Making Health a Shared Value

This project will build on and contribute to a growing body of research into the impact of public banks – financial institutions created by governments and chartered to serve the public interest – and their potential to address interlocking health, housing, and climate crises and reduce the racial wealth gap.

Baby bonds are publicly funded child trust accounts that have been proposed as a solution to build wealth for young adults and reduce racial wealth disparities. Public support for baby bonds is gaining momentum, including federal legislation introduced by Senator Booker (D-NJ) and reintroduced by Senator Booker and Representative Pressley (D-MA).

This study will model the relationship between state-level minimum wage rates and general health outcomes for men and women of color who have never attended college. To test this relationship, this study will use Centers for Disease Control and Prevention–administered Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey data.

Reparations are one policy solution that can advance racial equity and justice in the United States and can decrease racial inequities in health and well-being. Yet reparations cannot be truly effective and reparative if they are not deeply accountable to the people who were harmed. Building on the authentic grassroots organizing and meaningful community engagement of the Racial Justice Coalition in Asheville, North Carolina, the research team will utilize qualitative methods to study the local reparations process underway in Asheville and Buncombe County, North Carolina.

This research will provide actionable results as counties develop their mental health diversion policies and procedures in accordance with AB 1810, particularly as courts re-open in the wake of COVID-19. In so doing, this project will not only benefit racial justice in the criminal legal system in California but also efforts to pursue racial equity through the increased use of mental health diversion nationwide.

Greater scheduling predictability may reduce parental stress and increase child care stability, job stability, and income. Researchers will use qualitative and quantitative methods to evaluate the implementation of the Oregon law and analyze the impacts on family and child health outcomes.

Numerous studies have shown that 12-hour shifts, rotating shifts, and unpredictable work schedules are associated with greater risk of chronic health conditions including mental illness, cardiovascular disorders, gastrointestinal disorders, and obesity. Although large manufacturing companies recognize the risks, they cite several arguments in favor of maintaining them, including the 24/7 production schedule, and in some cases, employee preferences for long shifts to maximize days off and pay.

In recent decades, the “broken windows” approach to policing has led several large U.S. cities to employ the proactive policing program known as “Stop, Question, and Frisk” (SQF). The New York City Police Department (NYPD) made over 5 million such stops between 2002 and 2016.

Since 2004, California’s state disability insurance program has provided six weeks of parental leave at 55 percent pay (in addition to typically 6-8 weeks of postpartum disability leave for biological mothers, also at 55 percent pay). However, many parents—especially those of lower-income—cannot afford to take this bonding leave at only partial pay. San Francisco’s new Paid Parental Leave Ordinance (PPLO) addresses this issue by requiring San Francisco employers to supplement up to 100% pay for six weeks of parental bonding leave.

Many hourly workers, especially in the retail sector, contend with unstable and unpredictable work schedules in which the number of hours, the days of the week, and the times of day that they work vary substantially from week to week. This chronic instability is likely to negatively affect workers and could also have spillover effects for children.

While there is an extensive and growing research literature on the benefits of paid parental leave, few studies have examined the impacts of paid family leave on caring for elderly family members. Yet families that take advantage of these policies may actually be helping to lower state costs in other areas. Arora and Wolf (2018) estimate that paid family leave reduced elderly nursing home utilization by 11 percent in California relative to an empirically matched group of control states.

The Institute for Women’s Policy Research’s (IWPR) simulation model estimates the costs and benefits of paid leave for six common leave types, using data largely derived from the U.S. Department of Labor’s 2012 Family and Medical Leave (FMLA) Survey. The types include 1) own serious medical condition; 2) maternity and childbirth; 3) new child care following birth, adoption, or foster placement; 4) care for spouse; 5) care for children; and 6) care for parents.