Research from Rob Fischer and Meghan Salas Atwell, faculty members at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, was cited in a blog post on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation website in April 2022.
Fischer and Atwell, who serve as co-director and associate director of the Mandel School’s Center on Urban Poverty and Community Development, respectively, collaborated with child care referral agency Starting Point to publish “Tackling the Child-Care Conundrum,” a COVID-19 response piece investigating child care shortages in the Northeast Ohio region. Using local data collected from licensed child care centers and homes, Fischer, Atwell and colleagues discovered that the pandemic and its economic impact have significantly diminished the number of child care providers in Cuyahoga County. An overview of the study’s findings are available on a Story Map published by Starting Point.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a national health-centered nonprofit, referenced Fischer’s and Atwell’s findings in a blog post titled “How Can We Use Local Data to Address the Impacts of Structural Racism on Community Health?” The post’s authors recognized Fischer’s and Atwell’s research as a precedent for using data to improve health equity.