African American Studies Professor Darrell Gaskin: Informing the Health Care Debate

A new study by Darrell Gaskin, professor of health economics in the Department of African American Studies and associate of the Maryland Population Research Center, and a colleague from the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, offers estimates on the combined costs of health inequities for minorities over a four-year period (2003-2006), as well as estimates of how much in direct and indirect costs could have been saved in our health care system during that same period if those disparities for minorities had been eliminated. Read more

President Obama Announces Intention to Nominate Professor John Laub to Director of the National Institute of Justice

John Laub is the Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is also an Affiliate Faculty Member in the Department of Sociology at the University and a Visiting Scholar in the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard. He has served as the President and as a fellow of the American Society of Criminology, which awarded him the Edwin H. Sutherland Award. He was also named a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher at the University of Maryland for the 2006-2007 academic year. Read more

Psychology Professor Finds that Part-time Work after Retirement Promotes Health

Psychology professor Mo Wang studied more than 12,000 people ages 51-61 to find that people who worked part-time after retirement were significantly physically healthier than those who did not. However, only those who worked in a field related to their career were mentally healthier.

Retirees who transition from full-time work into a temporary or part-time job experience fewer major diseases and are able to function better day-to-day than people who stop working altogether, according to the national study. And the findings were significant even after controlling for people’s physical and mental health before retirement. Read more

Economics Professor Maureen Cropper Co-chairs National Research Council Report on Hidden Costs of Energy Production and Use

A new report from the National Research Council examines and, when possible, estimates "hidden" costs of energy production and use -- such as the damage air pollution imposes on human health -- that are not reflected in market prices of coal, oil, other energy sources, or the electricity and gasoline produced from them. The report estimates dollar values for several major components of these costs. The damages the committee was able to quantify were an estimated $120 billion in the U.S. in 2005, a number that reflects primarily health damages from air pollution... read more