategies and programs are most effective, as well as in what contexts they work best — is critical to saving lives.
What's Next: Applicants are invited to submit letters of interest in response to the RFP by July 11, 2022. There will also be an optional, informational conference call on June 16, 2022 (please RSVP here to receive dial-in information).
Read the story >
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By Juliana Keeping, communications manager
As Congress weighs reauthorization of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act — a massive, must-pass bill that provides half of the Food and Drug Administration’s budget — Dr. Reshma Ramachandran of AV grantee Doctors for America wants to make sure patient safety and transparency are top of mind.
What’s Happening: To do its job, the FDA receives user fees from the drug and biologic companies it regulates. This gives them the funding to review — in a timely manner — the drugs those companies submit for approval. Legislative authority for the current Prescription Drug User Fee Act expires in September, and the reauthorization must pass for the FDA to continue to collect these fees. It’s also an opportunity to bake in reforms to how the FDA operates.
Ramachandran and her fellow physician-advocates held a slate of meetings with policymakers and government officials to ensure the bill’s reauthorization would strike an appropriate balance between ensuring timely access to promising treatments and certainty that these treatments truly work for patients prescribed them.
Why it Matters: The FDA’s decision in June 2021 to use an accelerated approval pathway for the expensive new drug aducanumab (brand name: Aduhelm) to treat the early stages of Alzheimer’s became a flashpoint in the national debate about the tradeoffs between low-quality evidence and high prices — and underscored the shortcomings of a regulatory system under pressure to fast-track new treatments.
Dive Deeper: Ramachandran talks to AV’s Kirk Williamson, health care manager, about her research and activism on patients’ behalf and considerations for policymakers as the Prescription Drug User Fee Act moves through the legislative process.
“My hope is that we can level the playing field so that everyone is more aware of how FDA operates, but it’s not something that will happen overnight,” she says.
Read the story >
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Roundup: AV Journalism Grantees Report on Uvalde Mass Shooting
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By Rhiannon Meyers Collette, journalism grants manager
We’ve gathered a sampling of some of the most comprehensive and deepest-dive journalism on the Uvalde, Texas, mass shooting produced by AV journalism grantees. It’s impressive work on a heartbreaking news event, providing thoughtful context and centering our collective narrative about the epidemic of gun violence.
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Kevin Kinser and John Cheslock of Penn State College of Education, who discuss the role of online program managers, or OPMs, in higher education. These for-profit, third party vendors have an amorphous role when it comes to providing higher education — they coordinate the conversion of in-person courses and programs to online versions, providing diverse services that can include curriculum and course design. Kinser and Cheslock talk about OPMs with regards to policy in light of the recent report on them from the Government Office of Accountability.
Says Kinser: “What we are seeing is an evolution of the for-profit model in this OPM realm for higher education.”
Read the Q&A >
Related: The Chronicle of Higher Education gives an account of the upheaval that happened when online program management (OPM) company 2U paired with Arcadia University to create an online/hybrid physician’s assistant program. “2U was basically trying to turn our PA program into a cash cow,” said a former professor, Ashley Bell, who resigned in protest of the partnership. “They made it obvious that they didn’t care about the quality of the program.”
Related: Online Program Management Companies: A For-Profit Pocket Within Higher Ed
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Criminal Justice
- REFORM CEO Robert Rooks and board members Laura Arnold, AV co-chair, and Mike Novogratz discuss the allure of the organization and its hard-earned wins in this piece in Inside Philanthropy: “How This Star-Studded Justice Reform Outfit Rakes in Big Donor Support.”
- Robina Institute examines the prison-release frameworks of 52 U.S. jurisdictions in this AV-supported study, “American Prison-Release Systems: Indeterminacy in Sentencing and the Control of Prison Population Size.”
- Mass incarceration has become the country’s “de facto mental-health-care system,” write Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute and Judge Steve Leifman of Miami-Dade County, Florida, in this Atlantic story. They argue for changes to policing, crisis response, and courts to improve public safety and save tax dollars.
- We’re not reading it yet, but we are pre-ordering copies of "Corrections In Ink," a memoir by criminal justice reporter Keri Blakinger of The Marshall Project. The book documents her life from aspiring Olympic-level ice skater and student journalist at Cornell University to her journey through the American correctional system after she was arrested for heroin. Today she has dedicated her career to amplifying the voices and experiences of those behind bars, and the publisher, Porchlight Books, is helping send donated copies to people living in jails and prisons.
- “They’re literally afraid for their lives.” Go inside the newest federal prison, which The Marshall Project and NPR write has become one of the deadliest, with the constant threat of violence, shackling practices in violation of policy, and the use of double-celled solitary confinement.
- Read these mini profiles from the Los Angeles Times of people living in homeless encampments.
Health
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Medicare is on an unsustainable path, highlighting the need to consider reforms that address Medicare’s overall spending trajectory.
- From KFF, a new report funded in part by AV offers a road map to reduce health care spending and improve affordability.
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Elizabeth Melville received a shocking $2,185 bill for a routine colonoscopy recommended by her doctor, reports Kaiser Health News. Under the No Surprises Act, doctors and hospitals must give good faith estimates of patients’ expected costs before planned procedures like colonoscopies.
- In The Hill, read more about the financial and clinical impacts of allowing unproven drugs on the market, as well as what reforms should move in the massive FDA user fee legislation moving through Congress.
- This week, the House launched a probe to see if pharmacy benefit managers are complying with the Affordable Care Act regarding birth control, reports Politico. Under the law, they must provide birth control at no cost to patients.
Related: “How Some Health Insurance Companies are Breaking the Law”
- Spectrum News reports that in New York state, 1.2 million women live in contraceptive deserts, according to a study by Power to Decide, meaning they do not have reasonable access to contraception.
Related: “Oasis in the Contraceptive Desert: Pharmacist Prescriptions Increase Access to Birth Control”
Higher Education
- The New York Times and Teen Vogue both ran stories on the connection between college completion and student debt. From Teen Vogue: “An estimated 38.6% of the 43 million student debtors in the United States — roughly 16.6 million people — have debt but no degree six years after first entering college, according to National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) data analyzed by the Hope Center’s Mark Huelsman.”
- Preston Cooper at FREOPP highlights how less than 3% of actions by accreditors for higher education institutions are about student outcomes or academic quality. “Schools that rarely face consequences for their outcomes see little pressure to improve.”
- In Inside Higher Ed, Matt Reed elucidates the difference between affordability and price when it comes to higher education costs, college completion, and student support. “The key variable is the economic vulnerability of students.”
Journalism
- Some of the most vulnerable communities in Harris County are routinely exposed to emissions of toxic chemicals from nearby petrochemical plants, but such plants are rarely held accountable and community members have little recourse, according to new reporting by Public Health Watch, an AV journalism grantee.
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The documentary “Police on Trial,” born of a two-year collaboration between Frontline and the Star Tribune, examines the death of George Floyd, the community’s response, and the trial of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, a pivotal moment in the history of race and policing in America. Long before that event, the paper had been cataloging police violence, but Floyd’s death was a catalyst for this investigation into the policies and culture of police there and efforts to reform the system. Interviews with Floyd’s family and those closest to the event accompany on-the-ground footage and original reporting, painting a visceral and comprehensive portrait of the long-simmering tensions between police and community.
Related: Despite the national outcry after Floyd’s murder, political polarization eventually stalled a bipartisan movement for reform, but state legislatures and the White House have made some progress.
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- The Daily from The New York Times unpacks lessons learned from California’s efforts to reduce gun violence through legislation, highlighting what the evidence says about what works. The state has one of the lowest rates of gun deaths in the United States — 8.5 per 100,000 people, compared with 13.7 nationally.
- ICYMI: Former Congressman Doug Collins (R-GA) was on American Viewpoints with Mike Ferguson to talk about why conservatives need to lead on criminal justice reform.
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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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