Compared to the general public, police are at a higher risk for negative physical and mental health outcomes, including early death, injuries and illnesses, obesity, heart attacks, and sleep disorders. During the average officer’s career, they will witness and respond to 188 critical incidents which, without appropriate preparation, follow up support, and mental health care, can have dramatic effects on short- and long-term physical and mental health. In response, police agencies have begun to establish, expand, and sustain officer safety and wellness programming to address challenges commonly faced by officers. All agencies, no matter the size or geographic location, should ensure officers have access to resources and services promoting safety and wellbeing. A comprehensive strategy to promote safety and wellness requires a multi-faceted approach addressing a variety of essential topics, including physical fitness, mental health, emotional wellness, stress management, financial wellness, peer support, and family support, as well as tactical and operational safety considerations. This tool focuses on physical and mental wellbeing. The comprehensive strategy reinforces that officers who are mentally and physically well, will in turn be more likely to operate safely. This resource serves as a guide for law enforcement leadership in establishing an officer wellness program.

The U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) has released the OJJDP Tribal Consultation Response, a report which summarizes and responds to issues discussed at OJJDP's June 2020 tribal consultation with 288 tribal leaders and representatives. The consultation sought feedback on how OJJDP can assist tribes in implementing provisions of the federal Juvenile Justice Reform Act (JJRA) and increase tribes' access to juvenile justice funding. The report highlights a series of action steps that OJJDP will take to respond to the concerns raised by tribal representatives during the consultation and in subsequent written comments. One concern was that in one state, the relationship between the state and the tribe is adversarial and conflicted making it difficult for the tribes to access Title II block grant funds. Another concern was that culturally based tribal best practices programs that are effective in the tribal communities may fall outside of what grant programs commonly support. The report notes how OJJDP plans to foster ongoing dialogue with American Indian and Alaska Native tribes to support tribal communities' work with their youth.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States in March 2020, courthouses were forced to close alongside businesses, schools, and workplaces. But the criminal legal system could not completely shut down; core functions such as setting bail and appointing counsel needed to continue. And so courts around the country, despite historical resistance to cameras or recording devices in courtrooms, rapidly transitioned to virtual operations. Within the span of a few weeks—or even a few days—judges began conducting some criminal court proceedings on teleconferencing or videoconferencing platforms, Zoom foremost among them. In a handful of jurisdictions, courts went so far as to hold criminal jury trials over Zoom. This report examines the consequences of that switch to virtual hearings for criminal court through a quantitative study of defense attorneys and a qualitative study of judges, court administrators, defense attorneys, and prosecutors in three jurisdictions.

States and districts are increasingly incorporating measures of achievement growth into their school accountability systems, but there is little research on how these changes affect the public’s perceptions of school quality. The authors conduct a nationally representative online survey experiment to identify the effects of providing participants with information about their local public schools’ average achievement status and/or average achievement growth. Prior to receiving any information, participants already possess a modest understanding of how their local schools perform in terms of status, but they are largely unaware of how these schools perform in terms of growth. Participants who live in higher status districts tend to grade their local schools more favorably. The provision of status information does not fundamentally change this relationship. The provision of growth information, however, alters Americans’ views about local educational performance. Once informed, participants’ evaluations of their local schools better reflect the variation in district growth.

Traditional definitions of school readiness have focused primarily on the skills, knowledge and abilities children need for educational success. However, these definitions have evolved in recent years to encompass a multidimensional view, adding physical and mental health, social and emotional skills, executive functioning and self-regulation, and broader family and community supports. While 16 states (including Florida) plus the District of Columbia currently have statutory definitions of school readiness, these vary considerably in terms of comprehensiveness. This report looks at the malleable and transformative components of educational and health considerations (and their intersections) as they impact school readiness. It provides examples of innovative state programs and policies, highlights new federal financial supports, and closes with state-level policy takeaways.

Early childhood assessments can provide important information to guide instruction and inform policy. Given the widespread and growing use of statewide kindergarten entry assessments, in particular, it is important that policymakers understand how to choose and use assessments wisely. This brief summarizes research showing how authentic assessments grounded in guided observation and well-chosen performance tasks can be used to chart children’s progress in multiple domains of development and inform instruction. It provides recommendations for state policymakers about how to select, develop, and implement high-quality assessments that can both support instruction and inform policy to improve systems.

This project began an investigation into whether it is possible to create a useful microwave communications link across the Gulf of Mexico in order to link the linear Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) networks in the Florida Keys and Florida Panhandle, creating network redundancy for the first time for both segments. The work in this project has involved the design, procurement, construction, and initial testing of the equipment that will be used to conduct propagation testing under a future project. This project successfully demonstrated the design and construction of equipment for wireless communications across the Gulf of Mexico. If full-scale testing is successful, a vital link in the FDOT data communications system will be established.

The 2019 E-Stats provides estimates of e-commerce activity in key sectors of the U.S. economy for 2019, revises previously released estimates for 2018 and earlier, and places these estimates in historical context. Underlying data are collected in separate surveys of manufacturing, wholesale, service, and retail businesses. E-commerce shipments of U.S. manufacturers were $3,887.6 billion in 2019, down 2.1% from a revised $3,969.9 billion in 2018. Total shipments were $5,731.2 billion in 2019, down 2.7% from $5,890.7 billion in 2018. Revenues from electronic sources for service industries in the United States were $1,295.3 billion in 2019, up 13.0% from a revised $1,145.9 billion in 2018. Total revenues were $17,014.9 billion in 2019. Revenues from electronic sources were 7.6% of total revenues in 2019, up from a revised 7.1% in 2018. Sales from e-commerce for U.S. retailers were $578.5 billion in 2019, up 14.3% from a revised $506.1 billion in 2018. Total sales increased by 3.0% to $5,411.0 billion in 2019 from a revised $5,253.0 billion in 2018. Total e-commerce sales for merchant wholesalers in the United States, including manufacturers’ sales branches and offices, were up 2.9% to $2,873.1 billion in 2019 from a revised $2,793.0 billion in 2018. Total sales were $8,633.5 billion in 2019. This was not significantly different from a revised total sales estimate of $8,633.6 billion in 2018. E-commerce sales of merchant wholesalers, including manufacturers’ sales branches and offices, were 33.3% of total sales in 2019, up from a revised 32.4% in 2018.

Thrive Rural is an ambitious effort to create a shared framework and understanding about what it will take for communities and Native nations across the rural United States to be healthy places where everyone belongs, lives with dignity, and thrives. This field scan is a contribution to Thrive Rural, specifically to provide an understanding of the current state of rural economic development practice in the United States, and to address the question: What must happen for economic development to foster a more prosperous, healthier, equitable and environmentally sustainable rural America? This scan of field practice begins with an overview of the main economic theories and policy frameworks that guide and influence the practice of economic development, particularly in a rural context. This leads to a presentation of the results of qualitative research on economic development practice and how it is evolving, based on a series of interviews with over 40 experts representing a range of perspectives on economic development. The authors conclude with a commentary on how economic development can foster a more prosperous, healthier, equitable and environmentally sustainable rural America.

The COVID-19 pandemic threated public health and safety and led to a number of virus-related fraud schemes. The authors surveyed over 2,200 American adults to investigate their experiences with COVID-19-related frauds. The authors’ goals were to better understand fraud targeting and victimization, as well as the impacts of fraud on victims. Over a quarter of the surveyed sample reported purchasing either a COVID-19-related product or a service, yet 42.5% reported feeling targeted for fraud. Being a target of COVID-19 frauds is significantly linked to one's routine activities, however it is one's level of self-control that more strongly predicts victimization. COVID-19 anxieties mediate the impact of self-control on purchasing. Legal interventions and increased regulations surrounding advertising are a potential mechanism for protecting consumers, yet soft interventions that interrupt routine activities might be more useful and applicable. The use of white-lists, lists of administrator-approved entities including IP addresses, email addresses and applications, and publicly available websites that allow e-commerce sites and sellers to be verified would help enable higher levels of self-guardianship. It is also important to provide continuous and clear messaging about what is being done to protect consumers.

Since 2014, millions of consumers have purchased individual market health insurance plans through the health insurance exchanges—or marketplaces—established under the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). Sales representatives listed on U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) healthcare.gov website can also sell other types of health coverage arrangements that may cost less but may not cover all pre-existing conditions as comprehensive PPACA-compliant plans do. The authors performed 31 covert tests on selected sales representatives listed on healthcare.gov. These tests involved stating that the (fictitious) applicant had pre-existing conditions—either diabetes or heart disease—and requesting coverage for these conditions to see if the sales representative directed the applicant to a comprehensive PPACA-compliant plan or a PPACA-exempt plan that does not cover what the fictitious applicant requested. All 31 sales representatives the authors contacted appropriately referred the authors’ fictitious applicant to a PPACA-compliant plan. The majority of sales representatives also explained that a PPACA-exempt plan would not cover the applicant's pre-existing condition. None of the sales representatives the authors contacted engaged in potentially deceptive marketing practices that misrepresented or omitted information about the products they were selling. The results of the authors’ covert tests are not generalizable to all sales representatives listed on healthcare.gov.

Following the development and rollout of COVID-19 vaccines in late 2020, researchers, policymakers, and community leaders expressed concern about the low levels of confidence in COVID-19 vaccines among Black Americans across the United States. Although vaccination rates have increased over time, Black Americans are still being vaccinated at lower rates compared with other racial or ethnic groups. The study produced two overarching findings that speak to the current crisis and may offer lessons to inform a proactive response to future public health crises: 1) Vaccine confidence has improved among Black Americans, but mistrust plays a role in holding down vaccination rates. Mistrust of the vaccine stems directly from historical and ongoing discrimination and racism experienced by Black communities and can be conceptualized as an adaptive coping response to such experiences. The authors found that vaccine-related mistrust is a multifaceted construct that includes distrust of health care and health care providers (to be equitable), the government (to provide truthful information), and the vaccine itself (to be safe and effective). And 2) the national discussion of confidence issues has masked access problems. Although there has been considerable attention paid to the issue of mistrust and vaccine confidence among Black Americans, increasing confidence has shifted the spotlight to barriers to access as a reason for persistently lower vaccination rates. Specific access challenges noted by study participants at the beginning of the vaccination rollout included a) the distance to vaccine site was too far or there were insufficient vaccination sites in one's community; b) lack of transportation to available vaccination sites (e.g., poor public transportation infrastructure or lack of access to private transportation); c) lack of high-speed internet access and/or internet literacy or lack of English literacy required to locate and schedule appointments; and d) work- and child care–related issues and other scheduling challenges, particularly in the case of a two-dose vaccine and when managing side effects.

The authors investigate the relationship between opioid diverting policy and suicides among the veteran population. The opioid epidemic of the past two decades has had devastating health consequences among U.S. veterans and military personnel. In 2013, the Veterans Health Administration (VA) implemented the Opioid Safety Initiative (OSI) with the goal of discouraging prescription opioid dependence among VA patients. Between 2012 and 2017, prescription opioids dispensed by the VA fell 41%. Because this involved the aggressive curtailing of opioid prescriptions for many VA patients, OSI may have had a detrimental effect on veterans’ mental health leading to suicide in extreme cases. In addition, because rural veterans have much higher rates of VA enrollment, more prescription opioid use and abuse, and lower rates of substance abuse and mental health treatment utilization, the authors expect any effect of OSI on veteran suicides to be concentrated in rural areas. The authors find that OSI raised the veteran suicide rate relative to the non-veteran (civilian) rate with rural veterans suffering the lion’s share of the increase. They estimate that OSI raised the rural veteran suicide rate by a little over one-third between 2013 and 2018.

Job losses from the COVID-19 pandemic have exacerbated housing insecurity among low-income renters over the past year. Federal, state, and local policymakers have created temporary measures to help reduce displacement among people who have lost their jobs, but there is considerable uncertainty about what will happen when these temporary measures end. To gain insight into how homelessness changes over macroeconomic cycles, the authors examine changes in homelessness rates from 2007 to 2020. The analysis focuses on four metro areas that were particularly hard-hit by the foreclosure crisis: Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Riverside, California. Overall homelessness rates declined in all metros except Los Angeles during this time, but the share of unsheltered homeless persons has increased in recent years.