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Theory to Practice: The Intersection of Human-Centered Design & Public Policy

During our autumn 2021 Theory to Practice, The Intersection of Human-Centered Design and Public Policy: How you can apply design-thinking principles to solve complex public challenges, our guests Rachael Cicero, Dr. Mark Childs, and Krissy Kimura explored the fundamental ideas and methods of human-centered design, shared applicable ideas and tools to help solve challenges you are facing in your own professional sphere, and shared their lived experience using design methodology for solving complex community challenges.

Resources

Resource Document

Presenters

Rachael Cicero, is the City of Seattle’s civic designer. In her current role, she is responsible for spearheading research, engagement, and evaluation efforts for City programs and service delivery. Prior to joining the City of Seattle in 2019, Rachael spent over six years managing design and engineering work at companies such as Twitter and Seattle-based design consultancy, Artefact.

Dr. Mark Childs, an Evans School alum, is a professor emeritus, writer, poet, and architect. Mark recently retired from serving as interim dean of architecture and planning at the University of New Mexico where he had been on the faculty for the last 26 years. An accomplished scholar and academic, he was also a senior Fulbright scholar in Cyprus in 2005 where he researched architectural development and civic space. Prior to that he worked as a planner and architect in Seattle.

Krissy Kimura is the Interim Assistant Director for the Institute for Innovation and Global Engagement at the University of Washington Tacoma. Previously based in Washington, DC, she was a contractor for the federal government under the General Services Administration on the Code.gov team and at the Department of Energy, where she worked as a User Experience Designer.

Evans School Graduate Selected for the 2021-22 WSG Hershman Fellowship

September 2, 2021. The University of Washington College of the Environment announced that recent Evans School graduate Allison Lu and four other UW graduates have been awarded the Washington Sea Grant Hershman Fellowship for 2021-2022. This fellowship places highly motivated, qualified individuals with marine and coastal host offices throughout Washington, providing fellows with a unique perspective on building marine policy and allowing them to share their academic expertise with the host offices.

As a WSG Hershman Fellow, Allison will support the Northwest Seaport Alliance’s air quality and sustainable practices team with their climate and zero emission commitments.

Allison Lu

Allison was born and raised in the Seattle area and grew up playing on Alki beach, kayaking across Lake Sammamish, and sailing around Puget Sound with her family. She spent her summers studying abroad and eventually moved to the United Kingdom to pursue her bachelor’s degree in law at University College London. After graduating, she moved to Southern California to be the primary guardian for her teenage sister. She had developed a passion for environmental law throughout her undergraduate studies, so after her sister left the nest, Allison decided to pursue a master of public administration, concentrating in environmental policy, at the UW Evans School of Public Policy & Governance. During this time, she also worked as the nonprofit coordinator at the Washington State Parks Foundation. Throughout her academic work in and professional experience in outdoor recreation and conservation, she knew she wanted to pursue a career in marine and coastal policy, specializing in natural resource management.

Congratulations, Allison!

Read about the other fellowship recipients.

Research, education hub on ‘coastal resiliency’ will focus on earthquakes, coastal erosion and climate change

Ocosta-Elementary-photo-NOAA — Ocosta Elementary School in Grays Harbor County, Washington, is home to the first tsunami vertical evacuation center in North America, completed in 2016. NOAA

by Hannah Hickey and Kim Eckart

September 7, 2021. The National Science Foundation has funded a multi-institutional team led by Oregon State University and the University of Washington to work on increasing resiliency among Pacific Northwest coastal communities.

The new Cascadia Coastlines and Peoples Hazards Research Hub will serve coastal communities in Northern California, Oregon and Washington. The hub’s multidisciplinary approach will span geoscience, social science, public policy and community partnerships.

The Pacific Northwest coastline is at significant risk of earthquakes from the Cascadia Subduction Zone, an offshore fault that stretches more than 600 miles from Cape Mendocino in California to southern British Columbia. The region also faces ongoing risks from coastal erosion, regional flooding and rising seas due to climate change.

The newly established Cascadia CoPes Hub, based at OSU, will increase the capacity of coastal communities to adapt through community engagement and co-production of research, and by training a new generation of coastal hazards scientists and leaders from currently underrepresented communities.

The initial award is for $7.2 million over the first two years, with the bulk split between OSU and the UW. The total award, subject to renewals, is $18.9 million over five years.

“This issue requires a regional approach,” said co-principal investigator Ann Bostrom, a UW Evans School professor of public policy and governance. “This new research hub has the potential to achieve significant advances across the hazard sciences — from the understanding of governance systems, to having a four-dimensional understanding of Cascadia faults and how they work, and better understanding the changing risks of compound fluvial-coastal flooding, to new ways of engaging with communities to co-produce research that will be useful for coastal planning and decisions in our region. There are a lot of aspects built into this project that have us all excited.”

The community collaborations, engagement and outreach will focus on five areas: Humboldt County, California; greater Coos Bay, Oregon; Newport to Astoria, Oregon; Tokeland to Taholah, Washington; and from Everett to Bellingham, Washington.

Read the full story on UW News.

UW Evans School Relaunches Program for Undergraduates Interested in Public Service Careers

For the first time in decades, the UW Evans School of Public Policy & Governance will host a summer fellowship program designed to transform how students engage in the field of public policy and public administration and to build new pathways to public service for all who are called to serve.

The UW Evans School’s Summer Institute will provide undergraduate students with a deeper appreciation of current issues and trends in public and international affairs, a greater understanding of career opportunities in public service fields, and enhanced knowledge and skills to support their future pursuit of careers in public policy.

“This program is critical to delivering on our purpose to inspire public service and democratize the work of public policy,” Evans School Dean Jodi Sandfort described. “We have an imperative to build a more robust career pathway for historically underrepresented students into rewarding jobs in the public policy and international relations arenas. It is central to our ability to strengthen the public sector for years to come.”

The UW Evans School’s Summer Institute program is a rigorous seven-week summer program with a curriculum that includes economics, policy analysis and implementation, quantitative methods, and community engagement – all designed to sharpen students’ quantitative, analytic, and leadership skills.

Evans School Summer Institute participants will also gain exposure to the breadth and richness of public service in the Pacific Northwest through experiential learning opportunities, including mentorship, shadowing public service professionals, and engagement with community-based practitioners, regional leaders, and elected officials.

“The world is filled with incredibly complex problems that demand sustained public attention and innovative policy solutions. The Summer Institute provides an opportunity for students to learn about the public policy approaches necessary to address such problems,” highlighted Assistant Professor Karin Martin. “Highly motivated students who are eager to have a positive impact on the world will appreciate the excellent teaching, practical skills, and career development that happens at the Summer Institute.”

Overcoming Barriers to Access Health Care The Challenges Facing Minorities and Immigrants in Washington State

Washington state’s BIPOC and immigrant communities face worse health outcomes and a lower standard of care compared to their white counterparts. Barriers to access, both at the individual and system levels, are the primary drivers for inadequate care and unmet needs. As a purchaser and regulator, Washington State and its agencies can exercise their authority to finance, implement, and oversee interventions to help reduce and/or eliminate systemic barriers that disproportionately affect minority and immigrant households.

In this report, Layla G. Booshehri (Associate Director of Center for Health Innovation and Policy Science) and Jerome Dugan (Faculty in Health Systems and Population Health & Adjunct Faculty at the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance) examine what Washington State can do to reduce disparities in health care access experienced by Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) and immigrant communities.

Read the Report

Sharing Power: The Landscape of Participatory Practices & Grantmaking Among Large U.S. Foundations

August 25, 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic and fights for racial justice highlighted questions about whether mission-driven organizations can effectively deliver on their social impact goals without engaging with the communities that they seek to impact. Philanthropic foundations, in particular, have come under scrutiny amidst recent and growing concerns about their undemocratic nature and shrouded grant-making processes.

Philanthropic foundations in the United States hold significant power in the policy landscape, as they can both define societal challenges and determine the manner in which those challenges are addressed. The work of foundations is tax subsidized, but they are held to few standards of accountability, leading to increasing calls for foundations to shift their power to affected communities, to democratize decision-making through greater stakeholder participation, and to be more accountable to those whose lives they affect.

As part of the University of Washington Philanthropy Project, Evans School researchers Kelly Husted, Emily Finchum-Mason, and David Suárez sought to understand how large philanthropic foundations – with substantial assets and power – engage the people they serve in their governance and grant-making policies and practices. They launched a survey of the 500 largest private and community foundations in the United States between May and December 2020 to answer this question. These are their key findings:

Many foundations solicited and incorporated feedback from grantees, community-based organizations, beneficiaries, and the public directly into decisions regarding governance and grant-making, but true decision-making power was rarely given to these stakeholders.
The vast majority of foundations are using stakeholder participation as a way to increase their innovativeness and effectiveness rather than to share power, despite the fact that rhetoric surrounding these practices is focused on breaking down power silos.
For the largest foundations in this country, the primary impediment to stakeholder participation was a perceived lack of time and capacity to implement, despite the sheer volume of assets that these foundations wield.

By learning more about grantmaking practices that are currently in place, the motivations for using these approaches, and the key challenges to incorporating stakeholder participation, researchers hope to lower the barriers that some foundations may face in making stakeholder participation an integral part of their governance and grant-making.

Greater accountability from philanthropic foundations represents an important step to a more equitable future. When large, powerful foundations listen to those they aim to benefit, they can more effectively direct their giving in ways that align with community needs.

Read the Full Report

About the UW Philanthropy Project

The UW Philanthropy Project is a multiyear research program seeking to understand the many important roles that philanthropic foundations play in American society.

Interview with Horowitz Foundation Grant Awardee Vedavati Patwardhan on Maternal Cash Transfer’s Impact on Child Nutrition

UW Evans School Ph.D. Candidate Vedavati Patwardhan was recently awarded a grant from the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy for continued research on the impacts of providing cash assistance to pregnant and nursing mothers on children’s nutritional status in India – an important indicator for their future life success. We discussed how her work will be crucial in understanding how maternal cash transfer programs can have the most impact in low- and middle-income countries, both in how they are designed and implemented, so that those most in need receive the intended benefits.

“Cash transfer schemes are a popular policy tool in many low- and middle-income countries, and programs specifically targeting pregnant and lactating mothers are also gaining popularity…

My findings of the cash transfer program’s impact in Odisha, India speaks to the importance in design of these cash benefit schemes and who benefits in the long-run.”

What inspired you to research the effectiveness of cash assistance for pregnant and nursing mothers in India?

The first 1000 days of life provide a crucial window of opportunity in shaping a child’s future health. So, cash benefits that target mothers during pregnancy and lactation have a high potential to improve child nutrition. In 2017, the Central Government of India launched a national maternal cash benefit scheme, but the Mamata Scheme, which is a state-level program, was a precursor to the national program by 7 years. This inspired me to analyze the effect of maternal cash benefits in India, and the Mamata Scheme in Odisha in particular.

Malnutrition is a large global problem and India accounts for the largest burden of child undernutrition worldwide despite rapid economic growth following economic liberalization. In 2016, the India National Family Health Survey found that 38% of Indian children under the age of 5 had a low height-for-age, (stunting), and 21% suffered from a low weight-for-height (wasting), meaning more than 70 million children had indicators of malnutrition.

Why is it necessary to focus on program assistance to mothers specifically versus the whole family?

Research shows that women’s economic empowerment is linked to a positive effects on a household’s food security, children’s nutrition & health, and education. There are several female-centric policies in low and middle-income countries like India, and the underlying rationale for this is evidence showing that women spend money differently than men, resulting in better children’s outcomes and second, that these policies also empower women. Specific to cash transfers, providing cash assistance to mothers has been linked to higher female autonomy within the household.

Turning to interventions targeting pregnant and nursing mothers: these are important, as poor maternal health has adverse consequences on child mortality and nutrition, and women in low- and middle-income countries often face barriers to access crucial maternity care services. Increased financial resources in the hands of mothers may improve their ability to exercise preferences, reduce poverty related stress, and improve physical and mental conditions.

Given the current context of COVID-19’s tremendous impact in India, why do you think this research is vital, particularly now?

The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly exacerbated India’s nutrition challenges. The government’s health and development centers (Anganwadis) were closed, and closed schools meant no midday meals. Economic insecurity has been a double whammy, with rising food prices and job losses forcing people to cope by reducing the quality and quantity of meals. Analyzing government policies such as cash transfers is important to understand the extent these programs mitigate adverse nutritional effects for children in the aftermath of an economic shock.

Are there any general results or themes you are already seeing that you’re able to share?

I find that being eligible for the Mamata Scheme improves some, but not all measures of child nutrition. Children’s weight-for-height and weight-for-age improved after the Mamata Scheme, but, notably, I do not find significant improvements in children’s height-for-age, which is considered a more reliable wellbeing indicator in early childhood. I also find that children in poorer households benefit significantly less than those in wealthier households, suggesting that marginalized populations may be having difficulties with participating in the program.

What do you hope the results from your research will provide for India, as well as other low- and middle-income countries?

Cash transfer schemes are a popular policy tool in many low- and middle-income countries, and programs specifically targeting pregnant and lactating mothers are also gaining popularity (e.g. Indonesia’s Keluarga Harapan, Nicaragua’s Red de Proteccion and the Child Development Grant in Nigeria). The introduction of the national maternal cash benefit scheme in India 2017 signals the rising popularity of these schemes in the Indian context as well.

My findings on the impact of the Mamata Scheme speak to the importance in design of these cash benefit schemes and who benefits in the long-run. Policymakers may wish to pay special attention to whether the universal nature of the scheme (i.e. not selecting beneficiaries based on income) needs modification. Also, further research is needed to understand whether program conditions (women needing to fulfill a set of ante and prenatal care conditions to receive cash) restrict access for marginalized groups. The results are also a reminder that investments in complementary factors such as maternal education, access to clean water, sanitation, and health care are crucial in addition to maternal cash benefit programs.

Alison Cullen to Chair EPA Science Advisory Board

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Michael S. Regan has announced his selections for membership of the Science Advisory Board (SAB), including Alison Cullen, Daniel J. Evans Endowed Professor of Environmental Policy, as its chair.

The Science Advisory Board provides scientific advice to the EPA Administrator, including reviewing the quality and relevance of the information being used to propose regulations and reviewing agency programs. The committee will be comprised of 22 women and 25 men, including 16 people of color, making it the most diverse SAB since the committee was established. The EPA Administrator’s selections represent a cross-section of scientific disciplines and experience needed to provide advice to EPA leadership to help advance the agency’s mission.

“This highly qualified, diverse group of experts will ensure that EPA is receiving sound science-based advice to inform our work to protect people and the environment from pollution,” said EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan. “We worked expeditiously and deliberately to finalize the new Science Advisory Board, and now we can move forward knowing EPA’s work is guided by the most credible, independent expertise.”

For more information, and to see the full list of appointees, view the full press release from the EPA.

Evaluating Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) Policies Potential for Violence Prevention

Fact Sheet Outlines Health and Safety Implications of EITCs

The federal earned income tax credit (EITC), the largest cash transfer program for low-earning workers in the United States, is an economic policy intended to reduce poverty. Each year, the EITC program provides earning subsidies in the form of tax credits to certain workers based on their pretax earnings, marital status, and number of children.

A multidisciplinary team of researchers with the University of Washington Department of Epidemiology and Evans School of Public Policy and Governance investigated the EITC program an its affects on the rates of multiple types of violence, including child maltreatment, suicide, and intimate partner violence. It is plausible that a tax credit for low-income families could affect violence by improving family income and economic security, which could then lead to less stress, material hardship, and exposure to neighborhood violence.

The results of this investigation are summarized in the EITC & Violence Prevention Fact Sheet.

Researchers find that a 10 percentage-point increase in the generosity of state EITC benefits was associated with:

a 9% decline in child neglect
a 5% decline in child maltreatment
a 4% decline in suicide attempts
a 1% decline in suicide deaths

(all per year)

Researchers did not find an association between EITCs and intimate partner violence, but they note some restrictions that make it difficult for victims of IPV to receive the EITC.

These findings have policy relevance right now because there are similar programs being discussed and expanded. At the federal level, the stimulus package passed in February included an expansion of the child tax credit. Like the EITC, that credit provides income support to low- and middle-income families. The expansion was temporary but the Biden budget just released includes funding to make it permanent. At the state level, Washington finally funded our own EITC, the Working Families Tax Credit, after not being operational for many years. There are other states that do not have an EITC or have an EITC program that does not benefit low-income families at the levels it could.

Through this investigation, researchers aimed to broaden our scientific understanding of the benefits of providing income support to low-income families, and hope that it will influence state and federal policymakers to think about the potential for providing income support.

This fact sheet was developed by Ali Rowhani-Rahbar (PI), Heather Hill, Steve Mooney, Frederick Rivara, Caitlin Moe, Nicole Kovski, Erin Morgan, and Kim Dalve. Funding for this research was provided by Cooperative Agreement Award U01CE002945 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Sheila Edwards Lange (MPA ’00) Selected as Chancellor of UW Tacoma

University of Washington President Ana Mari Cauce and Provost Mark A. Richards announced the selection of Sheila Edwards Lange, president of Seattle Central College, as chancellor of the University of Washington Tacoma. Her appointment, pending approval by the UW Board of Regents, is set to begin September 16, 2021.

Edwards Lange has many years of experience in higher education and she is well known throughout the UW, having served as the vice president for Minority Affairs and Diversity from 2007 to 2015. As president of Seattle Central College, Edwards Lange leads all college operations, including instruction, student services, fiscal resources, human resources, facilities and community relations. She works closely and collaboratively with leadership across the Seattle College District to ensure students receive high quality and responsive education and services.

“I was attracted to UW Tacoma’s urban-serving mission, commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion, and its stellar academic programs. That unique combination has enabled UW Tacoma to be an active partner in economic development and prosperity in the South Sound,” Edwards Lange said. “I am excited about being part of this work and look forward to leading the institution at this critical time in its history.”

Edwards Lange earned her doctorate in educational leadership and policy studies, as well as her master’s in public administration – from the Evans School of Public Policy & Governance in 2000 – and her bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Irvine. She began her career at Western Washington University, before taking on leadership roles at Seattle Community Colleges. While earning her doctorate at the UW, she developed research and teaching interests in higher education policy, diversity in higher education, assessment and program evaluation, and underrepresented student access STEM fields. She taught a graduate level course on race and public policy for several years in the UW Evans School.