PRESIDENT BUSH ANNOUNCES NATIONAL SECURITY LANGUAGE INITIATIVE

On January 6, having invited 100 university presidents to a summit on international education, President Bush announced the National Security Language Initiative (NLSI).  The summit was co-hosted by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings.  The new program proposes adding considerable funding to the budgets of the Defense, State, and Education Departments to increase the foreign language skills of Americans, particularly in “critical need” languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Hindi, Farsi, and others.  The President will request $114 million in the FY 2007 budget for new and expanded programs from kindergarten through the university level and into the workforce.

The Administration argues that “an essential component of U.S. national security in the post-9/11 world is the ability to engage foreign governments and peoples, especially in critical regions, to encourage reform, promote understanding, convey respect for other cultures and provide an opportunity to learn more about our country and its citizens.”  Currently, according to the President, we are “unprepared” for this challenge since:  “Deficits in foreign language learning and teaching negatively affect our national security, diplomacy, law enforcement, intelligence communities, cultural understanding…and our business competitiveness.”

The NLSI will seek to partner with institutions of learning, foundations, and the private sector to assist in all phases of this initiative, including partnership in the K-16 language studies, and providing job opportunities and incentives for graduates of these programs.

The initiative has three broad goals:  1) expand the number of Americans mastering critical languages  starting at a younger age; 2) increase the number of advanced-level speakers of foreign languages with an emphasis on critical needs languages; and 3) increase the number of foreign language teachers and the resources for them.

To accomplish Goal 1, the Administration proposes $24 million to create incentives to teach and study critical need languages in K-12 by re-focusing the Education Department’s Foreign Language Assistance program (FLAP).  Another $27 million will go to 27 schools through the Department of Defense’s National Security Education program and the Department of Education to build continuous programs of study of these critical need languages.  The State Department will provide funds for scholarships for academic/semester study abroad experiences, including short-term opportunities for high school students, who are studying these languages.  Expand the Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant program to allow 300 native speakers of these languages to come to the U.S. to teach.  Provide new funds for American teachers of critical languages to study abroad.  Establish Director of National Intelligence study “feeder” programs that will provide grants and initiatives with K-16 educational institutions for various immersion experiences, courses and curricula, and other resources, beginning with students and teachers in five states in 2007 and expanding to additional states in 2011.

For Goal 2, the Administration proposes expanding the National Flagship Language Initiative to $13.2 million to produce 2,000 advanced speakers of Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Persian, Hindi, and Central Asian languages by 2009.  Increase scholarships, summer immersion study programs, and add overseas language study to U.S. Fulbright student scholarships. Boost support for immersion language study centers abroad.

Achieving Goal 3 will occur by establishing a National Language Service Corps for Americans with proficiencies in critical languages to serve the nation by working for the federal government, and/or serving in a Civilian Linguist Reserve Corps, and/or joining a newly created Language Teacher Corps to teach languages in our nation’s elementary, middle, and high schools.  It will also include an E-learning clearinghouse through the Department of Education, and an expansion of teacher-to-teacher seminars and training.

In addition to all this, the State Department hopes to use college and university presidents to help entice more foreign students to attend American institutions and to convince American students to study abroad.

Of course, at the moment, these are proposals for the new budget, which Congress will have a hand in shaping during the course of 2006.

GAPS IN SOCIAL/ BEHAVIORAL RESEARCH IN PANDEMIC FLU PLAN HIGHLIGHTED IN CONGRESSIONAL BRIEFING

According to House Science Committee Ranking Member Bart Gordon (D-TN) and Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA) a discussion is needed to “develop best practices for states and local governments to use not only in the event of a pandemic but for the betterment of national security and disaster planning in general.”  The two hosted a December 14 briefing to highlight the gaps in the Administration’s current pandemic flu plan and to start a national discussion on advances in social distancing, communications, and other public health efforts.

Prior to the hearing, on December 8, 2005, Gordon sent a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy outlining his concerns.   Commending the Administration “for a well-thought out agenda to finally move the biological aspects of pandemic preparedness forward in a rapid fashion (vaccine development, antiviral, and surveillance), he expressed his disappointment that the “plan does not substantively address important social science issues involving the behavior and the cooperation of the American people in preparedness for and response to this type of disaster.”  Gordon explained that he was “specifically … most concerned by the incompleteness of the plan in areas of risk communications, social distancing, and analysis of collective behavior in times of crisis.”  “Social distancing, effective communication, and other public health measures will be our only realistic line of defense,” wrote Gordon.  “Yet, neither the National Strategy nor the HHS plan makes effective use of current behavioral and social science research.”

Gordon also expressed his concern that the social science research “that is being utilized for disaster planning is 50 years old.”  He further voiced his concern that the National Science Foundation (NSF) “which funds approximately 50 percent of the social sciences would receive zero funding dollars in the President’s plan” while the National Institutes of Health (NIH) “would receive $6.7 billion, $6.4 billion of that sum going toward stockpiling vaccines and antiviral medications and acceleration the development of new vaccine technologies.”

He called on the HHS “to do more than just note that social science should be taken into account by the states.  We expect that just as they have laid out a detailed plan for how to distribute limited vaccine, they should give a detailed plan for how to use social science research in the most advantageous way to curtail the widespread affects of an influenza pandemic.”

Pandemic Would Pose Challenge to Social Scientists and Risk Communicators

Clete DiGiovanni, Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), a physician and researcher who examined the factors that influenced compliance with quarantine in Toronto during the SARS outbreak, outlined three uncertainties that will “pose challenges to the social scientists and risk communicators in the event of a pandemic.”

Challenge 1 -- Two or three times every century, starting in the 1800s into the 1900s, DiGiovanni explained, there has been a flu pandemic. The 1968 pandemic was relatively mild, the 1957 event was more serious, and from 1918 -1920 the Spanish flu “walloped” the globe.   We don’t know if the H5NI virus is capable jumping from human to human.  We don’t know if it is going to produce the next pandemic.  But we can’t wait to know for sure, he emphasized.

Challenge 2 – In the absence of pharmacological agents to deal with a flu pandemic, we will have to try to rely on public health measures.  There is not a lot of evidence, DiGiovanni argued, in support that these measures will work.  Most of that evidence, he explained, is based on mathematical modeling.

Challenge 3 – We will not know until the virus hits “how it will normalize.”  That will depend on how it is managed, that will pose challenges to risk communicators.

“We Have the Science Base For Delivering Communications’

Baruch Fischoff, from the Center for Risk Perception and Communication, at Carnegie Mellon University, explained that “social scientists have been studying people’s responses to risk intensively since World War II.”  According to Fischhoff, research conducted both in the armed forces and on the home front has identified patterns of behavior that can be expected to occur with pandemic flu, or any other risk.

He briefly described some relevant results, then recommended how the research, “the strongest in the world, should be mobilized to deal with pandemic flu.”

Result 1:  People want the truth, even if it is worrisome.  They want to know what they are up against, in order to have the best chance of figuring out what to do.  Candor is critical in risk communications, he explained, and cited Israel’s social resilience during its long struggle with terror as an example.

Result 2:  People can absorb only a limited amount of new information at a time.  Accordingly, communicators must identify the most critical facts, and then organize them according to their audience’s natural way of thinking.

Result 3:  People have difficulty understanding some kinds of information, such as how small risks mount up through repeated exposure or how well-told scenarios can unduly influence their thinking.  Any communication must accommodate the known strengths and weakness of its audience’s thought processes.

Result 4:  Emotions can cloud people’s judgment, in predictable ways.  For example, he explained, when angry, people are more likely to blame other people for their problems and more optimistic about solving them.  While these effects are generally small, they interfere with decision making.  As a result, communicators must treat their audiences respectfully, in order to encourage reasoned decision making.

Result 5:  Even the most experienced communicators cannot accurately predict how their messages will be interpreted, especially with novel topics (like pandemic flu) and unfamiliar audiences.   Accordingly, messages must be systematically evaluated, before they are disseminated – just the way that drugs must be.  With dynamic events (like pandemic flu), that means pre-testing prototype messages in advance.

Result 6:  People exaggerate their ability to predict other people’s behavior.  That includes experts when they predict how emergency plans will work, he explained.  As a result, social scientists need to be part of the planning team, so that the plans are based on science, not intuition.  Fischoff pointed out that otherwise, people will receive advice that does not make sense to them, breeding distrust.  He cited some of the evacuation messages associated with the recent hurricanes as an example.

Result 7:  People generally make sensible decisions, if they are judged in terms of how they see their circumstances and what their goals are.  Sensible decisions will not be effective decisions, he cautioned, if people do not have the right information.  As a result, communicators must assume responsibility for providing relevant information in a timely fashion.

Fischoff explained that this knowledge will be of little use without “a proper organizational process for designing and evaluating communications.”  It is a process that requires an explicit division of labor among four kinds of experts:  Subject matter specialists – public health, social services, law, distance work and education; Risk and decision analysts, who can identify the information critical to the decisions of different audiences;  Psychologists, who can identify the audiences’ audience beliefs, design comprehensible messages, and evaluate their success; and Communication system specialists, who can ensure that tested messages get into properly trained hands, and are coordinated with the rest of the emergency response system.

He concluded by noting that the science base for delivering communications in the event of a pandemic flu “must be deployed now, in order to be ready for a pandemic, and to convince the public that we are on top of the problem.  Without that research we will lose the battle for public trust well before a pandemic.”

Further Scrutiny Required

Monica Schoch-Spana, of the Center for BioSecurity at the University of Pittsburgh began by stressing that “devising proactive public policy for a future health crisis is a tough job.”  She commended the HHS Pandemic Plan, but indicated that three issues emerge that require further scrutiny:  1) the anticipation of panic, 2) the professionalization of response, and 3) the myth of personal choice.

Both the National Strategy and the HHS plan “set up erroneous expectation that the public will panic unless an adequate risk communication campaign is in place,” according to Schoch-Spana.  A person or mob consumed by sudden, unreasoning fear and acting without regard for others is a powerful and satisfying mental picture that has little-to-no basis in reality, based on extensive social research into extreme events, including disease outbreaks, she explained further.

She presented several counter-intuitive arguments.  Authorities, she noted, often mistake reasonable behaviors in the face of a big outbreak for acts of sudden, unreasoning fear – clogging up health department telephone lines for disease-related information, pouring into hospital emergency rooms for care, and seeking access to scare life-saving vaccines.  These actions, she argued, may complicate things for doctors, hospital administrators, health officials, political leaders and other authorities.  But going to the health experts for health advice and medicine – especially in the face of a novel threat like pandemic flu – makes good sense, she posited.

Regarding the professionalized response, Schoch-Spana contended that the second approach to pandemic flu planning that requires revision is that of a response solely by professionals.  While the HHS plan recognizes the value of mobilizing the workplace in responding to pandemic flu, the National Strategy thinks about the U.S. population strictly in terms of individuals and not in terms of whole neighborhoods, communities of faith, social clubs, and professional societies.  In addition, the federal government provides neither practical guidance nor material support to state and local authorities to rally non-governmental, non-commercial organizations in pre-pandemic planning of a community-wide response to the crises, she emphasized.

“The third operating principle within current U.S. pandemic flu preparedness with which social and behavioral science would take issue is the notion of personal choice,” said Schoch-Spana.  Skepticism toward or refusal to cooperate with public health orders, like the call for home quarantine, curtailed travel or mass vaccination is never strictly a matter of individual preference, she explained.  “The problem of ‘non-compliance’ has less to do with handling of willful, obstinate or ignorant individuals than with rectifying life circumstances that interfere with a person or a group’s ability to act according to authorities’ reasonable requests,” said Schoch-Spana.

The current recommendations, she argued, that citizens keep “supplies of materials at home, as recommended by authorities, to support essential needs of the household for several days if necessary” and to stay home for up-to-10 "snow days” ignores economic realities in the U.S.  Many poor and working class individuals can barely get by on a day-to-day basis, let alone stockpile for what is, for most, a theoretical danger, she added.