This past summer, Taylor Robinson, SBS-PhD ‘27 was one of 20 policy fellows with The Rappaport Public Policy Summer Fellowship, a paid 10-week internship that matches graduate students with state and local agencies around Greater Boston.
Taylor worked with the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development on two main projects across the Division of Rental Assistance and Public Housing. Taylor created the first Tableau dashboard of public housing and rental assistance data; where she assessed trends in demographic information, income levels and types, and cost of rent. She concluded this project with a memo listing recommendations on how to examine racial and ethnic inequalities in housing. The second project was to address missing fair market rent (FMR) data in the State Oversight Housing Assistance (SOHA) Data Warehouse. Taylor’s analysis provided key information on missing FMR data over time and by Local Housing Authority and provided specific examples and instructions on how to correct missingness.
Taylor described the main takeaway from the fellowship by saying, “Public health professionals are needed in the government sector. We have the skills and knowledge to ensure that proposed policies center relevant communities, government action accounts for historical practices, and appropriate methods are applied to advocate for populations.”
