Public Policy Commons^™

The Commonwealth Takes An Important Step In Protecting Our Democracy, Ashish Vaidya

eJournal of Public Affairs

Northern Kentucky University’s President Ashish Vaidya wrote an article celebrating Kentucky’s new bipartisan voting rights bill. Signed into law in April, the legislation is contrary to what we are seeing in other states and expands voting options in Kentucky. As an immigrant to the U.S. from India, President Vaidya has a unique perspective on democracy in America, and he is very passionate about higher education’s role to inform its students on their responsibility.

Top Boomtowns In The Mountain West, Ally M. Beckwith, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Cities & Metros

This fact sheet highlights data on the top boomtowns in the Mountain West region in 2019 and 2021. The original SmartAsset report includes data on the rapid economic growth and prosperity in boomtown cities through new employment opportunities and residents.

A Review Of Nepali Diaspora And Their Role In Nepal’S Development And Lessons For Developing Countries, Ambika P. Adhikari

Himalayan Research Papers Archive

United Nations data shows that the size of global diaspora had reached 281 million in 2020, and it continues to grow. Diasporas have contributed significantly to the development of their native lands through remittance, technology and knowledge transfer, philanthropy, and diplomacy. Many countries have designed policies to engage the diaspora more deeply by providing concessional citizenship and visa regimes, and attractive investment opportunities. Yet, there is room for improvement in policies and programs to enhance these prospects.

Since the 2010s, the size and expanse of Nepali diaspora has grown dramatically, the numbers perhaps reaching 800,000 in 2022 in the more …

The Rise Of Southern Nevada As A Cluster For Metropolitan Transit Technology Innovations, Arthur C. Nelson

Policy Briefs and Reports

Southern Nevada is emerging as the nation’s leader in private sector-driven innovations in transportation technologies. From the humble beginnings of a monorail system serving a portion of major hotel and gaming venues along the Las Vegas Strip, now supplemented by an array of people movers, Southern Nevada continues to attract transit innovations in tunneling, Hyperloop, and driverless vehicle delivery technologies. The region may soon anchor a high-speed rail system connecting Southern Nevada to Los Angeles. The purpose of this briefing paper is to frame the nature of this emerging transportation cluster and the opportunities this creates for Southern Nevada to …

Legislative Bill 519: Creating And Lobbying For Original Legislation, Brooklyn Terrill

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

This project reflects the process of writing and attempting to pass state legislation, Legislative Bill 519, as a college student. LB 519 is an immunity policy for certain drug and alcohol charges that would be potentially prohibitive to a survivor or witness of sexual assault reporting the crime. The first several sections cover the process of developing and introducing legislation. These sections cover the process of developing the idea for LB 519 and the thought process behind the language and structure of the bill. It then covers the advocacy portion of passing a bill which includes testifying and lobbying for …

Learning Styles, Megan Paul

Umbrella Summaries

What are learning styles?

The concept of learning styles is the idea that people differ in the way that they learn best, and instructors should determine each trainee’s optimal style and then use training methods that match the trainee’s style (Pashler, 2009). There are dozens of different learning style classifications, including such styles or dimensions as visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile modality preferences (Dunn & Greggs, 2003, cited in Coffield et al., 2004); concrete vs. abstract and sequential vs. random (Gregorc, 1982a, cited in Coffield et al., 2004); holistic vs. analytic and verbalizer vs. imager (Riding & Raynor, 1998, cited …

Criminal Justice Update - March 2022, Autumn R. Chassie

Criminal Justice Updates

The Criminal Justice Update is a monthly newsletter created by the Adams County Bar Foundation Fellow providing updates in criminal justice policy coming from Pennsylvania's courts and legislature as well as the US Supreme Court.

Contents:

• Updates from PA Governor's Office - No new updates this month
• Updates from the PA Legislature - No new updates this month
• Updates from the Courts
• U.S. Supreme Court: Criminal Law & Procedure
• PA Supreme Court: No new updates this month
• PA Superior Court: Criminal Law & Procedure

Global Climate Governance: Rising Trend Of Translateral Cooperation, Nataliya Stranadko

Public Affairs and Policy Faculty Publications and Presentations

The transformation from the Kyoto Protocol to the Paris Agreement has been analyzed by international relations scholars, international law, and transnational governance theory. The international relations literature looks at the climate regime from a perspective of power distribution, state interests, institutions, and multilateral negotiations. International law theory focuses on legal analysis and design of international climate agreements. The transnational governance literature examines the participation of transnational actors at different levels of governance. However, each of these theories overlooks a bilateral trend of cooperation in a multilateral setting that arises as part of the construction or reconstruction of the international regime. …

Hope Dies Last: The Progressive Potential And Regressive Reality Of The Antibalkanization Approach To Racial Equality, David Simson

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

This Article relies on Critical Race Theory concepts and social science research to make an important and timely contribution to a debate in law and public policy that is both long-standing and of immense current importance: What is the relationship between social cohesion on the one hand, and racial equality progress on the other?

[...]

Over the last four decades, the Supreme Court’s equal protection jurisprudence on governmental race-consciousness has answered with an “antibalkanization approach” which prioritizes social cohesion. Indeed, this approach views social cohesion as a prerequisite for racial equality progress. It considers racial hostility and resentment among White …

From Private Prejudice To Public Policy: How Religious Conservatives Use Liberalism To Control Women's Bodies -- The United States And Israel In Comparative Perspective, Gila Stopler

William & Mary Bill of Rights Journal

The Article uses the feminist critique of the patriarchal nature of religion and liberalism, the feminist critique of flaws in political liberalism, and a socio-political analysis of the power of religious conservative groups in the United States and Israel to claim that religious conservatives use the patriarchal nature of liberalism, its inherent flaws, and conservative political power to turn private religious prejudice into public policy. Analyzing the constitutional and legal status of religion in the United States and the recent dramatic changes it has undergone, the Article shows that contrary to popular belief, and due to the aforementioned factors, the …

Executive Summaries

The Foundation Review

No abstract provided.

Giving With Pride: Considering Participatory Grantmaking In An Anti-Racist, Lgbtq+ Community Foundation, Elizabeth J. Dale, Nicole J. Plastino

The Foundation Review

Institutional racism is woven into organizations, processes, and practices in complex ways that inhibit transformational change. Participatory grantmaking and trust-based philanthropy are two paradigms that can shift such power dynamics in foundation giving. This article examines how Pride Foundation, a regional LGBTQ+ community foundation in the Pacific Northwest, restructured its grantmaking as part of a broader organization-wide commitment to racial justice.

Through an embedded case study, the authors followed Pride Foundation in the first year of transforming its grantmaking to address two questions: the factors foundations should consider when exploring participatory grantmaking, and how a foundation can best navigate a …

Faith-Based Public Foundations: Identifying The Field And Assessing Its Impact, Allison K. Ralph, Brad R. Fulton, Samuel Allen

The Foundation Review

Charitable activity is a core tenet of most faith traditions, and many charitable organizations have a religious identity. However, little is known about the prevalence and scale of faith-based foundations, and how they differ from secular foundations.

This article identifies the field of public foundations, differentiates between faith-based and secular foundations, and compares their characteristics by analyzing Form 990 data. An analysis of these data estimates that 24% of all public charities operate as foundations and that 17% of public foundations are faith-based. These findings are used to generate first-ever estimates for the entire field of public foundations.

This analysis …

Grassroots Environmental Justice Work And Philanthropy: Challenges And Opportunities, Jennifer S. Ramirez, Ana I. Baptista, Molly Greenberg, Adrienne Perovich, Anna Yulsman, Antonio Lopez, Andrew Rosenberg

The Foundation Review

Across the United States, grassroots groups within the environmental justice movement are leading important work on the front lines of the climate crisis, especially in marginalized communities. Despite the importance of these organizations, the philanthropic sector has devoted the lion’s share of environmental funding to more mainstream nonprofits.

Building Equity and Alignment for Environmental Justice and the Tishman Environment and Design Center at The New School conducted a landscape assessment study of environmental funders and grassroots environmental justice organizations in the Gulf South and the Midwest. The study had four research aims: gain a greater understanding of environmental justice funding, …

Lead, Advise, Witness: Shifting Mindsets To Achieving Impact At Scale, Jeffrey Sunshine, Bernadette Sangalang

The Foundation Review

The David and Lucile Packard Foundation created Starting Smart and Strong, a 10-year, place-based initiative in three California communities, to develop and test solutions that support parents, caregivers, and educators as they prepare young children to be healthy and ready for school. The initiative brings together public and private partners to create comprehensive early learning systems, with a focus on impact at scale.

Seven years into Starting Smart and Strong, we offer key insights into our experiences as program staff managing this complex initiative and how our approach to scaling impact has shifted over the course of the strategy. Listening …

Lasso For Stochastic Frontier Models With Many Efficient Firms, William C. Horrace, Hyunseok Jung, Yoonseok Lee

Center for Policy Research

We apply the adaptive LASSO (Zou, 2006) to select a set of maximally efficient firms in the panel fixed-effect stochastic frontier model. The adaptively weighted L1 penalty with sign restrictions for firm-level inefficiencies allows simultaneous estimation of the maximal efficiency and firm-level inefficiency parameters, which results in a faster rate of convergence of the corresponding estimators than the least-squares dummy variable approach. We show that the estimator possesses the oracle property and selection consistency still holds with our proposed tuning parameter selection criterion. We also propose an efficient optimization algorithm based on coordinate descent. We apply the method to estimate …

Collective Cognitive Capital, Emily R. D. Murphy

William & Mary Law Review

This Article calls for a new project for law and neuroscience. It outlines a structural, not individual, application of brain and behavioral science that is aligned with the general goal of basic science research: improving the lives of citizens with a better understanding of the human experience. It asks brain and behavioral science to move explicitly into public policy territory, and specifically onto ground more traditionally occupied by economists—but in ways the project of “behavioral economics” has not yet ventured. Put simply, policy analysts should focus on brains—“collective cognitive capital”—with the same intensity with which they focus on money, rights, …

Senior Hunger In The Mountain West, 2019, Ally M. Beckwith, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Health

This fact sheet highlights data on senior hunger in the Mountain West region in 2019 as originally reported in Feeding America’s The State of Senior Hunger annual series. This report focuses on the extent of food insecurity among seniors in the United States. Seniors are defined as those who are 60 years of age or older.

The State Of Mental Health In The Mountain West, Olivia K. Cheche, Kristian Thymianos, Katie M. Gilbertson, Kelliann Beavers, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Health

This fact sheet explores mental health rankings of Mountain West states from Mental Health America’s (MHA) 2022 report, The State of Mental Health in America. This study offers a snapshot of U.S. mental health based on data across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. MHA is the nation’s leading community based mental health nonprofit, founded in 1909, and “dedicated to addressing the needs of those living with mental illness and promoting the overall mental health of all.” This report is a companion to MHA’s interactive data available through its website.

Immigration Federalism In The United States: Constructing A Contemporary Institutional Framework Centered On Local Communities Through A Case Study Approach, Sara Kuehlhorn Friedman

Dissertations and Theses

This research study presents a new model of immigration federalism which integrates existing theories into a framework that emphasizes agency at the local level. Unlike dominant models of federalism that observe the cascading effect of higher-level policy on lower levels of government, this research focuses on empirical evidence at the local level to understand its relation to policy at higher levels. Immigration federalism is receiving substantial interest in scholarly work and in practice, but it lacks a cohesive and comprehensive theory explaining variation at the community level. There is little reason to expect sweeping changes in immigration policy at the …

2014-2019 National Science Foundation (Nsf) Rankings By Total R&D Expenditures, Katie M. Gilbertson, Caitlin J. Saladino, William E. Brown Jr.

Higher Education

This fact sheet presents National Science Foundation (NSF) funding data for 10 individual research universities in addition to the combined funding received by the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) and the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) for the years 2014 to 2019.

Hygiene, Storage, And Waste Management For The Unsheltered Community: Gaps & Opportunities Analysis, Jacen Greene, Todd Ferry, Lisa Hawash, Marisa Zapata, Nicholas M. Puczkowskyj

Homelessness Research & Action Collaborative Publications and Presentations

This study, completed in early February 2022, included focus groups and interviews with 18 government employees and service providers, interviews with 19 people experiencing unsheltered homelessness, a review of research literature and news articles on the topic, and previous surveys and research from Portland State University to better understand gaps and opportunities in providing hygiene, storage and waste management to people living unsheltered.

Effect Of Covid-19 On The Wellbeing Of Healthcare Professionals In Public Isolation Hospitals In Egypt, Shaimaa Sabbah

Theses and Dissertations

One of the most vulnerable groups severely hit by the COVID-19 pandemic has been the Healthcare Professionals (HCPs), especially the physicians, pharmacists, and nurses who work in public Isolation hospitals. The Egyptian medical syndicate declared the death of more than 600 physicians from February 2020 till January 2022. In the meantime, the Egyptian government has worked on different policies for relieving the negative effects of the pandemic on this vulnerable group; however, easing restrictions, no total lockdown implementation, and monitoring bureaucracy has negatively affected the wellbeing of those HCPs. The study aims to figure out recommended policies to protect HCPs’ …

Trainee Reactions, Megan Paul

Umbrella Summaries

What are trainee reactions?

Trainee reactions refer to “subjective evaluations learners make about their training experiences” (Sitzmann et al., 2008, p. 280). Commonly referred to as “level 1” evaluations (e.g., Kirkpatrick, 1998), reactions are the most commonly used type of training evaluation and are measured with post-training surveys. Though measures are occasionally included in published research, there are no universal or even widely used measures. Instead, questions are developed by each organization or trainer based on their particular goals and interests. As a result, there is significant variation in what is measured. Originally, reactions referred only to how well a …

Tactical Mistakes: Women's Role In Terrorism, Laura Daniel

Liberty University Journal of Statesmanship & Public Policy

Since the 1970s, the word "terrorism" has become a well-known term. Almost two decades after 9/11, it has become a part of everyday vocabulary and, at times, dominates the news cycle. However, the faces we see associated with terrorism are mainly men. When talking of a training camp or a video claiming responsibility for terrorist attacks, women are not a part of the majority. However, women do play a significant role in terrorism. This article evaluates the history of women in terrorism and their positions in terror organizations, as well as the tactical mistake of overlooking women's role in global …

Great Disaster: The Impact Of Covid-19 On Yemen, Joshua Odey

Liberty University Journal of Statesmanship & Public Policy

The COVID-19 pandemic negatively affected countries around the world. Travel became restricted as countries around the world tried to control the pandemic. The global economy was also negatively affected. Nonetheless, many countries around the world took measures to control the economy and have successfully reduced the number of cases and the negative impact of COVID-19. This is not so with other countries such as Yemen, who is currently facing a humanitarian crisis that has greatly weakened their ability to respond to the pandemic.

The purpose of this research paper is to show how COVID-19 has negatively affected Yemen. For more …

Illegal Abortion: Truth Vs. Fiction, Andrew T. Looker Jr.

Liberty University Journal of Statesmanship & Public Policy

Numerous factual errors are made regarding the issue of abortion. These false claims are made in an attempt to scuttle efforts to restrict abortion. Some of the most frequent claims pertain to the effectiveness of pro-life laws themselves. One such claim is that thousands of women died from unsolicited abortions when the procedure was illegal, and that maternal deaths declined rapidly afterwards due to the legal availability of abortion. Another claim is that laws that either restrict or outlaw abortion are ineffective in reducing abortion rates. A comprehensive analysis of the best available data proves these assertions to be undeniably …

Addressing Work-Related Traumatic Stress Nebraska - Intervention Background, Quality Improvement Center For Workforce Development

Other QIC-WD Products

What is Secondary Traumatic Stress (STS) and why was an intervention designed to address it?

The Quality Improvement Center for Workforce Development (QIC-WD), in partnership with the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services Division of Children and Family Services (DCFS), conducted several surveys with a sample (40%) of child welfare workers and supervisors in December 2017, as a part of the needs assessment process. One of those surveys assessed the presence of secondary traumatic stress (STS) symptoms. Of the child welfare workers and supervisors that responded, 53% indicated that they had recently experienced elevated levels of STS symptoms. This …

Organizational Change Process Milwaukee - Intervention Overview, Quality Improvement Center For Workforce Development

Other QIC-WD Products

This Intervention Overview draws heavily from Building Cultures and Climates for Effective Human Services: Understanding and Improving Organizational Social Contexts with the ARC model, Oxford University Press (2018). This book was written by Drs. Anthony Hemmelgarn and Charles Glisson based on 20+ years of intensive implementation and research experience within child welfare and mental health organizations. Dr. Hemmelgarn consulted with the QIC-WD on this project and served as the ARC specialist in Milwaukee.

ARC is an organizational change process aimed at improving organizational culture and climate and the availability, responsiveness, and continuity of services in human service organizations. It …

Organizational Change Process Milwaukee - Intervention Background, Quality Improvement Center For Workforce Development

Other QIC-WD Products

What is ARC and why was it selected?

ARC stands for availability, responsiveness, and continuity and is an organizational change process. It is aimed at improving the organizational culture and climate and the availability, responsiveness, and continuity of services provision in human service organizations. ARC involves three primary strategies:

1. embedding five core principles of effective organizations into all aspects of organizational functioning;
2. installing most (but not necessarily all) of 12 key organizational component tools and processes to improve services in accordance with the five principles; and
3. building mental models and shared beliefs that support the successful application of ARC principles …