Alex Cohen is the Director of Learning and Evaluation for the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. The dangers of smoking are well-known. Smokers are more likely to die from lung cancer, heart disease, lung disease and other deadly illnesses, not to mention the health risks caused by secondhand smoke exposure or the impacts to newborns caused by smoking among pregnant women. Yet smoking still persists—for example, more than 1 in 5 Hoosiers currently smoke—in large part due to the addictive effects of nicotine. More than two-thirds of smokers want to quit, but nicotine keeps smokers smoking and consuming the other carcinogens and toxicants for the long term. What if it was […]

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 […]