Overview
Communities throughout the country share common needs: affordable connections to broadband Internet, modern and reliable energy infrastructure, effective responses to mental health challenges, and ways to resolve legal disputes more quickly and fairly. To address these issues, Pew collaborates with states and local governments to find and promote evidence-based solutions that help provide stability and opportunity.
We also have a long-standing commitment to Philadelphia, our hometown. For more than 75 years, we’ve tracked and helped address the city’s challenges, from job creation to health care.
It’s a time to point to notable progress that the city has made on many of the most challenging issues facing its residents, including reductions in homicides and shootings, overdose deaths, and the poverty rate. But there are also troubling signs, including stagnating educational attainment, median income, and population. These metrics, which had been bright spots for the city in recent decades, have been impeded since the COVID-19 pandemic and pose a long-term risk to the city’s success.
Over the past half century, Ken Burns has become America’s storyteller. His documentaries provide a history of the nation through biographies, sports, music, and other subjects. His most recent film, “The American Revolution,” which was supported by The Pew Charitable Trusts, premiered in November on PBS. He spoke about it with Pew recently in his barn office in New Hampshire.
Trust Magazine
According to a recent report, electricity use could jump 25% by 2030, driven in part by energy-hungry AI data centers. This surging demand, combined with increasingly extreme weather, puts our power supply at risk.
Nearly half of adults with disabilities live in households in which someone has been involved in a court case, according to a recent national poll by The Pew Charitable Trusts. This is the first known data on the prevalence of this population’s court interaction, which is significantly higher than for those without disabilities.
As the United States celebrates its 250th birthday this year, Philadelphia—the nation’s first capital and founding city—is marking a milestone of its own: the 75th anniversary of its Home Rule Charter. The charter, adopted on April 17, 1951, is often referred to as the city’s constitution, framing its governance structure and laying the foundation for relationships between Philadelphians and their local government.
Our Work
Good health is important to everyone. Pew conducts research and provides information and fact-based recommendations to state agencies, hospitals, researchers, and other health partners to help them provide better care. We find and share evidence-based practices to improve Americans’ health and well-being, including services that can prevent suicide, improve mental health care, and treat substance use disorder.
Latest In Advance Health & Well-Being
Communities throughout the country share common needs: affordable connections to broadband Internet, modern and reliable energy infrastructure, effective responses to mental health challenges, and ways to resolve legal disputes more quickly and fairly. To address these issues, Pew collaborates with states and local governments to find and promote evidence-based solutions that help provide stability and opportunity.
Latest In Build Communities
Nonpartisan, fact-based improvements in federal policy can create jobs, lower costs, and help the nation prepare for the future. When our research shows that small changes can have a big impact, we work across party lines to improve national challenges like housing affordability, internet access, energy reliability, and health care.
Latest In Improve Federal Policy
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Economic opportunity is the foundation of American society. Pew supports national, state, and local efforts to expand opportunity and promote financial well-being. Our work helps people pay off student loans, navigate court proceedings such as debt collection, buy or rent a home, access affordable internet, and save for their retirement.
Latest In Improve Economic Advancement
The global ocean teems with life, and it contributes to the vital cycles that keep people and our planet healthy. But the seas are vulnerable to overfishing, loss of habitat such as seagrasses and mangroves, ineffective fisheries management, plastic pollution, and declining biodiversity. These mounting losses affect the coastal communities that depend on the ocean for food and jobs.
Latest In Protect Marine Life
States and cities are the “laboratories of democracy” in America—the places where lawmakers and governors look for new ways to help their communities succeed. Whether in Pew’s hometown of Philadelphia or any of the 50 state capitals, we help elected leaders respond to the needs of their citizens, use public dollars wisely, fix outdated policies, and build a better future for all.
Latest In Strengthen State Government
Conserving natural spaces conveys benefits far beyond the gains to wildlife and their habitats. As scores of studies show, protecting and restoring lands and waters, particularly when done in close partnership with local communities, also improves people’s lives—and local economies—by increasing tourism and outdoor recreation.