Students

Mailman School students participated in a groundbreaking research project in New Orleans over spring break, Grandparents Raising Grandchildren, the results of which were recently presented to the Louisiana state legislature.

Working with the Hirtzel Institute of Health Education and Aging, the project came about from the leadership of the Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Information Center of Louisiana who believed that the “story” of grandfamilies throughout Louisiana had not been adequately told to the public, policymakers, and legislators.

The Institute enlisted the volunteer services of Mailman School MPH students, thirteen of whom paid their own airfare to go to Louisiana during their spring break to interview grandparents raising grandchildren. The students spent a week interviewing 200 grandparents to better understand the daily challenges they face and so that their experiences could be told in their own words.

The students involved represented departments from across the School: Lauren Bailey, Anne Bozack, Carolina Bravo, Kirby Bumpus, Monique Hedmann, Francesca Okolie, Brennan Rhodes, Brenda Senyana, and Sejal Vashi from the Department of Sociomedical Sciences; Irene Nsiah and Tianne Wu from the Department of Health Policy and Management; Tsega Araya Gebreyesus from the Department of Epidemiology; and Chelsey Leruth from the Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health.

The research found that Louisiana has the fourth largest percentage of children living with grandparents in the country. More than 2.5 million children nationwide are being raised by their grandparents without the biological parents present in the household. This is a noteworthy 55 percent increase since 1990. Nearly ten percent of all children in Louisiana (117,859) live in grandparent-headed households of which nearly 65,000 of them live there without either parent present.

Grandparents in Louisiana who are rearing their grandchildren face barriers to social services and financial support that leave many risking their own medical needs and depleting their personal and retirement incomes, the report shows. In the survey, grandparents said they need after-school programs and transportation, tutoring programs, and mental health counseling for the children. The final report calls for:

• Making it is easier for grandparents to establish custody when they are rearing a grandchild.
• Increasing the state Kinship Care Subsidy of $280 per month to the state foster care rate, which is 40 percent higher than the kinship subsidy, and raising the income eligibility cap for the subsidy.
• Giving grandparents power to designate a stand-by guardian in case the grandparents become ill.

Dr. Linda Rhodes, principal investigator at the Hirtzel Institute, commended the group of Mailman School students on the work they accomplished and for “turning their spring break into true public service.” Following the introduction of the three pieces of legislation as proposed in the report, the Department of Social Services and the head of the Governor's Office of Elder Affairs also will start to work on implementing some of the recommendations in the report.