News & Media

Achieving health equity requires building communities' capacity to mobilize, organize, and strategize to change the conditions-or social determinants of health-that impact their well-being. Community and resident-driven organizations need data to 1) bring attention to the disparities and move people into action, 2) understand the root causes and organize across sectors to deal with those root causes, 3) inform solutions that will create lasting change, and 4) monitor the change to…

The number of smoke- and tobacco-free colleges has more than tripled since 2010, when 446 campuses adopted smoke- or tobacco-free policies. Today that number stands at 1,577 campuses, yet the majority of the federally recognized Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in the U.S. do not have comprehensive smoke- or tobacco-free policies to protect their students and faculty from the dangers of tobacco use and second-hand smoke. Truth Initiative (formerly…

Programs designed to enhance opportunities for young people and adults from historically underrepresented groups in professions such as teaching, engineering, evaluation, medicine, and nursing play a major role in our nation's response to workforce diversity (see, for example, Collins & Hopson, 2014; Fenwick, 2001; Greer, Clark, & Bankston, 2015; Nivet & Berlin, 2014). This article discusses why such programs are necessary and what it takes to institutionalize workforce diversity without…

Creating a Culture of Measurement and Evaluation for High Performance Nonprofits On May 14, 2015, Community Science Principal Associate Meg Hargreaves, Ph.D., M.P.P., presented at the 7th Civil Society Days Nirun Sahingiray International Forum II titled Measurement and Evaluation in NonProfit Organizations in Istanbul, Turkey. The international conference was organized by the Educational Volunteers Foundation of Turkey in collaboration with Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and Kadir…

Health-literacy interventions traditionally focus on providing individuals with health information in multiple languages; using plain, nontechnical language (i.e., language at an eighth-grade level or below); and adding visuals to health-related information to make it easy to understand and apply to everyday situations. But what can you do to reach your service population when they are dispersed in a remote geographic area or rarely congregate in a central location? And what…

Community Science, in addition to our consultation, capacity building, and evaluation services, also works on local issues of national importance. There is an affordable housing crisis in Baltimore City, as in all American cities. Over half (53%) of city renters and 40 percent of homeowners pay more than one-third of their income in housing, putting them at risk for housing instability and even homelessness. In Baltimore on any given night,…