Ideas, Actions, and Inspiration for a Better Tomorrow - October 10 Edition

Las Vegas, Remembrance

Remembering the victims of the Las Vegas shooting

“In 11 minutes of rapid gunfire into a Las Vegas concert crowd last Sunday night [October 1], a mass shooter killed 58 people attending a concert. As the NewsHour has done all week, tonight we remember the final 10 of those victims.”

Health Care, Underserved Communities

Listen and read:

Training New Doctors Right Where They’re Needed

“The first teaching health centers began training residents in 2011. They operate primarily out of clinics in rural communities and other areas where primary care physicians are in short supply.

The ideal ratio of primary care physicians to patients is about 1 for every 2,000, Stewart said. The ratio in east Bakersfield “is more like 1 to 6,000, so we have a lot of catching up to do.”

Though teaching health centers remain relatively new, experts say they’re already succeeding: Their residents generally stay in the regions where they trained, putting down roots in communities with a big demand for health care.

In June, the Rio Bravo program graduated its first class of six doctors. Two joined the staff at a Clinica Sierra Vista clinic in east Bakersfield. The other four are practicing in clinics serving low-income communities in Sacramento, Riverside and Los Angeles counties.”

Business, Startups, Women

How These 4 Women Built Hot Startups Without Compromising Their Ideals

“…Julia Hartz, the co-founder and CEO of Eventbrite, summed up the sentiment for everyone. “It’s table stakes for building a great company,” she says. “If you want to build a once in a lifetime company that really matters, and really changes the space,” then social impact, philanthropy, and economic uplift need to be part of your thinking. “Legacies are built on the practices of your company,” she says. Renfrew agreed. “You can do well by doing good, and you should.”

While all four founders had stories to share about the nuts and bolts of building businesses. From working with investors, getting to profitability, and surveying existing customers for new product ideas—the idea of an expanded bottom line was essential. And, in many cases, unusual.

One example: Equity. When is the right time to share equity with employees? The Silicon Valley model, it was agreed, was old school. “Men hoard all the equity and give it out in snippets,” said Renfrew. “If you’re going to ask people to be committed to your mission, they should be included.””

Conservation, Environment

Interview: 

Jane Goodall, Still Traveling the World and Speaking Up for Animals at 83

“People regularly approach Jane Goodall in airports, tears in their eyes, and tell her she’s their idol. She travels 300 days a year, and at 83, she speaks dreamily about her home in England, the house she grew up in, where her sister still lives with her own family. Goodall will be there soon for a rare five-day vacation, sleeping in the same room with her childhood books—Dr. Dolittle and Tarzan were among her favorites—and looking out the window at the trees she once climbed.

In the 1960s Goodall, perhaps the world’s most famous primatologist, taught us that humans and chimpanzees weren’t as different from each other as people then believed. Our closest relatives have individual personalities, eat meat, and even make and use their own tools. A 1965 documentary about that work, Miss Goodall and the Wild Chimpanzees, turned Goodall into a global celebrity, and she has been in the public eye ever since. She has used that attention to fund ongoing research in Gombe Stream National Park, in Tanzania, where she did her initial conservation work. But she has also gone beyond her role as a scientist to encourage children to become environmental and social advocates, to develop antipoverty programs in the areas around African nature preserves, and to promote environmental stewardship.

Goodall is on the road again now to publicize a new documentary, entitled simply JANE, which highlights her early-career insights. The film debuts Monday at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, with Goodall in attendance. 

Although immensely practical about the hard work it takes to keep up her social justice mission, Goodall retains the idealism that has propelled her for decades. “Every single individual makes a difference every single day,” she says in her quiet but determined British accent. “We get to choose what sort of difference we’re going to make.”

Goodall spoke to Scientific American about her past work, recent discoveries and plans and hopes for the future.”

Family Leave Policy, Work Place

How the Women of Amazon Fought for—and Won—a Revolutionary Family Leave Policy

“… the most revolutionary aspect of the plan is Amazon’s leave share program. Leave Share is more commonly seen in unionized workplaces, where employees can share their sick leave with one another, giving those who need it more time but ensuring work continues smoothly while they’re out. At Amazon, which isn’t unionized, instead of sharing paid leave with a co-worker, you can share it with your spouse, even if they don’t work at Amazon. Yes, really. If an Amazon employee is ready to return to work but has a spouse who hasn’t been able to take a full, paid parental leave, Amazon will allow the Amazon employee to share up to six weeks of their paid leave at the employee’s salary. That way, the spouse can take unpaid leave from their own jobs without creating extreme financial stress the Amazon employee would end up feeling too.

The reasoning behind Amazon’s leave share is sound: Parents succeed in the workplace when they have a supportive partner at home. When both parents spend time as the primary caregivers for an infant, studies show, they’ll continue to share caregiving responsibilities as the child ages. Since most workplaces today offer only maternity leave if they offer paid leave at all, it is difficult for fathers to take time away to take part in caregiving. In essence, Amazon is pioneering a new way to help its female employees by financially encouraging their partners to be more involved at home.

Studies show that women take on a majority of child care and household responsibilities, even when both parents work, which leads women to drop out of the workforce at a higher rate after having children. By promoting a shared environment at home, Amazon is likely to have higher long-term retention rates for women at the company.

Winter described the leave share program as a “game changer.” “Amazon has employees everywhere,” he said. “Not everyone has a spouse who has a luxury of taking paid leave. We decided it’s not just our employee that needs this, it’s choice and flexibility for our families.””

Ideas, Action, and Inspiration for a Better Tomorrow - August 10 Edition

Infrastructure, Public Policy

America 2.0: Why It’s Time for a Technology Upgrade

"“When it comes to upgrading the nation’s infrastructure, Gad Allon, Wharton professor of operations, information and decisions, says that strategic emphasis should be placed on the nation’s major airports and high-speed trains. But he also believes that it is important for long-range prosperity and competitiveness to make sure that every person in the U.S. has access to high-speed internet, ideally fiber optic. “Only a fraction of the U.S. has LTE [wireless coverage]; most people have 4G. When people come from [South] Korea to the U.S., they cannot bear the speed here, so they stop connecting to the internet while they are here. This is, for me, first order.”

Allon argues that the impact of such an internet upgrade would be transformative because many people in geographically remote regions in the U.S. have “the feeling of being left behind” in the social and political narrative about progress and modernity. The technology gap further deepens other social and political rifts between economically deprived regions and those regions that have advanced infrastructure of all sorts. Bridging that gap would allow a much larger portion of the populace to enjoy “more and more educational resources that are online,” including those provided by Coursera, Udacity and Kahn Academy. Innovation would be positively impacted as well: Access to the internet “makes it easier for people to start and manage their own businesses,” he notes.”"

Maternity Care, Heroes, Inspiration

How one woman brought life-saving maternity care to Somaliliand

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: It was a pretty typical day at the Edna Adan Hospital. Three babies had just been born, a half-dozen high-risk women were in labor, several others were being treated for life-threatening illnesses, and at the center of it all, the hospital’s founder and namesake, Edna Adan.

EDNA ADAN, Founder, Edna Adan University Hospital: These are the kind of women I built the hospital for anyway, anemic, a woman who has had previous complications, a woman who has a scar, a woman who has lost babies before.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: What is especially remarkable is where this is all taking place, in Hargeisa, the capital of Somaliland, an enclave that declared its independence three decades ago from the war-torn Somalia, but is not recognized by the rest of the world.

The region suffers from some of the world’s highest rates of infant and maternal mortality. Adan was born here 79 years ago, the daughter of a prominent physician. At 17, she won a scholarship to study in England, becoming a midwife. She returned to Somalia, marrying a politician who would become prime minister. She’s seen with him here and next to President Lyndon Johnson at a White House reception.

She fled Somalia’s civil war in the 1980s. When Edna Adan returned to her native Hargeisa, the city lay in ruin from years of war. She was given a plot of land that had been used as a burial ground and on it laid the foundation for rebuilding the city’s health care system.

Visit Edna Adan Hospital to support her work.

World, Women, Rape

Countries Around The World Move To Repeal 'Marry Your Rapist' Laws

"Many countries are moving to repeal long-established laws that allow rapists to escape punishment if they marry their victims.

A handful of places have recently repealed these laws, including Tunisia, Morocco and, just last week, Jordan.

But these laws are still on the books in countries as far apart as the Philippines, Lebanon and Tajikistan. Purna Sen, policy director for UN Women, tells NPR's Ari Shapiro these laws were enacted in order to normalize illicit sexual contact by categorizing this conduct as part of the institution of marriage.

These laws enable societies to make sexual relations more respectable, as it is often considered problematic in some cultures, Sen said. The penal codes in these countries do not approach rape as violence or abuse, but focus more on the idea that sexual contact occurred outside of marriage."

Workplace, Wellness, Productivity

The Correct Way to Hang Toilet Paper, According to Science

"There are two ways to hang toilet paper: 1) over (with the loose end draped over the top) and 2) under (with the loose end hanging inside next to the wall). Most offices hang it "over" but I've been in many restrooms where it's been hung "under."

The over/under issue is surprisingly controversial and was allegedly the topic that generated the most letters to Dear Abby on a single subject. I'm here today to remove that controversy forever.

According to science, the correct way to hang toilet paper is "over." Why? Because "under" vastly increases the possibility that food-poisoning bacteria will spread from the restroom to the rest of the workplace."

Urban Spaces, Conservation

Green Roofs Are Saving Birds and Hatching Bird-Watchers

"Urban development hasn’t always accommodated birds. Window collisions due to reflective glass and bright lights have hurt migrating bird populations wherever there are skyscrapers, with the American Bird Conservancy estimating that each year, up to a billion birds die via collisions in the U.S. alone.

An overnight storm this past March left 395 warblers and orioles dead outside the 23-story One Moody Plaza in Galveston, Texas. The skyscraper is among the tallest in the area, and while it’s not wrapped in bird-unfriendly, floor-to-ceiling glass, a combination of lightning, building lights, and corner windows still disoriented the migrating birds into colliding with the structure.

However, when ecology and engineering unite, city roofs can become bird-roosting and bird-watching havens. Take New York City’s Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. New York City Audubon once ranked this I. M. Pei-designed fusion of glass and steel among the top three bird-killing buildings in the area. But since its 2009 renovation by FXFOWLE Architects, retrofitted low-reflectivity glass has reduced collisions by 90 percent. The new windows feature dot patterns visible to birds from the air, and a 6.75-acre green roof tops off the overhaul, ensuring that it not only kills fewer passing birds, but also feeds and shelters growing numbers."

Ideas, Actions, and Inspiration for a Better Tomorrow - June 21, 2017

Gender Equality, Human Rights, Science

She May Be The Most Unstoppable Scientist In The World

For the past decade, Dauqan has burst through glass ceiling after glass ceiling with fearlessness and grace.

Even as a young girl, she was rebel. "I was a little naughty," she says with a snicker.

She liked breaking rules. And proving people wrong. So when her parents told her she might not have the smarts to go into science and engineering — like her dad — Eqbal thought: Watch me.

"I told my father, 'I've heard a lot about scientists in chemistry. What is the difference between me and them? So I want to try," she says.

And she did more than try. She crushed it. 

Dauqan has already done so much for science — and society. When little girls in the Middle East see photos of Eqbal as a chemist — wearing a head scarf, measuring pH — they don't need to use their imagination to think: "I could be just like her. I could be a scientist."

Education/Military Veterans

How the Liberal Arts Help Veterans Thrive

“I joke with my Army buddies, I tell them [theory] is like the plane that gets you there,” the 36-year-old former paratrooper, who deployed to Iraq for the 2007 surge, said. “But once you jump out of the plane, everything else is different on the ground. That’s how you have to look at economics.”

Hardly any Vassar student could have arrived at this analogy until four years ago, when de la Torre and 10 other United States military veterans embarked on an experiment Vassar was leading among small, selective liberal-arts colleges: to seek out and enroll vets. In partnership with the Posse Foundation, a nonprofit with a successful track record of connecting students from underrepresented backgrounds with elite schools, Vassar enrolled its first cohort of veterans in the fall of 2013. The results of this effort became clearer in May as five of those student-veterans, including de la Torre, graduated after spending the traditional four years on campus.

In the years that followed, some peer institutions followed Vassar’s lead—Wesleyan University initiated a Posse Veterans cohort in 2014 and its first Posse veteran graduated a year early last month, while other schools, like Williams College, have partnered with Service to School to recruit veterans to their campuses. The initiative rests on the premise that liberal-arts colleges, whose educational doctrines insist on well-roundedness and inclusion, have both the resources and civic obligation to educate the almost 1.7 million post-9/11 veterans seeking college degrees.

Conservation, Science, Technology

Conserve elephants. They hold a scientific mirror up to humans

In August 2016, the result of the Great Elephant Census, the most extensive count of a wild species ever attempted, suggested that about 350,000 African savannah elephants remain alive. This is down by 140,000 since 2007. 

That most of the decline has been brought about by poaching is scarcely in doubt. Seizures of smuggled ivory, and the size of the carved-ivory market compared with the small amount of legal ivory available, confirm it. But habitat loss is important, too—and not just the conversion of bush into farmland. Roads, railways and fences, built as Africa develops, stop elephants moving around. And an elephant needs a lot of room. 

One source of conflict with elephants has been competition for pasture as the herders’ populations have grown. Indeed, the reserve itself is now sometimes invaded by cowherds and their stock. But, on top of this, some pastoralists have begun to settle down. Buildings and fences are appearing on land which, though outside the reserve, is part of the local elephants’ ranges as they travel from one place to another.

Understanding elephants’ behaviour also permits it to be manipulated in ways that help reduce direct conflict between elephants and people. One such project harnesses elephants’ fear of bee swarms.

Armed with that knowledge, Dr. King and her colleague Fritz Vollrath came up with the idea of protecting farms with bee fences. 

Women, Politics, Government

This Is What Happens When Women Get Elected

With a state legislature made up 40 percent of women, Nevada is second only to Vermont in terms of female representation. And that translated into a landmark session for women’s rights and health this year, even under a male Republican governor.

Nevada lawmakers just wrapped up a state legislative session that delivered a startling number of progressive victories for women: tax-free tampons, a new $500,000 family planning program, workplace accommodations for pregnant women, and mandatory insurance coverage of contraception and mammograms.

“We started with some pushback from Republicans, but by the end of the session we had broad bipartisan support on a lot of these measures,” said state Sen. Julia Ratti (D), a freshman from Sparks. 

Healthcare, Medicaid

Don’t Lower the Number of People on Medicaid. Make the System More Efficient

This small set of outcomes includes hospital complications that can be minimized, such as limiting the risk of patients’ acquiring pneumonia in the hospital after a stroke, treating a cold at a primary care doctor’s office or an urgent care center instead of an emergency room, and limiting avoidable hospital admissions or re-admissions by treating ongoing conditions, such as out of control diabetes, at the primary care doctor’s office.

It should be noted that these states are led by governors of both parties. These are programs that can have broad bipartisan support, in part because they not only lead to cost savings, they also lead to better medical outcomes.

There are significant savings opportunities across other states to improve outcomes and reduce waste. Rather than uniformly cutting costs and/or health care coverage, the federal government could incentivize progress by instituting programs like the ones these states have already shown can be successful. While the status of the AHCA is unclear, the need to address payment reform—especially for Medicaid—remains. How much money can be saved by improving outcomes? The Institute of Medicine estimates that between 20–30 percent of total health care spending is either wasteful or a consequence of poor outcomes.