Care

Find Your New Authorities

This database features alternative experts who are available to the press. Their authority derives from either lived experience or professional expertise or both. The current categories are Care, Disability, Drugs, Economics, History, Housing, Labor and Military with more to come. For additional information please visit the About page.

From day-care providers to parent advocates

Deana Around Him

Senior Research Scientist, Youth Development Program, Child Trends

Around Him, a tribal citizen of the Cherokee Nation, focuses on American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) children, youth, and their families at this organization focused on improving the lives of all children and youth, especially the vulnerable. Her areas include youth suicide, maternal and infant health, and the school climate experiences of American Indian and Alaska Native youth. Around Him, who often uses community-based participatory approaches, also works with the Tribal Early Childhood Research Center.

FOCUS: Care
LANGUAGE: English
ORGANIZATION: Child Trends

Lauren Birchfield Kennedy

Co-Founder, Neighborhood Villages

Neighborhood Villages serves as a de-facto early childhood district for five Boston-area child care centers. Its founders have backgrounds in policy and early child care. Kennedy oversees external relations including government affairs and communications.

FOCUS: Care
LANGUAGE: English
ORGANIZATION: Neighborhood Villages

Reneé Boynton-Jarrett

Associate professor, pediatrics, Boston University School of Medicine, and founding director, Vital Village Community Engagement Network

Boynton-Jarrett is a pediatrician and social epidemiologist whose areas of expertise are health and medicine, public health, social epidemiology, and population health. She focuses on how early-life adversities, such as psychosocial stress, obesity, and early puberty, can affect health. She has studied the intersection of community violence, intimate partner violence, and child abuse and neglect, and neighborhood characteristics. Vital Village is a Boston, Mass., network of residents and organizations committed to maximizing child, family, and community well-being.

FOCUS: Care
LANGUAGE: English
ORGANIZATION: Boston University School of Medicine

Leslie Forde

CEO and Founder, Mom’s Hierarchy of Needs

Forde developed the framework for Mom’s Hierarchy of Needs, an organization that looks at the challenges mothers face in making time for self-care, interests, and healthy relationships. The priorities at the base of the hierarchy, such as raising children and taking care of household tasks, mean self-care is often left out. She also helps employers retain working parents and create inclusive workplaces, and has been running an ongoing multi-wave study of parents’ attitudes and experiences of combining paid work and child care since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

FOCUS: Care
LANGUAGE: English
ORGANIZATION: Mom’s Hierarchy of Needs

Tiffany Gale

Owner, Miss Tiffany’s Early Childhood Education House

Gale runs a home-based child care center in West Virginia for children between six weeks and 12 years of age. She advocates for WV House Bill 4792, which requires a rule for child subsidies to be based on monthly enrollment rather than daily attendance, and for a national paid leave program for all workers.

FOCUS: Care
LANGUAGE: English
ORGANIZATION: Miss Tiffany’s Early Childhood Education House