ISE Projects 2007-2008

Last year was a good year for the Institute. We initiated several projects that helped to advance the Institute's mission to pursue a vision of social justice; its goal to introduce the concept of social exclusion, with its focus on the structural origins of social disadvantage, to the American public; and its objectives of applied research, community outreach, and public education. A few of the Institute's achievements in the last year are listed below.

Access to Breast Cancer Care for Low Income and Uninsured Women This Community Outreach/Public Education project served the Institute's social justice mission by catalyzing efforts to identify and dismantle the institutional barriers to poor and uninsured women's access to health care.

In the fall of 2006, ISE staff discovered that roughly 10,000 low income and uninsured women were waiting for mammograms at Stroger Hospital; many had been waiting for as long as two years. The ISE, then, convened a roundtable discussion among key decision makers in regional breast cancer care. During the meeting, an Action Plan was developed which was later used to inform a series of organizational changes that led to the elimination of the backlog by October 2007.

The ISE was an acknowledged catalyst in addressing this problem: Dr. Pamela Ganschow, Director of Breast and Cervical Cancer Screening at Stroger Hospital, and Mary Driscoll, Director of Patient Care Services & Chief Nursing Officer Ambulatory and Community Health Network for the Cook County Bureau of Health Services, stated that the ISE was instrumental in the elimination of the backlog by convening key people in a safe space that allowed them to speak freely about the causes and how best to deal with the backlog. Ganschow and Driscoll also stated that meetings like the roundtable hosted by the ISE are invaluable because they help to galvanize energy and resources required to address complex social problems.

At a follow-up roundtable discussion held in October 2007, Dr. Ganschow described the steps taken to eliminate the backlog. That meeting was attended by a Chicago Tribune reporter who summarized the discussion in an article published in the October 25th, 2007 edition of the newspaper.

For additional information on project outcomes...

Social Exclusion Simulation This community outreach and public education project served the Institute's goal of introducing the concept of social exclusion to the American public through development of an experiential role play exercise.

Another Institute achievement was the development of a Social Exclusion Simulation. The purpose of the Simulation is to illustrate what social structures are, how they operate, and how they can systematically block some groups' access to rights, resources, and opportunities required for social integration. The Simulation was piloted twice – once in July and again in October. In those pilots, the reentry experiences of formerly incarcerated women were used to illustrate how some community's efforts at social integration are systematically stymied by structural features of our society. The pilots revealed the Simulation to be a very effective tool for helping people to (1) change their outlooks and behaviors vis-à-vis important social issues; (2) question prevailing perceptions and assumptions; and (3) appreciate the limits on personal responsibility resulting from a context of constraining social structures and systems. The effectiveness of the Simulation is described in "The Social Exclusion Simulation: Changing Outlooks; Changing Behaviors."

For additional information on project outcomes...

Social Exclusion Conference Series This public education project served the Institute's goal of introducing the concept of social exclusion to the American public by organizing a conference to highlight the work of important scholars whose work centers on social exclusion.

In 2007, the Institute initiated a Social Exclusion Conference Series. The purpose of the series is to highlight different professional and disciplinary perspectives on social exclusion and to, thereby, generate new knowledge and insights on social justice issues.

The first conference in the series was convened in August. The keynote speakers were Hilary Silver, a sociologist from Brown University, and C. Nathan DeWall, a social psychologist from the University of Kentucky. The scholars presented distinctly different perspectives on social exclusion that, prior to the conference, were largely disconnected. The innovativeness of the conference stemmed not only from the juxtapositioning of distinct perspectives on social exclusion, but also from the highlighting of the relationship between social exclusion, mental health, and large scale social problems like civil unrest. These relationships have important implications for public policy, social change and social justice initiatives. For instance, one method of dealing with civil unrest requires the dismantling of exclusionary structures (through legislative and policy reform) that fuel social aggression and violence.

In recognition of the innovativeness of the Social Exclusion Conference Series, the Institute was awarded a grant from the Board of Educational Affairs (BEA) of the American Psychological Association. The award was subject to stiff national competition and constituted an "acknowledgement and compliment" of the quality of the Institute's work.

In the Pipeline for 2008

This year promises to be even more exciting and busy for the Institute. First, we will build on the 2007 initiatives. For instance, we will continue to develop and refine the Social Exclusion Simulation by adding the experiences of other socially excluded groups, such as immigrants and brain-injured individuals, to convey a more comprehensive understanding of the wide range of structural barriers to social integration. We will also continue the conference series. In April, our conference entitled "Disrupting the Status Quo: Exposing Bias. Building Community." will feature Karen Fulbright-Anderson, co-director of the Aspen Institute Roundtable Community Change. Dr. Fulbright-Anderson will talk about the Roundtable's recent research on structural racism and its impact on communities of color. The conference will also feature Francisco Valdes, professor of law at the University of Miami, who will talk about Lat-Crit (Latina & Latino Critical Legal Theory), human rights, morality, critical pedagogy, and coalition theory. In June, the conference series will continue with John McCarthy, a town and country planner from Scotland's Heriot-Watt University. He will discuss social exclusion and urban regeneration processes, and the Scottish government's national social justice policy agenda.  In September, we will host Karen Armstrong, MP, the Social Exclusion Minister in Tony Blair's Cabinet of the UK government.

We will also launch some new projects in 2008. For instance, the Institute will initiate two applied research projects for the Young Women's Leadership Charter School, a local public school that serves economically disadvantaged girls of color in grades in 7 through 12.  One project will seek to identify key measures and indicators of academic success.  The other research project will identify the structural barriers to student usage of the onsite health clinic. We will also launch a research project to evaluate social exclusion in the United States on the basis of indicators developed in the United Kingdom and to develop US-specific indicators of social exclusion. Other new projects in 2008 will include the publication of the ISE Newsletter, "Intersections" which will highlight relationships among the many critical movements, ideas and discussions that seek to combat social exclusion. It will include articles, book reviews, and editorial pieces that advocate for a reframing of the national debate on social disadvantage by highlight its structural origins.

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