Hicks is the founder and president of the AfricaLogical Institute and alumnus of Bridge Alliance's Master Mind Cohort.
The AfricaLogical Institute is a group of researchers and scholar-activists who provide thought partnership opportunites to individuals and organizations seeking positive change. We are social scientists – ethnographers by training – who perform the function of educated and experienced “people watchers.” One project our firm is currently leading is a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation-commissioned Health Equity Study. This action-oriented, community-based research initiative exists to ameliorate racial health disparities.
As a part of Team Indiana, we are working in urban areas throughout five cities in the Hoosier State. Our action-oriented research seeks to learn from and alert for better health awareness and create an advocacy network to provide appropriate diverse perspectives to the Indiana General Assembly and the state Family and Social Services Administration to develop and/or change laws. In a study published in 2019, we made 11 recommendations to them and others for improving a leading provider of Indiana Medicaid, HIP - The Healthy Indiana Plan.
We believe the recommendations deriving from our 2019 “HIP Study” were impactful, as they were foundational for the more prodigious Health Equity Study we are conducting now. Accordingly, the current Robert Wood Johnson Foundation study includes conducting semi-structured interviews with community members and creating a network across Indiana that united on the need to change laws, policies and procedures to improve community quality of life and health outcomes.
In developing the application for the foundation, I began promoting the term "community valued research." This approach to research does not simply seek to siphon input and data out of the community. It seeks to prevail as a primary methodological aim and study goal, placing resources, funded programming and investment dollars in the community.
Here, the community serves as the expert, and the Community Leadership Board is a diverse group of “co-conspirators” who work to make data-driven demands in the 2024 legislative session for specific changes to improve community health. Our Community Leadership Board has walked in step with us in developing and implementing this study that seeks to identify and make recommendations for eliminating racial and structural barriers that hinder proportionate quality of life in Indiana.
Precisely defined, a community-valued approach:
- Is signified by honoring community members as the experts. Our recommendations were based on community input and intentionally challenging the Flint, Mich., community to work on “clarion goals” that address their expressed community needs. We also clearly challenging elected and natural community leadership to lead.
- Insists that natural resources investments, funding for programming and other clearly defined avenues for money to get to the community are imaginable and clear and articulable study goals. Scholar activism, the backbone of AfricaLogical Institute Research, as defined internally, is only as valuable as it is actionable, feasible, and easily usable in our community for progress.
One of the best ways to account for change is by observing and measuring the impact as policy, law, procedures, rules and regulations are created or revised. In other words, it’s real when it’s written. Our macro-recommendation for the Flint community was to be intentional and unified in their pursuit of public policy change. We were careful, however, to insist that not even changing laws “sticks” in the politics of our day. We must ensure that laws are passed and that budget dollars are attached to revised regulations.
Gwendolyn Kelley, senior vice president for research design and development at the AfricaLogical Institute, shares: “There are too many laws that are good ideas that would help those who need help most, if only there were dollars attached to these potentially impactful laws that are passed with good intent.”
Finally, briefly, a third tenet of community valued research, as we observe it in its embryonic stage, should insist on evaluating existing and producing reformative, imaginative, intentional, and honest budgets. Community research in general, and certainly community valued research, should have a grand justification if budgets are not proportionate. We suggest starting at 50/50 and working the numbers from there. Community researchers working with institutions should insist that negotiated budgets reflect the community's contribution to the data outcomes needed and anticipated – especially in a community-oriented research project.
Another overwhelming tenet of community valued research could be the clear imperative that through methodological intent and resolve, research is designed and conducted to, in some empirical way, disrupt dysfunction.
Americans across the political spectrum have continued to ask about the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s connections among the political elite. (Angela Weiss/AFP)
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner speaks to voters at a town hall at the Elks Lodge 188 on June 7, 2026, in Portland, Maine.
McConnell and Platner both feel entitled
The two men could not be more different. One, a Republican, octogenarian, seven-term Southern senator, the other a progressive, millennial Maine oysterman who’s never spent a day in elected office.
But Mitch McConnell, the senior senator from Kentucky who’s been MIA for the past few weeks and Graham Platner, the Maine Senate candidate who’s facing calls to drop out of his race against Sen. Susan Collins, apparently do have something in common: an outsized sense of entitlement.
McConnell, who is 84 and not running for reelection, has been hospitalized for three weeks, and yet we still don’t fully know what he was admitted for or what his condition is. Per CNN, “his office has not disclosed a medical reason for the hospitalization or provided specifics on his health status beyond saying last week that he ‘continues to improve’ and ‘is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters.’ ”
While several legislators have said they’ve talked to him and insist he sounds strong, others have said they are completely in the dark. One MAGA influencer, Laura Loomer, posted ”High level source close to the White House tells me ‘Mitch McConnell is officially brain dead. He’s not coming back.’ ”
Meanwhile, up in Maine, Platner has been artfully dodging calls from his own party to drop out of his race after several allegations of misconduct from women, including a sexual assault allegation from a former girlfriend, came to light. While Platner, who has managed to survive a Nazi-tattoo scandal, a sexting scandal, and several old tweets scandals, denies the allegations, he has not quit.
High-profile Democrats including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer, the latter of whom had unsuccessfully hand-selected Maine Gov. Janet Mills to face Collins instead of Platner, have urged Platner to drop out, while other Dems have accused him of trying to influence the picking of his replacement.
Maine Democratic Party Executive Director Devon Murphy-Anderson released a statement Tuesday, which said in part:
“Unfortunately, Graham Platner’s team has repeatedly reached out to us in an attempt to put their thumb on the scale of what this process looks like. We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate nor in determining what this process looks like.”
Both incidents show a deep lack of accountability to voters, who in one case deserve to know whether their senator is capable of performing his duties, and in another deserve a candidate who isn’t being accused of crimes, bigotry and deception.
The offensive and odious entitlement of both McConnell and Platner stands out not because it is particularly unique among today’s political class. Tom Kean, the New Jersey GOP congressman, missed more than 100 votes, only sharing after a three-month mystery absence that he was dealing with depression.
Former President Joe Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin failed to disclose a hospitalization for prostate cancer surgery, flouting the established rules for Cabinet members and senior U.S. officials.
From Biden’s insistence on running for reelection despite his obvious cognitive and political weaknesses to Trump’s brazen flouting of laws and norms, few politicians seem to appreciate that their public service job comes with responsibilities to constituents, including transparency and honesty.
But both parties increasingly justify the chicanery, because the stakes of winning elections and keeping power are simply too high. But that’s no excuse. If we’ve learned anything over the past decade, it’s that character and accountability do, in fact, matter. And when we, the voters, stop caring about it, well, so do they.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.