“We are wasting human resources.”
That’s a concern of psychologist and St. Louis native Jason Que Purnell, Ph.D., associate professor in the Brown School of Social Work at Washington University St. Louis.
“We” in this case is the St. Louis region, although it could be applied across the U.S.
The resources are young people, whose ideas and dreams vanish long before they come to fruition; dismissed and invisible to others who could help them shape a greater tomorrow.
Purnell is involved in an initiative coordinated locally by the Nine Network, called American Graduate. The nationwide effort launched last fall in St. Louis and funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to address the high school dropout crisis in America.
“I’m sure there are people who are wondering what is a psychologist in public health in the School of Social Work doing worrying about education?
Because it all ties together,” Purnell said.
Through the initiative, Purnell spoke with a group of students he described as “bright or brilliant” who talked about why they were in danger of dropping out of high school.
“They said things like, ‘You look at me like you don’t think I have any potential,’” Purnell. “‘You see these braids in my hair, you see that I’m a black male coming down the street – you think I’m going to harm you or you think I don’t have anything to contribute.’”
Purnell remembered one female student who was keenly interested in Japanese music.
“She wants to study Japanese and go over and live in Japan. Nobody’s looking at that girl and thinking, ‘Those are her dreams and aspirations.’” he said. “And to hear these students describing it, nobody is supporting those dreams and aspirations, but if we care about the future of the region, we can’t continue to waste resources.
“It’s not just a moral imperative, it’s an economic imperative; it has to do with the health and well-being of the entire region.”
Dean Edward Lawlor, the William E. Gordon Distinguished Professor at George Warren Brown School of Social Work and director of the Institute for Public Health at Washington University, said Purnell’s leadership is extraordinarily effective, coming from a deep set of values and a deep commitment to the St. Louis community.
“He has such a moral center to him, and it shows in the passion he brings to all aspects of his work,” Lawlor said. “He is also such a nice, decent, and humane person. It is a privilege to work with him and we are so fortunate that he chose to come back to St. Louis and join the Brown School faculty.”
‘Wrong level of sensitivity’
After graduating from Saint Louis University High School, Purnell studied government and philosophy at Harvard University, earned his Master’s in Public Health from University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry and a doctorate from Ohio State University.
He initially wanted to be a counselor for adolescents, and by changing sponsors during graduate training, Purnell became interested in cancer research, spirituality, income dynamics and health outcomes and health disparities.
“I think the breakdowns that we have across cross-cultural lines are not because we pay too little attention to our differences,” Purnell said. “We pay attention in the wrong ways in the wrong times and with the wrong level of sensitivity in listening to people.”
Purnell says cultural competency has the danger of devolving into a superficial and too simplistic notion that because an individual is of a particular race, gender, persuasion or cultural group that someone knows something about them; or the notion that a person can read a book or have a set of experiences to make them “competent” to interact with the individual.
“You are never going to be truly competent in some culture that’s not your own,” he said. “It’s hard enough to be competent in your own culture.”
Diversity for what?
“Diversity has to serve some purpose other than itself and we can make those cases; we can tell those stories that diverse work teams come up with more creative outputs,” Purnell said. “Now they have more conflict as you bring different people together, but thinking together is going to create more innovation than thinking apart.”
At the Brown School of Social Work, Purnell has been tackling the challenges of disparities and diversity in all aspects of his work – research, teaching, and community service.
“He is tenacious and absolutely committed to improving the quality of life and health in our St. Louis community,” Lawlor added. “He has been developing creative approaches to addressing disparities using economic and public health approaches together.
Where Purnell’s passion in research is heading these days is getting conversations underway about health disparities that include education and economic status.
“If we can improve the financial status of households, can we also have an impact on some of the risk factors for risky health behaviors that we are seeing in those households?” Purnell is researching. He is looking at smoking and diet in particular.
“We’re not going to solve health disparities if we don’t solve socio-economic disparities.”
Health and wealth
Purnell recently published a study that indicates use of the nationwide 2-1-1 social service information referral system may be an important partner in reducing health disparities among lower income users of the service.
“Socioeconomic status is one of the most consistent predictors of poor health outcomes there is,” Purnell said. “People with lower levels of education – the disparities are actually widening, based on education in terms of life expectancy and premature mortality.”
Not only does the region need to change the conversation. Purnell said those conversations have to be made in languages that people understand.
“We can’t keep making the moral case to people whose primary concern is the economic case,” he explained. “That’s not to prejudge that anyone doesn’t have compassion and a sense of what’s just and right, but we’ve got to be much more sophisticated about laying out the case for investments in all of our children.”
Purnell spoke of data that indicates how much is lost in regional economic output when young people don’t graduate from high school.
“We are talking about tens and hundreds of millions of dollars over their lifetime that the region is missing out on because people aren’t graduating from high school. Say nothing of the fact that they need to be going to college. You do that math – the homes that aren’t bought; the goods and services that aren’t purchased; the jobs that aren’t created; and the costs of a social safety net and an increasingly large prison system,” Purnell said.
“You’ve got to lay out the case in those terms so people can see what are we losing economically as a region, and that impacts Chesterfield as much as it impacts the City of St. Louis – when the economic output of this region is being dragged down because we are not investing in all of our children and their outcomes.”
That’s a different story than expecting others to be compassionate because children who have less resources than their children have are not graduating, Purnell added.
“It’s much more complex than any one actor or organization or institution acting alone is going to be able to affect,” Purnell said. “‘Collective impact’ – that makes a lot of sense to me and the whole notion behind that being that all the different sectors … government, education, business – have to come together around the same table – come up with a common set of goals, informed by input and then start singing from the same hymnal and tracking their progress using a common set of metrics.”
And have some sort of backbone organization or institution for technical support, he added.
Beyond Housing’s 24:1 project is what Purnell described as an outstanding example of the synergy that’s already taking place in the St. Louis area. The 24 municipalities of the Normandy School District are working together to improve health outcomes while addressing education, economic development, housing and other concerns.
“They are proposing a set of strategies that they have developed with intensive community input,” Purnell said. “And they are working with partners to move that agenda forward. They are doing impressive work at Beyond Housing.”
Diversifying the Brown School
He is equally hopeful about diversity at the Brown School of Social Work. Purnell served on Dean Eddie Lawlor’s diversity task force.
“I was very pleased with his response to our recommendations and I think we are moving full steam ahead,” Purnell said. “I’m hopeful that we will get some significant work done around diversity at Brown School.”
That means more diverse faculty, staff and students.
“We have begun implementing a broad range of recommendations from our task force – touching almost all aspects of the School’s work,” Lawlor said.
At the University level, the Chancellor, the Provost, and the Vice Provost have been implementing a university-wide initiative to advance diversity, Lawlor added.
“Their support includes direct help with our faculty and staff recruitment,” Lawlor said. “In our successful round of faculty recruitment this year, Provost Ed Macias and Vice Provost Adrienne Davis were tremendously helpful – including working directly with our faculty candidates.”
“We have three new faculty members of color that will be joining us the next academic year,” Purnell said. “We are making progress and I am hopeful about that.”
