Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Vulnerable Populations

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News digest

News digest

This frequently updated news digest on the subject of Vulnerable Populations showcases select articles from major journals, news publications and blogs. The Vulnerable Populations Portfolio is a diverse collection of innovative programs that address health issues within their broader social context. News articles within this digest highlight the integral relationship between our health and how and where we live, work, learn and play. The digest is a free service of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. All rights reserved. Sign up to receive the digest free via email.

May 18, 2012	Realigning Health with Care Stanford Social Innovation Review, Rebecca Onie, Paul Farmer, & Heidi Behforouz, 05/18/2012 The misalignment between the expansive goal of “health” and a cramped definition of “care” has cost the United States untold lives and treasure. Yet realignment is in reach: Through expanding the scope of health care, the place where it is delivered, and the workforce that provides it, the US health care system could significantly improve health outcomes and reduce inefficiencies.
May 17, 2012	The Power of Nursing - Fixes looks at solutions to social problems and why they work The New York Times, David Bornstein, 05/17/2012 In 2010, 5.9 million children were reported as abused or neglected in the United States. If you were a policy maker and you knew of a program that could cut this figure in half, what would you do? What if you could reduce the number of babies or toddlers hospitalized for accidents or poisonings by more than half? Or provide a 5 to 7 point I.Q. boost to children born to the most vulnerable mothers? Well, there is a way. These and other striking results have been documented in studies of a program called the Nurse-Family Partnership, or NFP, which arranges for registered nurses to make regular home visits to first-time low-income or vulnerable mothers, starting early in their pregnancies and continuing until their child is 2. We tend to think of social change as more of an art than a science. “What’s unique about Nurse-Family Partnership is that the program was studied in what’s considered the strongest study design, and it showed sizable, sustained effects on important life outcomes which were replicated across different populations,” explained Jon Baron, president of the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy, a nonpartisan group. “This is very unusual. There are probably only about ten programs across all areas of social policy that currently meet that standard.”
May 17, 2012	Ex-cons step in to mediate conflict, prevent gun violence USA Today, Melanie Eversley, 05/17/2012 Two men scuffle on the ground one cool morning on the main strip of McElderry Park, near downtown Baltimore. A large man bursts from a storefront and separates the brawlers. The big man is Dante Barksdale, an outreach worker for Safe Streets, a program that enlists former convicts to battle neighborhood violence. Safe Streets and similar programs are winning plaudits from police, mayors and the Justice Department. The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health says the Baltimore program gets some of the credit for a 56% reduction in homicides in the Cherry Hill neighborhood from January 2009 through December 2010. The programs are modeled after one in Chicago called CeaseFire.

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