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Item Child safety, absolute risk, and the prevention paradox(2012) Schwartz, Peter H.While child-saftey proposals aim to improve child safety, their possible impact is unclear since there’s been so little discussion of the amount of absolute risk and risk reduction involved in each. And while precise figures are lacking, rough estimates indicate that the magnitudes are quite small. I will argue that this risk and benefit data raises important questions about the proposals, including whether parents might reasonably believe that the small absolute risk reduction offered by the proposed changes does not justify the attendant burdens. This possibility – termed the “prevention paradox” in other contexts – highlights ethical and theoretical challenges in this area of public health.Item Critical Juncture of Unification – Window of (missed) opportunity for the German Welfare State?(University of Duisburg-Essen, 2013) Walk, Marlene[Excerpt] This analysis focuses on the role of free welfare associations (FWAs) in the unification process, which was mainly characterized as an institution transfer from the west to the east. FWAs are a major force in the German nonprofit sector and the main provider of social services and health care in the country (Zimmer, 1999). Moreover, they play a special role in the German welfare state under the principle of subsidiarity. This principle allows them to act on behalf of the government in the provision of social services and health care (Zimmer, et al., 2004). Incorporating FWAs in the process of institution transfer after unification was essential for the German government, due to the valuable political knowledge of East Germany that the FWAs held (Angerhausen, Backhaus-Maul, Offe, Olk, & Schiebel, 1998). This paper draws on the concepts of path dependency, critical juncture, and window of opportunity (Hacker, 2002; Ebbinghaus, 2005; Marcussen et al., 1999) and analyzes to what extent the process of German unification was a successful or a missed opportunity for the unified welfare state, with particular consideration to the role of FWAs.Item Decision 2020 Electing Indiana's Future: Governance Issues for the Next Administration(2020-09) Kennedy, Sheila S.; Guevara, Tom; Thelin, RachelItem Exploring Intra-State Tensions in Government Responses to COVID-19(Oxford Academic, 2022-05-13) Federman, Peter; Curley, CaliResearch and attention to federalism has vastly increased due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While political polarization has largely been used as a scapegoat to explain the U.S. policy response to the pandemic, federalism has also been credited and blamed for the policy response and has played an important role in providing avenues for conflict. This article explores intra-state conflict stemming from COVID-19. We utilize ten exploratory cases to identify three distinct but interrelated patterns of conflict that emerged within U.S. states, focusing on tensions between the executive and legislative branches, between bureaucratic officials and the legislature, and between state and local governments. We then examine a series of questions regarding the implication of these conflicts, focusing on the issuance of executive orders, the responses undertaken by officials who disagreed with and sought to push back against these orders, and the ways that inter-branch and inter-governmental disagreements about these orders were resolved.Item Firearm Legislation and Fatal Police Shootings in the United States(American Public Health Association, 2017-07) Kivisto, Aaron J.; Ray, Bradley; Phalen, Peter L.; School of Public and Environmental AffairsOBJECTIVES: To examine whether stricter firearm legislation is associated with rates of fatal police shootings. METHODS: We used a cross-sectional, state-level design to evaluate the effect of state-level firearm legislation on rates of fatal police shootings from January 1, 2015, through October 31, 2016. We measured state-level variation in firearm laws with legislative scorecards from the Brady Center, and for fatal police shootings we used The Counted, an online database maintained by The Guardian. RESULTS: State-level firearm legislation was significantly associated with lower rates of fatal police shootings (incidence rate ratio = 0.961; 95% confidence interval = 0.939, 0.984). When we controlled for sociodemographic factors, states in the top quartile of legislative strength had a 51% lower incidence rate than did states in the lowest quartile. Laws aimed at strengthening background checks, promoting safe storage, and reducing gun trafficking were associated with fewer fatal police shootings. CONCLUSIONS: Legislative restrictions on firearms are associated with reductions in fatal police shootings. Public Health Implications. Although further research is necessary to determine causality and potential mechanisms, firearm legislation is a potential policy solution for reducing fatal police shootings in the United States.Item State Renewable Energy Governance: Policy Instruments, Markets, or Citizens(Wiley, 2015) Park, Sunjoo; School of Public and Environmental AffairsSince the 1990s, state governments in the U.S. have diversified policy instruments to encourage the electric power industry to deploy renewable sources for electricity generation. This study identifies the trends and variations in renewable energy policy governance among states and examines the effectiveness of policy instruments in the deployment of renewable energy sources for electricity production. This study explores 18 state legislative, renewable energy related regulations, programs, or financial incentives existing between 2001 and 2010 in 48 states in the United States. Renewable energy policies were classified into three types of policy approaches: command-and-control, market-based, and information instruments. Results suggest that authoritative approaches are more likely to be effective in the governmental intervention toward a pre-existing market, and information instruments and citizen participation became important in the power industry in the 2000s. In addition, it gives us some evidence that Federal assistance under the ARRA of 2009 influenced the overall growth of the renewable electricity industry, in addition to state government led policy designs.Item What Will It Take to Reap the Clinical Benefits of Pharmacogenomics?(Food & Drug Law Journal, 2006) Evans, Barbara J.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.