Selected National Issues Program
The goal for the Selected National Issues Program is to contribute to other major issues of our time in a way appropriate to our expertise and size. The Foundation contributes to an already widely recognized problem only when we have a special approach. Therefore, there are many problems of importance to which, lacking expertise or a special approach, we do not attempt to contribute.
Ted Greenwood, Program Director
Bioterrorism
Paula J. Olsiewski, Program Director
Our goal is to reduce the threat from bioterrorism. We believe that this threat is real and we are focusing on two underdeveloped areas: citizen preparedness and issues of potentially dangerous research in the life sciences.
Citizen preparedness includes those things that citizens or organizations can do for themselves to defend against terrorism. We are particularly interested in the use of face masks to prevent people from getting sick or spreading disease and what steps can be taken in the built environment to remove pathogens. Our work in the built environment led to the establishment of a new basic research program on the Indoor Environment.
An equally important but difficult and contentious area is potentially dangerous research in the life sciences. Biology is advancing rapidly and the potential for misuse is in the hands of many. Most life scientists are not aware of the issues. Among those who are aware, some feel that self-governance is enough, while others say that nothing can be done – all scientific experiments are inevitable. We are focused on working directly with the scientific community to raise awareness and find practical steps to address these issues.
The Foundation identified bioterrorism as an important national issue in the late 1990’s and awarded its first major grants in the fall of 2000 and spring of 2001 to the Center for Biosecurity and the Center for the Law and the Public's Health. These grants proved to be enormously needed and effective in the post 9/11 environment and continue to make valuable contributions to the nation’s biodefense. In June 2004, and again in December 2006, the trustees renewed support for the Center for Biosecurity to enable the Center to continue in its national and international leadership roles to reduce the threat of bioterrorism. In June 2005, the trustees renewed support for the Center for Law and the Public’s Health to continue that Center’s valuable work in legal preparedness. For more information, click here.
A central feature of our bioterrorism program is preparedness, both for individual citizens and for organizations. One of our major directions has been making preparedness information available to citizens. To that effect, we supported the Ready.gov initiative (www.ready.gov) and its Spanish version (www.listo.gov) with grants to the Ad Council in 2002 and 2003. This initiative has now been followed by the “Ready Business” and “Ready Kids” websites which were developed by the US Department of Homeland Security in February 2006. However, we have learned from experience that information, while essential, is often not enough. Most Americans remain unprepared. For related grants, click here.
The Foundation remains committed to exploring physical methods, such as building filtration and face masks, for reducing the threat of bioterrorism. With Sloan support, the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) conducted two events to help educate the community about what can be done with existing technology to reduce the threat of bioterrorism in the built environment. ASHRAE hosted a satellite broadcast: "Homeland Security for Buildings" in April 2004 and “Multiple Benefits Solutions for Enhanced Building Security" in November 2006.For additional information on these events, go to http://www.ashrae.org/education/page/557. The Foundation also supported the development of ASHRAE guidelines for Risk Management of Public Health and Safety in Buildings. The Center for Biosecurity convened a working group which published recommendations in Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: “Improving Performance of HVAC Systems to Reduce Exposure of Aerosolized Infectious Agents in Buildings: Recommendations to Reduce Risks Posed by Biological Attacks.” For other grants in this area, click here.
Incentives for businesses to prepare for terrorism are a major direction in Sloan’s program. For corporations, such incentives could mesh with their need for business continuity. The International Center for Enterprise Preparedness (InterCEP) at New York University, supported by a trustees grant in the fall of 2005, is developing legal, insurance, rating agency, and regulatory incentives. Additional information on the Center's work can be found at www.nyu.edu/intercep/.
On August 3, 2007, legislation was signed into law that requires the Department of Homeland Security to provide for the development of a voluntary certification program for all-hazards business emergency preparedness. This program is to be developed in consultation with key stakeholders, reflecting existing best practices and standards. On October 23, 2007, Sloan hosted a meeting of key stakeholders to discuss issues and opportunities related to the new program. Several Sloan supported activities emerged from the meeting. An interdisciplinary team from ASIS International, Disaster Recovery Institute International, National Fire Protection Association, and Risk and Insurance Management Society Inc. developed a Framework for Voluntary Preparedness , a mechanism to address verifiable private sector preparedness that recognizes similarities in the core elements of existing standards, guidelines, best practices, and regulations. InterCEP at New York University hosted a forum on the new program to provide private sector input . Approximately 50 representatives from business, government, professional and industry associations participated. Summary proceedings of the forum area available at http://www.nyu.edu/intercep/events/20080131-287.html.
In 2006 the trustees approved a grant to the University of North Carolina to develop policy and legislative templates in two areas: common sick leave policies and “Good Samaritan” liability protections for business and non-profit entities (http://www2.sph.unc.edu/nciph/law/). The trustees also awarded a grant to the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota (www.cidrap.umn.edu/)to establish an electronic information service and a forum for businesses to collaboratively plan for pandemic influenza and other infectious disease outbreaks. For other grants in business preparedness, click here.
There are major similarities between preparing for a naturally occurring pandemic and bioterrorism. Few are reluctant to prepare for pandemic flu while some regard the threat of bioterrorism as being put forward for political motives. While many scientists consider an influenza pandemic inevitable, there is a lack of information on the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical measures that will be necessary to protect the population before a vaccine can be produced. In 2005, the Foundation awarded a grant to the World Health Organization to develop their avian influenza preparedness guidance for healthcare workers.
In 2006, with Sloan support, Columbia University convened the “Workshop on Personal and Workplace Protective Measures for Pandemic Influenza.” One of the outcomes of the workshop was a policy paper brief published in the November 10, 2006 issue of Science: “Next Flu Pandemic: What to do until the vaccine arrives” by Sloan grantees Stephen S. Morse, Richard L.Garwin, and Sloan program director Paula J. Olsiewski. This piece outlined what can be done now and what we need to examine.
Also emerging from the workshop was a project on the use of masks in Israel. Tel Aviv University is conducting a pilot study of the use of surgical face masks to prevent the spread of seasonal influenza between parents and children. For related grants, click here.
In the difficult area of addressing issues of potentially dangerous research, the Foundation has funded some significant projects. The 2001 trustees grant to the National Academy of Sciences resulted in the October 2003 National Research Council Report "Biotechnology Research in an Age of Terrorism: The Dual Use Dilemma," www.nap.edu/catalog/10827.html, which is also known as the “Fink Committee report”. This report led to the creation in 2003 of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) by the US Department of Health and Human Services, www.biosecurityboard.gov. According to the organization's website, “The NSABB has been established to provide advice to federal departments and agencies on ways to minimize the possibility that knowledge and technologies emanating from vitally important biological research will be misused to threaten public health or national security.” This group continues to be informed by Sloan grantees.
The Foundation awarded the National Academies follow on grants in March 2004 and December 2006 to engage the international scientific community on biosecurity issues. The Academies, in collaboration with three international partners – The InterAcademy Panel (IAP), the InterAcademy Medical Panel, and the International Council for Science (ICSU, the umbrella organization for the major scientific unions) – organized and hosted the International Forum on Biosecurity in Italy on March 2005. Additional activities are in progress. Other related projects are being worked on at the World Health Organization and the University of Exeter.
The Center for International Security Studies at Maryland, with initial funding in 2001 and renewed support in 2003, 2005 and 2007, continues their difficult but essential work on the development of an institutional framework to prevent deliberate or inadvertent use of biology for destructive purposes, http://www.cissm.umd.edu/projects/pathogens.php.
The Foundation is also working closely with the synthetic biology community on these issues. In 2005, the Foundation awarded a grant to the J. Craig Venter Institute, who, in collaboration with the Center for Security and International Studies and the Synthetic Biology Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, to examine the risks and benefits of synthetic genomics Their report Synthetic Genomics: Options for Governance can be found at http://www.jcvi.org/cms/fileadmin/site/research/projects/synthetic-genomics-report/synthetic-genomics-report.pdf . - . For other work with the synthetic biology community, click here.
We have remained open to unique opportunities to reduce the threat of bioterrorism. Our successful work with Interpol is an example of this. The trustees approved grants in June 2004 and December 2005 to Interpol to develop Interpol’s capacity to counter bioterrorism by raising awareness, developing police training programs and strengthening law enforcement around the world, http://www.interpol.int/Public/BioTerrorism/default.asp.
Another example of a unique opportunity was the bioterrorism exercise "Black ICE". The Sloan Foundation, in collaboration with the Nuclear Threat Initiative, provided partial support for the Bioterrorism International Coordination Exercise "Black ICE" that took place in September 2006. The United States Government and the Government of Switzerland co-hosted the event in Montreux, Switzerland. This two-day tabletop exercise was an opportunity for officials from a dozen international organizations to examine critical cooperation and coordination issues that would be necessary to respond to an international bioterrorism attack. The Black ICE After Action Report is available on line at http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/79521.pdf.
For other grants, click here.
We will continue our work on practical projects with potential for wide impact. We plan to explore the health benefits of improved air filtering, both in buildings and through face masks. We plan to survey current awareness levels of scientists on the issues of dangerous research in biotechnology. We also plan to continue to capitalize on the current interest in preparing for possible, naturally occurring biological events, e.g. pandemic influenza.
Michael Teitelbaum, Vice President
The broad goal of this program is to improve the conceptual underpinnings of Federal statistics, especially economic statistics. We seek sustainable mechanisms by which expertise might be applied to improving the validity of Federal statistical measures, in view of rapid changes in the U.S. economy and society that have brought existing measurement approaches into doubt. Measuring productivity and prices, for example, was far easier when the U.S. economy was dominated by manufacturing than by services, especially hard-to-measure services such as information technology and E-commerce.
Grants to the Brookings Institution
in 1997 and 2001 have supported an ambitious series of symposia and other
activities addressing the measurement of productivity in the service sector,
with substantial involvement on the part of professionals at key Federal
statistical agencies. One of its products was a 2004 book by project directors Jack E. Triplett and Barry P. Bosworth, Productivity in the U.S. Services Sector: New Sources of Economic Growth
http://www.brookings.edu/press/books/productivityintheusservicessector.htm This book received the Harry Freeman Award of the Coalition of Services Industries, for its “exceptional contributions to understanding of the US service economy.” A 1998 grant to the American Statistical Association
and subsequent discussions assisted the three leading Federal statistical
agencies to establish two new Federal Advisory Committees on economic
statistics that are assisting these agencies to improve connections with
researchers outside of government.
A substantial research grant to the Urban Institute in 1999, supplemented by two small workshop grants in 1998 and again in 2002, have facilitated innovative work with the U.S. Bureau of the Census to exploit large administrative datasets that are collected at great expense, but rarely used for analysis and research. This complex project, now known as the Longitudinal Employer-Household Program (LEHD) has been proceeding very well, and is now providing for the first time data that links longitudinal earning and employment data on individual employees to data on their employers and geographical locations.
The LEHD Project has established voluntary partnerships now with more than 30 states. The Foundation has provided additional support for a joint program with five Sloan Industry Centers, to enable them to use the innovative LEHD data for detailed research on firms, workers, and workforce quality in their industries, and to provide their in-depth insights on key industries to the LEHD project researchers. This collaboration has been a productive one that during 2005 produced the final draft of a path-breaking book Economic Turbulence. This book is the first to analyze workers’ earnings and career paths together with the growth and survival rates of the firms that employ them. It uses the unique longitudinal data from the LEHD, conjoined with in-depth insights on the industries involved by scholars at five Sloan Industry Centers. Economic Turbulence will be published in September 2006 by the University of Chicago Press.
In 2004, a $30,000 grant to the Brookings Institution provided support for a June workshop on how Federal Statistics on services outsourcing might be made more informative and useful. The workshop attracted a very large audience, and led to a successful Brookings proposal to devote the 2005 Brookings Trade Forum to the topic of “Offshoring White-Collar Work — The Issues and the Implications”. The Forum was one of the first serious and fact-based assessments of the controversial issues surrounding “offshoring” of white-collar services, and attracted an outstanding group of scholars and an overflow audience. The Forum papers will be published in 2006, edited by Susan M. Collins and Lael Brainard. A pre-publication electronic version of the volume is available at: http://www.brookings.edu/es/commentary/journals/tradeforum/agenda2005.htm