A Turbulent Opposition: The ACA and the South

This report is part of a series of 21 state and regional studies examining the rollout of the ACA. The national network ---- with 36 states and 61 researchers ---- is led by the Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public policy research arm of the State University of New York, the Brookings Institution, and the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania.The South is often been portrayed as being resistant to "Obamacare." It is from many of these states that legal challenges were filed against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) after its enactment. Rather than operate their own exchanges, many southern states have defaulted to the federal health insurance exchange. Most have refused or deferred on Medicaid expansion. Some states have employed obstructionist tactics to complicate enrollment assistance provided by navigators and others. What accounts for this posture? Electoral politics and ideological differences among the parties certainly play roles. But as our preliminary research indicates, there are other factors as well that reflect ambivalence, caution, and uncertainty about state administrative and fiscal capacity, health demographics, and market conditions. Through the review of nine state-level field reports conducted under the auspices of the Managing Health Reform research network and through analysis of other relevant literature and data, this report concentrates on the intensity and sources of opposition within the southern states towards the ACA

West Virginia: Round 1 - State Level Field Network Study of the Implementation of the Affordable Care Act

This report is part of a series of 21 state and regional studies examining the rollout of the ACA. The national network -- with 36 states and 61 researchers -- is led by the Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public policy research arm of the State University of New York, the Brookings Institution, and the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania.As noted throughout this report, West Virginia's experience is a tale of two reforms or experiences. The state has adopted a hands-off, but nonhostile, posture toward the health insurance exchange. Unique policy and political dynamics contributed to the state first embracing the concept of its own exchange and then moving toward a very passive role in a state-federal partnership. In contrast, the state has been proactive in reaching out and enrolling those newly eligible under Medicaid expansion. As ACA implementation gains traction and best practices are discovered and shared, West Virginia's aggressive approach of utilizing SNAP enrollment lists as a means of reaching potential Medicaid applicants may be one of those stories that come to the fore

Looking Back Across the Years: Alumni Reflections on a Community Design Service Learning Experience

This paper examines the perceptions of alumni on a service learning experience they engaged in as graduate students. As students, they were enrolled in West Virginia University’s Master of Public Administration program and participated in the West Virginia Community Design Team. Since 1997, the Community Design Team (CDT) program has engaged the state’s rural communities through volunteer teams of faculty, professionals, and students who assist in community efforts to assess and envision their futures. Through a curricular-based approach of integration and reflection, students are able to incorporate their CDT experiences into their overall graduate education. After briefly describing how integration and reflection are pursued through portfolio and capstone requirements, the paper then focuses on alumni recollections of how they encountered small rural communities, their lasting lessons gained from the experience, their evaluations of the place of service learning in graduate education, and their advice to others seeking to engage communities through university outreach and service projects. Data was gathered for this paper through in-depth interviews with alumni who participated in the CDT program as students. The results also suggests that alumni perspective is important not only in assessing service learning experiences but in reinforcing lessons learned by revisiting the experience years later. The research also seeks to add to our understanding of service learning in graduate education. KEYWORDSservice learning; graduate education; community engagemen

The Military Families Learning Network: A Model for Extension-Based Virtual Learning Communities

This article provides an overview of Extension\u27s Military Families Learning Network. The network is an example of Extension\u27s commitment to building virtual learning networks in the support of targeted professional and lay audiences. The network uses well-established and emergent pedagogical approaches focusing on adult-centered learning while employing state-of-the-art online learning technologies. We present a four-dimensional model of learning activities to illustrate how the network offers different options for and approaches to adult-centered learning and training. The Military Families Learning Network can serve as a model for broader adoption of such entities across the Extension community

Repurposing Video Documentaries as Features of a Flipped-Classroom Approach to Community-Centered Development

Online and off-site educational programming is increasingly incorporated by Extension educators to reach their clientele. Models such as the flipped classroom combine online content and in-person learning, allowing clients to both gain information and build peer learning communities. We demonstrate how video documentaries used in traditional tourism development programs were repurposed as preprogram, flipped-classroom learning materials to deliver content and extend the goals of community-centric programming. The flipped-classroom approach yielded learning and process outcomes and allowed educators to maximize time spent facilitating peer learning, client engagement, and community organizing

Municipal Finances in West Virginia

West Virginia’s municipalities are part of the lifeblood of our state. From the smallest incorporated towns and villages to our larger cities like Charleston, Wheeling, and Morgantown, our state’s cities and towns often act as hubs for civic, social, cultural, and economic activity. We associate these municipalities and their surrounding communities as places to shop, work, worship, and receive services like healthcare and education. This report seeks to place West Virginia’s cities and towns in this broader context of change, challenge, and opportunity by providing an in-depth study of major features, trends, and factors in municipal finance

A novel approach to assessing the ecosystem-wide impacts of reintroductions

Reintroducing a species to an ecosystem can have significant impacts on the recipient ecological community. Although reintroductions can have striking and positive outcomes, they also carry risks; many well intentioned conservation actions have had surprising and unsatisfactory outcomes. A range of network-based mathematical methods have been developed to make quantitative predictions of how communities will respond to management interventions. These methods are based on the limited knowledge of which species interact with each other and in what way. However, expert knowledge isn’t perfect and can only take models so far. Fortunately, other types of data, such as abundance time-series, is often available, but, to date, no quantitative method exists to integrate these various data types into these models, allowing more precise ecosystem-wide predictions. In this paper, we develop mathematical methods that combine time-series data of multiple species with knowledge of species interactions and we apply it to proposed reintroductions at Booderee National Park in Australia. There have been large fluctuations in species abundances at Booderee National Park in recent history, following intense feral fox (Vulpes vulpes) control – including the local extinction of the greater glider (Petauroides volans). These fluctuations can provide information about the system isn’t readily obtained from a stable system, and we use them to inform models that we then use to predict potential outcomes of eastern quoll (Dasyurus viverrinus) and long-nosed potoroo (Potorous tridactylus) reintroductions. One of the key species of conservation concern in the park is the eastern bristlebird (Dasyornis brachypterus), and we find that long-nosed potoroo introduction would have very little impact on the eastern bristlebird population, while the eastern quoll introduction increased the likelihood of eastern bristlebird decline, although that depends on the strength and form of any possible interaction.We thank the ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, The National Environmental Research Project Decisions Hub and an ARC Linkage Project (LP160100496) for funding. CB is the recipient of a John Stocker Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Science and Industry Endowment Fund. MB is supported by an ARC Future Fellowship (FT170100274). EMM is a current ARC Future Fellowship (FT170100140) and was supported by an ARC DECRA Fellowship for the majority of this work