Senior Policy Fellow

Dr. Susan Hackwood
 

Dr. Susan Hackwood is a Senior Policy Fellow at the UCR School of Public Policy. At present she is the Director of the Science to Policy (S2P) Certificate Program at UCR.

S2P has launched a new Science Fellowship Program. Our first fellow, Derreck Carter-House (PhD graduate in Microbiology and Plant Pathology), joined Congressman Mark Takano’s office for the summer to analyze veteran demographics and health needs in the Inland Empire. The goal of the project was to create a data-driven report detailing veteran health needs and how they can be met through VA medical facilities. Taking a deep dive into the data, distilling the important findings and presenting them in a way that can be used in policy is helping both Congressman Takano’s office and UCR's School of Medicine better serve our veteran population. Data analyzed indicate that Riverside, home to 30,000 plus veterans, does not have high quality medical centers and clinics that are easily accessible by much of the population, and that this impacts disadvantaged populations in this district, especially senior citizens, disabled veterans, and impoverished veterans that need to use these facilities.