Social Issues
Chicago mental health services provider CEO Mark Ishaug works to change hearts and minds and structures of oppression.
An organization run by Northwestern students is working hard to keep Evanston’s small business owners afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is just one of several ways that Northwestern students are addressing needs in response to the pandemic.
As communities across Illinois respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and brace for its long-term effects, mental health and wellness are central to the recovery strategy. Rachel Bhagwat ’12 and Anthony Guerrero ’14, ’18 MS are on the team leading that effort at NAMI Chicago, an affiliate of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
In the wake of the coronavirus, life will never quite return to “normal.” We asked Northwestern professors to weigh in on how life has been transformed as a result of the pandemic.
To help reinvent the struggling industry, in 2018 the Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications launched the Local News Initiative — a research and development project designed to improve audience engagement and strengthen business models. Alumni and industry leaders have stepped up to fund LNI’s reporting, data and research, which is conducted by students and faculty.
Today few Americans have print subscriptions, and many local news outlets have struggled to develop a digital audience. These challenges are among the intractable problems the Local News Initiative was created to help solve.
We were only 15 minutes into our lab meeting when my single tear became what Oprah calls “the ugly cry.” My graduate students are therapists in training at the Family Institute at Northwestern, so they met my wave of emotion with empathy. I felt embarrassed, nonetheless.
“When you're in this position, as I am, as a mother who has lost a child, it never goes away. It's just sometimes you can bury it a little bit deeper than other days.” In 2016 Shapearl Wells’ 22-year-old son, Courtney Copeland, was found outside a Chicago police station with a fatal bullet wound in his back.
Geneve Ong ’14 is part of the fight to address COVID-19 in Singapore. As the senior assistant director of strategic planning for the government in Singapore, she helps find relocation options for people who are unable to shelter in place safely.
Sharmila Wijeyakumar founded Rahab’s Daughters to help victims of human trafficking in Illinois. She says there is an unprecedented need for her work during the COVID-19 pandemic.
