Aditi Srivastav Bussells, Children’s Trust research and community impact manager, was named to the city of Columbia’s Complete Count Committee (CCC).
Aditi Srivastav Bussells
The 24-person committee is comprised of community members representing a diverse range of organizations and interests. These key stakeholders are guiding the local effort to ensure a complete and accurate count of all city residents in the 2020 U.S. Census.
Srivastav Bussells, who recently received her Ph.D. at the University of South Carolina’s Arnold School of Public Health as a Doris Duke Foundation Fellow, is responsible at Children’s Trust for leading research efforts around child maltreatment to promote child health and well-being.
The CCC is being led by Chynna Phillips, research and policy manager for the Sisters of Charity Foundation of South Carolina and Kayla Mallett, coordinator for the South Carolina Citizens Review Panel with the Children’s Law Center at the University of South Carolina’s School of Law.
Complete Count Committees are volunteer organizations established to increase awareness of and motivate residents to respond to the 2020 Census. Among other activities, these committees are charged with creating strategies to conduct outreach in geographic areas of low response as well as among populations with low response rates. Success of the census depends on community involvement at every level.
“As the U.S. Census is conducted next year, ensuring our city, this region and our state have complete counts is critically important,” Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin said. “We look forward to Columbia’s Complete Count Committee encouraging all of our residents to participate in what will be a truly influential endeavor.”
The census can shape many different aspects of a community. The data collected determine the number of seats each state has in the U.S. House of Representatives (a process called apportionment) and is also used to distribute billions in federal funds to local communities. Every year more than $675 billion goes toward hospitals, fire departments, schools, roads, and more.
Source: City of Columbia press release
