O’Neill SchoolBloomington

O’Neill faculty member will serve on National Academy committee to advise the EPA

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Shahzeen AttariIndiana University O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs Associate Professor Shahzeen Attari will serve on an ad hoc committee of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine that will identify emerging scientific and technological advances from a broad range of disciplines.

Those advances will be provided to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development (ORD) to consider in its research planning to support the EPA’s mission for protecting human health and the environment. The committee is also expected to recommend to ORD how it can best capitalize on those advances to meet current and future challenges over the next couple of decades.

Attari is one of 17 members of the committee, which is expected to produce its report in May 2022.

In carrying out its study, the committee will consider EPA’s mission, strategic planning documents, and current initiatives, as well as other broader topics including, but not limited to, biotechnology, data science (along with artificial intelligence and machine learning), climate impacts, environmental monitoring and sensors (outdoor and indoor), and impacts of stressors on ecological and human health. The committee also will consider advances that help EPA better incorporate systems thinking into multimedia, interdisciplinary approaches.

Before joining the O’Neill School, Attari was a postdoctoral fellow at the Earth Institute and the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions at Columbia University. Attari has received numerous accolades, including being a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, and receiving the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship and IU’s Bicentennial Medal.

Her research focuses on people’s judgments and decisions about climate change and resource use. Her key areas of expertise include behavioral science, survey design, and data analysis.

“It is an honor to serve on this committee,” she said. “I look forward to helping the team harness the value of behavioral science for protecting the environment.”

The committee held its first meetings in late March, and is expected to finalize its recommendations over the next 14 months. Its report will build on relevant past efforts, including the National Academies report “Science for Environmental Protection: The Road Ahead.”

Shahzeen Attari to moderate panel with Nobel Laureate, acclaimed screenwriter, and world-renowned Sci-Fi author

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The worlds of Wakanda, Mars, and Green Fluorescent Proteins will converge on Wednesday, March 31, and the O’Neill School’s Shahzeen Attari will be there front-and-center.

Attari will moderate “The Power of Stories: Writing the Future of Our Planet,” a prelude to the inaugural Nobel Prize Summit in April. The event will bring together three distinguished guests to discuss how the stories we tell now will affect future generations. The event is free and open to the public.

Panelists include:

  • Martin Chalfie, a University Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at Columbia University. In 2008 he shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his introduction of Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) as a biological marker.
  • Joe Robert Cole, co-writer of the Academy Award-nominated Black Panther, for which he received a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Award. His critically-acclaimed Netflix directorial debut All Day and a Night was released May 2020. He produced the Emmy-Winning FX series American Crime Story: The People vs. OJ Simpson, for which he earned a Writers Guild of America (WGA) Award for Outstanding Writing and is currently co-writing the sequel to Black Panther.
  • Kim Stanley Robinson, an American science fiction writer, best known for his Mars trilogy, Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars. He was sent to the Antarctica by the U.S. National Science Foundation in 1995 and 2016, and is advisor to the Clarion Writers’ Workshop and the Sierra Nevada Research Foundation. His most recent novel is about climate change and is called The Ministry for the Future.

“There are so many commonalities across these three guests,” Attari said. “Each of them deals with stories. Stories of the future. Stories that are empowering in terms of race and gender. Stories that expand our scientific approach. Whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, all of them are storytellers, and my goal is to try to figure out what can be learned about how to build a more sustainable future.”

The use of storytelling to convey information and affect change is an area of active research for Attari. Her research focuses on the psychology of resource use and how to motivate public action on climate change. Attari and her lab work on problems that draw on both cognitive and environmental science, and focus on perceptions, motivations, and biases related to climate change and sustainability.

Each guest on the panel, she says, brings a unique view of science and the role it plays in creating a better world.

 

USDA awards IU researchers $500,000 grant to study farm ownership among marginalized groups

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture has awarded researchers from Indiana University a $500,000 grant to study ways that the government can encourage new farm ownership among young and beginning farmers, farmers of color, and women.

Julia Valliant
Julia Valliant

The project, “Incentivizing Land Access For Small, Beginning And Socially Disadvantaged Farmers And Ranchers: Research, Extension And Community Of Practice,” will be led by Julia Valliant, assistant research scientist with the IU Ostrom Workshop and IU’s Sustainable Food Systems Science research group. The project will involve several O’Neill School faculty members, including James Farmer, Shellye Suttles, Justin Ross, and Burney Fischer. The researchers will partner with agricultural service provider American Farmland Trust in order to communicate directly with farmers and to establish a community of practice and national advisory team.

“Often, retiring farmland owners prefer to transfer their land to a beginning farmer to help them get started in agriculture — but lots of barriers get in their way,” said Valliant. “We will study policies that aim to diversify access to opportunity in agriculture by helping owners transfer their land to young and beginning farmers and farmers from historically excluded groups.”

New farmers help revitalize rural communities, but struggle to obtain land

According to the project proposal, 70,000 new farms are started in the U.S. every year. New farmers help to bring prosperity to rural communities and make outsized contributions to sustainable agriculture. However, they also face significant obstacles when trying to obtain land.

The market for available farmland is tight. Existing agricultural plots are often consolidated into larger farms or sold for development. Most new farmers do not inherit land and instead struggle to raise enough capital to compete. At the same time, retiring farm owners face disincentives when transferring their land, so they delay doing so during their lifetime and typically transfer to an established landowner.

These problems are compounded for farmers of color and women. Although people of color make up more than a quarter of the U.S. population and provide more than 60% of farm labor, they make up only 3% of agricultural landowners. Women – half the U.S. population – make up less than a quarter of agricultural landowners.

Government programs exist to promote new farm ownership, but are not well understood

Federal and state governments have tried to help beginning farmers overcome these obstacles through financial incentives. However, little research has been done to evaluate their effectiveness.

One way that the government tries to promote new farm ownership is through programs called Land Access Policy Incentives (LAPIs). At the state level, most LAPIs award a refundable state tax credit to a current farm owner who chooses a qualifying beginning farmer as their land’s next operator or owner. Other LAPIs compensate beginning farmers directly. Similar programs exist at the federal level. In total, these efforts involve over $210M of federal and state funding. This month’s American Rescue Plan dedicated part of an additional $1B to address discrimination in land access.

Valliant and her team aim to measure the reach and impact of these programs. They will start by reviewing public documents to study how the programs were designed. They will also interview and survey key stakeholders, including landowners and young, beginning, and marginalized farmers, about their experiences.

“These incentive programs appear to be a win-win-win for entering farmers, sustainable agriculture, and existing landowners. More and more states are creating them through bipartisan agreements, across the aisle,” said Valliant. “But right now the effects of the incentives are not clear, and some of the policy programs need to be better mobilized to reach their intended audiences. In this project, we will figure out policy next steps in diversifying access to agricultural opportunity in the U.S.”

Ultimately, the project aims to help revitalize rural communities by helping a new generation of farmers enter the field – one that is a bit more representational of the communities they serve.

Their research will begin in spring 2021.

IU Research

Indiana University’s world-class researchers have driven innovation and creative initiatives that matter for 200 years. From curing testicular cancer to collaborating with NASA to search for life on Mars, IU has earned its reputation as a world-class research institution. Supported by $854 million last year from our partners, IU researchers are building collaborations and uncovering new solutions that improve lives in Indiana and around the globe.

50 years in the making

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Fifty years ago, on March 5, 1971, the University Faculty Council received a letter proposing that Indiana University establish a new academic unit “concerned generally with the problems of human society that transcend particular disciplines and especially those of man-­environment relationships.”

1971 letter to University Faculty Council proposing the establishment of SPEA
1971 Proposal to Establish SPEA

The accompanying report makes the case for the School of Public and Environmental Affairs:

There is growing evidence throughout the State, (and throughout the Nation as well), that people would like to see the universities dealing more effectively and dispassionately with the needs and problems of modern society. Nearly every major problem confronting modern society cuts across disciplinary and professional boundaries. The ability of society to cope with these problems depends, in part, upon … the marshalling of knowledge and its translation into findings and propositions useful to the voter, the public official, and the concerned citizen.

The report concludes:

The main advantage of a School of Public and Environmental Affairs is to permit flexibility … to make use of talent, wherever it exists, to work toward solution of difficult, complicated public problems, particularly those of human behavior in relation to the human environment, both natural and made by man.

The school was founded the following year in 1972. Now, five decades later, the O’Neill School is recognized as a world leader in public and environmental affairs and boasts an alumni network of more than 36,000 around the world.

O’Neill students win beginner prize at health-themed hackathon

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picture of teammates including Jouzi and Nworah
Natali Jouzi (top right) and Mackenzie Nworah (bottom right) with their hackathon teammates

Two O’Neill master’s students, Natali Jouzi and Mackenzie Nworah, recently teamed up to compete in a health-themed hackathon through Stonybrook University. After a fun but grueling 24 hours of coding workshops and competition, they earned the title of “Best Beginner Hack” for their website application aimed at healthcare workers who focus on nutrition.

Jouzi and Nworah met for the first time during orientation for IU’s Master of Science in Health Management (MSHM) program. Though they’d only known each other for a few months and neither had much experience with coding, they decided to pair up to enter HackHealth. Their four-person team included two members from Iowa State University who had backgrounds in computer engineering and human-computer interaction. Together, they figured out how best to leverage their individual strengths to contribute to their project.

“We were able to apply many of the skills we’ve been learning about in the MSHM program, like presentation skills, project management skills, and team management,” said Nworah. “We had just studied some FranklinCovey collaboration and teamwork principles, so we incorporated those, which really set us apart and enabled us to work cohesively together as a team.”

Hackathons are generally 24-hour long events, where participants learn about and practice coding skills and compete to build web applications. They notoriously include all-nighters, but both Jouzi and Nworah insist they made time to sleep. “Our MSHM program includes a focus on self-care, so I was sure to sleep a bit. I knew that in order to focus and present our project well, I’d need to take care of myself,” said Jouzi.

Their winning project, “International Food Guide for Health Professionals,” was a website application intended to help dietitians, diabetes educators, gastroenterologists, and other healthcare workers give better dietary recommendations to their patients.

Before joining the MSHM program, Jouzi was a registered dietitian. She witnessed firsthand how a lack of cultural competency could impact patient care. “Many patients’ needs were not fulfilled because their prescribed diet did not reflect their current diet,” said Jouzi. “Our goal with this project was to enhance healthcare professionals’ knowledge about things like eating practices, traditional dishes, cooking methods, and food taboos from around the world. They can consult this resource to say ‘If a patient is from X country, what are the implications for their diet?’”

In the future, they’d like to modify their app so it can be used to inform things like hospital menus or even travelers who want to experience traditional dishes. But first, they have a degree to finish.

“Participating in this hackathon reminded me that there are many different directions I can go with health management,” said Jouzi. “I’m discovering different fields, like healthcare IT, data analytics – lots of new opportunities for me to find out where my passion is.”

Nworah agreed. “I got way more out of this competition than I was expecting. I got to experience working on the back end with coding and the technological side of health care. I also had the opportunity to build connections. I met people with different backgrounds and added them on LinkedIn. You never know how those connections can expand in the future.”

 

Salamova awarded USDA grant to study toxic chemicals in food packaging

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amina salamova
Amina Salamova

The Agriculture and Food Research Initiative of the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture recently awarded a grant worth $479,712 to a team of researchers including Amina Salamova, associate research scientist at the O’Neill School, to study toxic chemicals in food packaging.

The project, “Mapping Potential Human Exposure to Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) from Domestic and Imported Food Packaging,” is a collaboration with Carla Ng (University of Pittsburgh). Salamova will lead the efforts on targeted analysis of PFAS. Research will begin in early 2021 and last through the end of 2023.

PFAS are a class of chemicals widely used in food packaging because of their non-stick properties and their ability to repel oil. PFAS are also known to accumulate in the human body, sometimes with toxic results. People who consume a lot of packaged foods or fast food have higher concentrations of these chemicals in their blood, indicating that chemicals from the packaging enter our bodies through contaminated food.

Select PFAS have been voluntarily removed from U.S. markets and banned in the European Union. However, other countries are not bound by these restrictions – and researchers have very little information about which PFAS are still used in food packaging and what their effects might be.

Salamova and her colleagues will perform the first systematic survey of PFAS in both domestic and imported packaged foods. They will start by building a database of packaged food available in both national supermarket chains and local international markets to come up with a representative selection of foods to study. Then, they will use state-of-the-art methods to analyze which PFAS are present in food packaging and in what quantity. They will also study how those chemicals are likely to affect humans, using a combination of computer simulations and experiments with zebra fish.

“We’re excited to conduct research that has such big implications for consumer safety. This research will help us understand a lot more about a group of chemicals that are widely used but not well understood,” said Salamova.

The researchers hope to contribute to better policymaking by making regulators aware of the types of food imports most likely to contain toxic PFAS. They also hope to provide guidance that can help consumers reduce their exposure to toxic chemicals and inform scientists about how specific PFAS structures or mixtures lead to increased toxicity to help them design less hazardous chemicals.

IU Research

IU’s world-class researchers have driven innovation and creative initiatives that matter for 200 years. From curing testicular cancer to collaborating with NASA to search for life on Mars, IU has earned its reputation as a world-class research institution. Supported by $854 million last year from our partners, IU researchers are building collaborations and uncovering new solutions that improve lives in Indiana and around the globe.

What has happened since the start of the COVID-19 crisis to opioid use disorder medication and to medications in general?

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Americans filled roughly the same number of prescriptions for opioid use disorder (OUD) medication before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and after, according to the first research using national prescription data representing all payer sources, co-conducted by Indiana University and IUPUI faculty members who are part of IU’s Addictions Grand Challenge.

But while prescriptions for buprenorphine plateaued after March 2020, prescriptions for other drugs show a troubling decline, suggesting more flexible use of telemedicine through new federal buprenorphine guidelines played a vital role in keeping those suffering from OUD on their prescribed medication. The share of prescriptions paid by Medicaid rose, pointing to the protective role of Medicaid during economic distress.

The study, co-conducted by the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs’ Kosali Simon and IUPUI Department of Economics’ Sumedha Gupta, examined prescription data from a U.S. database that includes 92 percent of the country’s retail pharmacy claims (as part of the COVID-19 Research Database, a pro-bono cross-industry collaborative). It appears today in JAMA Internal Medicine.

They counted the number of individuals who filled prescriptions each week between May 1, 2019 and June 28, 2020 and compared the trends before and after the transition—the week of March 16. That’s when the federal government relaxed longstanding guidelines on telemedicine, allowing authorized practitioners greater flexibility to prescribe medication for OUDs during the COVID-19 crisis. Rather than relying on in-person visits, practitioners were able to host virtual appointments that made it easier for some patients to keep their prescriptions current.

The ability for practitioners to continue prescribing OUD medications via nontraditional ways may have helped retain patients who might have otherwise discontinued treatment, Simon said.

“Between March 2019 and March 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a 9.1 percent increase in drug overdose deaths indicating that the opioid crisis was far from over as we entered the new COVID-19 crisis,” she said. “Many patients who rely on medications for opioid use disorder might not have been able to continue seeking treatment for buprenorphine. The relaxation of federal guidelines to allow practitioners to prescribe that medication through virtual visits or other digital methods most likely saved lives.”

The researchers, including the University of Michigan’s Thuy D. Nguyen, also looked at the number of all prescriptions for any medication over the same period. There was much slower growth (just under nine percent) between May 2019 and March 2020 for all prescriptions compared to the 26 percent increase for buprenorphine. But from March through June 2020, there was an abrupt and significant decrease in the number of all prescriptions issued.

“Relaxing the telemedicine guidelines, in a timely response to the pandemic, worked to retain continuity of buprenorphine treatment, one of the most effective treatments for opioid use disorder,” Nguyen said. The authors noted that there was no way to identify whether a prescription was new, or the continuation of an already-prescribed treatment.

The study also found that the number of patients who paid for prescriptions with cash significantly declined after the pandemic, while prescriptions paid for by Medicaid remained steady. Dr. Brendan Saloner from Johns Hopkins University mentioned, “if you look by payer, Medicaid holds much steadier than other sources, suggesting that Medicaid may be more of a stopgap in a period of economic dislocation.”

The study was co-authored by Simon, Gupta, Nguyen, and Engy Ziedan (Tulane University), G. Caleb Alexander (Johns Hopkins University), Brendan Saloner (Johns Hopkins University), and Bradley D. Stein (RAND Corporation).

 

COVID-19 turned parents into proxy educators. New research examines the stress it caused.

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When the emerging COVID-19 pandemic caused most U.S. schools to close and transition to distance learning last spring, many parents were forced into new roles as proxy educators for their children.

A new study co-authored by O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs Assistant Professor Alberto Ortega, published today in Educational Researcher, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association, found that roughly 51 percent of all parents surveyed in March and April had at least one child struggling with distance learning and were themselves experiencing significantly higher levels of stress.

Ortega and co-authors found that parents with at least one student struggling with distance learning were 19 percent more likely than other parents to report anxiety. These parents also were 22 percent more likely to experience depression and were 20 percent more likely to have trouble sleeping.

In addition, they were 20 percent more likely to feel worried and 23 percent more likely to have little interest or pleasure in doing things.

“Students’ academic success ultimately relies on their parents’ emotional health during this fragile time, which sets the learning environment for their children,” Ortega said. “Without proper support, both parents and students will likely suffer.”

Prior research has shown that stressful learning environments tend to stifle students’ academic achievement.

“It is not clear when schools will return to normal,” said Ortega. “Since students will likely rely on some form of distance learning for the foreseeable future, parents could face longer periods of elevated stress and mental health disruptions. Addressing parents’ emotional needs during the pandemic has become essential for students’ success.”

The disparity in mental health distress resulting from having at least one child struggling with distance learning seems to be independent of income, the number of children in the home, and the number of days their school had been closed at the time of the survey, which was administered to more than 3,300 U.S. households.

Ortega’s co-authors on the study included Cassandra R. Davis (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Jevay Grooms (Howard University), and Edward Vargas (Arizona State University).

O’Neill faculty and staff complete Mental Health First Aid training

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Twenty-five members of the faculty and staff of the O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs in Bloomington have successfully completed Mental Health First Aid Training.

The training is a nationally recognized curriculum that increases mental health awareness, decreases stigma, helps people understand signs of symptoms of mental health disorders, and provides guidance on how to help someone having a mental health issue.

“Just like traditional medical First Aid training, this Mental Health First Aid Training gives individuals the skills to recognize, respond, and react until a person suffering from a mental health crisis can get the professional mental health services they need,” said Megan Starnes, director of strategic initiatives at the O’Neill School.

Many of the school’s student services staff at the school have completed the training and are now certified to assist. Several other staff and faculty members also finished the training, which covered common signs and symptoms of both mental illness and substance use, how to interact with a person in crisis, and how to connect that person with the help they need.

The training teaches individuals to assess for the risk of suicide or self-harm, listen nonjudgmentally, give reassurance and information, encourage appropriate professional help, and encourage self-help and other support strategies.

Note: If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental health emergency, please call the campus crisis telephone line at (812) 855-5711 (after-hours, choose option 1), go to your local hospital’s emergency department, or call 911.

 

 

 

What economics can tell us about the opioid crisis

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Opioid misuse claimed 128 American lives a day in 2018 and was estimated to cost more than $500 billion annually. Those numbers have continued to rise. To work toward solving a public health crisis of this magnitude, scholars need to use tools from multiple disciplines – including economics.

In a new NBER working paper, “Review of Economic Studies on the Opioid Crisis,” Johanna Catherine Maclean (Temple University), Justine Mallatt (U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis), Christopher J. Ruhm (University of Virginia), and Kosali Simon (Indiana University O’Neill School) analyze the origins and consequences of the opioid crisis through an economic lens. Their paper summarizes contributions from economic research, including work that looks at supply- and demand-side factors affecting opioid addiction, labor market effects of the crisis, related demographic trends, and unintended policy consequences.

“Economists can help by using rich data to study things like incentives and spillover effects,” said Kosali Simon, Herman B Wells Endowed Professor and Associate Vice Provost for Health Sciences. “What can health insurance claims data tell us about the effectiveness of prescription drug monitoring programs? How does reducing the number of opioid prescriptions affect demand for harmful substitutes, like heroin and fentanyl? These are the types of causal relationships economists are trained to look for.”

The authors point to areas that need further study, including the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the relationship of the opioid epidemic to other drug problems in the U.S. They also encourage their fellow economists to create taxonomies that could help researchers more easily compare different policy approaches.

Their research is being considered for publication in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Economics and Finance. Read the working paper, part of IU’s Responding to the Addictions Crisis Grand Challenges initiative, at NBER (here).

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