Serving as the founding director of Poverty Solutions has been one of the great honors of my professional life. This year’s annual Impact Report is about “research to meet the moment,” and that has been our mission since day one when Poverty Solutions launched as a U-M presidential initiative in 2016. We believe that data, research, and analysis can contribute to systems change, empowering people to live healthy and full lives.

I leave Poverty Solutions knowing that our work has been a part of changing so many lives. Our analysis:

• contributed to bringing hundreds of millions of dollars in resources to help homeless students succeed in school;
• helped lay the groundwork for the 2021 expanded Child Tax Credit that drove child poverty to an all-time low; and
• was vital to the design of Rx Kids, a program now in nearly 30 Michigan communities that peer-reviewed research shows is improving the health of moms and babies.

Poverty Solutions has informed a Michigan housing aid program that brought evictions to their lowest point ever and the design of Michigan's unique Energy Direct program that saved tens of thousands of Michiganders from utility shut-off. Our work contributed to bringing auto insurance rates down in Detroit, reversing the tax foreclosure crisis in the city, and designing policies that have helped Detroiters build wealth through home ownership. And it prompted the Census Bureau to reevaluate how it conducts its decennial Census count in very poor cities like Detroit.

My move to serve as Detroit's first Chief Executive of Health, Human Services, and Poverty Solutions is a direct result of this work and I will stay closely tied to Poverty Solutions. This year Poverty Solutions embarks on a new body of cutting edge work, and Professor Kristin Seefeldt is the right leader to take the initiative into a new era. Kristin is a national voice on poverty and has been my partner in leading Poverty Solutions for years. I know she will build on our successes and break new ground by partnering with communities to find new ways to prevent and alleviate poverty. I can't wait to see all the ways Poverty Solutions will use research and analysis to improve lives in the years to come.

Sincerely,

Luke Shaefer
Hermann and Amalie Kohn Professor of Social Justice and Social Policy
Professor of Public Policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy
Founding faculty director of Poverty Solutions

Close ▲

It has been a pleasure to work alongside Luke Shaefer in my years at Poverty Solutions. I joined Poverty Solutions as associate faculty director in 2019 and served as acting director while Luke was on sabbatical in the 2024-25 academic year. Earlier in my career, I was assistant director of the National Poverty Center from 2004 to 2010, when U-M hosted the federally-funded research center. I am proud of the work the National Poverty Center did, and I have been honored to be part of Poverty Solutions with its focus on action-based research.

This action-based research approach starts with listening to community input to set a collective research agenda, and then we analyze data and research to help identify policy gaps. Next, we identify possible solutions and propose evidence-based interventions. Finally, we support the implementation of new policies and practices and evaluate the outcome — listening again as new models take shape. This is the legacy that Luke leaves at Poverty Solutions, and his commitment to engaging in work that will have real, positive impact on families’ lives is truly inspirational.

Over the past year, the Poverty Solutions team and I have been responding to unprecedented changes to the federal policies that shape our country's social safety net and people's access to housing, jobs, health care, and other basic needs. In this impact report, you’ll find many examples of how our research met the moment.

In 2026, we are partnering with researchers at the Institute for Social Research to track rates of food hardship nationally to help fill the gap left by the cancellation of the U.S. Household Food Security Survey. We also will evaluate the impact of federal changes to the national social safety net programs. In the months ahead, Poverty Solutions will continue to help people make sense of what the evidence base points to as the best ways to prevent and alleviate poverty.

This is a pivotal moment for the University of Michigan to demonstrate the power of higher education to serve humanity. Poverty Solutions exemplifies the meaningful positive impact that’s possible when scholars take an interdisciplinary approach to tackling society’s most pressing issues and leverage university resources to work alongside community groups, policymakers, and other stakeholders.

We look forward to partnering with many of you in this work; together, we can leverage our strengths for impact.

Sincerely,

Kristin Seefeldt
Associate Professor of Social Work and Public Policy
Incoming faculty director of Poverty Solutions

Close ▲