Up to 5,000 St. Louis County residents will be invited to participate in a survey and testing regarding COVID-19 to help gauge the impact the coronavirus has had on the county’s residents. Washington University in St. Louis and the St. Louis County Department of Public Health are leading the project.

As China’s government seeks solutions to social problems related to an evolving society, professional social work is increasingly entering new areas, including migrant and aging services, and is poised to take on a larger role in assisting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people, say two experts from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

There have been more than 3.5 million requests for assistance to 2-1-1 help lines around the United States since the coronavirus pandemic hit this spring. The impact was immediate and dramatic, said a Brown School researcher who tracks calls to 2-1-1 help lines across the U.S.

Louis Damani Jones, an incoming Brown School student, has been appointed to the board of directors of Catholic Charities of St. Louis.

The Brown School has launched a “Foundations of Pandemic Preparedness & Response” program. The five-part, 20-hour program provides a self-paced, online tool kit to help public health and social service professionals respond, mitigate and prevent infectious disease outbreaks, focusing on the COVID-19 pandemic.

Jason Purnell, associate professor at the Brown School, has been named vice president of community health improvement at BJC HealthCare. He will remain on the Brown School faculty.

Cindy Lynn Norman, business office operations supervisor at the Brown School, died in her sleep on July 15, 2020. She was 50. Norman had worked at Washington University for 26 years.

While COVID-19 has impacted all individuals, the impact has not been equal. In a new national Socioeconomic Impact of COVID-19 survey, the Social Policy Institute at Washington University in St. Louis found that liquid assets increased the likelihood that an individual could practice social distancing.

As the nation struggles with police violence, a new report from HomeGrown StL in the Race and Opportunity Lab at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis recommends reforms to build an equitable, transparent and accountable public safety approach that will include lawsuit liability, a police misconduct database and federal funding mandates.

The National Endowment for Financial Education honored Yingying Zeng, research associate at the Center for Social Development and the Social Policy Institute, with an award for her paper on Workplace financial counseling.