Editorial Staff

COVID-19 Roundup from Pioneer: Hubwonk: Elections & COVID-19; Update: Mapping COVID Testing; School Reopening; Protecting Civil Liberties, & more!

/0 Comments/in , , /by Editorial Staff
Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
Share on
LinkedIn
+

Pioneer staff share their top picks for COVID-19 stories highlighting useful resources, best practices, and questions we should be asking our public and private sector leaders. We hope you are staying safe, and we welcome your thoughts; you can always reach out to us via email:  pioneer@pioneerinstitute.org. 

Our Top Picks for COVID-19 Pandemic News:

Rebekah Paxton, Research Analyst: Pioneer is pleased to share a new update to our “Mapping COVID-19” tool. We continue to utilize the Massachusetts Department of Public Health data to map cases of COVID-19 by cities and towns. Now, in addition to maps and tables regarding the number of cases and case rates across the state, “Mapping COVID-19” also includes information regarding the Commonwealth’s testing efforts. A new tab titled “Testing” presents a dashboard of multiple charts, including data on positive test rates by municipality, number of persons tested by municipality, and test rate per 100K population by municipality. Find out which cities have the highest COVID-19-positive test rates.

Joe Selvaggi, Host, “Hubwonk“: This week, Pioneer’s Mary Connaughton and I talk with MIT Professor Charles Stewart on how states in general, and Massachusetts in particular, are adapting their voting process to keep elections safe, transparent, and fair during the COVID-19 pandemic.  Listen now!

How big of a hole is Massachusetts’ unemployment trust fund in? Greg Sullivan, Research Director, talked to the Boston Business Journal. 

Questions for Our Public & Private Sector Leaders:

Jamie Gass, Pioneer’s Education Policy Director: On the latest episode of “The Learning Curve” podcast, co-hosts Cara Candal and Gerard Robinson talked with Massachusetts Education Commissioner Jeff Riley about the state’s response to COVID-19, remote Learning, voc-techs, and reforming Boston’s schools. Read more about school reopening plans.

Jim Stergios, Executive Director: Be sure to check out Pioneer’s new “Respect My Rights” hotline, created to provide a platform for citizens to submit complaints and descriptions of civil liberties violations they have experienced.

Do YOU have interesting questions and/or articles to share with us? Please email us, or message us through our social media channels below!

Share our COVID-19 roundups: bit.ly/PIcovid
Make a gift to support Pioneer Institute.
Join us on social media!

Get Our COVID-19 News, Tips & Resources!

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Related Content

UVA Law Professor Kimberly Robinson On Legal Debate About Education As Federal Right

0 Comments
/
This week on “The Learning Curve,” Cara and Gerard continue coverage of COVID-19’s impact on K-12 education, joined by Kimberly Robinson, Professor at the University of Virginia School of Law and the Curry School of Education, about her new book, "A Federal Right to Education: Fundamental Questions for Our Democracy," and the need for states to establish a “floor of opportunity” to ensure educational equity.

The past seven weeks of Massachusetts unemployment claims total 25.8 percent of the civilian workforce.

0 Comments
/
The U.S. Department of Labor released its weekly report on jobless claims Thursday morning at 8:30 a.m., reporting that Massachusetts received 55,448 initial unemployment insurance (UI) claims during the week ended May 2. This brings the total of regular UI claims filed in Massachusetts since March 14, the beginning of the unemployment surge, to 781,110. 

National Study Finds Most States Lack Healthcare Price Transparency Laws

At a time when the coronavirus pandemic has caused massive shifts in state policies on telehealth and scope of practice in healthcare, a new Pioneer Institute study underscores that most of the 50 states continue to suffer from weak laws regarding price transparency.  The study identified states that have laws that require carriers, providers or both to provide personalized cost information to consumers before obtaining healthcare services.  Fully 33 states placed in the lowest of the three broad analytic tiers on the strength of their state healthcare transparency laws. 

Explosion in ESL enrollment creates new opportunities, challenges

0 Comments
/
  The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that, between 2010…

COVID-19 will likely lead to a recession. Can Massachusetts municipal budgets handle one?

0 Comments
/
Using municipalities' experiences during the Great Recession, a new policy brief examines the likely impact of COVID-19 on local property taxes, as well as political implications for state aid. We list the municipal revenues by category among the least tax-reliant communities in Massachusetts, show the trajectory of tax revenue growth rate in Massachusetts state and local governments, and rank stabilization fund assets per capita among Massachusetts Gateway Cities.

Conquering COVID-19: When and From Where Will Vaccines and Therapies Emerge?

0 Comments
/
This week on Hubwonk, Host Joe Selvaggi is joined by Pioneer’s Bill Smith, Visiting Fellow in Life Sciences, and Dr. Peter Kolchinsky, Harvard-trained virologist, biotech investor and author of the new book, The Great American Drug Deal, to learn how the SARS-CoV2 works, what a vaccine may look like, and how we might produce it to scale.

COVID-19 Roundup from Pioneer: Human testing of a vaccine; NYT best-selling author John Barry on COVID-19 & warmer weather; Just who’s getting stimulus $?; Latest unemployment #s; What will reopening look like?; Tipping point for Telehealth & more!

0 Comments
/
Pioneer staff share their top picks for COVID-19 stories highlighting useful resources, best practices, and questions we should be asking our public and private sector leaders.

New York Times #1 best-selling author John M. Barry on the 1918 Influenza Pandemic & lessons for COVID-19

0 Comments
/
This week on “The Learning Curve,” Cara and Gerard continue coverage of COVID-19’s impact on K-12 education, joined by John M. Barry, author of the #1 New York Times best seller, The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History.

The past six weeks of Massachusetts unemployment claims total 24.0 percent of civilian workforce

0 Comments
/
The U.S. Department of Labor released its weekly report on jobless claims this morning at 8:30 a.m., reporting that Massachusetts received 70,714 initial unemployment insurance (UI) claims during the week ended April 25. This brings the total of unemployment claims filed in Massachusetts since March 14, the beginning of the unemployment surge, to 725,018. 

Re-opening for business: What should employers and commercial real estate managers do to prepare?

0 Comments
/
Weeks away from re-opening, now is a time when employers and real estate managers must act. To assist our community in doing a great job of preparing, Pioneer Institute, in partnership with the law firm of Verrill, is sharing two checklists that will help you keep your employees safe, anticipate challenges, and develop feasible and useful methods to successfully deal with those challenges when they do.

Report Finds “Reopening Day” in the Commonwealth Will Likely Include Phasing in Businesses and Contact Tracing

New study compares the reopening of three European countries – Austria, Denmark, and Germany – to highlight approaches that could inform the Commonwealth’s reopening strategy.

To Read or Not to Read Shakespeare? 12 Great Ways to Get to Know The Bard During COVID-19

0 Comments
/
With school closures impacting 50 million children across America, and a challenging transition to remote learning,  many parents are seeking supplementary material to enrich their children's academic experience during COVID-19.  Fortunately, there is a wealth of information available to introduce children of all ages to, arguably, the greatest literary figure in the English-speaking world, William Shakespeare.