In the lead-up to Governor Mikie Sherrill’s inauguration on Jan. 20, two Princeton faculty members led transition teams for the governor-elect.
School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) Professor of the Practice Heather Howard co-chaired the Affordable Healthcare team, and Sociology and SPIA professor Kathryn Edin co-chaired the Kids Mental Health and Online Safety team.
In total, there were 10 policy-focused transition teams, each with nearly 20 people. The teams represented topics that Sherrill campaigned on, including education and lowering housing costs.
“What’s fascinating is the way each of them reflected themes,” Edin said in an interview with The Daily Princetonian. “Ours was very specific — it wasn’t child well-being, it was [child] mental health and safety.”
The work of Edin’s team involved looking critically at youth mental health and finding policy proposals that all members of the committee agreed on. According to Edin, the team’s youngest member is 14 years old, and is a youth activist for mental health.
“It was amazing how carefully the governor-elect staff thought about who should be [on the team],” Edin said. “If you’re going to have a task force on kids’ mental health and online safety, maybe you should have a kid [on the team].”
Two initiatives that Edin described were gathering information from a social media addiction observatory and hiring more mental health counselors in schools. The team’s work often included views of external stakeholders.
Edin described the transition process as a “listening exercise” with the governor-elect.
“It felt like these were questions the governor really wanted answers to, and she was going to take seriously the advice that each of these transition teams offered in their final analysis,” Edin said.
Edin also noted that she plans to share her learning from the experience with her students.
“Giving [students] a sense of what this process is like, what the rubrics look like, and what it’s like to work with stakeholders … are all interesting things to bring to a classroom,” Edin said.
Edin is an expert on child well-being and poverty research. She has advised states and local jurisdictions on child support, along with various government entities.
Edin runs the Bendheim-Thoman Center for Research on Child and Family Wellbeing at Princeton and frequently advises the state of New Jersey.
Howard’s action team focused on addressing the Trump administration’s cuts to Medicaid through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and designing affordable health care policies.
Howard was also a co-chair on former Governor Phil Murphy’s health care transition team in 2017 and 2018, but she noted some of the new challenges introduced due to federal cuts.
“The One Big Beautiful Bill Act imposes significant cuts to the Medicaid program, which is the largest budget item in the New Jersey state budget,” Howard said in an interview with the ‘Prince.’
“We were really tasked with thinking about how to mitigate the harm from those cuts — both the harm to people in the Medicaid program who rely on it for healthcare, and also to the broader healthcare safety net: the hospitals and doctors and clinics that everyone in New Jersey relies on,” she added.
The transition team was also connected to Howard’s current work at Princeton, where she is teaching SPI 393: Health Reform in the US — The Affordable Care Act and Beyond.
“In my own research, I want to continue to work on ways to make health care more affordable for people in the state. I’m committed — as a resident, as a former state official — to do that,” Howard said.
“My work is certainly not done.”
Clara Docherty is the assistant News editor for the ‘Prince’ leading faculty, graduate students, and alumni coverage. She is from Lafayette, N.J., and can be reached at clara.docherty[at]princeton.edu.
Christine Woods is a staff News writer for the 'Prince.' She is from New York City and can be reached at cw0453[at]princeton.edu.
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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