Blog Posts
Insight: Considering All Options
By: Samantha Ball How do you get a room full of people to truly engage with the complex topics of access to childcare and early childhood education, juvenile justice reform and the education system, and maternal mental health support and services? Based on my experience at the YWCA’s Utah Women’s Policy Conference, the deliberative community engagement model is great option. In August, over 100 people gathered at the Thomas Monson Center’s Town Hall to learn about issues affecting women in Utah. The YWCA used a deliberative community engagement approach offered by the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute to help attendees[...]
Insight: Is Utah Coal Going Global? Maybe.
By: Thomas Holst A District Court judge recently overturned an Oakland City Council coal ban aimed at preventing deliveries of Utah coal, primarily from Carbon and Emery counties, from entering Oakland and loading onto tankers destined for Asian markets. […]
Insight: The Utah Approach to Health Care Reform
By: Laura Summers Utah is known for its low per-capita health care costs and high rankings on healthy measures. It is home to some of the top health care systems in the country. But when you start talking about cutting-edge state health care reform, Utah’s name does not usually rise to the top. When you take a deeper look, you realize there is more going on here than what is being recognized at the national level. […]
Insight: Getting to Know Utah’s Life Sciences Industry
By: Levi Pace This year, I’ve been on a team at the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute researching the role of the life sciences industry in Utah’s economy. To get up to speed, I attended as many life sciences events as I could find. Turns out Utah has a buzzing life sciences community. At a networking event in March, I watched entrepreneurs pitch investors on diagnosing illnesses by taking a readout from a patient sample, like a cheek swab, and comparing it to proprietary databases. In February, walking around life sciences vendor tables at the Capitol, my co-author Josh Spolsdoff[...]
Insight: Utah’s Social Determinants of Health: An Economic and Humanitarian Imperative
By: Laura Summers Health is a key part of Utah’s economy. It is one of the largest industries in the state, employs a substantial number of people, supplies good paying jobs—and, as we all know, your own personal health can have a significant impact on your economic situation. Poor health can make it more difficult to find and maintain employment and serious medical emergencies can leave people with unplanned debt. […]
Insight: From Restaurants to Retail: Spending Trends of Utah’s International Visitor Population
By: Jennifer Leaver English. German. Mandarin. French. Japanese. Spanish. Korean. If you’ve spent any time at one of Utah’s national parks or monuments lately, then you’ve most likely heard a mélange of languages inside the visitor centers and out on the trails. International visitors make up a healthy portion of Utah’s national park visitors. Studies show that around 20 percent—or one-fifth—of all Utah national park and monument visitors come from outside of the United States[1]. In fact, at the more popular parks like Zion and Bryce, more than 25 percent of tourist season visitors are international in origin. […]
Insight: Saratoga Springs — the belly button of Utah
By: Natalie Gochnour Originally published in the Deseret News This week, the CEO of a large company headquartered in downtown Salt Lake City described the need to offer services and invest in infrastructure in Utah County. As he made his point, he looked across the table at me and asked if there was a single measure that captured the shift of Utah’s population southward. […]
Insight: A Note of Clarification on Utah’s Housing Shortage
By: James Wood Realtors, home buyers, renters, and builders all agree: there are not enough housing units to meet demand. And their anecdotes are supported by housing market data. Typically the number of new housing units in a given year is slightly greater than the annual increase in households. In other words, annually we get more homes than households and the difference is explained by second homes and changes in vacancy rates. This decades old stable relationship, however has flipped since the Great Recession. The annual increase in households has exceeded housing units for the past several years creating a[...]
Insight: Utah’s Expanding Medicaid Coverage
By: Laura Summers, M.P.P. One thing I’ve learned from my time working on state health care reform is that Medicaid is a very important, but very complicated program. At the most basic level, it is known for providing health care coverage to low-income children, pregnant women, parents with dependent children, seniors, and people with disabilities. It also helps pay for long-term medical care such as nursing home stays, which Medicare generally does not cover. […]
Insight: Utah’s growth demands cooperation, not sabotage
By: Natalie Gochnour Originally published in the Deseret News The poet E. E. Cummings wrote, “More, and more, and still more … are we all morticians?” This quote reminds me of the seemingly limitless growth occurring in Utah right now. We have more people, more jobs and more opportunity. We also have more congestion, more pollution and more need for water. For growth to be good, it must be guided by great leaders who represent our shared values. We must turn the “more of anything” into “more of the right thing.” Quality growth should be our north star. […]