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 […]

Alex Cohen is the Director of Learning and Evaluation for the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. The opioid epidemic, and related behavioral and mental health issues, is wreaking havoc in the lives of Hoosiers across the state and in Marion County in particular. To help address the crisis, the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation is making strategic grants to expand access to treatment for those struggling with addiction. It’s important to our Foundation and the people these grants are designed to help that we target our grants to areas of greatest need, which we do by tracking several key metrics related to access to treatment. One metric we monitor is the behavioral […]