VCU Center on Human Needs to Host Webinar on the Effect of Education on Hunger, Housing, Wealth and Health

By Sathya Achia Abraham

The Virginia Commonwealth University Center on Human Needs will host a webinar featuring a panel of leading education and public health experts who will discuss the impact of education on employment, income, hunger, homelessness, health and longevity.

The webinar takes place Dec. 7 from 11 a.m. to noon. There will be a live Twitter feed and participants can join the conversation at #humanneeds.

The webinar highlights recent findings and a new publication series from the VCU Center on Human Needs’ Project on Societal Distress titled, “The Price of a Lost Education: How Education Affects Hunger, Housing, Wealth, and Health.”

Discussion will be based on the report, which suggests that Americans with lower education levels, even those with some college education but no degree, struggle substantially to meet basic human needs. Participants will discuss the implications for public health and the economy.

Steven Woolf, M.D., M.P.H., director of the VCU Center on Human Needs and lead author of the report, will moderate the webinar. Woolf, professor of family medicine in the VCU School of Medicine, will be joined by Jonathan Fielding, M.D., M.P.H., M.B.A., director of public health and health officer with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, and Ron Haskins, Ph.D., senior fellow of economic studies and co-director of the Center on Children and Families at The Brookings Institution.

The Center on Human Needs also will launch a new website that provides detailed data on the prevalence of these problems in the United States and other resources about social determinants of health. Visit the site at www.humanneeds.vcu.edu.

The Project on Societal Distress involves collaborators on the VCU campus. The data team for this project is led by Robert E. Johnson Ph.D., in the Department of Biostatistics.

The event is funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

Registration is required. For more information, please contact Morgan Warners at 301-652-1558 or via email at mwarners@burnesscommunications.com.