Progress 08/15/16 to 08/14/19
Outputs
Target Audience:Target Audience includes Deans and Directors of the land grant universities in the Northeast, professionals at USDA and within NIFA, faculty and educators across the region, policy makers, planners, citizens, and other audiences, depending on the topic. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?As reported in the most recent progress report for the 2017 funding cycle, our small grants program provided 22 individuals from around the country opportunities to engage in various forms of co-learning. In turn, they deliver trainings in their home communities that serve as learning opportunities for their local stakeholders. Through our support of the National Extension Tourism Design Team, we played a strong role in delivering a successful networking and information-sharing event attended by more than 80 researchers, educators, and federal, state, and local government employees. The Center currently employes five postdoctoral scholars and two graduate students who, through engaging with our extensive portfolio of external grants, are exposed to a number of learning opportunities. Finally, Center staff made multiple presentations at a variety of venues to share research findings with researchers in various fields (e.g., regional science, agricultural economics, etc.). How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We share resources generated by the Center through our website, our bi-monthly newsletter, and multiple presentations given by the Director and postdoctoral scholars, as documented in our Annual Report. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
We made significant progress in implementing the programs and activities described above. On the capacity-building front, we engaged in several efforts that served to strengthen interstate ties in the region and beyond, and to grow Extension's capacity to deliver community and economic development programming. As reported in the most recent progress report for the 2017 funding cycle, our small grants program proved once again to provide an excellent return on investment. The three teams funded during the 2017-2018 grant cycle have all completed their proposed activities, resulting in resources that will benefit the region, including an infobrief on connecting local trail systems with downtown economic development goals; a 17-page collection of articles published in Delmarva Farmer about heath and health-insurance topics for the farming community; and an infographic showing the impacts of an innovative local-foods marketing program. Beyond these outputs, each of these funded teams has shared scholarship about their projects at conferences nationwide, thus further extending the learning and networking opportunities afforded by these grants. The ripple effects of these projects continue on in ways that are nearly impossible to track. For example, during a site visit that took place as part of the Downtowns and Trails project, UConn's Laura Brown forged a new connection with Berea College's Louisa Summers. The two later collaborated on an unrelated research project that estimated the health and community impacts of trail use in Connecticut. During their 2018 NACDEP presentation on their project, Brown acknowledged that were it not for the NERCRD-funded project, she and Summers would never have met or collaborated. With these projects largely completed, we have generated awareness of their outputs through our website, newsletter, social media, and through partner organizations (e.g., NACDEP). We will continue to leverage the work of our small-grants-funded teams as opportunities arise. Similarly, and also described in the 2017 funding report, we provided significant staffing support to the National Extension Tourism (NET) Design Team as they planned their October 2019 conference, which by all accounts was a very successful event. With the conference completed, the group is now embarking on a strategic planning process to explore ways of expanding their network and providing professional development opportunities to its members outside of the conference, e.g., through webinars, regional events, etc. On the research front, we continued to leverage the work completed under our seven-year food systems project, which ended in 2017 but continues to bear fruit in the form of published research. For example, research conducted within the project on competition among food hubs was published this year, showing the population thresholds that are required to support one, two, and three food hubs as well as the community characteristics associated with food hub viability. The findings, which were widely publicized through a Penn State press release, could help funding agencies establish criteria to determine whether and where new food hubs should be added. Research on determinants of economic resilience continued, including through a partnership with the Appalachian Regional Commission, led by Downstream Strategies and in collaboration with Dialogue + Design Associates and West Virginia University. That project, Strengthening Economic Resilience in Appalachia, which wrapped up this year, resulted in a technical report as well as a Guidebook for Practitioners that identified key strategies communities can use to enhance their economic resilience, including community engagement strategies, infrastructure investment, and place-based asset development. It also featured case studies of selected counties in the Appalachian region and across the country to gain additional insight into how some communities have rebounded from the recession and other economic disruptions in mining, manufacturing, hospitality, education, transportation and similar industries. One of the featured communities is a region in Pennsylvania, in which several counties have joined forces to promote themselves to tourists through a single "Pennsylvania Wilds" brand, promoted through the PA Wilds Center. We had an opportunity to partner with the PA Wilds Center in 2018 on a panel convened by PI Goetz on "Planning for a Changing Rural Economy," presented at the annual conference of the PA Chapter of the American Planning Association. We look forward to continued collaborations with this group going forward. Additional economic resilience research was conducted using county-level employment data to examine how quickly and completely counties recovered from the 2008 global financial and which U.S. counties were the most economically resilient. This research, published in Applied Economics, also looked at "economic centrality," a measure of how well-connected the industries in a given county are to other industries and other regions or states. We found that the more a county's economy is intertwined with others', the more it will be insulated from shocks, such as the loss of a major employer or an economic downturn, suggesting that one strategy local governments can use to increase resiliency is to promote increased economic centrality of their local industry structure. Our research capacity has grown with the 2019 addition of postdoctoral scholar Devon Meadowcroft, who is assisting with our NIFA-funded Rural Emergence and Vitality project. Dr. Meadowcroft has recently gained "Special Sworn Status" to access U.S. Census Data, which will accelerate our progress on this front. Another newly hired postdoc, Dr. Sarah Rocker, has been coordinating the AMS-funded technical assistance project for grantees of the Farmers Market and Local foods Promotion Programs (FMLFPP), as reported in the recent 2017 funding report. Other postdocs at the Center are advancing several additional lines of research, including on agricultural clustering, life expectancy, regional economic development, and nutrient-dense food crop production in the region.
Publications
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Progress 08/15/17 to 08/14/18
Outputs
Target Audience:Target Audience includes Deans and Directors of the land grant universities in the Northeast, professionals at USDA and within NIFA, faculty and educators across the region, policymakers, planners, citizens and other audiences, depending on the topic. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?Our multi-state Extension RFA is providing 22 individuals from around the country the opportunity to engage in collaborations that involve various forms of co-learning. For example, one project team is working together to create a knowledge-sharing network in New England so that Extension organizations can better understand how to help communities connect downtown economic development with local recreational trails. The group that was funded through the 2015-2016 multi-state Extension RFA to learn economic impact analysis techniques has evolved into an informal 22-member Community of Practice for Data Analysis, led by Daniel Eades (WVU), in which members share information about professional development opportunities, answer questions about IMPLAN models, and discuss how impact studies are being used in state-level policy decisions. The TAC analysis of the region provided two undergraduate students, one at Rutgers and one at WVU, the opportunity to conduct research, interpret data, and present findings. The RRDCs supported the HIREDnAg project, which held a webinar in October 2017 about the project's findings attended by more than 100 people. The Center-sponsored special sessions at the November 2017 North American Regional Science Association (NARSC)meeting in Vancouver, BC, provided an opportunity for attendees to learn about findings from the Rural Establishment Innovation Survey. The CAPE project, which the NERCRD supports, held several webinars aimed at helping community development and Extension professionals help communities address a broad range of behavioral health challenges. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We shared resources generated by the Center through our website, our bi-monthly newsletter, and multiple presentations given by the Director and postdoctoral scholars, as documented in our Annual Report. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?We will continue to support the NET group, to include facilitating a funding proposal looking at rural development and tourism and assisting with the planning of a 2019 national conference. We will curate the resources generated by the multi-state teams we're funding, sharing them broadly to maximize learning opportunities. We will continue to conduct research in the areas of local and regional food systems, economic resilience, behavioral health, and regional economic development. With new funding from NIFA, we will pursue new research aimed at finding ways for communities to support rural entrepreneurs. We are organizing a special session, focused on the rural economy, for the 2018 Conference of the PA Chapter of American Planning Association. We are scheduled to make a number of presentations at additional venues, including the European Regional Science Association annual meeting, where two papers will be presented, and the NARSC conference in San Antonio.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
At the October 2017 in-person meeting of our Board of Directors and Technical Advisory Committee, we synthesized the findings of our TAC-led inquiry into the current and emerging economic and community-development challenges facing the region. Several pressing issues were identified by three or more Northeast states: business retention and expansion, rural "brain drain", substance abuse, and balancing development pressure with rural and agricultural needs. The Center's ongoing research agenda adds to the science base around several of these issues, particularly the growing substance abuse crisis plaguing rural America. For example, research on causes, consequences, and spatial variations of substance abuse and poor mental health was published in Review of Regional Studies and presented at the joint meeting of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association (AAEA) and Allied Social Sciences Association (ASSA) Annual Meeting. Elizabeth Dobis, a postdoctoral scholar who joined the Center in October 2017 presented on the access and utilization of mental health care in rural America at the 2018 Southern Regional Sciences Association meeting and also attended a workshop on the Rural Health-Economic Development Nexus, organized by the North Central RDC. Another very clear finding from the TAC-led inquiry is that the Center should continue promoting and facilitating interstate collaborations in the region, which we have been doing on many fronts. First, we have funded three multi-state teams, comprising 22 people from nine states, in response to our "Impacts of successful Extension and outreach programs" small-grant program. We have continued to provide support to a multi-state team we funded via the 2015-2016 small-grant program curating their ongoing scholarship, programming, and adaptations around the First Impressions program on the Northeast Center website. We have led efforts to re-energize the RRDCs' partnership with the National Extension Tourism (NET) Design Team, which serves to connect Extension staff working in tourism across the nation. In addition to providing administrative support to this group, the Center is facilitating a discussion on how the group can pursue research and Extension program funding in the 2018-2019 grant cycle. For example, learnings from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) conference on rural innovation (attended by Goetz) inspired a NET-NERCRD joint grant application (in progress) that will connect rural development, agriculture, and tourism. We successfully closed our signature food-systems project, Enhancing Food Security in the Northeast through Regional Food Systems (EFSNE). The project made significant gains in understanding the extent to which the region can increase production of certain foods, and potentially better meet the food needs of low-income populations in the locations they studied. Findings and outputs from the project, which concluded earlier this year, will be useful to food system planners, policy makers, researchers and advocates interested in advancing regional food systems. The collegial relationships developed among project team members have resulted in new collaborations. For example, three EFSNE researchers and a collaborator at Cornell University were awarded a three-year AFRI competitive grant to examine whether current slaughter and processing infrastructure in the Northeast limits the expansion of small and medium-scale meat production.With a five-year grant and two no-cost extensions, the seven-year EFSNE project resulted in more than 100 presentations and 22 peer-reviewed publications--10 of which have been distilled into general-audience briefs--with more planned for publication later this year. Center staff presented on the outreach-writing component of this project at the Food Distribution Research Society in Honolulu, HI. We have continued to collaborate on national initiatives with the three other RRDCs, and engage in quarterly face-to-face meetings with other Center Directors. During this reporting period, a major initiative of the four Centers was expanding our Rural America Counts article to address the issues raised by the Secretary's Agriculture and Rural Prosperity Task Force Report. RRDC staff prepared several communications pieces showing how the land-grant University and Extension systems are working across issue areas of promoting e-connectivity, improving rural quality of life, supporting the rural workforce, harnessing technological innovation, and promoting rural economic development. Other joint initiatives include the ongoing Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Outreach Training and Technical Assistance Program, which held several SBIR proposal writing trainings in eight select states including Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The Centers also collectively participated in a national effort led by the University of Vermont to better understand how health insurance decisions affect farm and ranch enterprises. The project (Health Insurance, Rural Economic Development and Agriculture) concluded this year and resulted in a publication in Choices magazine, which attracted significant media coverage including from the Wall Street Journal. We synthesized the Choices article for a general audience which was distributed in the NERCRD newsletter. Along with the WRDC, the NERCRD represented the RRDCs at the APLU CEO-CICEP meeting in Richmond, VA in June. This was also an opportunity to feature the strong RRDC-Cooperative Extension partnership. The theme of the meeting was Creative Placemaking for Healthy Communities. The current chair of CICEP is Dr. Eric Barron, President of Penn State University, which is placing a strong emphasis on innovation. Dr. Goetz chaired the breakout group focused on rural innovation and with Dr. Albrecht drafted text for inclusion in an APLU policy statement on the roles of land grant universities is supporting place-based innovation.
Publications
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development (2018). 2017 Annual Report. University Park, PA.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Dobis, E. and S.J. Goetz. Access and utilization of mental health care in rural America. Presented at Southern Regional Science Meetings, Philadelphia, PA, March 15, 2018.
- Type:
Conference Papers and Presentations
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Goetz, S.J. and M. Davlasheridze. Explaining Spatial Disparities in Drug Overdoses, 1970-2014. Invited paper presented at the Allied Social Sciences Association Annual Meeting, January 6, 2018, Philadelphia, PA.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2018
Citation:
Li, M., S.J. Goetz, B. Weber. Human Capital and Intergenerational Mobility in U.S. Counties. Economic Development Quarterly, February 16, 2018
- Type:
Other
Status:
Other
Year Published:
2017
Citation:
Goetz, S.J. Overview of the NERCRD. Online presentation to the Northeast chapter of National Association of Community Development Extension Professionals. October 13, 2017.
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Progress 08/15/16 to 08/14/17
Outputs
Target Audience:Target Audience includes Deans and Directors of the land grant universities in the Northeast, professionals at USDA and within NIFA, faculty and educators across the region, policymakers, planners, citizens and other audiences, depending on the topic. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?We continue to provide various training and professional development opportunities for post-docs and graduate students who are affiliated with the Center. This year we are supporting the National Extension Tourism conference to be held in Princeton, New Jersey, which provides multiple excellent training opportunities for extension educators at the community, individual and firm levels. We are also working with WV and ME to launch SBIR training that is being led by the WRDC. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?We shared resources generated by the Center through our website, our bi-monthly newsletter, and multiple presentations given by the Director and postdoctoral scholars, as documented in our Annual Report. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?As reported in our prior-year funding report, we will use the regional analysis currently being conducted by our TAC to inform our decision of whether to adopt new focal areas, and to identify opportunities for forging new partnerships in response to emerging CRED issues that are shared by NE states. We expect to award at least two grants to two or more regional teams, and provide support to facilitate their collaboration and further embed impact data-collection in NE Extension programming. In addition we will continue our research on the interrelationships between economic complexity, diversity and resilience, as well as on the determinants of poverty in US counties. We will support at least one paper session at the North American Regional Science Council meeting on the REIS innovation projects that we are funding with ERS resources. In addition, we are scheduled to make a number of presentations at the upcoming annual Food Distribution Research Society annual conference.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
As reported in our prior-year funding report, we continued to facilitate the institutionalization of the CD impact measures by launching a new small-grants program designed to further regional work in this area. We also successfully nominated the authors of the Center-published "Impact Indicators Tip Booklet" for a NACDEP award, not only to recognize their good work, but also to raise awareness about the impact measures among CD Extension staff nationwide. We have continued to promote and share ongoing CD work and activities of our land-grant partners through our newsletter, listservs and social media accounts. We played a significant role in promoting a nationwide survey led by UVM that explored farmers' and ranchers' experiences with health insurance. This project has received a tremendous amount of attention both from policymakers and public media, because it is very timely. Preliminary survey findings revealed that 73 percent of respondents feel that affordable health insurance is an important or very important means of reducing their business risk, and 52 percent are not confident they could pay the costs of a major illness without going into debt. Our signature food systems research project, Enhancing Food Security in the Northeast, received a 7th year no-cost extension, allowing team members to continue writing up results and translating the results for multiple audiences, including consumers and business owners. Other accomplishments include that we continued to extend and promote our research on impact of extension spending; we shared with partners and continue to work on the Rural Counts article; we are working on various papers related to self-employment and entrepreneurship, including one major report with various partners for the Appalachian Research Commission; the research on assessing the impact of extension programs continues to be shared widely and has received substantial attention, and our research on the impact of the Dining With Diabetes project is about to be submitted to a journal; we have completed our work on the mental health and what can be learned from Twitter for the CAPE project; our graduate student Minghao Li presented a paper to the NARSC conference entitled: Education equity and intergenerational mobility, which has also been accepted for publication in Economic Development Quarterly (forthcoming); and we collaborated with colleagues at various universities on a number of NIFA projects, including one conference grant application with NYU and PSU faculty.
Publications
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2017
Citation:
Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development. (2017). 2016 Annual Report. University Park, PA.
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