Policy Analysis
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What Can We Know from China’s First Legal Order of 2021?
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China’s role on the international arena has been rising prominently. Even with a pandemic engulfing the entire globe since early 2020, the country is still attempting to accelerate its global impact. On January 9, 2021, China’s Ministry of Commerce announced that the new Rules on Counteracting Unjustified Extra-Territorial Application of…
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Harm Reduction, Healthcare, and the Opioid Overdose Crisis in Chicago
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Alex Rains is an MS1 at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. She can be reached at [email protected] Overdose deaths have been a serious public health concern in the United States for many years, and the COVID-19 pandemic has only highlighted the severity of this crisis. By disrupting…
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Harris Community Action Study Suggests Ciclovía Could Bring Economic, Health, Social Benefits to Chicago
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Siobhan McDonough, Noah Berman, and Eliana Fram contributed to this piece. A Harris Community Action team, in coordination with the Chicago non-profit Equiticity, found evidence that implementing an open streets program similar to Bogota’s ciclovía could effectively encourage social integration, build healthy habits, and boost local businesses. Harris Community Action…
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Remote Learning and the Widening K-12 Achievement Gap
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As we pass the anniversary of the first round of lockdowns, Americans are longing for a return to normalcy. With COVID-19 numbers decreasing due to increased testing and vaccine distribution, schools nationwide have begun the process of returning teachers and students to the classroom. Many schools have returned to a hybrid model of teaching,…
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Executive Underreach in the Response to COVID-19
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Here we are, over one year later: trapped inside as news of daily deaths keeps breaching the barricade around our isolated lives. How did it come to this? As we mourn COVID-19’s first anniversary, the history of this pandemic continues to be written, and most believe it is a tale…
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COVID-19 Halted Medicaid Work Requirements. Should They Come Back?
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In 2018, the Trump administration announced a new policy allowing states to require certain Medicaid enrollees to do a minimum number of “community engagement” hours in order to keep their coverage. These policies, often called work requirements, differ from state to state. They usually dictate that “able-bodied” Medicaid beneficiaries in…
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How AI is Changing Human Communication
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In 2013, the science-fiction drama Her questioned whether communication with artificial intelligence could be indistinguishable from communication with humans. While this day is yet to come, AI is increasingly facilitating human-to-human communication. This phenomenon is AI-Mediated Communication (AI-MC), which Jeffrey T. Hancock, Mor Naaman, and Karen Levy define in their recent paper as…
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High-Hanging Fruit: How Governments Can Respond to High Food Prices
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On January 31, the Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS) released its latest food price index report, showing that food prices have trended upward since July 2020. The primary agricultural commodities — soybeans, wheat, and other cereals, corn, rice, and meat — are trading at the highest levels in a decade. The…
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Centering Equity in Urban COVID-19 Recovery
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Even before the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, socioeconomic inequality plagued cities across the globe. The pandemic itself has both deepened those existing wounds and ripped open new ones. In the United States, neighborhoods predominantly inhabited by people of color have experienced the highest rates of both infections and deaths,…
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The Utility of Internet Access
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The coronavirus pandemic has proven to be the great amplifier of existing inequities in internet access across communities in the United States, driven by the need for both access and affordability. According to the Boston Consulting Group and Common Sense Media, since the pandemic began, the number of public school…
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Could Global Warming Increase Racial Disparities in Student Achievement?
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While much of global warming research focuses on the natural world — considering how climate change impacts ecosystems, agriculture, and biodiversity — a new wave of research studies how climate change will reshape the social and economic world. In this emerging field, a novel study suggests that global warming may…