Shivanshu Sharma, a second-year Master of Public Administration candidate at the Cornell Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, spoke with Dr. Ranveer Chandra, the Managing Director for Research for Industry & CTO of Agri-Food at Microsoft, about the role of technology in addressing future food challenges. Their conversation also touched on Dr. Chandra research… Read more »
The mental health system in the United States has historically lacked appropriate care for patients experiencing severe mental illness. During the 1960s, mental healthcare shifted from institutional settings to community-based services [1]. Although this shift gave patients with severe mental illness more autonomy over their care, it led to market forces driving a reduction in psychiatric beds without a parallel increase in support for community services [2]. As such, patients seeking preventative care for severe mental illness face long waitlists for community-based services; instead, these patients divert to ill-equipped emergency departments (EDs) for treatment of acute episodes but likewise wait long periods in hallways or other emergency room areas for an inpatient bed, also known as “boarding.”
As the threat of human-induced climate change increases, bringing with it rising tides, wildfires, and drought, the potential for impactful environmental legislation in the United States is decreasing. Climate change as a policy issue has become partisan, with 80 percent of Democrats to only 29 percent of Republicans believing it should be urgently addressed. The Biden Administration’s signature legislation, the Build Back Better Act, which includes $550 billion dedicated to fighting climate change, is stalled in the Senate, demonstrating the difficulty of passing sweeping legislation as a means to tackle the problem.