Catherine P. Slade

Barriers and Facilitators to Implementing Primary Stroke Center Policy in the United States: Results From 4 Case Study States

OBJECTIVES We identified barriers and facilitators to the state-level implementation of primary stroke center (PSC) policies, which encourage the certification or designation of specialized stroke treatment facilities and may address concerns such as transportation bypass, telemedicine, and treatment protocols. METHODS We studied the experiences of 4 states (Florida, Massachusetts, New Mexico, and New York) selected from the 18 states that had enacted PSC policies or were actively considering doing so. We conducted semistructured interviews during fieldwork in each case study state. RESULTS Our results showed that system fragmentation, gaps in human and financial resources, and complexity at the interorganizational and operational levels are common barriers and that policy champions, stakeholder support and communication, and operational adaptation are essential facilitators in the adoption and implementation of PSC policies. CONCLUSIONS The identification of barriers and facilitators reveals the contextual elements that can help or hinder policy implementation and may be useful in informing policy formulation and implementation in other jurisdictions. Proactively identifying jurisdictional challenges and opportunities may help facilitate the policy process for PSC designation and allow jurisdictions to develop more effective stroke systems of care.

The public value of nanotechnology

Science and innovation policy (SIP) is typically justified in terms of public values while SIP program assessments are typically limited to economic terms that imperfectly take into account these values. The study of public values through public value mapping (PVM) lacks widely-accepted methods for systematically identifying value structures within SIP and its public policy processes, especially when there are multiple stakeholder groups. This paper advances the study of public values in SIP using nanoscale science and engineering (NSE) policy by demonstrating that quantitative analysis of value statements can provide a credible and robust basis for policy analysis. We use content analysis of over 1,000 documents with over 100,000 pages from major contributors to the NSE policy discourse to identify and analyze a wide range of public value statements. Data analysis and reduction methods reveal a multifactor structure of public values that has been consistently cited by a range of actors in an NSE research policy network.

Understanding bureaucracy in health science ethics: toward a better institutional review board.

Research involving human participants continues to grow dramatically, fueled by advances in medical technology, globalization of research, and financial and professional incentives. This creates increasing opportunities for ethical errors with devastating effects. The typical professional and policy response to calamities involving human participants in research is to layer on more ethical guidelines or strictures. We used a recent case-the Johns Hopkins University/Kennedy Kreiger Institute Lead Paint Study-to examine lessons learned since the Tuskegee Syphilis Study about the role of institutionalized science ethics in the protection of human participants in research. We address the role of the institutional review board as the focal point for policy attention.

Faculty research following merger: a job stress and social identity theory perspective

With conflicting public pressure for greater access to higher education and budget reductions and with continuing backlash over increasing tuition and skyrocketing student debt, public universities have intensified efforts to improve organizational efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity. One strategic option is merging institutions of higher education to better utilize resources, reap cost savings, and increase scholarly outputs. Mergers and acquisitions more commonly occur in the business domain and analysis specific to the higher education arena is limited to this point. Our research examines the effects of university merger on knowledge production in the form of faculty scholarly productivity. We use results of a continuing study of merger of two state-funded higher education institutions, with quite different organizational cultures and research orientations, to explore merger impacts. Using the extensive prior literature on job stress and associated person–organization fit, as well as social identity theory, we develop a model of predictors of post-merger research time allocation and associated productivity. We find lingering effects of pre-merger institutional affiliation, particularly for the low status university faculty, on post-merger job stress, organizational fit, and resulting research productivity. The results of our study advance practical approaches to mergers in higher education for policy makers and managers of higher education.

The Policy of Enforcement Red Light Cameras and Racial Profiling

We explore the question of whether some of the often conflicting evidence of racial profiling can be cleared up using red light camera observations to measure racial disparities in traffic violations. Using data from cameras at intersections matched to census data, we find that although citations from the red light cameras are issued to a disproportionate number of minorities based on the racial composition of the surrounding location, the racial composition of the violator is consistent with the racial composition of the block group in which they reside. Our study indicates that red light cameras may have a present and future role in assisting public policy makers on issues of racial profiling thresholds.The use of red light cameras has focused on traffic safety issues with well established results. In this paper we explore the potential public policy benefits of red light cameras as tools to assess information relating to racial profiling. Specifically, we explore the question of whether or not some of the often conflicting rhetoric about racial profiling and gaps in the literature concerning the prevalence of racial profiling can be cleared up using red light camera observations to measure racial disparities in traffic violations. Using data from cameras at intersections matched to census data, we find that although citations from the red light cameras are issued to a disproportionate number of minorities based on the racial composition of the population surrounding the location of the infraction, the racial composition of the violators is consistent with the racial composition of the block group in which they reside. This confirms those studies of racial profiling that show the fallacy of measuring racial disparities of persons stopped, cited, or arrested for traffic violations based on location of the violation. Instead, we propose that racial profiling in traffic stops is not occurring if the distribution of violators cited by a red light camera is consistent with the distribution of violators cited by law enforcement officers. Using the red light camera violation information and census data, this study finds no evidence of differential behavior in red-light running based on race and evidence of a decrease in red-light running behavior for low-income groups. Our study indicates that red light cameras may have a present and future role in assisting public policy makers on issues of racial profiling thresholds.

Exploring Societal Impact of Nanomedicine Using Public Value Mapping

Scholars looking to promote the idea that public values, like equity, should guide scientific research often run into a tricky problem: who decides which values are most important? It can be a bit presumptuous for individual scholars to claim that they know what is best for the world and which values should be pursued. One recent technique developed to deal with this dilemma is Public Value Mapping or PVM. The basic idea behind PVM is that while deciding which values should be pursued by scientific institutions can open a can of worms in regards to representation and ethics, at the very least institutions should be held accountable for the values they public claim they are pursuing.

Retrospective View of the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative

The United States is noted for its leadership in nanotechnology policy development, adoption, implementation, and coordination. This chapter describes the origins and progress of the nanotechnology policies in the US, focusing on the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) to provide lessons learned by the US for use by developing countries as they proceed with policy development.