scholarly journals Drought Vulnerability in the United States: An Integrated Assessment

Water ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 2033 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Engström ◽  
Keighobad Jafarzadegan ◽  
Hamid Moradkhani
Keyword(s):  
Adaptive Capacity ◽  
Probabilistic Approach ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Environmental Indicators ◽  
Local Economy ◽  
Drought Vulnerability ◽  
Drought Mitigation ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Relative Vulnerability

Droughts are among the costliest natural hazards in the U.S. and globally. The severity of the hazard is closely related to a region’s ability to cope and recover from the event, an ability that depends on the region’s sensitivity and adaptive capacity. Here, the vulnerability to drought of each state within the contiguous U.S. is assessed as a function of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity, using socio-economic, climatic, and environmental indicators. The division of vulnerability into three sub-indices allows for an assessment of the driver(s) of vulnerability of a state and as such provides a foundation for drought mitigation and planning efforts. In addition, a probabilistic approach is used to investigate the sensitivity of vulnerability to the weighting scheme of indicators. The resulting geographic distribution of relative vulnerability of the states is partially a reflection of their heterogeneous climates but also highlights the importance of sustainable adaptation of the local economy to water availability in order to reduce sensitivity and to limit the impact of drought. As such, the study at hand offers insights to local and regional planners on how to effectively distribute funds and plan accordingly in order to reduce state-level drought vulnerability today and in the future.

scholarly journals Shooting from the ‘Scrip: Scope of Practice Laws and Access to Immunizations in the Pharmacy Setting

Vaccines ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 444
Author(s):  
Charles Stoecker
Keyword(s):  
Positive Impact ◽  
National Level ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Scope Of Practice ◽  
Patient Specific ◽  
Behavioral Risk ◽  
Influenza Immunization ◽  
Immunization Rates ◽  
The Impact

In the past two decades, most states in the United States have added authorization for pharmacists to administer some vaccinations. Expansions of this authority have also come with prescription requirements or other regulatory burdens. The objective of this study was to evaluate the impact of these expansions on influenza immunization rates in adults age 65 and over. A panel data, differences-in-differences regression framework to control for state-level unobserved confounders and shocks at the national level was used on a combination of a dataset of state-level statute and regulatory changes and influenza immunization data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. Giving pharmacists permission to vaccinate had a positive impact on adult influenza immunization rates of 1.4 percentage points for adults age 65 and over. This effect was diminished by the presence of laws requiring pharmacists to obtain patient-specific prescriptions. There was no evidence that allowing pharmacists to administer vaccinations led patients to have fewer annual check-ups with physicians or not have a usual source of health care. Expanding pharmacists’ scope of practice laws to include administering the influenza vaccine had a positive impact on influenza shot uptake. This may have implications for relaxing restrictions on other forms of care that could be provided by pharmacists.

scholarly journals Drought Vulnerability Indices in Mexico

Water ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 1671 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Ortega-Gaucin ◽  
Jesús de la Cruz Bartolón ◽  
Heidy Castellano Bahena
Keyword(s):  
Social Economic ◽  
Necessary Conditions ◽  
Environmental Indicators ◽  
Mitigation Strategies ◽  
Social Programs ◽  
Drought Vulnerability ◽  
Public Programs ◽  
Analytic Procedure ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Very High

Drought is one of the most harmful hydro climatic threats to society. Mexico has been historically affected by recurring and long-lasting droughts that have severely impacted society and the economy. Consequently, public programs and policies have been developed in order to reduce the country’s vulnerability to drought, hence the importance of identifying the spatial distribution and the dimension—even in relative terms only—of vulnerability in different regions from social, economic, and environmental perspectives. This article presents a method for obtaining indices and maps of vulnerability to drought in Mexico; indices and maps are based on a set of socioeconomic and environmental indicators that the method combines using an objective analytic procedure that identifies the most vulnerable states and municipalities from social, economic, and environmental perspectives, all of which converge in overall vulnerability to drought. The results obtained indicate that 38.9% of total Mexican population inhabits municipalities with high and very high degrees of overall vulnerability to drought. For this reason, it is necessary to continue implementing actions and preventive and mitigation strategies via public policies and social programs aimed at decreasing the country’s vulnerability to the occurrence of drought events. This is the only way to facilitate the necessary conditions to reduce the impact of drought and to decrease people’s vulnerability to this phenomenon.

Spatial Analyses of Obesity and Poverty

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Drewnowski
Keyword(s):  
Health Outcomes ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Healthy Foods ◽  
Distribution Of Wealth ◽  
Dietary Behaviours ◽  
Political District ◽  
The Impact ◽  
System Methodology ◽  
Zip Code

Obesity in the United States is a socio-economic issue. Recent advances in geographic information system methodology can provide a better understanding of the impact of neighbourhood deprivation on access to healthy foods, diet quality and selected health outcomes. Whereas state-level Centers for Disease Control maps are still best known, newer approaches have mapped obesity at different levels of geographic aggregation: county, political district, zip code or census tract. This chapter examines data from the new Seattle Obesity Study, which permits the mapping of dietary behaviours and health outcomes at the property parcel tax level – the finest level of geographic resolution possible. Analysis suggests that food-consumption patterns also show a spatial distribution, broadly following the geographic distribution of wealth and social class.

State-Level Cyberbullying Policy

2016 ◽  
pp. 62-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramona Sue McNeal ◽  
Susan M. Kunkle ◽  
Lisa Dotterweich Bryan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Information Technology ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Government Policies ◽  
Policy Adoption ◽  
Legislative Action ◽  
Bullying Laws ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Cyberbullying Policy

Cyberbullying is the use of information technology to deliberately hurt, taunt, threaten or intimidate someone. Currently, there are no federal statutes in the United States which directly address this problem. The response of the states has varied from attempting to use existing anti-bullying laws to limit cyberbullying to passing new laws that specifically target cyberbullying behavior. An important question is, “why are some states taking a lead in combating this cybercrime through new laws while others are relying on existing laws?” The literature on policy adoption suggests politics, resources and public need are important factors in predicting why certain states are more likely to enact government policies. This chapter analyzes the impact of these factors and others on policy adoption by exploring the level of legislative action to update existing cyberbullying laws for 2009 through 2014.

Air Emissions from the Incineration of Hazardous Waste

1990 ◽  
Vol 6 (5) ◽  
pp. 23-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Timothy Oppelt
Keyword(s):  
Hazardous Waste ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
State Level ◽  
Waste Incineration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Air Emissions ◽  
Operational Experience ◽  
Large Measure ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Impact

In the United States over the last ten years, concern over important disposal practices of the past has manifested itself in the passage of a series of federal and state-level hazardous waste cleanup and control statutes of unprecedented scope. The impact of these various statutes will be a significant modification of waste management practices. The more traditional and lowest cost methods of direct landfilling, storage in surface impoundments and deep-well injection will be replaced, in large measure, by waste minimization at the source of generation, waste reuse, physical/chemical/biological treatment, incinceration and chemical stabilization/solidification methods. Of all of the “terminal” treatment technologies, properly-designed incineration systems are capable of the highest overall degree of destruction and control for the broadest range of hazardous waste streams. Substantial design and operational experience exists and a wide variety of commercial systems are available. Consequently, significant growth is anticipated in the use of incineration and other thermal destruction methods. The objective of this paper is to examine the current state of knowledge regarding air emissions from hazardous waste incineration in an effort to put the associated technological and environmental issues into perspective.

scholarly journals State-level tracking of COVID-19 in the United States

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Juliette T. Unwin ◽  
Swapnil Mishra ◽  
Valerie C. Bradley ◽  
Axel Gandy ◽  
Thomas A. Mellan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Bayesian Hierarchical ◽  
Secondary Infections ◽  
The Us ◽  
Control And Prevention ◽  
Credible Intervals ◽  
Behaviour Changes ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Number Of Individuals

AbstractAs of 1st June 2020, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 104,232 confirmed or probable COVID-19-related deaths in the US. This was more than twice the number of deaths reported in the next most severely impacted country. We jointly modelled the US epidemic at the state-level, using publicly available death data within a Bayesian hierarchical semi-mechanistic framework. For each state, we estimate the number of individuals that have been infected, the number of individuals that are currently infectious and the time-varying reproduction number (the average number of secondary infections caused by an infected person). We used changes in mobility to capture the impact that non-pharmaceutical interventions and other behaviour changes have on the rate of transmission of SARS-CoV-2. On 1st June, we estimated that Rt was only below one in 23 states. We also estimated that 3.7% [3.4%-4.0%] of the total population of the US had been infected, with wide variation between states, and approximately 0.01% of the population was infectious. We demonstrate good 3 week model forecasts of deaths with low error and good coverage of our credible intervals.

scholarly journals COVID-19 scenarios for the United States

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Simon I Hay
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Model Performance ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Damage ◽  
Reference Scenario ◽  
Level Model ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
Novel Coronavirus ◽  
The Impact

The United States (US) has not been spared in the ongoing pandemic of novel coronavirus disease. COVID-19, caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), continues to cause death and disease in all 50 states, as well as significant economic damage wrought by the non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) adopted in attempts to control transmission. We use a deterministic, Susceptible, Exposed, Infectious, Recovered (SEIR) compartmental framework to model possible trajectories of SARS-CoV-2 infections and the impact of NPI at the state level. Model performance was tested against reported deaths from 01 February to 04 July 2020. Using this SEIR model and projections of critical driving covariates (pneumonia seasonality, mobility, testing rates, and mask use per capita), we assessed some possible futures of the COVID-19 pandemic from 05 July through 31 December 2020. We explored future scenarios that included feasible assumptions about NPIs including social distancing mandates (SDMs) and levels of mask use. The range of infection, death, and hospital demand outcomes revealed by these scenarios show that action taken during the summer of 2020 will have profound public health impacts through to the year end. Encouragingly, we find that an emphasis on universal mask use may be sufficient to ameliorate the worst effects of epidemic resurgences in many states. Masks may save as many as 102,795 (55,898-183,374) lives, when compared to a plausible reference scenario in December. In addition, widespread mask use may markedly reduce the need for more socially and economically deleterious SDMs.

Universal Pre-Kindergarten: Supporting High Quality and Broad Access at a Time of Federal Disengagement and “School Choice”

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Gomez-Velez
Keyword(s):  
School Choice ◽  
Federal Policy ◽  
Universal Access ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Local Policy ◽  
Policy Goal ◽  
High Quality ◽  
State And Local ◽  
The Impact

At the turn of the twenty-first century, public universal pre-kindergarten (UPK) gained momentum across the United States as a widely popular public policy goal. More recently, however, implementing high-quality UPK has been hampered by federal disengagement from the issue, fiscal constraints, and conflicting state policy approaches. This chapter examines the growth of UPK as an important policy goal on the federal and state levels; the impact of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and a new presidential administration on federal policy disengagement from the issue; and varying degrees of state fiscal support and state and local policy approaches in thwarting the full realization of UPK’s promise. This examination notes the urgent need for a policy focus on the equitable delivery of high-quality programs if UPK is to improve future educational outcomes and help close opportunity gaps. Universal access will not achieve pre-kindergarten’s benefits without high-quality programming. If universal pre-kindergarten’s promise is to be achieved, the federal and state governments must work in tandem to ensure that all children, starting with those most in need of early education, have access to high-quality, age-appropriate UPK. Because ESSA limits federal policy prescriptions, advocacy must focus on the state level, using evidence-based lessons from research and experience.

scholarly journals Promoting Clean Energy Innovation at the State and Local Level

2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 360-373
Author(s):  
David Popp
Keyword(s):  
Local Governments ◽  
Local Level ◽  
State Level ◽  
Clean Energy ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Local Economy ◽  
Working Paper ◽  
Energy Innovation ◽  
State And Local

AbstractInnovation is an important part of energy policy, and encouraging clean energy innovation is often an explicit goal of policy makers. For local governments, promoting clean energy innovation is seen not only as a pathway to a cleaner economy but also as a tool for promoting the local economy. But is such optimism warranted? There is a substantial literature examining the relationships between innovation and environmental policy, but few studies focus explicitly on innovation at the state and local level. In this paper, I provide key lessons from research on clean energy innovation, focusing on lessons relevant for state and local governments. I then summarize the results of a recent working paper by Fu et al. (2018) that studied wind energy innovation across individual states in the United States. While state-level policies can promote clean energy innovation, it is overall market size that matters most. Thus, innovation need not occur in those states most actively promoting clean energy. I conclude with lessons for state and local governments drawn from both this work and the broader literature on energy innovation.

The Impact of State Firearm Laws on Homicide Rates among Black and White Populations in the United States, 1991–2016

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 232-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anita Knopov ◽  
Michael Siegel ◽  
Ziming Xuan ◽  
Emily F Rothman ◽  
Shea W Cronin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Fixed Effects ◽  
Black People ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Homicide Rates ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Author Identification ◽  
Background Check ◽  
Black Populations ◽  
The Impact

Abstract This study aimed to investigate the potential differential effects of state-level firearm laws on black and white populations. Using a panel design, authors examined the relationship between state firearm laws and homicide victimization rates among white people and black people in 39 states during the period between 1991 and 2016. Authors modeled homicide rates using linear regression with year and state fixed effects and controlled for a range of time-varying, state-level factors. Results showed that universal background check laws and permit requirement laws were associated with lower homicide rates among both white and black populations, and “shall issue” laws were associated with higher homicide rates among both white and black populations. Laws that prohibit firearm possession among people convicted of a violent misdemeanor or require relinquishment of firearms by people with a domestic violence restraining order were associated with lower black homicide rates, but not with white homicide rates. Author identification of heterogeneity in the associations between state firearm laws and homicide rates among different racial groups has implications for reducing racial health disparities.

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