If You Build It, Will They Come, and What Will They Eat? Investigating Supermarket Development in Food Deserts

Over the last decade, increasing attention has been paid to communities with low physical access to full-service supermarkets, commonly called food deserts. These often have disproportionately high rates of poverty and minority residents, raising additional issues for local officials and advocates. Widespread research has also documented associations between poor access to supermarkets and negative health outcomes. To address these issues, coalitions of stakeholders have used development incentives known as fresh food financing to bring new supermarkets into food deserts, often invoking associative health claims as motivation. To date, few health evaluations have been completed, though of published results, few show improved health resulting from new supermarket development. This dissertation uses a multi-level, mixed-methods approach to understand three primary research questions: 1) How different types of development processes yield different types of supermarkets, 2) How different types of new supermarkets may drive different patterns of shopper adoption, and 3) How consumers engage with new supermarkets, and how might these behaviors be meaningful for health? A variety of primary and secondary data sources inform this research: an extensive document review, analysis of redemption data from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, open-ended interviews with major fresh food financing stakeholders, and walking interviews and surveys with shoppers at a store developed with fresh food financing. The investigation finds that while a number of financing methods have been employed to improve access to supermarkets in food deserts, the highly professionalized tools promulgated by industry leaders and officials are most prevalent. Additionally, most projects include local development incentives, even those not specifically dedicated to expanding food access. Though the positive health effects of new supermarket development have not been empirically documented, this research shows that important diversity exists among the types of incentives and stores that have been created, which may also influence store adoption by low-income shoppers. Shoppers in this study grappled with changing their diets, even in the context of managing chronic disease conditions. These findings highlight important points of friction that must be addressed for new stores in food deserts to achieve desired health outcomes, and provide an illustrative model for those who hope to create greater synergy between community development and public health

Boosting Science Learning - What Will it Take? (Conference Proceedings)

Research Conference 2006 examined recent research and practice directions in the area of science education both locally and internationally. The conference addressed what it will take to boost science teaching and learning. The proceedings from the conference can be downloaded from thsis page. The slides accompanying the papers presented by various guest speakers are presented as Related Documents (below

What Will It Take to Reap the Clinical Benefits of Pharmacogenomics?

Posted with permission from FDLI ; Food and Drug Law Journal Genetically targeted drug and biologic therapies promise a new era of personalized medicine, but there has been frustration with how slowly these therapies are moving from concept to actual clinical application. Various legal and regulatory barriers threaten to delay translation of basic discoveries into approved products and to slow the clinical uptake of new therapeutic products as they become available. There is a pressing need to reach consensus on what these barriers are, so that they can be addressed in a timely and effective manner. This paper explores what some of the key barriers may be. It examines: (1) legal, regulatory, and commercial barriers to “successive improvement” of existing drugs through improved targeting strategies; (2) barriers to cooperative, multi-party development of targeted therapies; (3) methodological problems in assessing the incremental health and economic benefits of an improved targeting strategy; (4) limitations of traditional product labeling as a medium for communicating timely, clear information about drug targeting to clinicians and the need to create new mechanisms within the medical profession to manage and communicate this information; and (5) difficulty defining the appropriate line between regulation of medical products and regulation of medical practice, in the case of targeted therapies

What It Will Take For The Successful Implementation Of Produce Prescription Programs In Connecticut: A Qualitative Analysis

Abstract Background: The Biden-Harris Administration National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition, andHealth was released in September 2022, a result of the second-ever White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, and Health. Produce prescription programs were included in this strategy and identified as a mechanism for preventing or managing diet-related diseases and addressing food security. Food security is a key social determinant promoting health. Food security allows for the adequate nutrition needed to promote health and prevent and treat diet-related diseases. This study aims to identify the key considerations for implementing and scaling up a state-wide produce prescription program in Connecticut to translate the national strategy. Methods: This qualitative study was based on in-depth interviews with nine key informants working in the areas of hunger, nutrition, health, policy, and/or produce prescription programs. The interview guide was developed based on the Stages Model - a heuristic policy conceptual framework. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the interview transcripts following an inductive coding approach. Results: Key informant interviews revealed four main themes that provided key insights for the potential implementation and scale-up of produce prescription programs in Connecticut. These specific themes were: engage community, consider aspects of implementation, understand the importance of produce prescription programs, and garner advocates’ and decision-makers’ support. Conclusion: A community-engaged multi-level strategy will be needed to successfully implement and scale-up produce prescription programs in Connecticut

Business process trends

Business process and business process management (BPM) concepts have matured over the years and new technology, concepts, standards and solutions appear. In this chapter we will therefore focus on the current and future process trends. We will elaborate on the importance of trends, the maturity of the subject, giving a perspective on what emerging trends, industry trends, mega trends are, what is hyped at the moment, and what has reached a market adoption where it has started to become the de facto standard in terms of mega trends that has achieved a dominant position by public acceptance

What is an Analogue for the Semantic Web and Why is Having One Important?

This paper postulates that for the Semantic Web to grow and gain input from fields that will surely benefit it, it needs to develop an analogue that will help people not only understand what it is, but what the potential opportunities are that are enabled by these new protocols. The model proposed in the paper takes the way that Web interaction has been framed as a baseline to inform a similar analogue for the Semantic Web. While the Web has been represented as a Page + Links, the paper presents the argument that the Semantic Web can be conceptualized as a Notebook + Memex. The argument considers how this model also presents new challenges for fundamental human interaction with computing, and that hypertext models have much to contribute to this new understanding for distributed information systems

The energy to engage: wind farm development and community engagement in Australia

This report reviews what is known about community engagement in wind energy industry and identify what we still need to understand. After briefly presenting the relationship between wind farms and society as a significant one, we will recapitulate what strains that relationship and how community engagement can address it. We will point out that divergent models of community engagement are currently available to analysts and practitioners; that companies around the world are increasingly shifting towards more collaborative forms of engagement; that Australian business in the wind energy industry and planning authorities have some catching-up to do if they are to align themselves with such a global trend; and that the gap between declarations of principle advocating tighter collaboration betweenwind farm developers and communities and the actual practice on the ground has left some critics wondering whether those declarations are just rhetorical stratagems geared to placate public opinion

Internet Governance: the State of Play

The Global Forum on Internet Governance held by the UNICT Task Force in New York on 25-26 March concluded that Internet governance issues were many and complex. The Secretary-General's Working Group on Internet Governance will have to map out and navigate this complex terrain as it makes recommendations to the World Summit on an Information Society in 2005. To assist in this process, the Forum recommended, in the words of the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations at the closing session, that a matrix be developed "of all issues of Internet governance addressed by multilateral institutions, including gaps and concerns, to assist the Secretary-General in moving forward the agenda on these issues." This paper takes up the Deputy Secretary-General's challenge. It is an analysis of the state of play in Internet governance in different forums, with a view to showing: (1) what issues are being addressed (2) by whom, (3) what are the types of consideration that these issues receive and (4) what issues are not adequately addressed