Persistence of a youth organizing initiative: Cultivating and sustaining a leadership development ecosystem.

Youth organizing can generate tangible improvements in community conditions and institutions while simultaneously promoting positive development among participants and contributing to broader movements for social change. Yet, organizing initiatives must navigate an array of challenges as they seek to continuously engage new leaders to build on the accomplishments of their predecessors who are aging out of youth organizing. This study examines the leadership development ecosystem enabling an exemplary youth organizing initiative to persist, expand, and enhance its impact over 15 years. Analyses of interviews with 19 adolescent and young adult participants reveal that engagement often begins before high school and continues long afterward, with more established older leaders playing a variety of roles to engage younger participants and support their development as leaders. Findings suggest practical strategies that can enhance the sustainability of these initiatives, which are key to the development and exercise of youth power for social justice.

Is the EU drinking water directive standard for pesticides in drinking water consistent with the precautionary principle?

Regulations based on the precautionary principle should undertake a comprehensive assessment of all available scientific and technical data to identify sources of epistemic uncertainty. In the European Union (EU), environmental regulation is required to fulfill the principles established in Article 174 of the EU Treaty, such that it offers a high level of protection and is consistent with the precautionary principle. Pesticides in drinking water are currently regulated by the Drinking Water Directive using a maximum allowable concentration of 0.1 µg/L. This standard (a surrogate zero) was consistent with the precautionary principle when it was originally set in 1980 and remained consistent when retained in 1998. However, given developments in EU pesticide and water policy, international experience in regulating pesticides, and an increasing knowledge of pesticide toxicity, it can be argued that the level of epistemic uncertainty faced by regulators has substantially decreased. In this paper, we examine the extent to which such developments now challenge the basis of European drinking water standards for pesticides and whether, for substances for which there is good toxicological understanding, a regulatory approach based upon the World Health Organization (WHO) Guideline Value (GV) methodology would be more consistent with the principles underpinning European environmental policy.

Partnering with youth organizers to prevent violence: an analysis of relationships, power, and change.

BACKGROUND: Youth from the city of San Bernardino, California, launched a community organizing campaign to develop policy changes to address conditions of inter-racial violence in their community. Pitzer College students collaborated with the high school youth organizers in a community-based participatory research (CBPR) project to study violence and racial conflict at local high schools. OBJECTIVES: The purpose of the project was to explore the experiences and perceptions of high school youth about racial conflict in their community and to develop policy proposals to address this issue. METHODS: Undergraduate student researchers and high school youth organizers collaborated in designing and conducting narrative research. Together they developed questions and carried out semi-structured interviews and two focus groups with 40 local youth. The undergraduate students then coded and analyzed the data to identify common themes. Youth organizer's feedback was incorporated into a final, shared research report, including policy proposals, which were presented to the greater community. RESULTS: Youth organizers worked with city and school administrators to secure the implementation of programs they recommended to address their research's findings. Programs were enacted to reduce racial bias and conflict on school campuses, and city leaders agreed to develop a strategic youth development plan together with youth organizers. CONCLUSION: The partnership experience supported important policy changes in San Bernardino high schools, yet also illuminated areas wherein the community-campus partnerships could work more intentionally to shift power dynamics between and within the partners, address conditions that generate dependency and inequality in the partnership, and expand outcomes of institutional and community transformation.

Titrating Theileria parva: single stocks against combination of stocks.

Theileria parva is the causative agent of East Coast fever (ECF), an important cattle disease in East and Central Africa. One of the methods for control of ECF is 'infection and treatment', a procedure in which an animal is infected with the live parasite and at the same time treated with a long-acting oxytetracycline formulation, restraining the infection and allowing a protective cellular immune response to develop. Optimal immunizing doses were estimated using models of trichotomous response: dysimmunization (death or severe reaction during immunization), immunization failure (death or severe reaction during lethal challenge) and successful immunization (neither dysimmunization nor immunization failure). In this paper we present methods of interpreting immunization trials and apply these methods to previously unpublished data from two such trials: one with a mixture of three T. parva stocks and one with a single T. parva stock. We explain why titration trials conducted with a cocktail of antigens could predict a suboptimal immunization dose. Indeed it is possible for a combination of three individually efficient stocks to result in a mixture with which optimal immunization response might be difficult to achieve, because of averaging effects. The corresponding interpretation provides insights into why standard immunization trials for T. parva have not yielded the results that might be expected of them. The results of this work may also have implications for the use of antigen cocktails in cancer, HIV and malaria vaccine trials.