Fitbit Data and Your Health Insurance (15:16)

Dr. Andy Boyd, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biomedical and Health and Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago.  Our Producer Palakiko just got a new Fitbit Charge smartwatch.  He loves it.  It tracks his resting heart rate, how many calories he burns each day, and even grades his quality of sleep.   But should his Fitbit data be used to deny him healthcare? Andy Boyd explains how fitness trackers come with many issues involving personal data

 

How Poverty Changes the Brain (1:03:12)

Elisabeth Babcock, Ph.D. is the President and CEO of Economic Mobility Pathways (EMPath), a national charitable organization dedicated to creating new pathways to economic independence for low-income women and their families. Beth’s role as CEO is to lead EMPath in its strategy to be a research and innovations powerhouse consistently delivering new approaches that expedite pathways out of poverty. A new study by EMPath examines how poverty really affects the brain. People in poverty tend to get stuck in vicious cycles where stress leads to bad decision-making, compounding other problems and reinforcing the idea that they can’t improve their own lives. Elizabeth Babcock explains the research.

 

Poor No More (1:51:53)

Peter Cove is a nationally-acclaimed advocate for private solutions to welfare dependency, and author of the new book, POOR NO MORE: Rethinking Dependency and the War on Poverty. Peter Cove is the founder of America Works, the first for-profit, welfare-to-work company. He has created more than 1 million jobs for welfare recipients through America Works and other private sector endeavors. In the 1960s, America set out to end poverty.  All initiatives on the War Against Poverty have since failed.  All except one, the welfare reform in 1996.  What made this reform different from all the others?  Peter Cover, the author of Rethinking Dependency and the War on Poverty and the founder of America Works shares his ideas on how jobs can fix poverty.