The Evidence-to-Impact Podcast

We're closing out this semester's season with a conversation about prevention and partnerships. We focus on a discussion between a long-standing collaborative relationship between Penn State and the Pennsylvania Commonwealth government, which targets interventions and prevention work targeted towards youth and families. Our episode covers a wide span of topics, including why prevention and implementation work are difficult, but critical; the changes that happen when there's a political transition, and much more.We spoke to Janet Welsh, PhD, Research Professor at the Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Center, and the Principal Investigator of the Evidence-based Prevention Intervention and Support program (EPIS) and SPEP™ (Standardized Program Evaluation Protocol) at Penn State, and Geoff Kolchin, Deputy Director of Unit of Violence Prevention Initiatives in the Office of Justice Programs at the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency (PCCD), about their decades long collaboration between EPIS and PCCD.Resources and Additional InformationWrong Pocket ProblemPAYS ReportsThe transcript is available here.

For this month's episode, we did something a little different. We spoke to two researchers with two different approaches to tackling the same problem: knowledge mobilization. In essence, the concept of knowledge mobilization focuses on making knowledge, resources or practices that exist in one space and making them accessible to specific audiences. We talked about the work behind SOSNetLab (Social Opportunity Space Networking Lab) and the Research-to-Policy Collaboration, barriers to this type of research and implementation, and what the future has in store for addressing this problem.We spoke to Taylor Scott, PhD., Co-Director of the Research-to-Policy Collaboration and Assistant Research Professor at the Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Center at Penn State, and Alan J. Daly, PhD., SOSNetLab Chief Executive Dreamer, and Professor, University of California, San Diego as well as SOSNetLab's full team, which includes: Mimi Lockton, Ed.D., SOSNETLAB Chief Project Catalyzer, and Doctoral Candidate at the University of California San Diego; Anita Caduff, SOSNETLAB Chief Swiss Army Knife, and Ph.D. Candidate at the University of California San Diego, and Martin Rehm, Ph.D., SOSNETLAB Chief Data Wrangler, and Post-Doctoral Scholar at the University of Regensburg in Germany.ResourcesSOSNetLab's WebsiteResearch-to-Policy Collaboration's WebsiteTaylor mentions the work of Jennie Noll, Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Penn State, Director of the Center for Safe and Healthy Children, and a previous guest on this podcast; and Francesca Lopez, the Waterbury Chair in Equity Pedagogy and Professor of Education at Penn State.Additionally, Taylor discusses working with the Kauffman Foundation and the William T. Grant Foundation to expand their work on entrepreneurial research.SOSNet's work is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.The transcript for the episode is available here.

This month's episode tackles a fascinating combination of topics involving the impact of biological and social factors on chronic diseases like obesity and diabetes, and the prevention and treatment efforts for those chronic diseases through state and local government programs.We spoke to Lindsay Fernández-Rhodes, Assistant Professor of Biobehavioral Health and the Director of Epidemiology and Genetics across Populations & Societies Laboratory at Penn State, and Amy Flaherty, Director of the Division of Nutrition and Physical Activity at the Bureau of Health Promotion and Risk Reduction in the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Department of Health, about public health, epidemiology, prevention work, and the influence of genetics and our environment on our health. Resources and Additional InformationAmy mentions the Chronic Disease Burden Report that her Bureau released earlier in 2021.Additionally, Amy discusses the National Diabetes Program, which has been in effect since 2010. For more information about obesity related programs, check out the Pennsylvania Department of Health's website and Center on Disease Control's website.Amy talks about the State Physical Activity and Nutrition (SPAN) grant, which is a five-year state investment that improve nutrition and support safe and accessible physical activity. She discusses the Healthy Pantry Initiative, a partnership with Feeding Pennsylvania, which helps to increase healthier options at food pantries across Pennsylvania, and WalkWorks, an initiative between the Pennsylvania Department of Health and the Pennsylvania Downtown Center that supports the development and adoption of active transportation plans or related policies.Much of Lindsay's work focuses on Latino communities and community-based cohorts. She mentions the article ‘Demographic and sociocultural risk factors for adulthood weight gain in Hispanic/Latinos: results from the Hispanic Community Health Study / Study of Latinos (HCHS/SOL)' as a particular example of her work in this space. This website provides a longer description of the public health parable and how going ‘upstream' can address health inequities.The transcript is available here.

This month's episode discusses mental health screenings for adolescents in the K-12 school system. We spoke to Deepa Sekhar, MD, Associate Professor, Department of Pediatrics at the College of Medicine, and Executive Director, Penn State PRO Wellness; Perri Rosen, PhD, NCSP, Consulting Psychologist, Office of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services, Pennsylvania Dept. of Human Services, and Steve Sharp, School Counselor in the Hempfield School District, and K-12 School Counseling Coordinator for the Hempfield School District about why having mental health screenings (or mood screenings) in K-12 schools makes a difference when helping children who might be struggling and getting them the resources that they need to succeed.Episode Resources and ReferencesThe SHIELD study is mentioned several times throughout the episode. SHIELD stands for Screening in High Schools to Identify, Evaluate and Lower Depression.The Student Assistance Program (SAP) is a systematic team process used to mobilize school resources to remove barriers to learning. SAP is designed to assist in identifying issues including alcohol, tobacco, other drugs, and mental health issues which pose a barrier to a student's success.Steve mentions receiving a school safety grant through Pennsylvania Commission and Crime and Delinquency (PCCD). He also mentions getting an ESSER grant through the Department of Education.Deepa discusses the SHIELD study receiving funded by the Health Resources and Services Administration and the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute.Steve mentions using MTSS teams, which stands for multi-tiered systems of supports.Lastly, Steven talks about the CAMS Model (Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality), which is a therapeutic framework for suicide-specific assessment and treatment of a patient's suicidal risk.

The end of the spring semester marks the release of another episode! This month, we tackled the tough topic of mental health among college students. We talked about how COVID-19 has impacted college students seeking mental health services, the challenges for counselors and administrators working in university mental health centers, policy solutions to the crisis, and other things that have happened as a result of the pandemic like changes in technology.We spoke to Maithreyi Gopalan, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Education and Public Policy and Social Science Research Institute co-funded faculty member at Penn State, and Brett Scofield, Ph.D., Associate Director of Counseling and Psychological Services at Penn State and Executive Director of Center for Collegiate Mental Health (CCMH) about mental health, college students, what universities are doing (and should be doing), and a little bit of everything in between.Episode Resources and ReferencesThere's been a series of articles in the New York Times about adolescent mental health that are worth perusing: Teens In Distress Are Swamping Pediatricians, ‘It's Life or Death': The Mental Health Crisis Among U.S. Teens, Hundreds of Suicidal Teens Sleep in Emergency Rooms. Every Night., and Surgeon General Warns of Youth Mental Health Crisis.Maithreyi mentions a study that she did with her colleagues, Stephanie Lanza, Ph.D. and Ashley-Linden Carmichael, Ph.D., from the Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Center, about overall college experiences, the student community, and their sense of belonging and impact that may have on their well being, health, and academic performance.Brett discusses the Clinical Load Index (CLI), a metric used to measure the average annual caseload of a clinician at a mental health center.Maithreyi mentions the dozens of calls for grant applications opened up by the National Institute of Mental Health about understanding the effect of the pandemic on mental health.Brett discusses two researchers involved with projects at CCMH: Louis Castonguay, Ph.D. and Jeffrey Hayes, Ph.D.The transcript for the episode is available here.

We're back for our third season! Kicking off the 2022 season, we explore the juvenile justice system in Pennsylvania.We spoke to Megan Kurlychek, Professor of Sociology, Criminology and Public Policy and Associate Director of the Criminal Justice Research Center at Penn State, and Rick Steele, Executive Director of the Juvenile Court Judges' Commission at the Pennsylvania Commonwealth, about their work in the juvenile justice field, the history of the juvenile justice system, prevention programs, the issue of recidivism, and more.Episode Resources and NotesMegan mentions that she began her career working at the National Center for Juvenile Justice, located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.Both Rick and Megan discuss the concept of parens patriae. According to the Legal Information Institute at Cornell Law, parens patriae is Latin for "parent of the people." Under parens patriae, a state or court has a paternal and protective role over its citizens or others subject to its jurisdiction.Megan discusses the court case, In re Gault, as one of the landmark Supreme Court cases that changed how juvenile justice was approached back in the 1960s.Rick refers to the MAYSI-2, the Massachusetts Youth Screening Instrument – Second Version, when mentioning how behavioral health and substance use issues are assessed among justice-involved youth.Additionally, Rick discusses how the Pennsylvania Commonwealth has incorporated the University of Cincinnati's EPICS, Effective Practices in Community Supervision, into their probation model.Rick mentions using a standardized program evaluation protocol based on the work by Mark Lipsey, Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University.Megan mentions a prevention program that partners nurses with young mothers called the Nurse-Family Partnership.The School-to-Prison Pipeline is something that both Megan and Rick discuss as it relates to prevention research and programming.Megan talks about risk need assessments for assessing justice-involved youth. More information is available here.Rick discusses the Models for Change program, which helped to advance reforms to make juvenile justice systems more fair, effective, rational, and developmentally appropriate. He also mentions the Big Brothers, Big Sisters program, which is nationally renowned.JCJC's reports are available online for anyone interested in reading more about their work.Rick talks about working with other researchers in the field such as Gina Vincent, Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts, Keith Cruise from Fordham University, and Edward Mulvey, Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh's School of Medicine.Megan mentions her book, The Cycle of Juvenile Justice, which she co-wrote with Tom Bernard, Ph.D. back in 2010.The transcript for the episode is available here.

This month's episode tackles all things related to the U.S. Census. We discussed the decennial Census, the data products created and released from the U.S. Census Bureau, the current demographic trends and challenges, and measuring hard-to-reach populations.We spoke to Raeven Chandler, Ph.D., Director of the Pennsylvania Population Network (PPN) at the Population Research Institute (PRI), and Assistant Research Professor of Rural Sociology at Penn State, and Eric Jensen, Ph.D., Senior Technical Expert for Demographic Analysis in the Population Division at the U.S. Census Bureau, about their work as demographers, both in academic and government settings, and some issues around collecting and analyzing data, especially as it pertains to the 2020 Census.Episode Resources and NotesEric mentions the American Community Survey (ACS) and the Current Population Survey as some examples of the many data products that the U.S. Census Bureau produces for the public.Eric discusses how Penn State has a Federal Statistical Research Data Center (RDC), a place where qualified researchers can access restricted microdata from a variety of statistical agencies.Raeven and Eric talk about some issues around collecting data in college towns across the United States. Most recently, some towns have said that they want to challenge the results of the 2020 Census.Raeven discusses the concerns surrounding questions about Latino and Hispanic heritage questions on the 2020 Census. For more information about that topic, this is a blog post from the U.S. Census about the issue.Eric mentions the U.S. Census Bureau working with two Penn State demographers, John Iceland, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Demography, and Jenny Van Hook, Ph.D., Roy C. Buck Professor of Sociology and Demography at Penn State. He also mentions Sue Capella at the Pennsylvania State Data Center, which is part of Penn State Harrisburg.The transcript for this episode can be found here.

In this month's episode, we tackled innovations in healthcare. Since the beginning of the pandemic, we've seen a focus on various healthcare innovations and technology like artificial intelligence, cloud-enabled solutions, and inpatient telehealth, but other innovations are important, too. Some of these focused on in Pennsylvania include how we can get more value out of the country's healthcare system without sacrificing the quality of care and lowering barriers for underserved populations.We spoke to Dr. Doug Jacobs, M.D., M.P.H., Chief Medical Officer and Chief Innovation Officer in the Office of the Secretary at the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services, and Meg Small, Ph.D., Director of Social Innovation and Assistant Research Professor at the Penn State Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center, about what it means to have a healthcare system that pays for value, promotes health equity and addresses the social determinants of health; measuring the success of healthcare innovation; healthcare innovations involving mobile technology; and other improvements to expanding access while reducing healthcare costs.Episode Resources and NotesFor more information about DHS's efforts on healthcare innovation, visit this page.In response to a question about how health equity frames prevention science, Meg brings up a collaboration project with a woman named Lavelle Smith Hall, an entrepreneur and founder of a company called MOMLogics. MOMLogics serves Black moms and empowers them with parenting strategies so they can enjoy better relationships with their children, spouses, and families.Meg discusses a program called Museums for All that allows families and children receiving food assistance (SNAP benefits) free or reduced admission to over 700 museums throughout the United States simply by presenting their EBT card.Meg mentions the research of Karen Bierman, Ph.D., Evan Pugh Professor, Professor of Psychology and Human Development and Family Studies, and Director of the Child Study Center at Penn State. For more of her work, visit Karen's Google Scholar page.Meg mentions Penn State faculty affiliate and pediatrician, Laura Jana, M.D., and her work on adopting reach out and read programs into early learning centers. More information about Laura can be found here.Doug refers to a healthcare system in Pennsylvania that has a “fresh food pharmacy” where physicians can prescribe fresh food for families.Meg references The Common Good by Robert Reich.The transcript for this episode is available here.

This month marks the beginning of the third season of this podcast! We're kicking things off by exploring the opportunities and challenges of Pennsylvania's child welfare system. For the past several years, there has been an ongoing partnership between Penn State researchers and government partners to change the Commonwealth's county-based child welfare system through legislative and policy actions. We spoke to Jennie Noll, Ph.D., Professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies and the Director of the Child Maltreatment Solutions Network at Penn State University, and Brian Bornman, Esq., Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Children and Youth Administrators Association, about their collaborative process, the challenges of navigating a stressed bureaucratic system, and what the future holds for resolving issues of child welfare and maltreatment. Episode Resources and Notes Brian mentions several horrific cases of child abuse that made headlines in Pennsylvania, including the Danieal Kelly case in Philadelphia, the Grace Packer case, and the Jerry Sandusky case. (Please note that these links include severe graphic descriptions of child abuse and violence.) The transcript for this episode is available here.

  For this month's episode, we explore a topic that we have wanted to cover for some time: unemployment and the pandemic labor market. As the nation begins to "reopen" and the economy begins shifting, many states have begun ending pandemic-era unemployment insurance benefits. For many, unemployment insurance was the only thing keeping them afloat following the unprecedented unemployment crisis at the beginning of the pandemic. And yet, despite the unbelievable numbers of unemployed workers in our country, the stigma of receiving unemployment insurance persists. We asked ourselves why, in a time of tremendous health and economic crisis, are we giving folks who need help a hard time? We know that research shows that many families and individuals are still out of work and struggling to afford adequate food and pay mortgages or rent. Like other topics we covered - childcare and food insecurity, for example - the pandemic has made it abundantly clear that our country's systems are unsustainable and not enough to support the financial needs of families and individuals. To debunk some of the concerns and myths of unemployment and dive into the shifting economy, we spoke to Sarah Damaske, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Labor and Employment Relations, Sociology and Women's Studies at Penn State and Associate Director of the Population Research Institute (PRI), and Mark Price, Ph.D., Associate Director of Research at the Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA). We discussed the stigma of experiencing unemployment or receiving unemployment insurance, how and why men and women experience unemployment differently, wage stagnation in the education sector, and more. We encourage listeners to also check out Sarah's new book, The Tolls of Uncertainty: How Privilege and the Guilt Gap Shape Unemployment in America. While it is not required reading for this episode, it does paint a picture of pre-pandemic unemployment and provides salient policy recommendations to our unemployment system. Episode Resources and Notes Sarah's new book, The Tolls of Uncertainty: How Privilege and the Guilt Gap Shape Unemployment in America, is out now. Buy it through Princeton University Press or on Amazon. Sarah and Mark mention the work of Kathryn Edwards, an economist at the Rand Corporation. Sarah mentions the Great Depression-era photographs by Dorothea Lange as inspiration for her book. You can find more of Dorothea Lange's work here. The transcript for this episode is available here.    

For this month's episode, we examined how the pandemic has revealed the "hidden crisis" of food insecurity throughout Pennsylvania and the rest of the country. According to the U.S. Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, food insecurity is defined as the disruption of food intake or eating patterns because of lack of money or other resources. For example, this could mean cutting down on the number of meals or changing the types of food that you eat to save money. Since the beginning of the pandemic, the issue of food insecurity moved to the forefront as many people lost their jobs, schools went virtual and scrambled to set up school lunch pickups, supply chains stumbled, and food banks and community refrigerators flooded with people seeking food to feed their families. While we would argue that food insecurity was never a "hidden crisis," the pandemic worsened it for many children and families. We spoke to Muzi Na, Ph.D., M.H.S., Assistant Professor of Nutritional Sciences and the Broadhurst Career Development Professor for the Study of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention at Penn State University, and Vonda Ramp, M.S., R.D., State Director of Child Nutrition Programs at the Division of Food and Nutrition in the Bureau of Budget and Fiscal Management within the Pennsylvania Department of Education (PA DOE), about who has been impacted by food insecurity and what is being done to help people access healthy food in their communities. Episode Resources and Notes SSRI "Insights from the Experts" COVID-19 Blog Series: Food insecurity in Pennsylvania during the COVID-19 pandemic: Addressing immediate concerns and opportunities for the future JAMA Network Open: Disparities in Diet Quality in School-Age Children—Opportunities and Challenges Dr. Na discusses something called the 24-hour recall method following a question about how to measure the nutritional and health concerns related to food insecurity. According to the National Institutes of Health, the 24-hour dietary recall method is a structured interview intended to capture detailed information about all foods and beverages (and possibly consumed by the respondent in the past 24 hours, most commonly, from midnight to midnight the previous day. Ms. Ramp references how the PA DOE has applied for over 80+ U.S. Department of Agriculture child nutrition program waivers since the pandemic began. At this time, the PA DOE has applied to over 90 waivers. The transcript for this episode is available here.

This month, we return to our Pandemic Perspective series and explore the state of the childcare system in Pennsylvania during the pandemic. We discuss the challenges and opportunities to funding, access, and quality for the childcare system. We spoke to Karen Grimm-Thomas, Director of External Relations at the Pennsylvania Office of Child Development and Early Learning (OCDEL), and Philip Sirinides, Associate Professor of Education in the School of Behavioral Sciences and Education and Director of the Institute of State and Regional Affairs (ISRA) at Penn State Harrisburg, about the impact that the pandemic has had on childcare providers and families throughout Pennsylvania. OCDEL is a collaborative effort between the Pennsylvania Department of Education and the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services that focuses on creating opportunities for the commonwealth's youngest citizens to develop and learn to their fullest potential. The Institute of State and Regional Affairs leverages Penn State's unbiased data expertise and the resources to provide multifaceted data and research support services to partners in government and the private sector. Episode Resources ISRA's Report on the Impact of COVID-19 on Pennsylvania Child Care ISRA's Report on the Cost of Childcare in Pennsylvania Breakdown About OCDEL's COVID-19 Funding The transcript for this episode is available here.

This month, we are taking a break from our Pandemic Perspective series to examine an existing working relationship between academia and government. Since we talk a lot on this podcast about how the research community and government partners or policymakers can work together more effectively, it made sense for us to dig into an existing policy collaboration between the two groups. For our March episode, we explore the Pennsylvania Coordinated Medication-Assisted Treatment Program, or PacMAT, which builds evidence-based medication-assisted treatment (MAT) programs for Pennsylvanians suffering from opioid use disorder. Currently, there are 14 PacMAT centers throughout Pennsylvania that utilize a hub-and-spoke model. PacMAT's hub-and-spoke model has an addiction specialist physician at the center as the hub, providing expert guidance and support to primary care physicians in rural and underserved areas of the state. The primary care physicians, who serve as the spokes, provide the direct-patient care and includes prescribing MAT, which is the gold standard for opioid use disorder treatment. PacMAT stemmed from a significant need throughout Pennsylvania for physicians who had 1) received a DEA (U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration) waiver for prescribing MAT to patients living with opioid use disorder, and 2) felt comfortable enough to even prescribe MAT to their patients. We spoke with Laura Fassbender, executive advisor in the Office of the Secretary at the Pennsylvania Department of Health, and Max Crowley, Associate Professor of Human Development and Family Studies and the director of the Evidence-to-Impact Collaborative at Penn State University, about the challenges and successes behind developing the interdisciplinary architecture for PacMAT. If you or someone you know is struggling with a substance use disorder, you can visit SAMHSA's website for more information. If you enjoyed this episode about PacMAT and combatting the opioid crisis, check out our episode about tackling the stigma of the opioid epidemic with Glenn Sterner and Steve Forzato. Note: This episode was recorded in early February 2021. Laura Fassbender has since left the Pennsylvania Department of Health and currently serves as the Vice President of Primary Care and Public Health Policy at the Wright Center for Community Health. The transcript for this episode is available here.

This month's episodes feature everything but the kitchen sink! We're tackling how government, primarily at the local and state levels, transitioned to remote work, unemployment and the recession, the messaging behind school closings/mask wearing, the 2020 Election, COVID-19 vaccines distribution, and everything in between. As part of our new series, The Pandemic Perspective, we spoke with Commissioner Mike Pipe, Centre County Chair of the Board of Commissioners and Co-Chair of the Election Board of Centre County, and Dr. Chris Witko, Associate Director of the School of Public Policy and Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at Penn State University. This episode is the second episode of a two-part episode about this topic. Listen to Part 1 here. Please note that this episode was recorded in early December 2020. Resources/Additional Links for this Episode Business Insider: Unemployment surged to 14.7% in April as the US lost a record 20.5 million jobs U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: Ability to work from home: evidence from two surveys and implications for the labor market in the COVID-19 pandemic ProPublica: What Coronavirus Job Losses Reveal About Racism in America NPR: Pandemic Forces More Women To Leave The Workforce Pew Research Center: Economic Fallout From COVID-19 Continues To Hit Lower-Income Americans the Hardest Newsy/Ipsos: Newsy/Ipsos Poll Finds Broad Support For National Mask Mandate Pew Research Center: More Americans say they are regularly wearing masks in stores and other businesses The Hill: Restaurant group calls on governors to make closing indoor dining 'a last option' WITF: The dispute over the Wolf administration's handling of coronavirus in nursing homes, explained New York Times: More Than One-Third of U.S. Coronavirus Deaths Are Linked to Nursing Homes The Evidence-to-Impact Collaborative Podcast's new series, The Pandemic Perspective, examines how the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and various aspects of our society, institutions, and other systems have collided, changed, and even collapsed in the last nine months. The transcript for this episode is available here.

This month's two part (!) episode features everything but the kitchen sink! We're tackling how government, primarily at the local and state levels, transitioned to remote work, unemployment and the recession, the messaging behind school closings/mask wearing, the 2020 Election, COVID-19 vaccines distribution, and everything in between. For the second episode of our new series, The Pandemic Perspective, we spoke with Commissioner Mike Pipe, Centre County Chair of the Board of Commissioners and Co-Chair of the Election Board of Centre County, and Dr. Chris Witko, Associate Director of the School of Public Policy and Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at Penn State University. This episode is broken into two parts - we had a lot to talk about! - and will be released biweekly. Please note that this episode was recorded in early December 2020. Resources/Additional Links for this Episode Business Insider: Unemployment surged to 14.7% in April as the US lost a record 20.5 million jobs U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: Ability to work from home: evidence from two surveys and implications for the labor market in the COVID-19 pandemic ProPublica: What Coronavirus Job Losses Reveal About Racism in America NPR: Pandemic Forces More Women To Leave The Workforce Pew Research Center: Economic Fallout From COVID-19 Continues To Hit Lower-Income Americans the Hardest Newsy/Ipsos: Newsy/Ipsos Poll Finds Broad Support For National Mask Mandate Pew Research Center: More Americans say they are regularly wearing masks in stores and other businesses The Hill: Restaurant group calls on governors to make closing indoor dining 'a last option' WITF: The dispute over the Wolf administration's handling of coronavirus in nursing homes, explained New York Times: More Than One-Third of U.S. Coronavirus Deaths Are Linked to Nursing Homes The Evidence-to-Impact Collaborative Podcast's new series, The Pandemic Perspective, examines how the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and various aspects of our society, institutions, and other systems have collided, changed, and even collapsed in the last nine months. The transcript for this episode is available here.

  The Evidence-to-Impact Collaborative Podcast is offering a new series called The Pandemic Perspective, where we examine how the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and various aspects of our society, institutions, and other systems have collided, changed, and even collapsed in the last nine months. For the first episode of this series, we spoke with three experts about how the delivery of educational services for children with disabilities and the greater education system has changed since the beginning of the year, as well as how we can incorporate lessons learned into the future. The discussion stems from a May 2020 blog post from the Social Science Research Institute's “Insights from the Experts” COVID-19 blog series. Our guests include Carole Clancy, Director of the Bureau of Special Education for the Pennsylvania Department of Education; Paul Morgan, Professor of Education and Demography in the Department of Education Policy Studies and Director of the Center for Educational Disparities Research (CEDR) at Penn State; and Adrienne Woods, CEDR Postdoctoral Research Scholar in the Department of Education Policy Studies at Penn State.   Resources for Teachers, Families, and School Administrators Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) Bureau of Special Education for the Pennsylvania Department of Education Pennsylvania Training and Technical Assistance Network (PaTTAN) Council for Exceptional Children National Center for Learning Disabilities Transcript for the episode is available here.

In this month's episode, we spoke to Alexis Santos, PhD, Assistant Professor of Human Development and Family Studies at Penn State, and David Saunders, Director of the Office of Health Equity for the Pennsylvania Department of Health, about different disparities throughout the Pennsylvania Commonwealth and how the lack of good data impacts what we understand about poverty and health inequities. The discussion stems from a project between Penn State's Administrative Data Accelerator and Office of Health Equity which examined associations between socioeconomic characteristics of the counties of Pennsylvania and life expectancy. Interestingly, those associations can potentially help to address disparities across the state through policy mechanisms. According to the U.S. Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion's website, the phrase "social determinants of health" are conditions in the environments in which people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship, and age that affect a wide range of health, functioning, and quality-of-life outcomes and risks. Conditions (e.g., social, economic, and physical) in these various environments and settings (e.g., school, church, workplace, and neighborhood) have been referred to as "place." Note: This episode was recorded prior to the outbreak of COVID-19 and does not address current circumstances, but the issues discussed are undoubtedly exacerbated due to the conditions of the pandemic. For clarification, Penn State's Administrative Data Accelerator is an infrastructure of the Evidence-to-Impact Collaborative at Penn State, which specializes in the acquisition, linkage and responsive use of often sensitive administrative data for research purposes—coming from both government, industry or other sources Transcript is available here.

What is there left to say about the opioid crisis that has not already been said? It's claimed thousands of lives, torn apart families and communities, strained our country's already fractured healthcare system, and cost the economy billions, perhaps trillions, of dollars. If burning a path through communities for the last twenty years was not enough, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced many individuals and families to endure joblessness, potential homelessness, and other uncertainties, causing a spike in substance use and subsequently, overdoses. In this episode, we spoke to Glenn Sterner, PhD, Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at Penn State Abington, and Stephen Forzato, Deputy Chief for Statewide Drug Initiatives at the Pennsylvania Office of Attorney General about reducing the stigma of the opioid crisis and greater issues of substance use. For more information about Glenn Sterner, PhD's work in reducing the stigma of the opioid crisis through storytelling, visit shareyouropioidstory.com. For more information about finding treatment for substance use disorder, please visit SAMHSA's treatment provider website. Note: This episode was recorded before the outbreak of COVID-19 and does not address current circumstances, but the issues discussed are undoubtedly exacerbated due to the conditions of the pandemic. Since the recording of this episode, Mr. Forzato has retired from law enforcement to join the faculty of St. Joseph's University as the Director of the Center for Addiction and Recovery Education. Transcript is available here.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues and unemployment benefits for many Americans decrease significantly at the end of July, many Americans will be unable to pay rents and mortgages and may face eviction. Given the severity of this particular crisis, July's episode focuses on multiple issues related to housing in America, like the lack of affordable housing and housing as a means to improve overall health and well-being. In this episode, we spoke to Bryce Maretzki, Director of Policy and Planning for the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency, and Selena Ortiz, PhD, Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Administration as well as Demography, at Penn State. Note: This episode was recorded before the outbreak of COVID-19 and does not address current circumstances, but the issues discussed are undoubtedly exacerbated due to the conditions of the pandemic.

For this month's episode, we spoke to Lisa Davis, Director of the Pennsylvania Office of Rural Health and Ann Tickamyer, PhD, Professor Emerita of Rural Sociology and Demography at Penn State, about the challenges and opportunities of healthcare in rural communities. Pennsylvania is considered one of the most rural states in the nation, and is anchored by Pittsburgh in the southwestern and Philadelphia in the southeastern parts of the state. Across the nation, however, rural counties have much in common in terms of geographic isolation and significant challenges like access to economic development, transportation infrastructure, broadband services, healthcare services, and many others. As the U.S. continues to weather the COVID-19 pandemic, the inadequacy of our country's healthcare system hangs heavily over rural communities and the people living in them. Transcript available here. Note: This episode was recorded before the COVID-19 pandemic and does not account for current changes for rural communities.

For this month's episode, we spoke to Penn State's Marty Sliwinski, PhD, Director of the Center for Healthy Aging and Professor of Human Development and Family Studies, and Stephanie Cole, Director of Special Projects and Executive Assistant at the Office of the Secretary at Pennsylvania Department of Aging, about challenges and opportunities related to aging. This episode was recorded in February 2020 before the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic and mandatory physical and social distancing. The Podcast Team believes the discussion of our country's aging population is more salient than ever as individuals, families, and children remain quarantined in their homes to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and give our healthcare system a fighting chance. And since individuals of advanced age are presented with higher risks, this is more important that ever. Aging is a lifelong process, beginning at birth, and continues throughout adulthood. Through this lens, we begin to understand the problems that our country's population faces now and in the next several decades when we will reach a cultural tipping point in which there will be more people over age 65 than age 18 and under. For that reason, there must be a shift in integrating our country's systems like healthcare, housing, and transportation to better adapt to our aging population. Transcript available here.

This week, we spoke to two experts on issue about criminal sentencing guidelines. Sentencing guidelines are a set of standards that are generally put in place to establish rational and consistent sentencing practices within a particular jurisdiction. Guests: Jeff Ulmer is a Professor of Sociology and Criminology at Penn State and the Program Head of the Criminal Justice Policy and Administration MPS Degree for Penn State World Campus. His research interests include criminology, social psychology, sociology of religion, organizations, and the integration of qualitative and quantitative methods. His current projects Mark Bergstrom is the Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing and an Associate Teaching Professor of Sociology and Criminology at Penn State. He started working for the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing in 1992 and took over as its Executive Director in 1998.  

Join us each month as we explore issues affecting our families and communities.

Join us each month as we explore issues affecting our families and communities.