Claire Fiddian-Green is the President & CEO of the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. Every April, we celebrate National Minority Health Month in order to call attention to the health disparities that affect racial and ethnic minorities across the country. This year’s theme of “Active and Healthy” living is timely, given the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation’s recently released report on the obesity epidemic in Marion County and Indiana. This obesity report found that one in three Hoosier adults is obese, and more than two in three are overweight or obese. In Marion County, the rate is even higher with 39 percent of adults having obesity, up from 26 percent in 2005. While […]

Claire Fiddian-Green is the President & CEO of the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. It is no secret that the U.S. struggles with a skills gap. According to a March 2018 report released by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation and Burning Glass Technologies, “surveys of employers routinely find that companies have difficulty finding skilled workers.” This national finding holds true in Indiana, which faces a gap in “middle skill” jobs – i.e., jobs that require more than a high school education but not necessarily a four-year college degree. There are many factors that contribute to our state’s skills gap, perhaps the most fundamental of which is that too many Hoosier […]