After a year of teaching and living through a pandemic, educator mental health is at risk and yet, at the same time, we desperately need to avoid further school disruptions. Teacher burnout and turnover — already cause for concern long before pandemic life — have increased. An additional 11 percent of teachers say they may …
Continue reading “Caring for Teachers is Caring for Students”
Houston ranks among the top 50 cities with the highest obesity rates in the U.S., with 34% of Houston children now struggling with obesity. At the same time, Feeding America reports that Harris County has the second-highest number of food insecure individuals across all US counties, with 869,000 individuals not knowing when or where their …
America is facing an unprecedented exodus of women from the workforce. The hard-fought gains women have made over the past 40 years are at risk of being wiped out by the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. As of March 2021, more than 1.8 million women have left the workforce since the pandemic started. …
Continue reading “The Great She-cession: How COVID-19 is impacting women in the workforce”
In Houston, Black and Hispanic students on average lag between 3.0 and 3.6 years behind white students, as if they were absent for a quarter of their K-12 schooling.1 Pause here, re-read the previous sentence, and let that sink in for a moment. This problem is compounded by the fact that the groups that lag …
From advocating for children and immigrants to creating businesses to expanding access to the arts and community services and beyond, these Houstonians are creating a better future for our region Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month was initially established as AAPI Heritage Week to last the first 10 days of May. This timeframe …
On May 4, 2021, Understanding Houston held its second Data Dive + Workshop (DDW) with United Way of Greater Houston on Vulnerabilities to and Impacts of Disasters. The second session in our three-part series brought together nonprofit organizations to examine the disaster data through interactive and engaging discussion. We started off with a review of …
Continue reading “What we heard during our second Nonprofit Disaster Data Dive + Workshop”
Where we live profoundly affects nearly every aspect of our lives, including the quality of education we receive, the availability of good-paying jobs, access to high-quality healthcare and fresh food, and more. One year into the pandemic, it is also evident that the neighborhood we live in influences our chances of catching COVID-19 and getting …
Continue reading “Examining the effects of environmental inequity in Houston”
Greater Houston has many reputations, many good, some more challenging. We’re the Space City, Clutch City and home to the medical capital of the world. We’re also known to be the Bayou City, the Energy Capital of the World and a car city, to name a few. On their own each reputation speaks to a …
Continue reading “Four Facts Every Resident Should know about Houston’s environment”
From protecting green spaces to fighting for gender equality and beyond, these are the women creating a better future for our region Every March, the United Nations sets a theme for Women’s History Month, and the theme for 2021 is “Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world”. This theme celebrates the …
Continue reading “Women’s History Month: 8 Houston Leaders making a difference today”
March 4, 2020: A Fort Bend County area man became the Houston area’s first presumptive positive case of COVID-19 after traveling on a Nile River cruise. From there, the situation worsened rapidly. Just one week later, the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo was cancelled for the first time in 88 years after evidence of community …
Continue reading “The pandemic turns one: 6 ways COVID-19 has impacted Greater Houston”
