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The Aspen Challenge presents three high school teams from Louisville and one team from Dallas who developed innovative solutions to issues that have chronically impacted their communities. See these young change-makers take to the stage to prove that entrepreneurial community solutions can be created at any age. Learn how Justin F. Kimball and Central High School Magnet Ca...
Mental health disorders are rampant in America’s correctional facilities — in many cases, our prisons and jails are the main providers of mental health treatment in their municipalities. Furthermore, prisons and jails routinely subject people with mental illness to environments that radically exacerbate their condition, often to the point of suicide or self-harm. Why do so...
Meet Patience Lee, a 2023 Aspen Ideas: Health Fellow who’s building cultural awareness into mental health support services for unaccompanied refugee children in the United States.
We put them in harm’s way all over the world, and when they return to us — often physically and mentally debilitated — we have a bad habit of forgetting their sacrifice. What do we owe our veterans, what can we learn from them, and what new strategies can we use to keep them healthy and productive in civilian society?
Today’s young people have not seen a lot of good examples of adults working together to solve problems. Generation Z is coming of age amidst daunting issues like climate change, gun violence, and a teen mental health crisis, and trusted adults seem few and far between to many of them. The rift goes both ways — Baby Boomers and Generation X also report distrust and dislike...
The industrial revolution and consequent terrible labor conditions sparked a wave of revolutions in Europe, and then a string of laws and protections for workers. As author and innovation expert Alec Ross describes it, we “rewrote the social contract.” But, Ross says, we may be due for another rewrite, as we transition from an industrial economy to one based on information...
Few health and social welfare policy issues escape the oversight of the US Department of Health and Human Services, second in size only to the Department of Defense. Prescription drug costs, access to reproductive health services, national and domestic public health threats like COVID-19, and the epidemic of loneliness are all within its purview. As it implements the healt...
In a rare interview, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency weighs in on the global security scene and explains the current risks to the United States. John Brennan is interviewed by Dina Temple-Raston, counterterrorism correspondent for NPR, at the Aspen Security Forum.
While incomes are rising, there are questions about gains in short-term financial stability and long-term wealth creation for the majority of America’s working households. Related, there have been debates about the connection between the demise of the middle class and how this could threaten our overall economy and democracy. How can we create a new golden age of middle-cl...
Poverty is a powerful stressor that influences growth and development in children, and physical and mental health throughout adulthood. Science and imaging technology are making its impact visible, demonstrating how the socioeconomic disparities that flow from historical injustice alter brain structures. We’re also learning that social capital can be a protective layer aga...
America has a crisis of trust, but we are not hopelessly divided. David Brooks, founder of the Aspen Institute’s Weave: The Social Fabric Project, and Frederick Riley, its executive director, discuss how this nation can rebuild trust — from the ground up and around a shared sense of belonging — and how you can take part. (This session features small group exercises that bu...
Featured Ideas Festival Scholar includes Liz Plank. A robust fourth estate is central to the education of an engaged citizenry and healthy democracy. It informs us, shapes our thinking, and holds our leaders and institutions accountable. But if Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump agree on one thing this election season, it’s that political media is malfunctioning. On televisio...
Amazing discoveries are happening in the garages and high school science classes of young pioneers. A 17-year-old invented color-changing stitches, dyed with beet juice, to provide early warning signs of infection. A Time Magazine “Kid of the Year” is building a device to detect contaminants in the water supply and using AI to call out cyberbullying. Another teenager devel...
Computer systems don’t anticipate all the types of people who might use them. What are the innocuous, and more problematic, consequences of this?
Born online after the not-guilty verdict in the killing of Trayvon Martin, and translated to the streets after the killing of Michael Brown, #BlackLivesMatter is an organization, a movement, and a rallying cry for racial justice. Even as the historic presidency of Barack Obama comes to an end, systematic racial injustice persists: young black men are 21 times more likely t...
Joshua Goldstein, co-author of "A Bright Future," explains why individual actions to help the planet don't add up to real change.