Impact Areas

Communities today are struggling to address a host of challenges, each of which poses significant societal implications if ineffectively addressed. Some problems are quite local: housing affordability, food insecurity, indebted local governments, and polarized communities. Others operate on a much larger scale, such as health care access, climate change, and racial discrimination. While governments often bear primary responsibility for addressing these issues, the critical role of the private sector, philanthropic institutions, and nonprofits cannot be ignored. 

At Stanford Impact Labs, we believe universities can do far more to address these threats, by spurring research—designed with government and community involvement from the start—that can generate evidence and insights to help tackle some of today’s most pressing social problems. To that end, we invest in solutions-focused research teams working to tackle a range of social problems across the following impact areas:

• Economic Opportunity

• Education | Social Mobility

• Race | Gender | Identity

• Democracy | Governance

• Climate | Energy | Environment

• Law | Justice | Safety

• Health

• Migration

• Technology & Society