This essay examines community narratives around Keep Virginia Beautiful's Green
Grants initiative. Green Grants is a signature annual program that awards grants to organizations
throughout Virginia in support of projects aligned with one of Keep Virginia Beautiful’s three
pillars: recycling, litter prevention, and community beautification. The primary research
questions are...
In some legislative bodies, the use of terms like climate change and global warming is frequently seen as taboo. In the United States, voters who identify as right-leaning have reported little concern about the environment or climate change. This lack of interest is mirrored by Republican legislators who often publicly...
The enactment of the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010 marked a critical moment in American healthcare history. The ACA introduced Medicaid expansion, a policy designed to extend healthcare coverage to a larger population of low-income Americans. This policy quickly became a topic of debate and led to...
Water in the U.S. West faces considerable challenges and uncertainties. Climate change has intensified weather extremes, threatening the water sources that support the region’s many stakeholders. Urban water providers are among the stakeholders contending with the challenge of providing reliable water supplies to their growing populations. Recognizing the critical role...
This research explores the prospects of legislation in Michigan to authorize statewide use of Overdose Fatality Review Teams (OFRTs) to address the escalating opioid crisis. OFRTs consist of multidisciplinary teams that collaborate for overdose prevention. These teams operate on a local to statewide level and are comprised of individuals from...
Access to broadband internet is vital for rural communities in the digital age, but persistent barriers impact adoption and availability. This topic is analyzed through the lens of the Community Capital Framework (Emery & Flora, 2006). By surveying county commissioners, the research aims to better understand rural broadband challenges and...
The question of “what is to be done” about the prevalence of houselessness in large US cities has become a top policy priority, Often left out of these discussions are the opinions of the unhoused about the policies that are designed to serve their needs. Most of the literature that...
Pregnant people have been criminalized for their pregnancy outcomes even after Roe v Wade established some rights to reproductive autonomy. Fetal personhood theory, changing societal conceptions of motherhood, and existing racial and class-based biases have fueled an increasing and complex patchwork of punitive policies and interpretations. This study analyzed 35...
Wildfires in the modern era have grown ever more destructive and dangerous following decades of suppression-only policies and climate change. Because of this, the wildfire incident management teams (IMTs) and their public information officers (PIOs) that manage these fires have taken on a more visible and important role, especially in...
As the Internet has radically changed modern life, much attention has been paid to the outcomes produced by the diffusion of online access. In the modern economy, reliable Internet access is a crucial tool offering better access to information and opportunities, increasing work efficiency, and facilitating personal connection, leaving those...
Oregon has one of the five highest homeless occupancy rates in the U.S., according to the Annual Homeless Assessment Report (2021). Using the current governor of Oregon’s (Tina Kotek) plan to decrease homelessness, which focuses primarily on housing developments and strategies, this study will first examine the merits of permanent...
Assisted living facilities represent a large portion of the long-term care facilities in the United States. Although there are not uniform policies regulating assisted living facilities, debates on the best way to ensure adequate staffing center on two approaches: required ratios or acuity-based staffing. The purpose of this study is...
In 2021, Oregon’s legislature passed House Bill 2021 with relative ease. House Bill 2021 is a mandate for the state’s two largest utilities to reduce carbon emissions from electricity generation on a decreasing scale, reaching 100% below baseline levels by 2040. This ambitious piece of legislation, meant to reduce the...
Homelessness is a visible and growing problem, with unsheltered rates of homelessness largely concentrated on the West Coast. There have been two main explanations for homelessness over the past four decades, either individual or structural failings, and those explanations have produced different policy responses. Eugene, Oregon has one of the...
High-speed police pursuits occur daily across the United States. On average, one person dies per day as the result of a police pursuit. In certain contexts, it might be acceptable to society for a police officer to engage in a high-speed pursuit. The ends could justify the means. For example,...
The Oregon coast faces complex environmental and social challenges, such as the threat of a regionally disastrous Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ) earthquake and tsunami. Researchers are united in their assertion that the CSZ is new, the region is due for a quake, and to mitigate this hazard society must collaborate...
For university students, academic misconduct policies are designed to promote learning and protect the university’s reputation. Misconduct consequences can impact students’ grades, finances, and even visa status. While elements of such policies are similar across institutions, there are uneven reporting patterns within institutions, leaving some students more vulnerable to these...
The Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) has emerged as a method of understanding how stories and evidence are portrayed within policy arenas to support policy discussions and what end goals these policy narratives aim to meet. This study applies the Narrative Policy framework to policy narratives used to discuss and share...
On any given night across the United States there are over half a million individuals that are experiencing homelessness. Much of the growth in homelessness has been concentrated on the West Coast, with states like California, Oregon, and Hawaii having the highest percentages of people experiencing homelessness that are unsheltered....
The COVID-19 pandemic became the deadliest epidemic since the Influenza pandemic in the early 1900s. (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2023). Every government level across the United States had differing responses to COVID-19, and politicians have been the center of attention for their role in COVID policy support or...