Social Policy Expert from U.S. to Hold Lecture at VMU

Social policy expert Paul Draus from the University of Michigan-Dearborn will hold a lecture at VMU Great Hall (28 S. Daukanto Str.) at 4 p.m. on 29 September entitled Challenges to Sustainable Urban Development in USA: the Case of Detroit.

The lecture will examine the legacy of the 20th century American urban, industrial and housing policy as it relates to issues of poverty, unemployment, crime and substance abuse that affect the city and its suburbs today.  Efforts to rebuild and “re-imagine” the city of Detroit today must confront the legacy of past policy and the wounded landscape it left behind.

Paul Draus is a social policy expert who works in the Department of Behavioral Sciences at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. From 1992 until 2000, Dr. Draus was a public health field worker, specializing in tuberculosis control, first in New York City and then in Chicago. He earned his PhD from Loyola University Chicago in 2001. The guest lecturer is also the author of Consumed in the City: Observing Tuberculosis at Century’s End (Temple University Press, 2004), which was based on his dissertation research.

He has published numerous articles on health behaviors and social contexts related to substance abuse in rural areas of Ohio, as well as the social networks, daily routines and income generation strategies of active heroin users and former street sex workers in the city of Detroit. His most recent research focuses on the relationship between neighborhood landscape change and marginalized populations in Detroit.