UW-Madison faculty member receives grant to increase child, family well-being

A University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty member has received an award from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation to increase the well-being of children and families by advancing evidence-based policymaking.

Karen Bogenschneider, Institute for Research on Poverty faculty affiliate and Rothermel-Bascom Professor of Human Ecology, was awarded an $800,000 three-year grant to extend her work of nearly two decades advancing the use of research findings in child and family policymaking.

This award will support the work of the Family Impact Seminars. The seminars — a series of presentations, briefing reports and discussion sessions — provide state policymakers with high-quality, objective research on timely issues such as corrections policy, growing the state economy, helping poor children succeed, moving families out of poverty, prisoner reentry, school finance, welfare reform, and workforce development. The Family Impact Seminars translate and distill research for the real world.

The award will enable her to expand the work of the Policy Institute for Family Impact Seminars, which is providing technical assistance for conducting Family Impact Seminars to 28 other states based on Bogenschneider’s experience in Wisconsin.

In particular, the grant will support seminars in four of these states — Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi and Louisiana — which are struggling with large fiscal deficits, high unemployment rates and high rates of child and family poverty (Mississippi has the highest poverty rate in the nation at 21.2 percent, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures).