McCormack Speaks

December 6, 2017
by McCormack Speaks
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Crucial Support for Senior Affordable Housing at Risk in Tax Reform Legislation

This post originally appeared on the Gerontology Institute blog.

By Len Fishman, Gerontology Institute

Low-income elder Americans face a housing crisis today. We don’t have nearly enough decent, affordable housing for them, and our country’s aging population is adding waves of new seniors to the waiting lists every day.

States and the federal government generally do not build new affordable housing directly. Instead, they maintain a market-based system that allows private firms and nonprofits (many of them faith-based) to partner with government to build and preserve housing for low-income elders and the working poor.

For decades, this public-private partnership has been the main engine driving new construction and preservation of subsidized senior housing. With the passage of tax legislation in both houses, Congress now faces a stark choice. Read more.

Len Fishman directs the Gerontology Institute. His work focuses on research and policy, especially to combine affordable senior housing and health care in innovative and cost-effective ways.

December 4, 2017
by McCormack Speaks
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Raising the Minimum Wage in Massachusetts to $15 – Should that even be a question?

by Marisela Ramirez, McCormack Graduate School student

We are a society that values hard work and considers it the ticket to living a middle-class lifestyle. But, reaching this lifestyle isn’t always that easy for some. No matter how hard you work, you still find yourself struggling to make ends meet and pay for basic needs.

The minimum wage in 2008 was $8/hour where it remained for six years. In 2014, Governor Deval Patrick signed a bill that raised it to $11 per hour. This law was phased in over three years with a $1 annual increase. The last boost was implemented in January of this year.

In Massachusetts, a minimum wage worker currently earns $11 per hour, amounting to a full-time earned income of only $22,880 a year. Can you imagine trying to live on an income like this? Or imagine being a parent who cannot provide some of the most basic needs of food, clothing, and child care for your family. We all know that the cost of living only keeps getting higher and higher. While the state has raised the minimum wage over the years, it has failed to take into consideration the increasing cost of living. Continue Reading →

December 4, 2017
by McCormack Speaks
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McCormack Staff Member Speaks to the Nigerian Government to Pass a Bill Targeting Hate Speech

by the Center for Peace, Democracy, and Development

Representing the Center for Peace, Democracy, and Development (CPDD) at UMass Boston’s McCormack Graduate School of Policy and Global Studies, Nigerian Program Manager Mariam Marwa-Abdu recently spoke at a one-day retreat for federal lawmakers of Nigeria’s House Committee on National Security and Intelligence as it considers a bill on religious tolerance that includes provisions targeting hate speech. Recent trends in Nigeria have seen hate speech being used as a tool for silencing targeted groups, and as a weapon to belittle, defame, and bully different groups based on their ethnicity, religion, and culture.

Marwa-Abdu, a lawyer with years of management experience in Nigerian nonprofits, oversees CPDD’s collaboration with the Interfaith Mediation Centre (IMC) of Kaduna, Nigeria, working to build greater peace between Muslims and Christians nationwide. In her presentation on the Religious Tolerance and Prohibition of Hate Speech Bill, which IMC and CPDD helped to draft, Marwa-Abdu sought to persuade the members of the House of Representatives on the need to consider passing the document into law. She explained that if the law is not set in place quickly, the situation is likely to deteriorate, especially as Nigeria moves toward elections in 2019. After a few hours of deliberations based on her comments, the 18 committee members agreed to use the IMC/CPDD recommendations as a working document and vowed to see that the bill is passed into law. Continue reading.

November 30, 2017
by McCormack Speaks
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Tick Tock: Cardiovascular Health and Driving Behavior in Older Adults

Tick Tock: Cardiovascular Health and Driving Behavior in Older Adults

by Danielle Waldron, Gerontology PhD student

While my primary research interests include health and social policy for persons aging with intellectual and developmental disabilities, I am widening my scope of study to other interesting areas in the field of gerontology.

This year I presented my research on elder driving and cardiovascular health at the Gerontology Society of America Conference (GSA) in New Orleans – my first GSA pressentation. After reading about driving accidents involving older adults and heart attacks in local newspapers, I decided to look deeper into the issue using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) Core 2012. The HRS surveys an estimated 20,000 community-dwelling Americans (age 50 years or older), and reports on demographics, physical health conditions, driving status, work status, and other information (Karp, 2007).

My research team and I analyzed relationships between driving and four cardiovascular conditions: heart attack, heart failure, angina, and abnormal heart rhythm. In our analyses, we controlled for levels of physical activity (mild, moderate, and vigorous) and other demographic covariates. Ultimately, we found that the odds of a person with heart failure maintaining the ability to drive is decreased by 38.3% (OR=0.617) in persons age 65 years and older. Heart failure was the only significant cardiovascular condition found to be associated with driving cessation. Since people with heart failure experience poor flow of blood and oxygen to the brain and other body parts (American Heart Association, 2016), we believe such oxygen deficits may inhibit people with heart failure from being physically and/or cognitively able to operate vehicles.

However, it is important to note that due to the cross-sectional nature of this project, we are unable to establish causation in this research. In addition, this research indicates that people who participated in vigorous activity, such as running, swimming, or jogging, at least once a week, had a 1.96 times greater odds of driving, on average, after controlling for cardiovascular health and all other variables. This demonstrates the importance of physical activity in relation to heart health and driving.

Presentation Information

Waldron, D., Lee, C.M., Evans, M., Kittle, K., Li, Y., Dowdie, B., & Dugan, E. (2016). Cardiovascular Health and Driving Cessation: Findings from the Health and Retirement Study. Gerontological Society of America, New Orleans, Louisiana.

November 29, 2017
by McCormack Speaks
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McCormack Graduate School Hosts Conference on School Discipline

What are the impacts of school suspension? To begin with, students suffer the obvious loss of instructional time. Research also indicates that suspensions lead to lower grade levels in reading, significantly increase the risk of dropping out of school, and are a leading indicator of future incarceration.Data also shows that black and disabled students are referred to the principal’s office more often than other students. In Massachusetts, the average Black/White gap was 24 more days of lost instruction, with 10 schools having a Black/White gap of over 100 days.

Professor of Public Policy and Public Affairs Mark R. Warren and his graduate assistant Andrew King hosted a day-long event, “Moving Beyond Chapter 222,” about the school discipline landscape in Massachusetts and possibilities for future investment in progressive discipline aimed to, in the end, close the racial discipline gap and ensure student success and higher graduation rates.

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