In this month’s episode, we tackled innovations in healthcare. Since the beginning of the pandemic, we’ve seen a focus on various healthcare innovations and technology like artificial intelligence, cloud-enabled solutions, and inpatient telehealth, but other innovations are important, too. Some of these focused on in Pennsylvania include how we can get more value out of the country’s healthcare system without sacrificing the quality of care and lowering barriers for underserved populations.

We spoke to Dr. Doug Jacobs, M.D., M.P.H., Chief Medical Officer and Chief Innovation Officer in the Office of the Secretary at the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services, and Meg Small, Ph.D., Director of Social Innovation and Assistant Research Professor at the Penn State Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center, about what it means to have a healthcare system that pays for value, promotes health equity and addresses the social determinants of health; measuring the success of healthcare innovation; healthcare innovations involving mobile technology; and other improvements to expanding access while reducing healthcare costs.

Episode Resources and Notes

The transcript for this episode is available here.

This month marks the beginning of the third season of this podcast!

We’re kicking things off by exploring the opportunities and challenges of Pennsylvania’s child welfare system. For the past several years, there has been an ongoing partnership between Penn State researchers and government partners to change the Commonwealth’s county-based child welfare system through legislative and policy actions. We spoke to Jennie Noll, Ph.D., Professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies and the Director of the Child Maltreatment Solutions Network at Penn State University, and Brian Bornman, Esq., Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Children and Youth Administrators Association, about their collaborative process, the challenges of navigating a stressed bureaucratic system, and what the future holds for resolving issues of child welfare and maltreatment.

Episode Resources and Notes

The transcript for this episode is available here.

For this month’s episode, we explore a topic that we have wanted to cover for some time: unemployment and the pandemic labor market.

As the nation begins to “reopen” and the economy begins shifting, many states have begun ending pandemic-era unemployment insurance benefits. For many, unemployment insurance was the only thing keeping them afloat following the unprecedented unemployment crisis at the beginning of the pandemic. And yet, despite the unbelievable numbers of unemployed workers in our country, the stigma of receiving unemployment insurance persists. We asked ourselves why, in a time of tremendous health and economic crisis, are we giving folks who need help a hard time? We know that research shows that many families and individuals are still out of work and struggling to afford adequate food and pay mortgages or rent. Like other topics we covered – childcare and food insecurity, for example – the pandemic has made it abundantly clear that our country’s systems are unsustainable and not enough to support the financial needs of families and individuals.

To debunk some of the concerns and myths of unemployment and dive into the shifting economy, we spoke to Sarah Damaske, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Labor and Employment Relations, Sociology and Women’s Studies at Penn State and Associate Director of the Population Research Institute (PRI), and Mark Price, Ph.D., Associate Director of Research at the Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA). We discussed the stigma of experiencing unemployment or receiving unemployment insurance, how and why men and women experience unemployment differently, wage stagnation in the education sector, and more.

We encourage listeners to also check out Sarah’s new book, The Tolls of Uncertainty: How Privilege and the Guilt Gap Shape Unemployment in America. While it is not required reading for this episode, it does paint a picture of pre-pandemic unemployment and provides salient policy recommendations to our unemployment system.

Episode Resources and Notes

The transcript for this episode is available here.