Charles E. Lewis, Jr. is the founder and president of the Congressional Research Institute for Social Work and Policy (CRISP), a nonprofit organization that works to engage social workers with the U.S. Congress. He is an adjunct professor at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work and lecturer at Columbia University School of Social Work. He is a member of the 12 Grand Challenges for Social Work Executive Committee and serves as a co-lead on the Smart Decarceration policy subcommittee. Dr. Lewis was Deputy Chief of Staff and Communications Director for former Congressman Ed Towns and a member of the faculty of Howard University School of Social Work.  He earned his MSW degree in clinical counseling from Clark Atlanta University and PhD in policy, planning and policy analysis from Columbia University.

Dr. Lewis and CRISP organize a Student Advocacy Day in March during Social Work Month that brings hundreds of social work students to Washington, DC to participate in a day of advocating for federal legislation relevant to social work. CRISP also organizes a Social Work Day on the Hill during March which brings together social work educators, administrators, and practitioners for a day of activities that begins with a policy forum at the National Press Club and a reception for social work Congressmembers. In July CRISP conducts a Political Boot Camp for social workers wanting to run for elected office or work on political campaigns.

Associate Professor Heidi L. Allen studies the impact of social policies, like Medicaid—America’s health insurance for the poor—on health and financial well-being.  She is a former emergency department social worker and spent several years in state health policy, where she focused on health system redesign and public health insurance expansions. Dr. Allen was a lead investigator on the Oregon Health Insurance Experiment, where she oversaw primary data collection for mail surveys and in-person health screenings, qualitative interviews, and development of an administrative emergency department claims database. Findings from her research have been published in high-impact journals such as Science, New England Journal of Medicine, Milbank Quarterly, and Health Affairs. She has received funding as a principal investigator from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Russell Sage Foundation.

Dr. Allen is currently involved in a variety of research projects focused on social policy at the intersection of health and poverty. She is using a novel source of all-payer claims data merged with state administrative data on family income to compare Medicaid and Affordable Care Act Marketplace coverage on access to healthcare, quality of care, and costs to individuals and society. In another study, Dr. Allen is examining potential health impacts in the Paycheck Plus demonstration project, an experimental evaluation of providing low-income single-adults with an income supplement similar to the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). She is also studying the impact of Medicaid expansions on housing evictions.

In 2014–2015, Dr. Allen was an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow in Health & Aging Policy.  In 2017, she spoke at TEDMED on The Cost of Being Uninsured in America. Associate Professor Allen is a Standing Member of the NIH Health Disparities Equity Promotion (HDEP) Study Section (2018–2022), the Columbia University Just Societies Task Force, and the Close the Health Gap Committee of the Grand Challenges for Social Work. Dr. Allen was recently honored by the Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR) with the 2019 Social Policy Researcher Award for an Emerging Scholar.

You can follow Associate Professor Heidi Allen on Twitter @Prof_HeidiAllen.