2012 RAND Annual Report

Who are you listening to? RAND CORPOraTIO ANNUN AL REPORT 2012 Our Mission The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. SANTA MONIca, WasHINGTON, PITTSBURGH, NEW ORLEANS, JACKSON, BOSTON, DOHA, CAMBRIDGE, BrUssELS, CALIFORNIA D.C. PENNSYLVANIA LOUISIANA MIssIssIPPI massacHUSETTS QATar UNITED KINGDOM BELGIUM Contents Statistics Economics Management Studies Education Operations Research Policy Analysis Physics TechnologyHealth Communications National Security Studies Medicine 4 32 34 Research and 2012 by the Staff News Analysis Numbers 36 38 42 answer be the Outreach Events Pardee RAND Graduate School 46 54 58 Investing in Advisory Boards Clients and People and Ideas Grantors Message from the Chairman and the President At the heart of RAND’s work is a belief that fact-based analysis can make individuals and communities safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. In 2012, demand for our expertise made clear that decisionmakers, thoughtleaders, and policy-minded individuals throughout the world crave our research and analysis as they look to take on the challenges before them and get ahead of those still to come. How do we know? We worked for more clients and on more projects. We received more gifts from more donors who share our commitment to public service. Media coverage of RAND analysis and people was up more than 25 percent, and published commentary bringing our research and expertise to unfolding policy debates more than doubled. The new RAND Blog, weekly Policy Currents e-newsletter, and our first iPhone app have expanded our online audience. By year’s end, our research products were downloaded more than 5.5 million times and more than 18,000 people were following RAND on Twitter. Amidst all the noise and static of today’s policy debates, people are listening to RAND. As we build upon our accomplishments from the past year, we thank you for supporting our people and ideas. Paul G. Kaminski Michael D. Rich Chairman, RAND Board of Trustees President and Chief Executive Officer Community Resilience Extreme events, both natural and man- made, demonstrate the extent to which people are—or are not—prepared to handle crises. RAND’s deep bench of expertise in emergency preparedness continues to help individuals and communities contend with future disasters. 4 RAND Corporation Annual Report 2012 Emergency Preparedness Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and catastrophes that followed such as hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, the U.S. government and many nongovernmental organizations have sought to boost citizen preparedness for disasters. After years of campaigns and countless household surveys that track the preparedness activities of individuals and households, one thing has become clear: Existing messages are not influencing “A health care facility can muddle behavior. Several community resilience experts at along with limited supplies and a RAND who are engaged in efforts to help people short-handed staff for several days, better survive disasters have concluded that communications on preparedness will be more but it cannot function without power. effective only when we rely less on conventional No city can absorb a hit as massive wisdom and more on empirical data about which as those inflicted by Hurricanes aspects of bystander response are most helpful Katrina and Sandy without sustaining and which may be counterproductive. “Evidence serious damage. But with proper and measurement,” says policy researcher Lori Uscher-Pines, “combined with a critical foresight, communities can take examination of long-held assumptions, offer us the important steps, in advance, to limit surest path to preparedness.” the consequences and swiftly bounce The preparedness of hospitals and other health back. This includes assuring that care facilities came into stark relief in November essential facilities, such as hospitals, 2012 in the wake of Superstorm Sandy. In a post- nursing homes, and gas stations have storm commentary, Arthur Kellermann recounts a reliable and survivable source that many experts considered New York City a national leader in disaster preparedness, but of emergency power.” when Sandy’s storm surge swept through areas Arthur L. Kellermann, Paul O’Neill Alcoa Chair in of lower Manhattan, two hospitals shut down Policy Analysis, The RAND Blog because critical components of both hospitals’ backup power supplies were submerged in their basements. Likewise, a nursing home in Queens was disabled when a backup generator on its first floor was destroyed. Ultimately, the problem was not mechanical failure but a failure to even anticipate that a storm of Katrina’s magnitude could land in such a different part of the country and cause such destruction. RAND Corporation Annual Report 2012 5 Trauma and Gun Violence After the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, in which twenty children and six adult staff members were fatally shot, clinical psychologist Lisa Jaycox wrote in a RAND.org commentary, “We’ve come a long way since 2001, when there were few resources and little public recognition on how children react to trauma and grieve.” Jaycox was instrumental in the creation of the Cognitive-Behavioral Intervention for Trauma Featured Expert in Schools (CBITS) program. CBITS helps detect youth with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that may or may not be recognized Senior policy researcher Anita Chandra by parents and teachers and reduce symptoms of helped launch RAND’s Resilient anxiety, depression, and PTSD. The program also Communities podcast series and Focus helps mobilize resilience factors (like peer and parent on Community Resilience e-newsletter, support) to allow children to function more adaptively which presents research findings, at school, at home, and socially. CBITS has been resources, and tools to policymakers, implemented with great success in the Los Angeles practitioners, and other researchers. And Unified School District and in New Orleans–area with generous donor support, Chandra is schools, and can help students in communities collaborating with behavioral scientist Joie like Newtown. Acosta to build a community resilience module to help train planners across Arthur Kellermann, the Paul O’Neill Alcoa Chair in the country and around the world. The Policy Analysis, is a thoughtleader in the ongoing tool will use state-of-the-art web design, conversation on reducing U.S. gun violence. In the multimedia, and interactive features to Journal of the American Medical Association, he convey best practices for emergency identifies specific federal and state laws that have response and recovery and provide key sharply reduced support for firearm injury research supporting materials, such as worksheets since the late ’90s. He argues that the U.S. might today and checklists. The project will spur be in a better position to respond to these increasing improvements in household preparedness, incidents of gun violence if medical and public health encourage productive partnerships researchers had been funded to study the issue between first responders and the as they had been between 1985 and 1997. And at organizations that support response and healthaffairs.org, Kellermann urged decisionmakers recovery efforts, and help communities to not judge the feasibility of various policy options track the effectiveness of these efforts. through the lens of a single event. “Just because an intervention doesn’t work 100 percent of the Scan the code with your time doesn’t mean it can’t—or won’t—decrease the smartphone to listen to RAND’s Resilient frequency or severity of gun violence,” he wrote. “Over Communities podcast and the last 20 years, the number of Americans dying in to subscribe on iTunes. motor vehicle crashes has declined by 31 percent. Deaths from fires and from drowning have fallen even more. This progress was achieved without banning automobiles, swimming pools, or matches.” 6 RAND Corporation Annual Report 2012 Louisiana Coastal Master Plan In the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, RAND created the Gulf States Policy Institute to support hurricane recovery and long-term economic development in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. This year, innovative research and analysis led by RAND researchers Jordan Fischbach and David Groves—both alumni of the Pardee RAND Graduate School—helped Louisiana adopt a long-range master plan for a sustainable coast. To guide the state’s investments and help its coastal citizens plan for the future, RAND developed a new hurricane flood risk model to assess effects of projects designed to reduce damage from flooding, as well as a planning framework and decision support model to develop and compare different coast-wide groupings of risk reduction and restoration projects. The Louisiana legislature unanimously approved the master plan in May 2012 after months of public comment and review. These modeling efforts stand at the forefront Featured Expert of work on the topic of coastal restoration and sustainability. They have had a major impact on Gulf State infrastructure planning, with implications Lynn E. Davis is a senior political scientist and for mitigating damage from disasters elsewhere in director of RAND’s Washington office. Her current research focuses on citizen preparedness, the United States and abroad. strategic planning, terrorism, and defense strategy and force structure issues. Davis’ commentary has appeared in U.S. News

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