Policy Recommendations for Meeting the Grand Challenge to Achieve Equal Opportunity and Justice

This brief was created forSocial Innovation for America’s Renewal, a policy conference organized by the Center for Social Development in collaboration with the American Academy of Social Work & Social Welfare, which is leading theGrand Challenges for Social Work initiative to champion social progress. The conference site includes links to speeches, presentations, and a full list of the policy briefs

Socializing One Health: an innovative strategy to investigate social and behavioral risks of emerging viral threats

In an effort to strengthen global capacity to prevent, detect, and control infectious diseases in animals and people, the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Emerging Pandemic Threats (EPT) PREDICT project funded development of regional, national, and local One Health capacities for early disease detection, rapid response, disease control, and risk reduction. From the outset, the EPT approach was inclusive of social science research methods designed to understand the contexts and behaviors of communities living and working at human-animal-environment interfaces considered high-risk for virus emergence. Using qualitative and quantitative approaches, PREDICT behavioral research aimed to identify and assess a range of socio-cultural behaviors that could be influential in zoonotic disease emergence, amplification, and transmission. This broad approach to behavioral risk characterization enabled us to identify and characterize human activities that could be linked to the transmission dynamics of new and emerging viruses. This paper provides a discussion of implementation of a social science approach within a zoonotic surveillance framework. We conducted in-depth ethnographic interviews and focus groups to better understand the individual- and community-level knowledge, attitudes, and practices that potentially put participants at risk for zoonotic disease transmission from the animals they live and work with, across 6 interface domains. When we asked highly-exposed individuals (ie. bushmeat hunters, wildlife or guano farmers) about the risk they perceived in their occupational activities, most did not perceive it to be risky, whether because it was normalized by years (or generations) of doing such an activity, or due to lack of information about potential risks. Integrating the social sciences allows investigations of the specific human activities that are hypothesized to drive disease emergence, amplification, and transmission, in order to better substantiate behavioral disease drivers, along with the social dimensions of infection and transmission dynamics. Understanding these dynamics is critical to achieving health security--the protection from threats to health-- which requires investments in both collective and individual health security. Involving behavioral sciences into zoonotic disease surveillance allowed us to push toward fuller community integration and engagement and toward dialogue and implementation of recommendations for disease prevention and improved health security

Co-occurrence of dinoflagellate and cyanobacterial harmful algal blooms in southwest Florida coastal waters: dual nutrient (N and P) input controls

ABSTRACT: During July 2006, 2 distinctly different harmful algal blooms (HABs), one dominated by the pelagic red tide dinoflagellates Karenia spp. and the other by the benthic cyanobacterium Lyngbya majuscula, occurred simultaneously in the coastal embayments surrounding Sanibel and Captiva Islands, Florida, USA. The co-occurring HABs were investigated using in situ bioassays with additions of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) alone and in combination to assess nutrient controls of these ‘dueling’ toxin-producing species. Photosynthetic, biomass (chlorophyll a), and (in L. majuscula) nitrogen fixation responses to nutrient enrichment were examined over 4 d. Primary productivity in Karenia spp. was consistently stimulated by N additions, while P additions failed to show stimulation. When added in combination with N, P did not lead to additional stimulation above N alone. Similar patterns of chlorophyll a stimulation were observed. These patterns were observed at 2 d, after which the cells fell out of suspension. Nutrient stimulation of L. majuscula metabolic activities as well as biomass production was smaller and much slower, relative to controls, than responses observed in Karenia spp. After the demise of Karenia spp., L. majuscula was able to continue utilizing subsequent nutrient additions, and it responded most strongly to the N+P additions after 4 d. This study confirms previous estuarine and coastal studies that indicated that when non-N₂-fixing HABs co-occur with N₂-fixing cyanobacterial HAB species, both N and P inputs need to be carefully considered and, in all likelihood, controlled

Two lineage boundaries coordinate vertebrate apical ectodermal ridge formation

Proximal–distal outgrowth of the vertebrate limb bud is regulated by the apical ectodermal ridge (AER), which forms at an invariant position along the dorsal–ventral (D/V) axis of the embryo. We have studied the genetic and cellular events that regulate AER formation in the mouse. In contrast to implications from previous studies in chick, we identified two distinct lineage boundaries in mouse ectoderm prior to limb bud outgrowth using a Cre/loxP-based fate-mapping approach and a novel retroviral cell-labeling technique. One border is transient and at the limit of expression of the ventral gene En1, which corresponds to the D/V midline of the AER, and the second border corresponds to the dorsal AER margin. Labeling of AER precursors using an inducible Cre showed that not all cells that initially express AER genes form the AER, indicating that signaling is required to maintain an AER phenotype. Misexpression of En1 at moderate levels specifically in the dorsal AER of transgenic mice was found to produce dorsally shifted AER fragments, whereas high levels of En1 abolished AER formation. In both cases, the dorsal gene Wnt7a was repressed in cells adjacent to the En1-expressing cells, demonstrating that signaling regulated by EN1 occurs across the D/V border. Finally, fate mapping of AER domains in these mutants showed that En1 plays a part in positioning and maintaining the two lineage borders

The psychology of windfall gains.

We hypothesized that windfall gains are spent more readily than other types of assets. Three questionnaire studies supported this hypothesis and led us to the conclusion that the unanticipated nature of windfall gains is responsible for their heightened proclivity to be spent. We then tested this hypothesis in two studies using actual money. In both studies using money, one group of students was told I to 5 days before an experiment that they would be paid for their participation, whereas another group was told about the money only after they arrived at the experiment. In the first of the cash studies, those who were given no forewarning of the money bet significantly more during a gambling game than did those who anticipated the payment. In the second cash study, those who did not anticipate the money spent more money at a basketball game than did those who anticipated the money. We relate the results of these studies to economic theories and to theories of choice

The psychology of windfall gains.

We hypothesized that windfall gains are spent more readily than other types of assets. Three questionnaire studies supported this hypothesis and led us to the conclusion that the unanticipated nature of windfall gains is responsible for their heightened proclivity to be spent. We then tested this hypothesis in two studies using actual money. In both studies using money, one group of students was told I to 5 days before an experiment that they would be paid for their participation, whereas another group was told about the money only after they arrived at the experiment. In the first of the cash studies, those who were given no forewarning of the money bet significantly more during a gambling game than did those who anticipated the payment. In the second cash study, those who did not anticipate the money spent more money at a basketball game than did those who anticipated the money. We relate the results of these studies to economic theories and to theories of choice