New Department Chair Seeks to Unlock Reasons for Racial Health Disparities

Health Disparities

Thomas A. LaVeist is taking his quest to improve the health of African-Americans to the nation’s capital.

For 25 years, he has worked at the Johns Hopkins University, most recently as the director of the Hopkins Center for Health Disparities Solutions and a professor of health policy. Come February, he will be chair of the department of health policy and management at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University.

His work has focused on how socioeconomic and racial disparities harm the health of individuals and communities, particularly African-American ones. He says he combats “a shocking lack of awareness” about the widely differing incidence between black America and the rest of the population of obesity, high blood pressure, and other afflictions that greatly shorten life expectancies. “I spend a lot of time debunking myths because they’re so widely popular,” he says.

He has been writing for both academic and trade publications, and is seeking support through crowdfunding to continue his work on The Skin You’re In, a documentary film about race-correlated health disparities in the United States. His goal for the film: “to unlock all the information that’s locked away, and make it accessible for a general public” by 2017, he says.

It’s not the career Mr. LaVeist anticipated when he traveled from New York City to take up a football scholarship at the University of Maryland-Eastern Shore and major there in classical bass performance. After becoming fascinated by political sociology, he went to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and wrote a doctoral dissertation on racial disparities in infant mortality that won a 1989 award from the American Sociological Association. Intent on exploring findings on public-health disparities, he undertook a two-year course of postdoctoral study. He says he found less information than he’d hoped for, and “I decided, at that point, Why don’t I try to answer those questions?”

He anticipates having more contact with policy makers in Washington, he says, and thus having a better chance of bringing about change.— Peter Monaghan

Working on Access

Ericka Miller considers herself both an optimist and a pragmatist, so when the College Board asked her to consider joining it, she was curious about the opportunity to work somewhere that “combined theory and practice.”

“I’ve worked with other mission-driven nonprofits before, of course, but College Board is a bit unusual both because of its scope, and because it delivers actual tools and assessments to prepare students for college,” says Ms. Miller, who was formerly senior adviser to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. The College Board administers standardized tests like the PSAT, SAT, and Advanced Placement Exams. After she begins her new role as chief of membership, governance, and higher education there in January, she will collaborate with the organization’s 6,000 member institutions and organizations, as well as “make sure we are appropriately and effectively and aggressively” working with both two- and four-year colleges to increase student access.

One of the challenges students face when considering college is navigating financial aid. Ms. Miller could, for example, work with financial-aid officers to develop new tools to simplify the process for students. She will also try to connect educators with more resources to offer students, whether those are college-application fee waivers or Khan Academy videos on test preparation.

All of this is “very consistent” with her past focus on underserved students, she says. While she was at the Education Department, her projects included developing a strategy to better serve colleges with limited resources and pushing for grants that helped send students back to college.

And, with the College Board, there’s a personal connection, too. “I grew up with parents who expected me to go to college, but it wasn’t until I took the PSAT that I began to really own that decision and actually see myself as a young person preparing for college,” she says.

“College Board had that special place in my academic development, and I thought there was an opportunity to leverage that to make a similar difference for others.”— Angela Chen

Needs of Western States

Joseph A. Garcia’s priorities for his coming role as president of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education have their roots in his background: as lieutenant governor of Colorado and the state’s executive director of higher education, as a former college president, as a student from a community where few people went on to earn a degree.

Mr. Garcia will take the reins at the regional policy center, known as Wiche, after Colorado’s legislative session concludes next spring. He plans to focus on access and attainment, particularly for Hispanic students, people from low-income families, those not of traditional college age, and other groups that higher education has not historically served well.

These are issues Mr. Garcia has tackled in his dual role in Colorado over the last four years. The achievement gap for the state’s growing Hispanic population is “particularly profound,” he says. About half of white adults in Colorado have some sort of college credential, while just 19 percent of those who are Hispanic do.

Under the administration of Gov. John W. Hickenlooper, Colorado has overhauled remedial education and created a performance-based funding system that ties some state support to how well public colleges do at enrolling and retaining students, especially the underserved.

Mr. Garcia hopes to expand the lessons learned from his time in Colorado — where he previously was president of Colorado State University at Pueblo and of Pikes Peak Community College — to the 15 states and the Pacific territory that form Wiche.

He also wants to work on ways to better serve parents and working adults, including tailoring course delivery to their needs and allocating college credit for real-world experience. Mr. Garcia’s own mother went back to school after he and his siblings graduated from college, earning a bachelor’s degree in her 60s.

“It always was a message in our household that education gave you opportunities,” says Mr. Garcia, who grew up in rural northern New Mexico. “And I want to be part of spreading that message.”

Mr. Garcia, who has served as chairman of Wiche’s commission, will replace David A. Longanecker, who is retiring after having served in the post since 1999.— Karin Fischer

Unequal Influences

For their 2014 book on the tenacity of poverty across generations, three researchers have been awarded the 2016 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award in Education.

In The Long Shadow: Family Background, Disadvantaged Urban Youth, and the Transition to Adulthood, Karl L. Alexander, Doris R. Entwisle, and Linda S. Olson wrote that, aside from some exceptional cases, education does not outweigh socioeconomic status in terms of determining children’s futures.

All three authors were on the faculty of the Johns Hopkins University. Mr. Alexander is now a professor emeritus of sociology there; Ms. Entwisle, who died in 2013, was a research professor and professor emerita of sociology; and Ms. Olson, who recently retired, was an associate research scientist with the university’s Center for Social Organization of Schools.

The researchers followed nearly 800 Baltimore-area urban youths from first grade through adulthood. They found that just 4 percent of those raised in low-income families had earned a college degree by age 28.

Two other academics are among the 2016 Grawemeyer award recipients. Steven F. Maier, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Colorado at Boulder and director of its Center for Neuroscience, won the award in psychology for his work in connecting behavioral control and resilience. Susan R. Holman, senior writer at the Harvard Global Health Institute, won the award in religion for her book Beholden: Religion, Global Health, and Human Rights.

The 2016 award winners will give lectures at Louisville in April. The award in each category carries a $100,000 prize. — Ruth Hammond

Obituary: Women’s Advocate Dies

Judith Magyar Isaacson, a former dean of students at Bates College who advocated for women’s rights there, died on November 10. She was 90.

A native of Hungary, Ms. Isaacson was confined with family members at concentration camps in Poland and Germany during World War II. She emigrated to the United States in 1945.

After earning a master’s degree in mathematics, she joined Bates in 1968 as a lecturer in mathematics and computer science. The next year, she was named dean of women, and she was later promoted to dean of students and associate dean of the college. In the 1970s, she pushed for female students at Bates to have more athletic opportunities and less-restrictive social codes.

Ms. Isaacson often spoke and wrote about her experiences during the Holocaust and, after retiring in 1978, she documented them in a memoir called Seed of Sarah. — Anais Strickland

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