“It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.” - Mahatma Gandhi The Affordable Care Act enacted broad reforms across the United States’ healthcare system. But while the healthcare landscape has changed drastically, one important constant has remained the same: a person’s health is affected significantly by non-medical factors. For [...]
[Apply today for DSSG 2015!] Previously, we wrote about the problem facing Mexico and many other countries: maternal mortality. In 2000, Mexico joined many other UN countries in committing to reduce maternal mortality, making it a high priority initiative for its current administration. But over the past 10 years, the country’s maternal mortality rate has [...]
[Apply today for DSSG 2015!] “The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.” -- Alexis de Tocqueville Why Are Earmarks Still Relevant? Congressional earmarks are legislative provisions that direct federal funds to specific projects. Even though the House Appropriations committee [...]
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Fc4IHhJSV3I" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe> In the second installment of our DSSG 2014 videos, we focus on the team that worked last summer with the Chicago Department of Public Health. Fellows Joe Brew, Alex Loewi, Subhabrata Majumdar, and Andrew Reece and mentor Eric Rozier tackled [...]
In our previous post, we described the challenge faced by our partners at Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS). We analyzed a sample of about 11,000 MCPS students to determine if the MCPS early warning indicator system was reliably identifying students who may be off track and therefore at risk for not graduating on time. [...]
[Apply today for DSSG 2015!] The Data Science for Social Good Summer Fellowship (DSSG) is like summer camp for adults. Summer camp like the youth programs where you met interesting people, came together to devote your time to a particular interest, and learned new things from each other. DSSG is a summer camp where the [...]
[Apply today for DSSG 2015!] Rapid growth, followed by a period of suburbanization and instability, ending with a gradual rebirth of the core: that’s the last hundred years in a nutshell for most American cities. But the recent wave of urban reinvestment has been uneven, especially since the financial meltdown of 2008. Some central city [...]
On Monday, applications will open for fellows, mentors, project managers, and project partners for Data Science for Social Good 2015. We'll publish more information about those categories and our plans for the program's third year then as well. For now, please enjoy the first of three videos on the 2014 fellowship filmed by Scrappers Film [...]
In June, it was just rows and rows of data: property assessments, school records, smart meter readings, contract bids, and census results. By the end of August, this raw material was transformed into tools for detecting international corruption and political earmarks, predicting buildings that pose lead hazards and students at risk of dropping out, and [...]
“When we enter our clients’ homes, we’re not just nurses, we’re also confidants and counselors,” said nurses from Nurse-Family Partnership’s DuPage County, Illinois local agency. For decades, Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP), a national non-profit organization that sends specially-trained nurses into the homes of young, low-income, first-time mothers until their babies are 2 years old, has demonstrated [...]
