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Illinois became the most recent state in the U.S. to adopt universal Child Development Accounts on August 23, when Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed legislation to open a 529 college savings plan account with deposits for every child born or adopted in Illinois after Dec. 31, 2020.

“We are excited to provide this opportunity for children in Illinois,” said Illinois Treasurer Michael Frerichs. “Every child should have an opportunity to afford to attend college. We think starting a college savings account will set the expectation that college is achievable and will put our children on the road to success.”

The gubernatorial signing is the third in a little over a year for statewide Child Development Accounts (CDAs), joining Nebraska and Pennsylvania. It signals encouraging momentum for child accounts, according to Margaret Clancy, policy director for the Center for Social Development (CSD) at Washington University in St. Louis. Also noteworthy, these three examples represent red, purple, and blue states. During a very partisan political era, CDAs find support across political parties.

“This marks three statewide CDA legislative victories within just over 12 months, and more states are considering this asset-building policy for children,” Clancy said. “Using the 529 college savings plan as a platform to implement statewide CDAs has been very successful, both economically and politically.”

CSD has been a national leader in CDA research and CDA policy innovation around the world. Research in a CDA policy model in Oklahoma has shown that mothers’ outlook and parenting improved, as did their education expectations for their children. Children’s social–emotional development also improved, regardless of whether or not the families saved additional amounts. Other research finds that children with an account in their name are likely to have higher educational attainment.

In Illinois, the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, based in Chicago, was one of twelve partners in the SEED demonstration of CDAs in the early 2000s. Careful research in SEED has laid the groundwork for CDA policy in Illinois and elsewhere. Clancy has worked with the Illinois Asset Building Group, the Woodstock Institute, the Heartland Alliance, and Bright Start Direct, as well as the state treasurer’s office, to develop the CDA policy concept in Illinois.

When it is implemented in 2021, the Illinois program will have the largest annual cohort of CDA participants in the nation, with about 160,000 newborns each year. The largest amount of CDA assets is currently in the state of Maine, at more than $134 million.

The Illinois House passed the Child Development Account legislation on April 3, and the Senate passed it on May 31. It uses the Illinois Higher Education Savings Program for the purpose of “expanding access to higher education through savings.” Among its provisions:

CSD Director Michael Sherraden—who in 1991 first proposed universal asset building beginning at birth—said research testing CDA policy, and documented success in statewide CDAs have been key steps in moving toward a national policy. “Since 529 college savings plans already exist and are very stable, these can become the backbone of a national CDA policy that reaches all U.S. children,” he said. “A nationwide CDA policy could eventually develop into a lifelong asset-building policy for the nation. This policy vision would emphasize asset accumulation and achieving life goals.”

More effort is needed to provide education for mentally and physically disabled children and youth in Afghanistan, according to new research from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

In the first study of its kind, researchers surveyed and interviewed children and adults in Afghan villages to assess the impact of more school opportunities in post-Taliban Afghanistan. One survey was taken in 2005 and another in the same villages in 2013.

They found that despite progress in increasing the number of schools, teachers and student enrollment, access to school and literacy did not improve for children and youth with disabilities, and both outcomes were worse for girls with disabilities and those with a mental learning or associated disability. The encouraging finding was that disabled children and  youth reported less mental distress over time, perhaps because the stigma of disability was being increasingly challenged and expressed less often publicly.

“A concerted effort is required to intervene at the community level to break the vicious cycle of attitudes, beliefs, prejudice and discrimination toward children with disabilities,” said lead author Dr. Jean-Francois Trani, associate professor at the Brown School. “At the school level, promoting a conducive learning environment in which the teacher is valorized by good working conditions and training to address the various needs of children might contribute to make school an undisputable protective environment for all children.”

The study was published June 10 in PLOS One.

Researchers, evaluators and governmental administrators from around the U.S. and the world came to the Brown School July 29 – August 2, 2019 for training in systems science and how it can be applied to enhance social impact.

The first annual Systems Science for Social Impact Summer Institute was a week-long program that aimed to begin training the next generation of health and social science scholars in systems science methods. The 33 participants received training in either agent-based modeling, system dynamics, or social networks, and learned how to apply the methods.

Participants became familiar with major concepts, learned analytic best practices, and applied the methods to real-world data. They also had opportunities to interact with each other, instructors, and outside experts across tracks.

“They were highly engaged and appreciated the opportunity to work with each other and with us,” said Douglas Luke, professor and director of the Center for Public Health Systems Science at the Brown School. “The WashU campus and Brown School environment and people impressed them.”

Other faculty leaders at the institute were Ross Hammond, Betty Bofinger Brown Associate Professor; and Peter Hovmand, professor of practice and the founding director of the Social System Design Lab.

“The Institute helped increase the visibility of the sort of work we’re doing here at the Brown School,” said Luke, who noted that side conversations with the instructors included discussions about consulting, new grant opportunities, job applications and student recruitment.

Hovmand said the focus on social impact made the training special.

The institute will be offered again next summer, Luke said, to take advantage of the Brown School’s expertise in the field—and the lack of systems science training elsewhere specifically designed for researchers and practitioners in social work, public health, and other applied social sciences.

To stay informed on future institute dates and registration, visit systemsscienceforsocialimpact.wustl.edu or email cphss@wustl.edu.

The Brown School welcomes 11 new exceptional faculty scholars in fall 2019. They add their expertise, research and teaching to our vibrant community, and help us deepen our dedication to equity and impact locally, nationally and globally.

Meet all of them below.

A commitment to address the social determinants of health

Ruopeng An, assistant professor in the tenure track, assesses socioeconomic determinants and policies that impact individuals’ dietary behavior, physical activity, sedentary lifestyle, and obesity in children, adults of all ages, and people with disability. His research goal is to develop a well-rounded knowledge base and policy recommendations that can inform decision-making and the allocation of resources to combat obesity.

The research of Maura Kepper, assistant professor in the research track, demonstrates the importance of, and interplay between, the social and physical environments on parenting practices, health behaviors, and obesity-related outcomes in youth. Her goal is to design, disseminate, and sustain interventions that overcome community-level barriers to reduce health disparities in childhood obesity, type 2 diabetes and other chronic diseases. 

Stephanie Mazzucca, assistant professor in the research track, works to develop and evaluate evidence-based approaches for promoting healthy eating and physical activity to prevent chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes and cancer. Her work focuses on improving home environments, as well as organizations such as public health departments and childcare centers, to support healthy behaviors for populations at risk of chronic disease.

Advancement of culturally responsive practice, the Black experience, and sexual health

Tyriesa Howell, assistant professor in the tenure track, is examining and understanding social and cultural determinants of sexual and reproductive health among adolescents and women. She is particularly interested in the development of technology as an innovative approach to promoting sexuality health education for youth. Her emerging research also seeks to address maternal health disparities experienced by Black women living in the U.S.

Husain Lateef, assistant professor in the tenure track, focuses on the role African-centered approaches may have in improving outcomes of youth prevention programs for African American youth. He is currently examining the relationship between African-centered constructs and indicators of positive youth development among African American youth.

Dalychia Saah, a lecturer in the teaching track, is a sexuality educator, writer, and speaker who is passionate about people unlearning oppressive societal norms.  Saah is the co-founder of Afrosexology, a pleasure-based sex education platform that creates educational content and workshops to center the pleasure, empowerment, and liberation of Black people.

Expertise in implementation science and policy

Todd Combs, an assistant professor in the research track, focuses on health and social policy, dissemination and implementation science, and systems science. He is also the assistant director of research at the Brown School’s Center for Public Health Systems Science. Much of his research focuses on policies that affect the built environment to promote behavioral change.

Associate Professor Jin Huang, in the research track, is working on social policies that support family and child well-being, with a particular focus on financial capability and asset building (FCAB) programs for disadvantaged populations. He has studied diverse populations with disadvantaged backgrounds, such as low-income children, children with disabilities, children of immigrants, and youth in transition to adulthood.

Byron Powell, an assistant professor in the tenure track, focuses on efforts to improve the quality of behavioral health and social services. His scholarship has focused on barriers and facilitators to implementing evidence-based practices, designing and tailoring implementation strategies and assessing the effectiveness of implementation strategies.

Dedication to refugee and global development issues

Kim Thuy Seelinger, associate professor in the research track, is an expert on sexual violence related to armed conflict and forced displacement. She focuses on systems of legal accountability in conflict-affected settings, as well as sexual violence survivors’ access to support and protection in humanitarian crises. She is currently working with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to improve understanding of the disclosure of sexual violence in rapid migration and the treatment of intimate partner violence in asylum procedures in the Americas.

Brad Tucker is an assistant professor in the practice track. As a consultant and researcher, Tucker both studies and advances organizational development, change and institutional sustainability among local development and social service organizations in sub-Saharan Africa. Specifically, he collaborates with U.S. and international organizations to strengthen their leadership, management and program development/implementation capabilities.

On June 12, Washington’s University’s new Social Policy Institute hosted Kathy Kraninger, Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), along with a panel of esteemed contributors to discuss the link between emergency savings and long-term economic mobility. The Brown School’s Clark-Fox Policy Institute and the university’s Gephardt Institute for Civic and Community Engagement co-sponsored the talk.

The event brought together more than 125 policymakers, practitioners, and researchers, and it included remarks by the following: Dave Sieminski, Policy Analyst, CFPB; Mary McKay, Neidorff Family and Centene Corporation Dean of the Brown School; Holden Thorp, Provost Emeritus; and Andrew Martin, Chancellor.

As an introduction to Kraninger’s talk,  Michal Grinstein-Weiss, director of the Social Policy Institute and Shanti K. Khinduka Distinguished Professor at the Brown School, facilitated a panel discussion featuring David Williams, Chief Tax Officer, Intuit; Tishaura Jones, St. Louis City Treasurer; and Ray Boshara, Assistant Vice President, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Panelists explored the benefits of emergency savings and wealth creation from stability against life events to teaching saving habits beginning in childhood. They also highlighted potential solutions and action steps for addressing these needs, including institutional behavior change and the development of partnerships across sectors.

Kraninger then spoke further about the overwhelming absence of emergency savings accounts in the United States. “It led me to believe that we at the CFPB needed to take a leadership role in helping to improve this situation and to empower consumers to build more liquid savings,” she said.

She then introduced the CFPB’s new initiative Start Small, Save Up which launched in February 2019. “Our vision for Start Small, Save Up is to increase people’s financial well-being through education, partnerships, research, and policy or regulatory improvements that increase people’s opportunities to save and empower them to realize their personal savings goals,” she said.

Kraninger highlighted strategies and barriers to reaching goals for Start Small, Save Up, as well as solutions that the CFPB and partner organizations have already begun to employ. She stated, “Our hope is that we can contribute to helping consumers be more financially resilient so that when they take care of that short-term goal or cover that unexpected expense with their liquid savings, they feel financially empowered to start saving up again.”

“The Bureau has many responsibilities,” Kraninger concluded, “but certainly one of the most important and compelling is to help consumers protect and build their financial capability and financial well-being. We hope you all will join us in this effort.”

Brown School students found inspiration over the summer in both Costa Rica and Uganda during transdisciplinary problem solving (TPS) courses designed to address real-world global problems in a comprehensive way.

Sustainability in Costa Rica

Sydney Gosik, an MSW/MPH student, was one of 12 Brown School students who took the 10-day class “Sustainability in Costa Rica.”

 “We were provided with vast amounts of information and learning experiences regarding ecosystems, social systems, and economic systems within Costa Rica,” Gosik said. “This course went way beyond information sharing and really drew upon my critical thinking and analytical skills. We routinely put the concepts into a global context. Without thinking, I was synthesizing new information into new ideas for how I want to view the world and practice as a professional.” 

The TPS class is led by Joe Steensma, associate professor of practice.

“In the course, we were able to delve into sustainable power,” Steensma said. “Costa Rica is 100 percent fossil-fuel free. I think students were really inspired by that. They start got to understand the economics of hydroelectric and solar power, but also the ecology.”

Large swaths of land in Costa Rica have been turned into forest to capture carbon, generating power without a carbon footprint.

“Seeing the biodiversity is an eye-opener,” Steensma said.

The course partnered with Earth University, a 25-year-old institute in Costa Rica, where students study tropical agriculture and develop methods that can be sustained for hundreds of years to feed the world’s people. Brown School students worked side by side with the Earth University students on the university’s farm as part of the course. The co-instructor was Ivan Castillo Gomez, director of ecology at Selva Verde, an eco-lodge where they stayed. Students also visited a community-managed fishery.

In their journals, students highlighted the key learnings they’d take back to home to use in their future coursework and practice. 

Tracy Liang, an MPH student specializing in Epidemiology/Biostatistics, said she would highly recommend the course. “The most valuable study activity was the daily reflection and discussion,” she said. “We were encouraged to share ideas which deepened our understanding, and I was inspired a lot by the discussion.”

Partnering with NGOs in Uganda

Another innovative TPS summer course was “Working with NGOs to Address the Intersection of Child Labor, Poverty, Gender, and Health in Sub-Saharan Africa.”  

Based in Uganda, it was a collaboration between the Brown School’s International Center for Child Health and Development (ICHAD) and SMART Africa Center, and their many partner organizations in Africa.  The various institutions and organizations that hosted the students included the Uganda Parliament, Childfund, and the Uganda Youth Development Link.

The 10-day course provided students the conceptual and practice skills they need in working with international governmental and non-governmental organizations and advancing social development within sub-Saharan Africa. Specifically, it sought to help students interested in issues such as poverty, child labor and HIV/AIDS to understand the practitioner’s role in planning for, developing and administering non-governmental organizations. Students were also encouraged to come up with innovative ideas to address challenges.

The class was led by Fred Ssewamala, William E. Gordon Distinguished Professor, who established ICHAD. He is also the director of the SMART Africa Center, aimed at reducing gaps in child and adolescent mental health services and research in Ghana, Kenya and Uganda.

“As much as you try to prepare students in the classroom, many are not prepared for what they find in the field, especially in global work,” he said. 

Students are taught cultural competence, but seeing it in action on the ground can be challenging, he said. “The level of poverty they saw, many have never seen, so it’s hard to prepare students for that. But the practical pieces are just as important as the classes. The classroom by itself is not enough; there’s a need to get out there.”

Many of the students had not been out of the U.S. Some of the students were overwhelmed by the receptivity of the Ugandan people and the NGOs that Ssewamala has worked with for more than a decade. 

Deja Miles, a first year MPH student, was one of those students.

“Seeing the organizational strategy utilized to serve so many native Ugandans living and thriving despite their HIV or AIDS status presented a newfound sense of hope,” she said.

An African-American from St. Louis, her first trip to Africa was both enlightening and fulfilling. 

“I was always the minority and for once, I was nearly the same. A sense of belonging filled me and for a moment, I felt at home.”

Jianrong Zhang, MPH ’19, said his experience in Uganda had helped him realize the relationship between education and poverty, one that also exists in his homeland of China.

“My country, China, actually has also experienced considerable issues related to poverty, health, gender and education over time,” said Zhang, who has returned to China, where he is a physician. “China should aim to contribute to shared development with other countries like Uganda and the United States.”