Changes to policy, scientific discovery, and expert recommendations and opinions all have the power to rapidly influence the landscape of a sector. Whether you’re a leader at a non-profit, a member of a university’s marketing department, or a stakeholder for a public health agency, being informed about the latest industry happenings can be the difference between exceeding and falling short of organizational goals. At Hager Sharp, our experts vigorously scan media coverage to identify areas of opportunity. And now, with the introduction of the Sharp Round-Up, you too can review what we consider to be some of the top news of the week.

Below you will find a compilation of news spanning the health and education, labor, and economy sectors. This list includes mainstream, DC-focused, and trade publication coverage from Saturday, April 1, to Friday, April 7. Let these clips serve as a resource when developing thoughtful strategies and use them to further foster organizational innovation and adaptability.

Here’s what you need to know.

Mainstream News:

• A new survey conducted by the Wall Street Journal shows that the majority of Americans believe that a four-year college degree is not worth the cost. Participants noted debt and the belief that many students often graduate without specific job skills as reasons for this belief.
• Two new studies show that exercise can lead to sharper thinking and a healthier brain. Exercising for longer or harder increases levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, often referred to as “Miracle-Gro” for the brain, prompting the creation and maturation of new brain cells and synapses.

Education News:

• An analysis by the Pew Research Center demonstrates how school districts’ mission statements are beginning to reflect how race and gender issues are handled in schools. The analysis noted that districts in Democratic-leaning areas are over twice as likely than those in Republican-leaning areas to discuss diversity, equity, and inclusion in their mission statements.
• Two districts in Alabama are demonstrating the severe divide in how the pandemic has affected students. In Macon County, students were nearly a full grade below their same age peers in math and half a grade lower in reading before the pandemic. However, in the next county, Pike Road City Schools students come from families in which the median income is more than double that in Macon County. Their test scores actually improved over the course of the pandemic.

Health News:

• Healthy sleep patterns were shown to be associated with a lower risk of asthma, regardless of genetic susceptibility. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), adults should aim for at least seven hours of sleep every night to maintain healthy sleep patterns.

Advancements in Health:

A novel treatment, called CAR-T cell therapy, is showing promise against cancer in kids. The treatment uses supercharged immune cells, neuroblastoma, which work against a rare type of cancer in children. Scientists collect T cells from the patient’s blood and strengthen them in a lab before they are returned to the patient through an IV, which yields the ability for the modified cells to multiply and then last a long time to fight the cancer.

During National Social Work month, we are thinking about how social workers are an underutilized asset. Social workers can strengthen nearly every aspect of a communications campaign, from research to creative execution. Firms like Hager Sharp that have social workers on staff benefit from their expertise.

The populations that social workers serve are so often campaign audiences. Social workers help everyone from children to the elderly, individuals to communities, and under-resourced groups to persons with disabilities. And they serve their clients in a variety of institutions, such as schools, food banks, hospitals, and state and local health departments.[1] Social workers are equipped with a special combination of skills and desire to understand and build trust among these populations.

Social workers are experts at developing relationships with and empowering populations that are typically difficult to engage—persons who usually need our help the most. The social work profession requires a balance between empathy for the challenges populations face and encouragement to create change in their unique lives and circumstances. This skill facilitates a level of intimacy with the information, and the messengers an audience needs to hear it from, that can take a campaign from good to extraordinary.

One example is the quest to improve breastfeeding rates. Maternal infant social workers are experts in both the barriers breastfeeding people face and the resources needed to overcome those challenges. These can include education about breastfeeding, help finding lactation counselors, and assistance acquiring breastfeeding pumps. Social workers’ insights on these matters can expedite and refine a campaign’s formative research process by helping the team quickly analyze relevant policies, resources, social media and digital content, audience profiles, and more.

Social workers’ knowledge can also strengthen the impact of a campaign’s messaging. For example, medical social workers are often familiar with the challenges people with diabetes face in accessing and managing care. They can connect patients to financial and medical resources, nutrition education, and mental health support. These experiences position them as experts who can ensure that materials resonate with intended audiences.

Additionally, social workers can identify and connect communication teams to messengers who increase audiences’ trust. They are like walking rolodexes of organizations and trusted leaders, both locally and nationwide.

Social workers’ insights are too often untapped resources that can help communicators execute nearly every aspect of a campaign with greater efficiency and precision. They can bring target audiences to life–beyond a diagnosis or data point and at the heart of a campaign. And they can inspire resourceful and unexpected ways to cultivate ideas that make a difference. Here at Hager Sharp, we’re lucky to have them.

[1] What is Social Work? | CSWE

Lower diet quality is associated with higher rates of chronic disease in the United States, including type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease. For many Americans, accessing healthy, safe, and affordable foods consistently is a challenge due to structural and health inequities that make accessing healthier foods and beverages difficult.

This past fall, the Biden-Harris Administration reconvened the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health and released a national strategy for ending hunger and reducing diet-related diseases. Embedded in this work is a call to address disparities preventing equitable access to healthy and affordable foods using a “Whole-of-Society Response” that urges involvement from various sectors, including state and local government, healthcare, and community-based organizations.

There is a clear role for health communication professionals in this response as the strategy’s third pillar, “Empower all consumers to make and have access to healthy choices,” calls for building and promoting environments that enable all Americans to make healthy food choices. This pillar calls for investment in culturally appropriate public education campaigns and support for tailored nutrition education programs grounded in cultural understanding.

Inclusive communication is the practice of creating information products that address all people–across the full spectrum of diversity, including age, gender, gender identity, ability, race and ethnicity, language, socioeconomic status–in a manner that makes them feel included, represented, and respected. Creating inclusive content extends beyond language translation and showing images of diverse groups of people and often involves adapting content to meet the unique information needs and values of a population or community. The select principles offered below are some of the many we can use in our work.

Adapt interventions, materials, and messages for different cultures and communities. In the context of communications, cultural adaptation is the tailoring of messages and interventions to reflect an audience’s culture, language, and values. Adaptations are largely done to ensure success among a particular culture or group and often involves designing core strategies and messages with input from the affected community to create an initiative that builds from and addresses their beliefs, cultural norms, and barriers to acceptance.

Many of the nation’s leading health initiatives for reducing diet-related diseases over the past 25 years–such as the National Diabetes Prevention Program, Million Hearts®, National Diabetes Education Program, and National Kidney Disease Education Program–have followed cultural adaptation principles. Program planners recognized that “one-size-fits-all” approaches that do not account for differences between audiences would not drive message acceptance or behavior change. Instead, they relied on gathering and applying input from people with lived experiences, addressed social determinants impacting the groups at greatest risk, and introduced educational resources that incorporated culturally appropriate elements, such as language, faith, and storytelling to create impactful messages.  

Candice Watkins Robinson, MA
Vice President, Health

Changes to policy, scientific discovery, and expert recommendations and opinions all have the power to rapidly influence the landscape of a sector. Whether you’re a leader at a non-profit, a member of a university’s marketing department, or a stakeholder for a public health agency, being informed about the latest industry happenings can be the difference between exceeding and falling short of organizational goals. At Hager Sharp, our experts vigorously scan media coverage to identify areas of opportunity. And now, with the introduction of the Sharp Round-Up, you too can review what we consider some of the top news of the week.

Below you will find a compilation of news spanning the health and education, labor, and economy sectors. This list includes mainstream, DC-focused, and trade publication coverage from Saturday, February 18, to Friday, February 24. Let these clips serve as a resource when developing thoughtful strategies and use them to further foster organizational innovation and adaptability.

Here’s what you need to know.

Mainstream News:

• A 53-year-old man in Germany is officially the 5^th person to be cured of HIV. Results of his treatment were announced in 2019 but could not be confirmed until earlier this week.
• A new study found that humans may need more sleep in the winter months. Participants in the study experienced REM sleep that was 30 minutes longer in the winter season compared to summer, which suggested that the body’s circadian rhythm changed to support more sleep based on the amount of light in the winter.
• 61 British businesses participated in a largely successful four-day workweek trial, with results showing sharp decreases in worker turnover and absenteeism.

Politics and Policy:

• The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) fined four businesses this week for continuing to sell unapproved vapes. According to the article, this is the first time the FDA has issued fines to businesses that have ignored federal orders to stop selling certain tobacco products.

Health News:

• New data shows that this year’s Flu shot provided effectiveness of between 45-50%, which is considered decent in comparison to previous years’ protection.
• A recent report by the World Health Organization (WHO) showed that in 2020, a woman died every two minutes due to pregnancy or childbirth. The report also showed that the maternal mortality rate increased in 17 countries from 2016 to 2020 and stayed the same in most others.

Education News:

• Arkansas, Virginia, North Dakota, and Mississippi join Florida in review of the new Advanced Placement (AP) African American studies course before officially allowing students to take the class in their state. The states claim that the course may conflict with state policies concerning the teaching of race in schools.
• Vox’s newest segment of The Highlight delves into lessons that America’s education system has learned in the past few years: from the legacy of a 1973 Supreme Court case to the point of homework.
• A Michigan high school is already seeing students try to cheat by using ChatGPT to write their assignments for them, spurring “don’t let the robot do your homework” conversations between students and teachers. The principal of the school provided six tips for teachers across the country to use in addressing the new landscape of cheating.

Changes to policy, scientific discovery, and expert recommendations and opinions all have the power to rapidly influence the landscape of a sector. Whether you’re a leader at a non-profit, a member of a university’s marketing department, or a stakeholder for a public health agency, being informed about the latest industry happenings can be the difference between exceeding and falling short of organizational goals. At Hager Sharp, our experts vigorously scan media coverage to identify areas of opportunity. And now, with the introduction of the Sharp Round-Up, you too can review what we consider some of the top news of the week.

Below you will find a compilation of news spanning the health and education, labor, and economy sectors. This list includes mainstream, DC-focused, and trade publication coverage from Saturday, February 10, to Friday, February 17. Let these clips serve as a resource when developing thoughtful strategies and use them to further foster organizational innovation and adaptability.

Here’s what you need to know.

Mainstream News:

• Schools lack the resources to address the mounting mental health problems among students. 92% of superintendents believe the mental health crisis is worse than it was in 2019, and 79% say they do not have the necessary staff to mend the problem.
• Researchers have linked the likelihood of new-onset diabetes with COVID-19 infection. Scientists believe that COVID-19 infection may accelerate the development of diabetes in those with preexisting risk.
• Officials investigating the recent derailment of a train carrying toxic chemicals in Ohio are increasingly concerned about the effect on human health and the environment. Among the potential health issues that can arise from being exposed to vinyl chloride, scientists say that particles from the chemicals can seep into wells and other drinking water sources and migrate through soil into basements and homes.

Education News:

• During the pandemic, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test scores in data literacy dropped significantly compared to other math subjects. Large racial gaps in data literacy scores also widened during the pandemic. A study suggests that teachers should incorporate data literacy lessons into other subjects to improve their students’ skills in interpreting and understanding data.

Advancements in Health:

• A new device has revolutionized heart transplants by increasing the distance donor hearts can travel, expanding the number of hearts available for transplant. While previously donor hearts were simply placed on ice, the new method utilizes a machine that pumps blood through the organ, allowing the heart to be viable for double the original 4-hour period.
• A new form of male birth control renders lab mice “temporarily infertile” via a single injectable dose. The new drug can temporarily pause fertility in male mice by inhibiting the movement of an enzyme that is vital for sperm movement and maturation.
• Revolutionized epilepsy treatments rely on improvements in monitoring the brain’s electrical activity. Doctors are able to remove a piece of the patient’s skull, place electrodes into the brain to find the primary source of seizures, and then use a laser to remove that piece of the brain.