County Legislative Responses to COVID-19

Well welcome everyone thank you so much for taking the time this morning to come

to our talk. My name is Elizabeth Day and my co-presenter is Adam Levine both from

Cornell. And I'm gonna share my screen so we can get started and let's see

 

Okay! So today we're going to talk about a project that we've been working on  that really explores kind of the county legislative responses to Covid 19 and just to give a quick kind of overview of what we'll talk about today first we'll just do some brief introductions of who we are. Then we'll do an overview of our project pretty broadly. And then we'll talk about more specifically what we've done with counties in New York and then we'll close with just some challenges and benefits of this type of work and then we'll open it up for discussion and questions if you have any questions during the webinar please feel free to put them into the chat box. And then we also have some pre submitted questions that we'll discuss at the end as well.

 

So as I mentioned my name is Elizabeth Day and I am an engaged learning associate with CIPA and I'm also the assistant director for policy engagement for Cornell Project 2Gen which is a project that's based out of the Bronfenbrenner Center for Translational Research and oh thanks Adam sorry I saw the chat box pop up yes please answer all your thoughts and share your thoughts and questions there so the Bronfenbrenner Center is a Center at Cornell that really focuses on trying to bridge research with people in the community so research with practice with policy and my work specifically focuses on bridging research and policy and my background is in Human Development and Family Studies so I really focus on child and Family Policy.

 

Great and hi everybody, I'm Adam Levine I'm an associate professor in the Department of Government at Cornell and I'm also the co-founder and president of an organization called Research for Impact and so all of you I think know what the Department of Government probably is and what Cornell is Research for Impact might be a little bit more of a mystery but it's an organization that is dedicated to connecting research practice and policy. And we do a lot of different and also actually not just to do the work but also to be relentlessly scientific while we're doing it and so we're also sort of like sharing what we're learning about the best way of doing it as it's getting done okay there we go so um I want to start like at like really the the 30,000 foot level.

And so I'm gonna talk for a little bit and then pass it back to Elizabeth. And so I'm thirty thousand foot level there's a very popular narrative this day these days and I'm sure that many of you have seen sort of snippets of this narrative and maybe you've even read some of the books that are up on the screen on and or sort of read news articles like the one that's at the bottom of the screen. And so this narrative is basically this hostility to scientific expertise it's the idea and this includes both leaders so political leaders but also everyday citizens that they don't want to interact with scientists and experts and they want to actively reject scientific research and scientific expertise. And this narrative is pretty widespread and so you see it from sort of the books I mean the death of expertise book has gotten a lot of attention over the past couple of years.

And we've been treated to many many many headlines including again the one bottom newspaper headlines that are expressing this view as well yet in this project and this is sort of the kind of ethos of the work that Elizabeth does more generally the work that I do more generally and actually now the work that we're doing together is where actually we're focused on the opposite phenomenon which is when do people actually want to have that conversation with scientific experts and when do they actually demand scientific expertise to help them solve problems that they're dealing with and so that's really kind of the core question we really are sort of trying to take this kind of popular narrative and turn it on its head and better understand that demand question as well as also what kinds of interventions might lead to better demand for and use of scientific evidence in both practice and policy making so there's lots of possible domains to study these kinds of questions.

As I said I've done a lot of work studying how to connect searchers and nonprofits for example and a lot of that has been through research for impact here though we're focused on a different setting which is bridging research and policy. There's really good reasons to want to sort of create those bridges policy itself is very complex the world is complex policy is complex and having an evidence base can strengthen its effectiveness the effectiveness of policy and then the same time research that wants to have an impact research that wants to sort better understand you know conditions in the world how we can sort of improve how we can sort solve community and social problems you know you want have an understanding of sort of the policy process of policy constraints of what kinds of factors go into that and we're just sort of both you know think about what research questions are important and also what are the most effective and feasible ways of answering them that said policy makers don't always want scientific research and researchers don't always want to talk to scientists and that's in part of you know whatwe're interested in investigating.

So even once we sort of say alright we're not just we're focused on you know connecting sort of like you know we're talking we're scientific expertise in general the role scientific expertise in American democracy then we can start thinking about connecting like scientist practice scientists nonprofits and policy makers but we're gonna then say okay no we're gonna focus specifically on policy makers even then of course we still have to serve narrow down even further because there's lots of possible policymakers to focus on and so what we're focused on in this project is um and Elizabeth is gonna say a lot more about in a second is county legislators but here what you see up on the screen so Elizabeth has done some of the most cutting-edge work on connecting research and policy at the state level there's other great work that's happening at the federal level but you know the the local level has been you know relatively speaking from the research side and from the outreach side has been largely neglected and so we really sort of enter like you know the project that we're going to describe a little bit from today with a key sort of theoretical question about what's the demand for scientific research among County County leaders and that's both legislators as well as executivesdifferent counties have different kinds of governance structures and so some of them have a separate executive branch some of them don't and things like that but um but so we think about our County leaders generally.

One thing I should say is that like you know it goes without saying that the work that folks do at the county level is really really important but it's often under the radar and it's often not all that sexy I mean it's about you know like what should parking regulations look like you know what how will you make sure the streets are plowed how are we gonna make sure that like you know that you know how are we gonna do sort of road improvements road paving things like that you know highway superintendents are some of the most like you know powerful people at the county level and so they do really really important work and so this is again the domain where you know sort of ensuring that like they are making evidence-based decisions can be really important impactful on our everyday and so what we'll do today is a we're gonna present basically a piece of lives this kind of so the broad question that we're trying to investigate right now sort of what is the demand for scientific expertise how do we build relationships between researchers and county level leaders.

Well we're gonna we've been up to over the past month or so what we're gonna be doing today is present results from a pilot study of those efforts and so we've actually been doing pilots that we Elizabeth and I have been doing pilot study studies along with to try to answer this question since December but in the wake of Covid we sort of shifted gears and kind of ramped it up a little bit because we thought you know look like counties are very much on the front lines of the Covid responses in a lot of ways in ways in part that we learned even through doing this pilot study and so but at the same time they've largely been left on their own across a range of challenges and so there are many ways in which county leaders nowadays I mean this doesn't make the headlines all the time some of you might be very familiar with this but some might not like there are many ways in which basically the federal in the state government federal government state governments you know even in sort of you know states like New York where you know clearly like Cuomo has been a very sort of strong leader on Covid related matters you know basically like you know they're still left on their own there's so lots and lots of questions and challenges they're facing that don't necessarily have precedent and that they just like there aren't answers from the state level

So what we've been doing and this has been as part of this pilot study is we've been doing outreach to different counties and this we've done it with six counties in upstate New York and this outreach began in early March and just as events were unfolding and we focused on basically doing outreach where we said to two counties County leaders you know like what kinds of challenges are you facing particularly that relate to sort of children and families we focus on that in part because of our own expertise but also in part because those are the kinds of issues that like are they are very much kind of on the front lines dealing with and so what we have this sort of this this this process that unfolds and you see sort of the different colored squares in the arrow and so it's basically been a series of steps to just try to get a sense of like you know what does it look like to do outreach to County leaders and you know what might sort of come next and I want to sort of underscore that like you know nothing we're doing here is like rocket science in any way on the other hand to our knowledge and we heard this from County leaders over and over again no one else has done it they are not receiving this kind of outreach from researchers at least that's what they that's what they told us does not say it's not happening anywhere but say that's what we heard from them and so the process is we're connecting with email to County leaders and/or we're using connections via colleagues we can say more about that in the Q & A if folks have want to know a little bit more about how to make those connections and then we're asking them what are your most pressing needs.

Again this is the kind of question that they are not used to getting at least the ones that we spoke with and so then what we're doing is we're sort of responding to those needs and usually that's been sort of a combination of either comparative policy research and Elizabeth is going to give an example of that in a second or compare compiling existing research and summarizing what do we know about this then reporting those findings back sharing them broadly across the state and then you know in a lot of cases receiving new requests because other some of the later counties have heard about us from the earlier counties so anyway so I'm gonna stop there and I'm in a little Elizabeth take it over from here. I'll unmute myself so in our work with counties as Adam mentioned we just honestly held a lot of conversations with them around kind of what did you what did they want to learn and two of them have the really kind of key themes that came out of this work is that first they want to know what are the immediate needs of people in my County so many county leaders not just legislators as Adam mentioned talked a lot about how you know I kind of have a good sense of some things but I really don't have a good sense of other things particularly around kind of what's happening on the ground.

That was kind of our first bucket of what they wanted to learn of what came out of our conversations and then the other big thing was what are other people doing so we know that county legislators would say we know that everyone's facing these challenges right now around Covid 19 so can you tell me what or other places doing and do they work and can I use them they're really trying to think about you know if someone else is doing this work and doing it well I'm gonna just use their idea instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.

And here's a quote there we go so one County leader that we talked to said that's the one that's plaguing me the most who is doing this and what are they doing so trying to work smarter versus harder in terms of thinking about approaches they could take the best serve the people in their communities so I'm going to go through two examples that kind of cover each of these of these broader buckets so the first one being kind of what are what are the needs of my community and so our work then really turned into kind of a mini needs assessment so we were thinking about okay what do key community stakeholders say are the immediate needs of families or people in their communities and what ideas do these stay holder's have for meeting those needs and those included kind of across counties that included talking with different elected officials or found supervisor so kind of like the nextlevel smaller in terms of government in these counties but it also includedother community stakeholders like talking with parent-teacher organizations what's happening in the schools or people who are whereexpertise had expertise in that community around housing and housingneeds or food insecurity and food needs.

I'm so really our work then became kind of doing this many needs assessment in one example that I'll give here is that in one of the counties they asked what is the best way we can use this mobile social services unit and obviously this is a very specific question and so Adam and I couldn't really turn to any broader research around mobile social services units but we could turn to the experts in the community to ask what do you think would be a good way use this so the legislators were asking you know they told us we purchased this mobile child welfare and Family Services unit our original plan was for it to go out into the community and be able to help people essentially with kind of social service paperwork but once Covid 19 hit it really was sitting unused and the legislators recognized that this was kind of a huge waste of resources they had this mobile unit and they really wanted to know what can we do with it to be able to help people in the community and so our findings were really that community stakeholders have lots of ideas really.

I think you know these County elected officials or leaders were really smart in thinking what do I need to know I need to know what's happening on the ground because that's then how they're able to find out possible solutions that will really work for the people in their community so in this example but these are some just examples of what we heard from the many needs assessment so the first one was a concern around parents seating access to technology Wi-Fi in order to get their kids set up for schooling the access resources and find critical information on the pandemic.

This came from a leader of the of the PTO in that County of one of the major school systems in the county I'm and so that they suggested you know this mobile services unit could offer resources and information and by taking them offline and in to harder to reach areas it really can kind of help reach these more vulnerable populations that might not have access to the internet from another person mentioned that people need big food and basic household supplies such as disinfectants and hand sanitizers so why not stock this mobile unit with those household goods and if possible food and then deliver with the mobile unit and then a third one was that people really need translation services to be able to gain access to safety and other Covid 19 information so again there's some of these barriers to flow of information so if you can offer these types of things through this mobile unit take it into the community and offer these sessions where people know they're getting information from reliable resources and that include translators for non-english speakers and then you can do a better job of kind of getting information into the county so these are things that we heard from doing our many needs assessment we compiled them and then presented them to the to the legislators that we were working with and just to give you a sense of kind of the timeline of all this if you've ever worked with elected officials or any sort of policymaker they are generally on a very very short timeline for things obviously for obvious reasons around Covid 19 or they really want to try to be as responsive as possible so we're doing this work kind of in a one to two day turnaround for these policymakers.

 

The other kind of big questions that I mentioned that these policymakers had were what are others doing and so the approach that we kind of took to this is doing really a comparative policy brief. so we were thinking about okay on this topic what are other states doing what are other counties doing and then really importantly do we have any evidence of success or failure across these approaches so the example that I'll give here is that we had County leader asked really specifically about these critical shortages in child care for essential workers.

And just to give you some background this is one of the first projects that we tackled and so it came a lot of policies were rolling out in early March if you remember where you could have outdated information one day later.

So essentially what happened is that the state mandated that child cares remain open to service and personnel and they also required schools to make plans for child care for essential workers when the schools closed.

But if you're not familiar with kind of how child care centers really operate they really require being at full capacity to be able to make money and stay open as a business. And so unfortunately as Adam also mentioned there was very actual literal there was very little detailed guidance from the state about how to keep these childcare centers open which were much needed for essential workers even though this was happening across the state counties were saying we know we need to keep them open essential workers need them but we don't know how to do that.  

So again we did this kind of comparative analysis looking across different counties in different states to see what others were doing and really we found that approaches were very diverse as expected when there's little guidance kind of from the higher up levels of government there was no guidance from the federal government and minimal from state then that means people are can be very innovative at the local level but it also means we end up with this quote this patchwork quilt of different approaches people taking um we also very quickly found that there unfortunately there were no data on effectiveness which of course makes sense you know this again we were doing this in early March things were changing daily and these approaches were really kind of coming out daily and so there had not been any time study effectiveness of the different approaches so just to give you a little bit of a snapshot of what was happening with child cares across the different counties in different states we look at states with we did 14 states that really had some kind of child care policy so I'm sure at this point I haven't looked back but I'm sure all the states have some kind of inner policy on this but at the time they're really only 14 that we could find information on.

One of the approaches was through governor executive orders so many states were lifting or waiving usual child care regulations which meant that they were changing staffing in classroom sizes. So again in in child care oftentimes there are very clear state mandates around being licensed where you have to have a certain ratio of teachers to students or teachers to children or infants and so a lot of states kind of immediate action that they took was to waive those requirements and say we can have higher ratios now because we recognize the need to have these have these children have some sort of daycare a lot of states also mandated school districts to provide child care they said you know we recognized by closing these schools that now we have to have some other option for families so we're gonna kind of pass it on to the schools however again this common theme of the state providing some sort of mandate or regulation they rarely provided funding to support these efforts.

I'm so then kind of what we saw was that oh and that also sorry state-funded child cares often were required to remain open so if you received any sort of state funding across state say they were required to stay open. because there was kind of this lack of funding to support these efforts we saw a really strong sense of locally lead response in a lot of states WMCAs we're taking the lead on offering services so once they had to close their usual gym operations they were taking a few weeks to kind of recollect themselves and be able to offer child care to essential workers and other approaches included community centers libraries and faith communities across the different states and we also then of course zoomed in to New York because that would be the most relevant comparison for the county that we were working with within the state we looked at the eight largest counties and again varied responses to the governor's orders to create plans in many places they were keeping existing centers open they were again like other states were doing opening new centers via community organizations and then also in some counties they were coordinating with Cooperative Extension and if you're unfamiliar with the Cooperative Extension system I saw someone had made a really good comment in the chat box about this but Robert Cornell Cooperative Extension is a system of educators in every county across the state that are really helping to support across a wide range of different issues to support families and individuals in their communities and some in some counties they were also partnering with their Cooperative Extension we're really trying to figure out how to navigate this childcare issue.

The biggest limitation was the funding so you know even through doing all of this these this digging into what other places were doing it was not always clear how this was going to be sustainable how places could continue to fund this and unfortunately that was just a limitation of the work that we were doing for this county. Excuse me, that we weren't able to tell them kind of a good way to fund these things other than this patchwork of having community organizations kick in volunteers and those types of approaches so to share our findings once we kind of did this really dug in for a day or two into the into the information all of our findings we shared with a brief report and so this is an example of the emergency childcare brief that we put together it included kind of a summary of our findings on the first page and then recommendations that we had so after looking across all the different states and counties even as someone just going in and trying to find the information there were clear approaches that states were taking that made it easier for families to find information that seemed to just kind of ease the flow of any information accessing services so those were the types of recommendations we were able to give and then also including kind of this very specifics of the different approaches where we got our information from and you know we included that first state and counties so that if anyone who used this brief could follow up with those people if they wanted to learn more about their approach.

Then we also did follow-ups with staffers and policymakers so we had had conversations with them then we sent them our findings. and then we had follow-up conversations just to ask you know was it helpful for her was this helpful for the policymaker and then we also distributed these really broadly across so even if the request came from a certain county we provided this information across a range of counties so that we weren't limiting who got this information just to the people who have specifically asked for it.

 

Because these are issues that we're facing kind of all of the counties and I'm gonna pass it back to Adam he's gonna talk about some of the challenges and benefits of this type of work. Great Thank You Elizabeth yeah so I'm gonna just talk about the challenges benefits and then also raise a couple of discussion questions and I know folks have already added some questions too there's some in the chat box and there's some in the QA so we'll try to cover all of them we also receive some before before we started but in terms of challenges so you know we the example the Elizabeth highlight it was one where basically you know we we were connected to Erie County through like have a separate connection and you know for the most part like things went very smoothly when we said you know are there any challenges where you think research might be a helpful um you know they said yes here they are but yet like they're in other counties that will go that will go unnamed for right now there was definitely like you know this sort of initial just hesitation to the question just because if the question was so novel to them and again this is now again we're strictly talking about either in some cases county executives or county legislators you know to them at least the question was novel and so and the idea the an University that like these two random people but what God's Act I would say like you know is there research that might be helpful they had not received that that kind of offer before and so and in particular you know there used to sort of and we heard this valuable you know basically there used to essentially if researchers contact them or anybody contacts them from say a local university you know they're sort of looking for a catch in some way because most of the kinds of people who reach out them just in general serve they want something or they're trying to sell something or whatever and so when we say no no like you know we are this is free research you know we are funded by a foundation that funds the research for impact work and things like that.

You know we had to sort of kind of get over that initial hurdle a bit. so so one challenge was the novelty you know. The second challenge is of course is always a short turnaround time Elizabeth mention that about how you know I mean they need to make decisions now people's you know lives are being upended now and we need to move quickly and that's been true in all of these cases including the one that the ones that she talked about and then the last is needing to gain entree into the local policymaking community because again you know we are we are strangers to them and one of the things you know so in some cases we were able to use like existing professional connections that we just happen to have but then also what we found is that once we sort of you know had made some connections like for example in Erie County people offered to connect us with with connecting counties and so you know uh and because you know then and then it was sort of relatively easy to say you know so-and-so from this county you know recommended that we reach out to you and you know we were able to obtain personal email address as opposed to professional email addresses and things like that but you know that takes that certainly takes time and we had to sort of you know in some of the initial work we were doing you know demonstrate that like we were trustworthy demonstrate that you we could get the job done demonstrate that we would actually ask and answer their questions and be responsive.

 

So they're all these kinds of like relational elements but overall the benefits are that because this was you know we were able to basically have a conversation I think it's worth sort of underscoring the unit like the currency here is conversations initially then there's research briefs afterwards but the initial currency is really conversations and you know research briefs, op-eds all of that stuff are like are incredibly important for a variety of different reasons you know and and that's what some of the folks we talked to spoke about but yet like one of the things that they also said was that you know researchers they don't reach out to us directly like this and we heard that over and over again and like to have a conversation where we can go back and forth and say all right well you know these are like my needs in my county and then you know we as the researchers can ask like okay you know so like you know what what's you know what are this sort of like top priorities let me ask a little bit more about that you know and give opportunities for sort of reflection at the beginning there and then sort of tailor the response to that.

 

And so so that the brief you know again it does take more time but it is a little bit more sort of tailored and that's really kind of what we're trying to do with this project more generally think about basically how to sort of like initiate these relationships like what does it look like to initiate these kinds of relationships with these county leaders and so and that's also why the second benefit is that we're planting the seed for long term relationships as well so I want to the last slide that that we prepare is just some discussion questions and of course folks have already asked questions just great and please ask more questions we have some that we're gonna will address as well but we'll just throw these out here and these are I want to like fully admit these are like a vague kind of super like 30,000 foot level but and and they invite you just sort of like either to answer if you have if you have answers and stuff you want to share like we would be more than happy.

 

Feel free to put it either in the Q&A or it actually might not make sense for the Q&A feel free to just put in the chat box and we'll sort of share it if you want to like send it to us first that's totally fine but so you know but some of the discussion questions we're sort of thinking about is you know why do you think that there's a gulf between research and policy first of all and you can answer that the national level if you want but I mean you know particularly start thinking about like the local level.

 

It you know notice says in our case essentially you know we played matchmaker in a way like in a way that sort of you know we basically we did the outreach the the county executives and and legislators that we spoke we spoke with, they weren't doing outreach on their own and that's for a variety of reasons in some cases and and you know and particularly at this moment because they're incredibly busy and and their days are just getting filled in lots of sort of unpredictable ways but it's worth noting that like essentially what was needed was sort of somebody who's gonna play the matchmaker role and so you know you might so one another discussion question is just sort of more generally why might matchmakers be necessary and certainly like you know Elizabeth mentioned the Cornell Cooperative Extension earlier I mean one of the like major sort of like benefits of the Cooperative Extension there's many benefits but one of the major benefits is they often are playing matchmakers especially with all sorts of folks in throughout counties in upstate and downstate New York. And so the and with a wide variety I'll say with a wide variety of constituencies.

 

And so um and then the third question is what are other ways to bridge the gap between research and policy and so again you know we're sort of what is a little bit you know relative to previous outreach efforts to legislators and executive branch folks you know one of the things that's a little bit sort of distinctive here is again that we're really are trying to focus on like the relationships as the currency as the unit of analysis and how can we build those.

 

And so but if you have other ideas you know and or you want to start talking about the limitations of what we've done we would be more than happy to sort of talk about that engage on that and that would be wonderful so anyway so those are the discussion questions we're gonna leave those up and what we're gonna do is we're gonna basically sort of you know start um we're gonna give you a few minutes to sort of think about those and whatnot and or in the meantime we received some questions already during the presentation as well as sort of prior to starting the presentation and so we're gonna sort of start addressing some of those.

 

So Elizabeth how do you want to do that? Yeah so I will just go through a few of them and then we can also look I don't know if you want to take a look I can tackle the first one and then if you want to take a look at the chat box, to check those out.

 

So one of the questions we had submitted prior to this morning, which I think is actually a really good question challenge that we face is do legislators ever reach out to Cornell faculty or is it always faculty reaching out to legislators and I think really kind of been thinking about this question it got a midst Covid 19 as Adam mentioned a lot of legislators are entirely overwhelmed in terms of thinking about what their responses are gonna be and how things are changing on a daily basis so in this sort of context I don't think many are probably reaching out but understandably so because they're really trying to kind of put out fires as they come up with Covid 19.

 

Outside of this specific context we do see efforts where legislators are reaching out to faculty as well often times this happens if they have already have an existing relationship with some sort of faculty member or there have been instances where I think legislators or their staff will make kind of cold contacts to Cornell faculty but in other words that I've done particularly at the state level one of the big limitations to that is that often times both policymakers and practitioners in the community are feel a little bit intimidated to reach out and also are worried that they might not ask the right questions or have the right questions to ask.

 

And then a very logistical limitation is that they're just not sure how to find the right person. If you think about you know if you're not if you don't have any affiliation with a giant you know university like Cornell and you want to go try to find someone to help you on a specific topic it would be really hard to find someone.

 

I've had previous Maker's suggests why isn't there just a search tool that I can use to try to find some sort of researcher who relates to the work that I'm doing so I think it kind of you know there are very logistical and practical reasons that those connections as much from the policymakers side of things.

 

But also I think that you know it does happen and there are policymakers that you reach out it prior to coming to Cornell I was a staffer in the United States Senate and we absolutely reached out the researchers to try to get information from them. But again it was oftentimes people that we knew had a good reputation or knew or someone that was going to give us credible information. I don't know if you want to add anything to that.

 

No I thought that was really great and actually the one thing I will just add is I will just say also you know at the beginning you know we talked about and I don't know I mean this is a little bit of a personal reflection but you know I think that one of the things like even in just doing like you know the outreach we've done to the six counties so far and having these conversations and learning about some of the challenges that they're dealing with. I will say that like you know we mentioned there at the beginning about why connect research and policy and you know so the you know in this case likeit's clear sort of how the policymakers got information that they didn't have  already that was useful to them I do want to sort of add like from the from the other side I mean I myself like games like an enormous appreciation that I you know quite frankly feel like I probably should have had already but I didn't for sort of the kinds of challenges and work that that county leaders are doing and you know and and I think it's really sort of like you know I reflect upon that a lot but it's really sort of you know I feel like my own sort of like outlook on life and on sort of how society works and things that we don't sort of think about like has been sort of altered by this.

And so it's really been a very rewarding experience in that way a rewarding experience in the way the sort of relationship building in general shouldbe or hopefully is so yeah do you want me to pick another question.

Yeah I haven't looked in this in the Q&A box so well so then so Renee Smith mentioned a couple of different things although I think that like I am like totally not a zoom experts. I think these went it says it went to all new panelists but I think that's not all attendee so I'm gonna do is I'm gonna read I'm gonna read what she wrote because I think that most of the participants can't see it but maybe you can't see in which case then I don't know like sorry for reading it.

 

But so CCE- Cornell Cooperative Extension so she's talking about again if you can't see these messages she's talking about sort of some of the work that they're doing as well to engage a whole variety of different stakeholders at the county level in upstate New York in New York in general and so on one of the things that she writes about is engaging consultants to do training I'm around storytelling and the um particularly engaging with a professor at Georgetown does research on how storytelling can influence opinions and policy.

 

And so what they've been doing is sort of thinking about like how to basically sort of tell like impactfull stories that can often open up the door to presenting the data and then she added it but at the end and it's like really really important like how the data alone as we see nationally does not change minds and keeps people in their political corners. And there really is actually um so you know the you know one of the things when we talk about the word evidence.

 

Yeah we kind of today we didn't really unpack like the word evidence too much and we could although that would be that's like way too much for sort of 9:30 in the morning but anyway but we could. But like you know there's just lots and lots of different types of evidence and one of the things about you know Renee's comment here which i think is really important is that you know when we talk about sort of like problems and sort of you know to even sort of like give evidence that a problem exists let's say you know you can talk about in terms of the data the unemployment rate is this this number of people filed for unemployment.

 

Like that you know things like that but you can also sort of talk about it in terms of you know like let me tell you a story about somebody and what happened to this person or this person's family. And then use that as a way to sort of get people's attention and those those kinds of stories can often resonate in a way that sort of data doesn't always resonate.  I think that you know it's sort of sometimes I think we have a tendency and I'll say we are sort of and this is like the not yeah this is sort of like the proverbial we like in the scholarly community you know we think about sort of you know hard-nosed facts and we're supposed to have these kind of hard-nosed facts and data and statistics and things like that and of course we like you know I would never say we shouldn't have that but I think that like what Renee is sort of really kind of reminding us about is that like when you're interacting with policymakers it's not that they don't want to hear that that's not you know but it's that like you need to get their attention they're very busy they have a lot of demands they're used to people screaming at them. We heard that actually multiple times outs are actually thinking about sort of the you know the the challenge is to like you know even like the getting them to sort of pay attention to us and sort of understand what we were like trying to offer.

 

You know was sort of so outside of the bounds because there's so many of these legislators and executives especially the legislature look like we only hear from people when like things go wrong and so anyway but like you know to get their attention like you know how I'm having like stories of people who have been affected by unemployment like healthy people who have lost their jobs and what is going on right now or you know to come back to the mobile services you know people who like have not only lost our job to sort of live in parts of the of the county of the county that just you know there's no public transit there's no you know and gas is expensive or they don't have a car or whatever it is you know that's a way to sort get people's attention.

 

So I think it's really important to thank you Renee. Okay Elizabeth, you're up. Yeah so another one I think a couple related questions are around kind of the logistics of how we went about gathering information and so how did we know who to reach out to who did we talk to and then we're gonna be look so I would say for I'm thinking about when we were looking into the mobile services unit really that came from I just did some work on looking at the mutual aid groups that were in that specific County and in those mutual aid groups really like on Facebook or any sort of social media they had identified at least a couple people that were kind of like the key leaders of a mutual a group or were highly active that I could see on that social media I'm also I having a background in kind of working doing this type of work in the Senate of who do you talk to kind of who are the key players in a community that was also helpful in knowing you know like it's important to tap into the PTO of a really large school system in this area it's important to try to talk to some of the key leaders of groups that are active in homelessness issues or housing issues but also we found out from the people we talked to really it was kind of this snowball sample idea where I would talk to one person and they would say you know you should really also talk to this person this person this work and so then doing follow-ups with those people and then they would also say oh you should really talk to and oftentimes so you know someone refer me to one leader of a group and someone else would also have referred me to that person so that's kind of really how you did in terms of doing the many needs assessment what that looks like around finding the people to talk to.

 

And it's you know a downside to it being a very time limited type of an hour well not really analysis but sort of outreach and information gathering one benefit of it being time limited is that it was really who I could reach in kind of the 24 hours that we had to turn around the information for the county.

 

And that was really important to that it was time founded around issues you know back in March when things were changing so quickly that we were giving them the most relevant information that we could for that for that group in terms of looking up for kind of what are other states doing what are other counties doing that was really just a lot of searching in terms of looking at what had been in the news what had been in the media.

 

It took some playing around to figure out kind of which search terms to use to try to find this information but Adam and I both kind of you know insert in terms of tackling that we had you know some different perspectives on search terms we could use or ideas of we could find and so the combination of those are really helpful in kind of creating this complete look at what's happening in other places.

 

Especially around in terms of thinking about childcare. When we did that across different states and across the different counties. And again you know there were there were definitely limitations that around. It was all that kind of what's happening other places we didn't make phone calls to places we didn't try to do any direct conversation direct contact.

 

Because for that one the focus really was gathering as much information on as many places as possible in the day that we had to turn around the information in that specific case the county actually had we spoke with the county executive I think it was on like a Wednesday and by Friday that was Wednesday afternoon and by Friday afternoon she had to make some sort of statement or announcement to the Commission that she was working on that was releasing kind of their plan for childcare.

 

So again very time bound where we just went to try to get her as much information as we could versus so we went from breadth versus depth around what was happening in those different places um and then importantly Q you know having a background in research and really for both of us having a background and knowing kind of what sources are reliable and what sources are less reliable really helped facilitate that process.

 

Where we could look at a source and say I'm not going to include this one because it's probably not not as valid giving me valid information about what's happening but this one I think is or I'm hearing this from multiple news sources in this particular area and I can find where they got this information I can pull up the actual executive order I can pull up the actual piece of policy they're referring to. boy I am going to include that so let me.

 

um I'll go to the I've been trying to make sure to pay attention also do that what's in the Q&A box oh yeah I'll also acknowledge it this is the first time I've do a presentation with the Q&A box opposed to the chat box and so I'm so Millie Dibble as so you present on this pilot with specific focus on Covid 19 responses what was the difference between that and earlier pilots that were less there were likely less emergent.

 

Do you think you had a better reception because of the crisis? So actually so we get questions about this so the first the the initial when we I mentioned earlier about certain you know one of the kind of challenges is just simply that like for the county for the legislators and the executives at least that we connected with you know they weren't used to getting an offer like this.

 

They just that was from you know from from researchers and so um and so one of the initial missteps we had and this was the very first County which again the first county will go nameless that we that we tried is you know we were able to connect with people and and you know with legislators and this sounds great we had a number of great conversations but like we definitely sort of found that rather what we did is we basically said tell us about sort of like any sort of challenge that you're facing where you think that research on children and families might be helpful.

 

And and I should also say I don't remember if we actually emphasize this before or not but like Elizabeth in particular like is like she's the expert on children and families issues like so you know I am like riding her coattails in that but that was sort of why I mean it's relevant to counties but also it's like her subs in an area of expertise and you know it's the thing that like state legislators given her previous work are the ones who are like flocking to her for sort of you know like tell us what to do and things like that and so with you know that was sort of that's why we have that kind of substantive focus here and so um but but anyway and so on but we but we left it open it was left open in terms of just anything related children and families and what we found was that like yeah that was what people would sort of kind of had this dear in headlamps look like well but you know like I'm not this question is so outside the bounds of what I'm used to I'm not really sure kind of how to answer it and people answer in kind of different ways but for the most part like you know we we received a range of responses that were like well but are you just trying to basically like you know place a PhD student like you know are you trying to like get an intern like like what's going on here. and and so it was challenging.

 

Then you know by the time we sort of like essentially sort of like round 2 of our pilot basically Covid had emerged the Covid that the crisis had emerged and so then we were able to say well you know we still don't know we don't know the specific children of families related issue that's going on in each particular county but at least we could do is we could sort of when we did the outreach we could say tell us about something that children and families really issue that you're dealing with in response to Covid and so as a narrower kind of offer and that was when all of a sudden like we had no problems with people like everybody that we could every single person in fact that we connected with was able to sort of say something now one question I think that you know and and so the question that Milly raises is also I think really important for thinking about which is that well okay fine you know but like accent like a giant public health crisis pandemic you know should we have any reason to believe that this work is gonna be important in any way or you know should we just not be focusing on county legislators and executives and one thing we did hear from a number of folks was that no I mean like yes they want to talk about Covid stuff right now but actually like you know they had other things and in some cases they shared stuff Erie County in particular like shared stuff that was like you know was a kind of a bigger initiative that was going on had been in place well before the Covid crisis and in fact we have one of the people who specifically said like you know normally I'd want to ask you about X but instead because it's cut yo because of the crisis I can't really focus on that I need to focus on the things that Elizabeth talked about.

 

And so yeah so I think um I think it's like I did a totally fair question and you know at least based on that you know we have reason to believe that like we could take this pilot and we could you know sort of try to expand it later on which is what the what the plan is and you know that that should be alright so we've definitely learned from it so basically just you know we need to we can't be too open-ended in our offer is essentially sort of what this comes down to and we've learned that through these pilot studies.

 

Millie just had a really good follow-up question - you know when we don't have the crisis to kind of help frame what what we're gonna ask now that we know we need to be more specific this is a great question and something that we've thought a lot about and really I think our approach is that trying to do some sort of I guess a needs assessment really before kind of reaching out so that could mean talking with a certain leader.

 

For example a chair of like the Children and Families committee in that county or the county executive that's overseeing certain children and family issues and having a conversation with them first of what are the things that are really facing your County around Children and Families.

 

Because like Adam said, you know even though that's kind of a broad question it's at least asking what are the challenges facing children and families versus what do you want research on I think that's kind of where the disconnect happens of like thinking about what the challenges are and then we can go in and see if we can offer any sort of research or evidence or our you know any sort of information collecting services to that to that legislature or that County leader but then also we can take what they said and take it to other policymakers in that county.

 

So for example if we heard from a county executive that you know I'm really interested in kind of racial disparities in our child welfare system we can take that topic and take it to other legislators and say we've heard one of the challenges in your community is this.

 

Are there any other issues around the child welfare system that you'd be interested in? They're really kind of getting it at least a little more narrow I think is really helpful they're being able to make our questions something that's just more approachable for the policymakers hopefully Adam do you want to add to that I feel like I could just talk to the circle but.

No no no that's great .yes we have we have just a couple of minutes left I guess um Elizabeth maybe if you could just like put our like contact information. Oh yeah. I'm like totally free riding off of her shared screens.

 

But so there's our contact information we certainly invite you to contact us with any questions questions concerns ideas you know whatever. You know people who study people like us who are studying how to build relationships generally like to also build relationships with our work and so you know please please feel free to do that.

 

I guess some there was one that we got there was we got a bunch of questions and unfortunately it looks like we won't have time to answer all of them but before the presentation started. There was one about the anticipated revenue loss.

 

This is not so much about building relationships we thought we should address it just cuz it was something that came up quite a bit in some of these conversations so how are on the question was how are state and county officials preparing to fund these Covid 19 relief policies and programs in light of anticipated revenue loss at the state and local levels from the economic impact of Covid 19.

 

And i think that like you know one thing to sort of stress is that when we talked about you know when we asked them to sort of talk about like children and families really concerns. You know funding like always came up. I mean like you know and what we're seeing you know the initial so like the Erie County example that we just gave this was from now what four weeks five weeks ago he was like really early on.

 

And very very early on and and so now actually more recently in fact just literally last week in fact the county we were approached by a county to talk less so about like kind of immediate children and families needs that we need to like address right now but thinking much more about okay like the economic fallout what's gonna happen how are we gonna address that and you know this is a situation where like you know having an idea about what other locales are doing like along the same lines that kind of comparative policy analysis that Elizabeth talked about could be really really helpful.

 

I mean you know neither me nor she are economist on this and we're in uncharted territory where you know it's it's it's unclear even how like past experiences let's say from the preview recession we can start of course we can point that. But you know it's it various attributes are different there but like but you know thinking about sorry if you know what kinds of other kinds of counties and or states might be good to look at like what are they doing what options are on the table what's being discussed.

 

That's really what like this particular person this county leader was was thinking about and was kind of wondering about and so you know so I think anyway so I mean we're not I admit this is not actually an answer to the question of like you know how they're sort of preparing to fund them is except to say that like you know what we heard from County officials as recently as last week is that like this is absolutely like on the front burner. especially now that kind of they're over the initial concerns. and it will definitely be part of a big part of the conversation going forward.

 

Just a quick ad because I know we're out of time but and I think too that helps you know what Adams talking about that we are not experts in that particular topic but we can connect them to experts or we can try to help them information and just help them find information and do kind of the legwork of that comparative policy brief that we created. Or reaching out to people to ask them in the communities looking forward what do you see as some of the fiscal concerns that you have. I've been really it's just a matter of offering that time.

 

Because these policy makers are so inundated with other things that they're trying to do in that just offering the time to do that on their behalf I think is something that really helps strengthen their relationships and so that we you know we don't have to be the topical expert but we can help you find topical expert or we can help you find the expert on the ground or we can show you what other collects this information across other places or you on your behalf to the policymaker just to help them kind of get a better sense of what what's going on.

 

So okay we are out of time thank you all so much I'm sorry that we didn't get a chance to answer all of your questions but we had you know hopefully it was a great, on my end it was a great conversation or discussion and it was really I'm a pleasure to talk about this work and share our work with you. And as Adam mentioned we are happy to take questions via email or you know thoughts concerns about our work ideas you have any and all things we are willing to take so thank you so much again for for joining us this morning. Thank you everybody!