Jason Winik, an MPP student at Harris Public Policy, spent his summer working with Mark Templeton, the director of the Abrams Environmental Law Clinic. Winik performed geospatial analyses to understand where daycare facilities in Illinois have dangerous levels of lead in their drinking water and are out of compliance with Illinois testing requirements. A report will be published incorporating Winik’s visualizations and findings to raise awareness about the severity of the issue to the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) and provide policy recommendations to remove lead more swiftly from Illinois’ drinking water.
“I am interested in using data analysis to inform environmental policy and decision-making, so to help draw attention to the lead contamination problem in Illinois and hopefully catalyze further action was extremely rewarding. This was a great opportunity to not only put the quantitative skills I learned last year into practice, but to design and implement my own analysis that both technical and non-technical audiences can understand.”