The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently held a workshop to examine the broadband needs of rural populations, including the unique challenges of deploying and adopting broadband in rural areas. The event included panel discussions on the economic, educational, and healthcare benefits of deployment and adoption of broadband.

Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago hosted a webcast that explored the connection between healthy child development and well-being. The event organizers noted that a large body of research and science points to the need to create nurturing environments where children can develop along a healthy trajectory physically, cognitively, emotionally, behaviorally, and socially. When adverse childhood experiences and trauma occur, development can be derailed. Webcast speakers provided several frameworks for understanding the domains and measurable indicators of well-being, and considered steps that can be taken to improve well-being and developmental functioning. Participants were encouraged to explore how policies, practices, assessments, and interventions in their work could be organized around a well-being framework to more effectively ensure a positive life course for children.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury created the Financial Empowerment Innovation Fund, an initiative designed to facilitate informed decision making amongst American families by providing increased access to knowledge and tools that promote financial capability. The Treasury will be allocating approximately six million dollars to research contracts that explore and test promising practices in this field. The Treasury is particularly interested in strategies that incorporate technology and focus on the needs of low- and moderate-income households.

The Health Profession Opportunity Grants (HPOG) Program, established by the Affordable Care Act of 2010, funds training programs in high-demand healthcare professions, targeted to Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) recipients and other low-income individuals. In 2010, the Administration for Children and Families of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded 32 HPOG grantees in 23 states with five-year grants. This Annual Report provides an overview of HPOG grantees, characteristics of participants, activities in which participants were engaged, training and employment outcomes, and how grantee programs continued to evolve in the second year of the program. (author abstract)

There is longstanding interest among policy makers and program operators in finding ways to increase the skill levels of low-income individuals, improve their enrollment in and completion of post-secondary education, and improve their economic prospects. The career pathways approach is gaining steady acceptance as a promising strategy to address these challenges and improve post-secondary education and training for low-income and low-skilled adults.

This brief focuses on the Innovative Strategies for Increasing Self-Sufficiency project; a major national effort to evaluate the effectiveness of nine career pathways programs using an experimental design. It summarizes the framework used to describe the career pathways approach and the theory of change that guides the evaluation. It then describes the nine programs in the evaluation, and concludes with the study’s research questions and data sources. Later reports and briefs will present findings from the evaluation and will be posted on the project website. (author abstract)

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Children's Bureau recently released a media toolkit that includes materials to spread the message about preventing child maltreatment and to promote well-being. April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month, and the toolkit contains several media strategies to help organizations and community partnerships spread the word about events, reach potential supporters, and build relationships. The toolkit contains sample messages for Facebook posts, tweets, press releases, PSAs, and e-mail signatures.

The Supporting Healthy Marriage (SHM) evaluation was launched in 2003 to test the effectiveness of a skills-based relationship education program designed to help low-and modest-income married couples strengthen their relationships and to support more stable and more nurturing home environments and more positive outcomes for parents and their children. The evaluation was led by MDRC with Abt Associates and other partners, and it was sponsored by the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation in the Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. This paper presents the results of an exploratory analysis that examines whether SHM program impacts vary by six subgroup-defining characteristics.

SHM was a voluntary, yearlong, marriage education program for lower-income, married couples who had children or were expecting a child. The program provided group workshops based on structured curricula; supplemental activities to build on workshop themes; and family support services to address participation barriers, connect families with other services, and reinforce curricular themes. The study’s random assignment design compared outcomes for families who were offered SHM’s services with outcomes for a similar group of families who were not offered SHM’s services but could access other services in the community.

The study’s main impact reports limited subgroup analysis to three potential moderators of impacts 12 months and 30 months after couples entered the study: couples’ level of marital distress, family income-­to-poverty level, and race/ethnicity. This paper explores whether the impacts of the SHM program on marital quality and stability outcomes differ according to six additional subgroup-defining characteris­tics at the 12-and 30-month follow-up points: (1) length of marriage at study entry, (2) experience of abuse or neglect in the family of origin, (3) psychological distress at study entry, (4) whether the extended family respects and values the couple’s marriage, (5) presence of a stepchild in the household, and (6) presence of a young child (under 3) in the household. (author abstract)

The United States Interagency Council on Homelessness recently released a fact sheet on preventing and addressing tuberculosis among people experiencing homelessness. According to the authors, ttuberculosis is a serious health concern for people experiencing homelessness and those working with homeless populations. The authors noted that tuberculosis rates are ten times higher for people experiencing homelessness, and of the patients involved in tuberculosis outbreaks investigated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2010 – 2012, over half did not have a place to call home.

The Brookings Institution recently released an interactive tool that takes a comprehensive look at the state of the job market for America's youth in the nation for each of the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas. Users are able to select a city from the dropdown menu and then view data about the specific employment rates, disconnected youth, race/ethnicity, education levels, and poverty status. Interested users are also able to download this information. The report also includes a number of strategies to reduce youth joblessness and labor force underutilization.

Many TANF staff are unfamiliar with the SSI Program but want to learn more. This brief describes the basic SSI disability determination process and compares and contrasts it with several procedures different TANF agencies use to identify recipients who meet TANF work-limitation criteria in states or localities. It goes on to discuss topics including different strategies TANF agencies use to assess which individuals are most likely to qualify for SSI. (author abstract)