Collaborations with Meharry Medical College, Sinai Chicago and Wayne State University will expand access to community health workers and care
WOONSOCKET, R.I. /PRNewswire/ — CVS Health® (NYSE: CVS) today announced a new initiative that will address barriers to care in underserved communities across the country. The CVS Health Community Equity Alliance is being established to expand the community health worker workforce, enhance connections between health care institutions and communities and address disparities in heart health and mental health outcomes. The Alliance is part of the Company’s commitment to advancing health equity.
Image courtesy of CVS Health
The first institutions joining the initiative are Meharry Medical College, Sinai Chicago and Wayne State University. CVS Health is providing funding to each institution for locally tailored initiatives and will bring Alliance members together to share best practices and work to integrate lessons learned into the Company’s health equity strategy.
Through the power of collaboration, expansion of evidence-based interventions and a shared commitment to integrating the voices and lived experiences of community members, the Alliance will create innovative solutions to help make health care more accessible and decrease health disparities.
“The Alliance is being established to elevate the voices, needs and experiences of local communities, as institutions work to remove barriers to equitable care,” said Dr. Joneigh Khaldun, Vice President and Chief Health Equity Officer, CVS Health. “These collaborations will help us deliver on our health equity strategy and commitment to making health care accessible for everyone.”
Partnering with Sinai Chicago to bring health resources to underserved communities Sinai Chicago and CVS Health will focus on engaging the community in the North Lawndale neighborhood in Chicago. Through the collaboration, Sinai Chicago and CVS Health will provide residents with tailored health and social resources to address health disparities, with a focus on heart health and mental health. Sinai Chicago will also recruit residents in local neighborhoods to become community health workers through its Block Leaders program. As a community health worker, individuals are trained to connect local residents with critical health information and resources, while building their own career paths in health care.
“Our collaboration with CVS Health enables both Sinai Chicago and our community partners, like the North Lawndale Community Coordinating Council, to set the stage for creating an innovative and transformational approach to addressing health and social issues that contribute to the lower life expectancy rates challenging our community members,” said Debra Wesley, President, Sinai Community Institute. “Our Block Leaders from I Am Able’s TR4IM initiative will work as community health workers and use the Personal Community Self-Administered Health Needs Assessment and Social Determinants of Health Pilot Project to provide the tools and skills that will enable our community members to take control of their own health and wellness.”
Collaborating with Meharry Medical College to expand the community health worker workforce Meharry Medical College and CVS Health will work together on the recruitment and training of community health workers, increasing the diversity of local clinicians and decreasing health disparities in heart health and mental health. Community health workers will partner with faith-based or community-based organizations to provide health education and connect historically marginalized communities to health resources. Meharry Medical College will also conduct a continuing education program for health care professionals focused on the patient-centered medical home and share strategies for how to work with organizations in medically underserved and rural communities.
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“Access to health care services is critical for good health and increased quality of life. People living in rural and underserved communities are often met with extreme and historical barriers to accessible health care services, deemed common and usual in a rational health care system,” said Pat Matthews-Juarez, Ph.D., Senior Vice President for Strategic Initiatives and Innovation and Professor, Department of Family and Community Medicine, Meharry Medical College. “Meharry Medical College and CVS Health are establishing an apprenticeship pathway for community health workers interested in community-based nursing that will strengthen and extend health care services to medically underserved and rural communities in Tennessee. This collaboration leverages our mission for improving health outcomes for vulnerable populations, while advancing health equity.”
Working with Wayne State University to expand community engagement and training The collaboration with the Wayne State University Center for Health Equity and Community Knowledge in Urban Populations (CHECK-UP) will create a multi-sector community coalition to assure integration of community voice and alignment of community assets and resources to decrease heart health and mental health disparities in Detroit. The collaboration will also train faculty, staff and community members on best practices in community-engaged research and expand opportunities for skill-building for the community health worker workforce.
“We are grateful to CVS Health for this collaboration, which will support much-needed initiatives to address health disparities in Detroit and the surrounding region,” said M. Roy Wilson, President, Wayne State University. “Strengthening relationships in the community and training community leaders will develop grassroots avenues to further our work to improve the health of the people of Detroit.”
About CVS Health CVS Health® is the leading health solutions company, delivering care like no one else can. We reach more people and improve the health of communities across America through our local presence, digital channels and over 300,000 dedicated colleagues – including more than 40,000 physicians, pharmacists, nurses and nurse practitioners. Wherever and whenever people need us, we help them with their health – whether that’s managing chronic diseases, staying compliant with their medications or accessing affordable health and wellness services in the most convenient ways. We help people navigate the health care system – and their personal health care – by improving access, lowering costs and being a trusted partner for every meaningful moment of health. And we do it all with heart, each and every day. Follow @CVSHealth on social media.
About Meharry Medical College Meharry Medical College is one of the nation’s oldest and largest historically black academic health science centers dedicated to educating physicians, dentists, researchers, and health policy experts. Founded in 1876 as the Medical Department of Central Tennessee College, Meharry was the first medical school in the South for African Americans. It was chartered separately in 1915. Today, Meharry includes a medical school, dental school, graduate school and applied computational sciences school; and is home to the Center for Health Policy at Meharry. The degrees include Doctor of Medicine (M.D.), Doctor of Dental Surgery (D.D.S.), Master of Science in Public Health (M.S.P.H.), Master of Science (M.S.), and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degrees. Meharry Medical College also produces the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved, a public health journal. For more information on Meharry Medical College, visit MeharryMedicalCollege.com.
About Sinai Chicago Sinai Chicago is a Chicago-based private, not-for-profit organization, includes seven member organizations serving the West and Southwest Sides; Mount Sinai Hospital, Holy Cross Hospital, Sinai Children’s Hospital, Schwab Rehabilitation Hospital, Sinai Medical Group, Sinai Community Institute and Sinai Urban Health Institute. The system has 4,000 employees, over 800 physicians on its hospital medical staffs, 654 licensed beds, 100,000+ annual emergency department patient visits and eight physician residency training programs. Please visit Sinai.org for more information.
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About Wayne State University Wayne State University is one of the nation’s pre-eminent public research universities in an urban setting. Through its multidisciplinary approach to research and education, and its ongoing collaboration with government, industry and other institutions, the university seeks to enhance economic growth and improve the quality of life in the city of Detroit, state of Michigan and throughout the world. For more information, visit Wayne.edu.
Neither party – Democrats nor Republicans – is doing a better job at fixing crime.
Carl Ballou – iStock/Getty Images PlusJustin de Benedictis-Kessner, Harvard Kennedy School and Christopher S. Warshaw, George Washington University
Following George Floyd’s death at the hands of police in Minneapolis in 2020, the U.S. has undergone a national reckoning over crime prevention and police reform.
Across the country, calls went out from activists to rethink the scope and role of the police. Some on the left vowed to “defund” the police. Others on the right promised to instead “back the blue” and maintain or increase police funding.
This rhetorical tug-of-war unfolded while many cities across the country grappled with spiking crime rates during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Blaming crime on Democratic city leaders was a centerpiece of Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. He repeatedly made claims about crime spikes in recent years without evidence or context.
More recently, Republican congressional leaders have called several Democratic mayors from across the country to testify before Congress about their sanctuary city policies that are aimed at protecting noncitizens from deportation. These congressional politicians have asserted that these Democratic mayors – Brandon Johnson of Chicago, Mike Johnston of Denver, Michelle Wu of Boston, and Eric Adams of New York – have “created a public safety nightmare” in their cities by allowing immigrants without legal authorization to stay there.
Journalists and politicians on both sides of the aisle have claimed that local election results over the past four years in places like San Francisco and Los Angeles reflect a widespread frustration with Democratic policies on crime in cities.
Under this argument, Democratic city leaders need to change their approach on crime to satisfy voters. It’s become a political axiom of sorts that policies championed largely by Democratic city leaders over the past half decade have resulted in rising crime levels.
As researchers of politics and public policy, we wanted to figure out if that was true.
A New York Times headline from June 8, 2022, linking crime rates and the Democratic Party.The New York Times
Neither party does a better job
As any student of introductory statistics learns, correlation doesn’t imply causation. Looking at increases or decreases in crime rates in Republican or Democratic cities and claiming either party is to blame would be making exactly this error: confusing correlation with causation.
We put to the test the argument that one side or the other is better at fighting crime in our research published in January 2025. By employing three decades of data on mayoral elections from across the country, we were able to disentangle city leaders’ partisanship from other features of cities.
Contrary to much of the political rhetoric and media coverage aimed at most Americans, our results show that neither party is doing a better job at actually causing crime to decrease.
In Dallas, Mayor Eric Johnson has claimed that Democratic leaders aren’t taking public safety seriously and that the Democratic Party is “with the criminals.” Johnson switched from being a Democrat to a Republican in 2023 and attributes his decision at least partially to this partisan difference on crime and policing and the seriousness with which he takes this policy issue.
But our research shows that Johnson’s and others’ claims about Democratic cities becoming more dangerous just aren’t true: Mayors from the Democratic Party aren’t making cities any more – or less – dangerous than mayors from the Republican Party.
Nor, it turns out, is there any support for claims by some progressive Democrats that they would reduce the role – and enormous budgets – of police departments in cities across the country.
When we examined the number of sworn police officers in cities and how much money those cities spend on the police, Democratic and Republican mayors alike have had surprisingly little influence on police department budgets or sizes.
In other words, Democrats aren’t cutting police budgets, nor are Republicans increasing police budgets. Most cities have increased police budgets in the past few years, possibly due to pressure from police unions.
Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson speaks during the second day of the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on July 16, 2024.Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images
‘Crime is nonpartisan’
It turns out that campaign promises from both sides of the partisan aisle about crime and policing have little bearing on what’s happening on the ground in most cities and police departments across the country.
Neither party is doing a better job at reducing crime. Nor is either party actually addressing the ballooning financial cost of local police forces in the U.S., nor the long-term reputational costs from police misconduct for trust in the police and government more broadly.
As others have said: crime is nonpartisan.
Crime has decreased across the U.S. during the past three decades overall, and the isolated cities where crime has increased recently can reverse these temporary trends.
Partisan blame narratives do little to actually lower crime and make neighborhoods safer, though.
There are real evidence-backed policies that reduce crime – such as youth jobs programs in Chicago and Boston. Other policies reduce racial disparities in the criminal justice system – such as alternative 911 response programs that use unarmed behavioral health workers to respond to some types of emergencies.
These policies and interventions might not be as slogan-worthy as “defund the police” or “back the blue.” Nor is implementing these policies as politically convenient as blaming sanctuary city mayors. But research shows that they work and can move cities toward the shared goal of improved public safety for their residents.Justin de Benedictis-Kessner, Associate Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School and Christopher S. Warshaw, Professor of Political Science, George Washington University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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A mourner holds a portrait of Pope Francis at the Basílica de San José de Flores in Buenos Aires, a church where the pope worshipped in his youth.
AP Photo/Gustavo GarelloMolly Jackson, The Conversation
Pope Francis, whose papacy blended tradition with pushes for inclusion and reform, died on April, 21, 2025 – Easter Monday – at the age of 88.
Here we spotlight five stories from The Conversation’s archive about his roots, faith, leadership and legacy.
1. A Jesuit pope
Jorge Mario Bergoglio became a pope of many firsts: the first modern pope from outside Europe, the first whose papal name honors St. Francis of Assisi, and the first Jesuit – a Catholic religious order founded in the 16th century.
Those Jesuit roots shed light on Pope Francis’ approach to some of the world’s most pressing problems, argues Timothy Gabrielli, a theologian at the University of Dayton.
Gabrielli highlights the Jesuits’ “Spiritual Exercises,” which prompt Catholics to deepen their relationship with God and carefully discern how to respond to problems. He argues that this spiritual pattern of looking beyond “presenting problems” to the deeper roots comes through in Francis’ writings, shaping the pope’s response to everything from climate change and inequality to clerical sex abuse.
2. LGBTQ+ issues
Early on in his papacy, Francis famously told an interviewer, “If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” Over the years, he has repeatedly called on Catholics to love LGBTQ+ people and spoken against laws that target them.
An LGBTQ couple embrace after a pastoral worker blesses them at a Catholic church in Germany, in defiance of practices approved by Rome.Andreas Rentz/Getty Images
But “Francis’ inclusiveness is not actually radical,” explains Steven Millies, a scholar at the Catholic Theological Union. “His remarks generally correspond to what the church teaches and calls on Catholics to do,” without changing doctrine – such as that marriage is only between a man and a woman.
Rather, Francis’ comments “express what the Catholic Church says about human dignity,” Millies writes. “Francis is calling on Catholics to take note that they should be concerned about justice for all people.”
3. Asking forgiveness
At times, Francis did something that was once unthinkable for a pope: He apologized.
He was not the first pontiff to do so, however. Pope John Paul II declared a sweeping “Day of Pardon” in 2000, asking forgiveness for the church’s sins, and Pope Benedict XVI apologized to victims of sexual abuse. During Francis’ papacy, he acknowledged the church’s historic role in Canada’s residential school system for Indigenous children and apologized for abuses in the system.
But what does it mean for a pope to say, “I’m sorry”?
Members of the Assembly of First Nations perform in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican on March 31, 2022, ahead of an Indigenous delegation’s meeting with Pope Francis.AP Photo/Alessandra TarantinoAnnie Selak, a theologian at Georgetown University, unpacks the history and significance of papal apologies, which can speak for the entire church, past and present. Often, she notes, statements skirt an actual admission of wrongdoing.
Still, apologies “do say something important,” Selak writes. A pope “apologizes both to the church and on behalf of the church to the world. These apologies are necessary starting points on the path to forgiveness and healing.”
4. A church that listens
Many popes convene meetings of the Synod of Bishops to advise the Vatican on church governance. But under Francis, these gatherings took on special meaning.
The Synod on Synodality was a multiyear, worldwide conversation where Catholics could share concerns and challenges with local church leaders, informing the topics synod participants would eventually discuss in Rome. What’s more, the synod’s voting members included not only bishops but lay Catholics – a first for the church.
Participants arrive for a vigil prayer led by Pope Francis and other religious leaders before the 2023 Synod of Bishops assembly.Isabella Bonotto/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
The process “pictures the Catholic Church not as a top-down hierarchy but rather as an open conversation,” writes University of Dayton religious studies scholar Daniel Speed Thompson – one in which everyone in the church has a voice and listens to others’ voices.
5. Global dance
In 2024, University of Notre Dame professor David Lantigua had a cup of maté tea with some “porteños,” as people from Buenos Aires are known. They shared a surprising take on the Argentine pope: “a theologian of the tango.”
Pope Francis drinks maté, the national beverage of Argentina, in St. Peter’s Square on his birthday on Dec. 17, 2014.Alberto Pizzoli/AFP via Getty Images
Francis does love the dance – in 2014, thousands of Catholics tangoed in St. Peter’s Square to honor his birthday. But there’s more to it, Lantigua explains. Francis’ vision for the church was “based on relationships of trust and solidarity,” like a pair of dance partners. And part of his task as pope was to “tango” with all the world’s Catholics, carefully navigating culture wars and an increasingly diverse church.
Francis was “less interested in ivory tower theology than the faith of people on the streets,” where Argentina’s beloved dance was born.
This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.Molly Jackson, Religion and Ethics Editor, The Conversation
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
STM Daily News is a vibrant news blog dedicated to sharing the brighter side of human experiences. Emphasizing positive, uplifting stories, the site focuses on delivering inspiring, informative, and well-researched content. With a commitment to accurate, fair, and responsible journalism, STM Daily News aims to foster a community of readers passionate about positive change and engaged in meaningful conversations. Join the movement and explore stories that celebrate the positive impacts shaping our world.
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Kelsey Juliana, a lead plaintiff in a federal lawsuit over responsibility for climate change, speaks at a 2019 rally in Oregon.
AP Photo/Steve DipaolaHannah Wiseman, Penn State
The U.S. Supreme Court in March 2025 ended a decade-old lawsuit filed by a group of children who sought to hold the federal government responsible for some of the consequences of climate change. But just two months earlier, the justices allowed a similar suit from the city and county of Honolulu, Hawaii, to continue against oil and gas companies.
Evidence shows that fossil fuel companies, electric utilities and the federal government have known about climate change, its dangers and its human causes for at least 50 years. But the steps taken by fossil fuel companies, utilities and governments, including the U.S. government, have not been enough to meet international climate targets.
So local and state governments and citizens have asked the courts to force companies and public agencies to act. Their results have varied, with limited victories to date. But the cases keep coming.
In response to this federal executive seesaw of climate action, some legal claims use a court-based, or common law, approach to address climate concerns. For instance, in Connecticut v. American Electric Power, filed in 2004, nine states asked a federal judge to order power plants to reduce their emissions. The states said those emissions contributed to global warming, which they argued met the federal common law definition of a “public nuisance.”
That case ended when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2011 that the existence of a statute – the federal Clean Air Act – meant common law did not apply. Other plaintiffs have tried to use the “public nuisance” claim or a related common-law claim of “trespass” to force large power plants or oil and gas producers to pay climate-related damages. But in those cases, too, courts found that the Clean Air Act overrode the common-law grounds for those claims.
With those case outcomes, many plaintiffs have shifted their strategies, focusing more on state courts and seeking to hold the fossil fuel industry responsible for allegedly deceiving the public about the causes and effects of climate change.
Three examples of petroleum industry advertisements a lawsuit alleges are misleading about the causes of climate change.State of Maine v. BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, Sunoco and American Petroleum Insititute
Examining deception
In many cases, state and local governments are arguing that the fossil fuel industry knew about the dangers of climate change and deceived the public about them, and that the industry exaggerated the extent of its investments in energy that doesn’t emit carbon.
Rather than directly asking courts to order reduced carbon emissions, these cases tend to seek damages that will help governments cover the costs associated with climate change, such as construction of cooling centers
and repair of roads damaged by increased precipitation.
In legal terms, the lawsuits are saying oil and gas companies violated consumer-protection laws and committed common-law civil violations such as negligence. For instance, the city of Chicago alleges that major petroleum giants – along with the industry trade association the American Petroleum Institute – had “abundant knowledge” of the public harms of fossil fuels yet “actively campaigned” to hide that information and deceive consumers. Many other complaints by states and local governments make similar allegations.
Another lawsuit, from the state of Maine, lists and provides photographs of a litany of internal industry documents showing industry knowledge of the threat of climate change. That lawsuit also cites a 1977 memo from an Exxon employee to Exxon executives, which stated that “current scientific opinion overwhelmingly favors attributing atmospheric carbon dioxide increase to fossil fuel consumption,” and a 1979 internal Exxon memo about the buildup of carbon dioxide emissions, which warned that “(t)he potential problem is great and urgent.”
These complaints also show organizations supported by fossil fuel companies published ads as far back as the 1990s, with titles such as “Apocalypse No” and “Who told you the earth was warming … Chicken Little?” Some of these ads – part of a broader campaign – were funded by a group called the Information Council for the Environment, supported by coal producers and electric utilities.
Courts have dismissed some of these complaints, finding that federal laws overrule the principles those suits are based on. But many are still winding their way through the courts.
In 2023 the Supreme Court of Hawaii found that federal laws do not prevent climate claims based on state common law. In January 2025 the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the case to continue.
Lead claimant Rikki Held, then 22, confers with lawyers before the beginning of a 2023 Montana trial about young people’s rights in a time of climate change.William Campbell/Getty Images
Other approaches
Still other litigation approaches argue that governments inadequately reviewed the effects of greenhouse gas emissions, or even supported or subsidized those emissions caused by private industry. Those lawsuits – some of which were filed by children, with help from their parents or legal guardians – claim the governments’ actions violated people’s constitutional rights.
For instance, children in the Juliana v. United States case, first filed in 2015, said 50 years of petroleum-supporting actions by presidents and various federal agencies had violated their fundamental “right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life.” The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that their claim was a “political question” – meant for Congress, not the courts. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to reconsider that ruling in March 2025.
But children in Montana found more success. The Montana Constitution requires state officials and all residents to “maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment … for present and future generations.” In 2024 the Montana Supreme Court determined that this provision “includes a stable climate system that sustains human lives and liberties.”
The Montana Supreme Court also reviewed a state law banning officials from considering greenhouse gas emissions of projects approved by the state. The court found that the ban violated the state constitution, too. Since then, the Montana Supreme Court has specifically required state officials to review the climate effects of a project for which permits were challenged.
Concerned people and groups continue to file climate-related lawsuits across the country and around the world. They are seeing mixed results, but as the cases continue and more are filed, they are drawing attention to potential corporate and government wrongdoing, as well as the human costs of climate change. And they are inspiring shareholders and citizens to demand more accurate information and action from fossil fuel companies and electric utilities.Hannah Wiseman, Professor of Law, Penn State
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Justin de Benedictis-Kessner, Associate Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School and Christopher S. Warshaw, Professor of Political Science, George Washington University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
