BIRMINGHAM – Children’s of Alabama will welcome the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and the Brookings Institute to Birmingham to present Volume 25 Number 1 Spring 2015 of The Future of Children, Policies to Promote Child Health. This collaboration of two world-class institutions is aimed at translating the best social science research about children and youth into information that is useful to policymakers, practitioners, grant-makers, advocates, the media and students of public policy.

Nancy Reichman, PhD, a professor of pediatrics at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School at Rutgers University and a visiting professor in the department of economics at Princeton University, will present an overview of the chapter “How Healthy Are Our Children?” to the Children’s medical staff during Grand Rounds at noon on Thursday, July 9. Reichman’s presentation will summarize the health of America’s children and the role and extent of government investments in children that are examined in the chapter that was written by Sara Rosenbaum of the Milken Institute School of Public Health at the George Washington University and Robert Blum of the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins.

Following Grand Rounds, Reichman will present an overview to attendees of an afternoon conference and will be joined by James Ziliak, PhD, founding director of the Center for Poverty Research at the University of Kentucky, who will present the findings from the chapter on Food Assistance Program and Child Health written by Craig Gundersen of the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics at the University of Illinois.

Ziliak will also lead a panel discussion featuring child nutrition programs that are working to improve child health. Panel members include Grant Brigham, executive director of the Jones Valley Teaching Farm in Birmingham; Stephanie Cihon of ProMedica, a non-profit health care system headquartered in Toledo, Ohio; Harriet Giles, managing director of the Hunger Solutions Institute and director of external relations in the College of Human Sciences, Auburn University; Dave Reaney, executive director at Bay Area Food Bank in Mobile; and Margaret Morton, ‎executive director of the Sylacauga Alliance for Family Enhancement, Inc.

This presentation of The Future of Children marks the first time the journal has been unveiled in a pediatric hospital.

“We are proud and honored to host this great event here at Children’s,” said president and CEO Mike Warren. “For more than 100 years, our mission has been to serve as advocates for all children and to educate the public about issues affecting children’s health and well-being. Having a role in the presentation of the important child health research published in the latest volume of The Future of Children embodies those efforts to meet the health care needs of all children and to serve as advocates on their behalf.”

The first joint Future of Children journal was published in 2005. Each covers a single issue relating to children. Two journals and policy briefs are published each year, and are complemented by a variety of related outreach events including numerous activities and conferences, an active website, a blog and webcasts of many of the outreach presentations. Topics range widely—from income policy to family issues to education to health—with children’s policy as the unifying element.

The senior editorial team represents two institutions and multiple disciplines. Editor-in-Chief Sara McLanahan is the director of the Center for Research on Child Wellbeing and the William S. Tod Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University.

Senior editors include Ron Haskins, senior fellow and co-director of the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institution, and a senior consultant at the Annie E. Casey Foundation; Cecilia Rouse, dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Katzman-Ernst Professor in the Economics of education and professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton University; Janet Currie, director of the Center for Health and Wellbeing and Henry Putnam Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University; and Isabel Sawhill, senior fellow, and co-director of the Center on Children and Families and Cabot Family Chair at the Brookings Institution.

The Future of Children is supported by staff at both Princeton and Brookings. Associate editor Kris McDonald and managing editor Jon Wallace oversee the project; Lisa Markman-Pithers and Reid Quade organize outreach activities; and Regina Leidy coordinates communications.

The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, DC. Its mission is to conduct high-quality, independent research and, based on that research, to provide innovative, practical recommendations that strengthen American democracy, foster the economic and social welfare, security and opportunity of all Americans and secure a more open, safe, prosperous and cooperative international system. Brookings is consistently ranked as the most influential, most quoted and most trusted think tank in the world.

Chartered in 1746, Princeton University is the fourth-oldest college in the United States. It is an independent, coeducational, nondenominational institution that provides undergraduate and graduate instruction in the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering. As a world-renowned research university, Princeton seeks to achieve the highest levels of distinction in the discovery and transmission of knowledge and understanding. Today, more than 1,100 faculty members instruct approximately 5,200 undergraduate students and 2,600 graduate students.

Since 1911, Children’s of Alabama has provided specialized medical care for ill and injured children. Ranked among the best pediatric medical centers in the nation by US News & World Report, Children’s provided care for youngsters from every county in Alabama, 42 other states and 10 foreign countries last year, representing more than 653,000 outpatient visits and nearly 14,000 inpatient admissions.

With more than 2 million square feet, it is the third largest pediatric medical facility in the U.S. Children’s offers inpatient and outpatient services across its Russell Campus on Birmingham’s historic Southside with additional specialty services provided at Children’s South, Children’s on 3rd and in Huntsville and Montgomery. Primary care is provided at more than a dozen medical offices in communities across central Alabama.

Children’s of Alabama is the only medical center in Alabama dedicated solely to the care and treatment of children. It is a private, not-for-profit medical center that serves as the primary site of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) pediatric medicine, surgery, psychiatry, research and residency programs. More information is available at www.childrensal.org.