Happy New Year from Pioneer Institute

Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
Share on
LinkedIn
+

We hope you are taking time to celebrate and find peace during this season. Thank you for your support for Pioneer, which has helped us stay focused on steering the state’s debate on the pandemic response, and making progress on our key policy objectives. Here’s to a great 2021 for Massachusetts and the country.

Recent Posts

Where in Massachusetts is being hit hardest by unemployment due to COVID-19?

Pioneer’s new tool, called “COVID Unemployment Tracker,” provides an interactive look at how economic shutdowns in response to the COVID-19 pandemic are affecting jobs and lives across the state of Massachusetts.

Hubwonk Ep. 5: COVID Calling: How answering the tracing phone call will move us forward

/
In this episode, Host Joe Selvaggi and Co-Host Barbara Anthony speak with the heads of Partners in Health Drs. Sheila Davis & John Welch on how they are bringing their expertise battling Ebola in West Africa to defeating the COVID-19 epidemic in Massachusetts. They explore precisely how and why tracing is an essential element in battling the epidemic.

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

/
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.

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. 

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

/
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.

Pioneer Institute Relaunches “One-Stop Shop” for Education Performance Data

Pioneer Institute is re-launching a new and improved MassReportCards.org, a one-stop shop for information on Massachusetts public schools, including test performance, school finance, and much more. The new version of the site includes additional and updated data, and is more user friendly than the original. MassReportCards adds to Pioneer’s suite of online transparency tools, MassWatch.

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

/
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.

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.

A Tipping Point for Telehealth – Bringing Healthcare into Your Home

/
This week on "Hubwonk," Joe Selvaggi and Josh Archambault talk with Dr. Roy Schoenberg, Chief Executive of Amwell, a global telehealth technology company headquartered in Boston, about the promise of telemedicine and how the COVID-19 pandemic has catalyzed broader adoption.

Study Finds Historic Drop in National Reading and Math Scores Since Adoption of Common Core Curriculum Standards

New study shows that, breaking with decades of slow improvement, U.S. reading and math scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and other assessments have seen historic declines since most states implemented national Common Core English and math curriculum standards six years ago.

Ashley Berner of Johns Hopkins on Academic Quality, Educational Pluralism, & the Providence Public Schools

/
This week on “The Learning Curve,” Cara and Gerard continue coverage of COVID-19’s impact on K-12 education, joined by Ashley Berner, Deputy Director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy. 

Study Highlights Transit Agency Best Practices in Response to COVID-19

The MBTA is taking a number of important steps to mitigate risks associated with the coronavirus, but some transit agencies around the country - from Philadelphia to San Francisco - have done significantly more, according to a new study that highlights the best practices of U.S. transit systems in response to COVID-19.

Coronavirus & Contracts – Protecting Massachusetts Attorneys & Clients from Risk

/
In this episode of "Hubwonk," host Joe Selvaggi and Pioneer’s Chief Financial Officer & Director of Government Transparency, Mary Connaughton, speak with attorney and entrepreneur Kosta Ligris about how Massachusetts’ requirement for live attestation for many vital contracts is putting attorneys and clients at risk of exposure to coronavirus.

Buoy Health – Intelligent Front Door to Optimized Healthcare

/
In this first episode of Pioneer's new podcast, Hubwonk, host Joe Selvaggi and Pioneer Senior Fellow in Healthcare Josh Archambault talk with Dr. Andrew Le, cofounder and Chief Executive Officer of Buoy Health.

Hospitality, Retail Trade, Healthcare Among ‘Most Vulnerable Industries’ in Terms of Unemployment due to COVID-19

Recent data provided by the Massachusetts Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development show that hospitality, retail trade, healthcare and social assistance, and construction are the industries that have suffered the most unemployment as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, according to the new Pioneer Institute report, “A Look at the Massachusetts Industries that are Most Vulnerable Due to COVID-19.”

Christensen Institute Co-founder Michael Horn on Digital Learning & COVID-19

/
This week on “The Learning Curve,” Cara and Gerard continue coverage of COVID-19’s impact on K-12 education, joined by Michael Horn, co-founder of the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation.

New Study Calls for Re-thinking Massachusetts’ COVID-19 Care Standards

Pioneer's new study raises concerns about the Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s (DPH’s) Crises Standards of Care (CSC) issued earlier this month, which bear the earmarks of a state bureaucratic effort and should be rethought under a process that includes a thorough vetting by Massachusetts citizens.

Pioneer Institute Launches Its New Policy Podcast, “HubWonk”

Pioneer Institute is pleased to announce the launch today of a new, weekly podcast called “HubWonk,” covering timely topics, with insights and in-depth interviews on the issues that affect our quality of life, ability to prosper, and liberties.