Seat Belts and Second Chances

2021 ◽  
pp. 153-178
Author(s):  
Craig J. Bryan

This chapter argues for a potentially high-impact but underutilized strategy: restricting or limiting access to highly lethal methods for suicide, especially firearms. It begins by describing the role of seatbelts in traffic fatality prevention. Prevention through design assumes that injuries, illnesses, and fatalities can be most effectively reduced or controlled by designing and building systems that eliminate or remove potential hazards from the very beginning, before they can cause any harm. If we shifted our mindset surrounding suicide prevention in a way that better aligned with the prevention through design approach underlying traffic fatality prevention, we might reconsider the considerable time, effort, and resources being devoted to the development and implementation of suicide risk identification and detection methods, and consider instead the potential impact of redirecting these efforts toward environmentally focused strategies that are more likely to reduce suicide rates. The chapter then considers the life-saving effects of laws and policies designed to reduce access to firearms, discussing firearm suicide in the United States.

Author(s):  
Richard Alba ◽  
Nancy Foner

This chapter explores the role of post-World War II immigration laws and policies of France, Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, United States, and Canada in giving rise to the mix of new social groups on their social landscapes. In one fundamental sense, the immigration regimes of European countries, the United States, and Canada are very much alike. All are restrictive in that they set limits on the numbers and type of people who can settle as permanent residents. There are, however, important transatlantic differences, lending some support to the common perception that Canada and the United States are more welcoming of immigration. Western European countries continue to be wary about immigration from outside of Europe. Their wariness is reflected in their attempts to make migration through marriages to the second generation more difficult as well as in immigration laws that constrain economic migration from the global South, keeping its numbers modest while seeking to select high human-capital immigrants.


Author(s):  
Richard M. Titmuss

This chapter examines the demand for blood in England and Wales and the United States. Between 1948 and 1967, the annual number of donations of blood in England and Wales rose by 269 per cent. Some part of this increase in supply has met the increase in the amount of blood actually demanded and used per 100 patients treated in hospitals. Meanwhile, estimates have been made that 5,100,000 pints of blood were collected in the United States in 1956 and around 6,000,000 pints in 1966–7. Some of the factors responsible for this world trend relate to the major life-saving role of blood. Others are adding yearly to the relatively new role for human blood of acting as a vital preventive and therapeutic agent. Surgery in its many branches has, for example, been given a new lease of life by increases in the volume of blood available and the advent of effective blood transfusion services.


2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 690-695 ◽  
Author(s):  
James G. Hodge ◽  
Lexi C. White ◽  
Andrew Sniegowski

Promoting and protecting the public's health in the United States and abroad are intricately tied to laws and policies. Laws provide support for public health measures, authorize specific actions among public and private actors, and empower public health officials. Laws can also inhibit or restrict efforts designed to improve communal health through protections for individual rights or structural principles of government. Advancing the health of populations through law is complex and subject to constant tradeoffs. This column seeks to explore the role of law in the interests of public health through scholarly and applied assessments across a spectrum of key issues. The first of these assessments focuses on a critical topic in emergency legal preparedness.


IAWA Journal ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Johnson ◽  
Lars Laestadius

This article describes new laws and policies that are being put in place to reduce illegal logging and associated trade in illegally sourced wood products. We place special emphasis on the demands posed by the Lacey Act in the United States, and highlight the subsequent needs for new knowledge and capacity in the field of basic and applied wood science. These needs include clear links among botanical and trade names; efficient and user-friendly methods for identifying the species and provenance of timber and derived fiber products, and for tracking these products from their origin to point of sale; and enhanced technologies and training for law enforcement activities.


2008 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 97-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Smita C. Banerjee ◽  
Kathryn Greene ◽  
Marina Krcmar ◽  
Zhanna Bagdasarov ◽  
Dovile Ruginyte

This study demonstrates the significance of individual difference factors, particularly gender and sensation seeking, in predicting media choice (examined through hypothetical descriptions of films that participants anticipated they would view). This study used a 2 (Positive mood/negative mood) × 2 (High arousal/low arousal) within-subject design with 544 undergraduate students recruited from a large northeastern university in the United States. Results showed that happy films and high arousal films were preferred over sad films and low-arousal films, respectively. In terms of gender differences, female viewers reported a greater preference than male viewers for happy-mood films. Also, male viewers reported a greater preference for high-arousal films compared to female viewers, and female viewers reported a greater preference for low-arousal films compared to male viewers. Finally, high sensation seekers reported a preference for high-arousal films. Implications for research design and importance of exploring media characteristics are discussed.


Author(s):  
Taylor F Brinkman

During the past decade, forty-six professional sports venues were constructed in the United States, while only 16 expansion teams were created by the major sports leagues. Nearly two thirds of these newly built stadiums and arenas were funded with public tax revenues, despite substantial evidence showing no positive economic impact of new sports stadium construction on local communities. In reviewing the economic literature, this article investigates the role of professional sports organizations in the construction and public subsidization of new sports venues. Franchise relocation and public stadium subsidization is a direct result of the monopoly power of professional sports leagues, whose franchise owners extract large subsidies from their host communities by threatening to relocate to viable alternative locations. After explaining how the most common methods of stadium subsidization project a disproportionate allocation of the benefits and costs of hosting a professional team to local community interests, this article outlines several considerations for local policymakers who seek to reinvigorate public discussion of equity concerns in professional sports finance.


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