Innovations in Opioid Law and Policy Interventions Workshop: Summary of Proceedings

In 2017, Indiana University, in cooperation with Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb and community partners, launched the Grand Challenge: Responding to the Addictions Crisis initiative, a university-wide effort to advance interdisciplinary research and interventions in response to the substance abuse crisis affecting Indiana and the nation. The “Legal and Policy Best Practices in Response to the Substance Abuse Crisis” project is one of sixteen funded under Phase 1 of the Grand Challenge. In July 2018, and as part of this project, the research team convened a group of national experts to discuss legal and policy innovations to respond to the opioid use disorder (OUD) crisis. This report summarizes the proceedings of this workshop and updates some of the recommendations made by the team in their March 2018 Preliminary Report. During the workshop, experts answered targeted questions relating to the challenges in implementing law and policy recommendations to respond to the addiction crisis, as well as identified gaps in the current research. Participants provided examples of innovative interventions to respond to this crisis across four primary topic categories: (1) Criminalization; (2) Public Health; (3) Treatment; and (4) Effectuating Change

Post-disaster housing and management in Malaysia: a literature review

Purpose – Malaysia is still in the process of reorganising and restructuring disaster management policy, learning from the national and international experiences. Argument about current situation of emergency management and housing in Malaysia can be used by the decision makers, authorities and NGOs to develop strategies and actions that include awareness raising and capacity building for enhancing enforcement of current legislation. Design/methodology/approach - The work concentrated mostly on academic reports of original investigations rather than reviews. The conclusions in this paper are generalizations based on the author's interpretation of those original reports. Findings - Malaysia is not a developed country and also not a developing country but more in the middle, follows any direction from the international arena to national situation. Malaysia has a developed country approach in disaster management policy but with the implementation of developing country. This paper argues that providing post disaster housing must accommodate requirement in the national disaster management policy and parallel with the needs from international concern to the rights of disaster victims. Originality/value - The outcomes from this discussion might give insights into designing and planning the national policy and disaster management framework by restructuring and reorganising the present National Disaster Management Mechanism in terms of enhancing the coordination of responsibility between and within government bodies in the National Disaster Management Mechanism

A New Cosmology of Risks and Crises: Time for a Radical Shift in Paradigm and Practice

Crises in the 21st century differ—structurally— from those we had to deal with in the last century. Those were traditionally defined and handled as a combination of “threat, urgency and uncertainty”. Today, they are better described in terms of a destruction of vital references and a dynamic of systemic implosions. If crises were a type of severe, dynamic accident , they are becoming the essential mode of life of our hypercomplex systems. These transboundary crises mark a watershed between mindsets and tools of the past, and the new strategic landscape which we are now in. The intellectual and governance challenges are extreme. But looking backwards is not an option. It is vital to forge new routes into Terrae Incognitae. The goal of this article is to help build a) a renewed understanding of the emerging challenges we face; b) a better strategic response to these systemic dislocations which are now the name of the game.

Nil: The Value of Patents in a Major Crisis Such as an Influenza Pandemic

This essay focuses on the role of patents in relation to a potential global crisis such as an influenza pandemic or other public health crisis. I argue that patent rights will be largely ignored during an epidemic and that any post-crisis compensation would likely be low when compared to traditional patent rewards or settlements entered under threat of injunctive relief. In some situations, such as use of a patented invention by a state or local government, a patentee may have no recourse. Part III of the essay raises a separate issue that stems from the relatively long time frame for obtaining patent rights as compared with the time frame of an epidemic. Patent rights are only obtained through the typically slow process of patent prosecution. Consequently, innovation triggered by the onset of an epidemic might not be protected by patent rights until well after the crisis has abated. This realization suggests that the role of patents rests with longer-term preparation and follow-up, rather than with protecting innovations triggered by the specific crisis itself. Certain classes of innovations without effective patent protection – such as anti-viral or anti-microbial treatments that are engineered only after isolating the offensive biologic agent. I conclude that patent rights offer little innovation incentive in the face of an impending crisis. Optimistically, under this same formulation, patents may provide an incentive to ensure that the crisis is never realized. Part V of the essay recognizes that innovation still takes place in the absence of enforceable patent rights. A wide variety of incentives play a role in innovation policy, and reduced patent value will not end innovation

Integrated urban data visualising and decision-making framework

The work package (WP) 2 on Basic Exploration, Stakeholder Studies and Requirement Analysis created the scientific fundament of the project and produced essential knowledge for the conceptualisation of UrbanData2Decide. Task 2.5 brought together the previous research results and elaborated an integrated research model as well as a stakeholder requirements catalogue with first use case scenarios. In this integrated deliverable previous results of WP2 were combined to define a first blueprint for the UrbanData2Decide system as it will be developed later in the project