Claire Fiddian-Green is the President & CEO of the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. The opioid epidemic isn’t over yet, as evidenced by the latest data from the CDC, which shows that overdose deaths continue to rise – and opioids are the leading cause of these deaths. Addressing the epidemic will take a multi-pronged approach, and a key strategy is to focus on preventing opioid misuse. One important step is to provide the latest information to doctors and other health professionals about safe prescribing practices as well as effective, non-opioid pain management alternatives for patients. This is especially important because – despite a recent decline – Indiana still has one of […]

Alex Cohen is the Director of Learning and Evaluation for the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. Can a young, 20-something who just walked off the stage, college diploma in hand, step into a classroom and, with relatively little training, effectively teach in one of our nation’s more challenging K-12 environments? Finding talented teachers for high-need schools is a perennial issue. While there are plenty of organizations working to address this problem, perhaps the most well known—and hotly debated—is Teach For America. Teach For America, or TFA, selectively recruits recent college graduates to teach in high-need public schools. TFA generally attracts graduates who did not major in education and provides several weeks […]