Stanford University

Health

The Influence of Democracy on Health Outcomes

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This brief is part of the Democracy Action Lab's "The Case for Democracy" series, which curates academic scholarship on democracy’s impacts across various domains of governance and development. Drawing from an exhaustive review of the literature, this analysis presents selected works that encompass significant findings and illustrate how the academic conversation has unfolded.

While national wealth has long been considered a primary determinant of population health, democratic governance independently improves health outcomes through distinct political mechanisms. Democracies consistently outperform autocracies on metrics including infant mortality, life expectancy, and disease control—with particularly strong effects for conditions requiring sustained policy commitment and equitable service delivery. These benefits materialize primarily through long-term democratic experience rather than short-term regime change, as electoral accountability and responsive institutions require time to develop.

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Climate Resilience and Local Governmental Policy: Lessons from Los Angeles and Tel Aviv

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The Visiting Fellows in Israel Studies program at CDDRL and the Environmental Social Sciences department of the Doerr School of Sustainability

present a two-day conference

Climate Resilience and Local Governmental Policy: Lessons from Los Angeles and Tel Aviv

Los Angeles and Tel Aviv-Yafo are vibrant cultural and cosmopolitan centers characterized by significant demographic diversity. They are also home to disparate ethnic, religious, and cultural groups and are marked by stark contrasts in wealth and poverty. Despite their differences in size and geography, both cities face similar challenges in fashioning their responses to the anticipated adverse impacts of rapid climate change. To enhance climate resilience and ensure the effective implementation of climate policies, it is essential to consider not only the technical integrity of adaptation programs but also the socio-economic and cultural diversity unique to each city.

Studying these two cities side by side can shed light on how climate strategies can be adapted across scales and contexts. It can provide insights into navigating the complex interactions between central and local governments in designing climate adaptation programs. It can aid in prioritizing resource utilization to achieve the greatest possible reduction in climate-related risks. And, it can foster creative thinking about how equity-focused climate actions can be tailored to the unique needs, capacities, and values of diverse communities within each city.

PRESS
 

Day 1 — Evaluation of Past Environmental Cooperation Initiatives


8:15 - 9:00 am — Breakfast, Gathering, and Registration

 

9:00 - 9:15 am — Welcome: Global Contexts – Local Action
 

WELCOME

  • Chair: Alon Tal, Visiting Fellow in Israel Studies, Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Stanford University


 INTRODUCTION

  • Kathryn Stoner, Mosbacher Director, Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, Stanford University
  • Vicki Veenker, Vice Mayor, City of Palo Alto

 

9:15 - 10:15 am — Opening Keynote: Los Angeles and Tel Aviv-Yafo: The Urgency of Climate Resilience


PRESENTERS

  • The Honorable Nancy Sutley, Los Angeles Deputy Mayor of Energy and Sustainability
  • Noah Efron, Tel Aviv City Council member; Chair, Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipal Environmental Protection Committee

 

10:15 - 11:30 am — Panel 1: Water Management in Water Scarce Cities: Combatting Droughts and Ensuring Supply
 

  • Chair: Bruce Cain, Professor of Political Science, Director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West, Stanford University


PRESENTER

  • Felicia Marcus, William C. Landreth Visiting Fellow, Water in the West Program, Stanford University


PANELISTS

  • Dror Avisar, Head of the Water Research Center, Tel Aviv University
  • Maya Crabtree, Director of the Environment, Forum of 15, Israel
  • Gregory Pierce, Co-Executive Director, Luskin Center for Innovation, UCLA
     

11:30 - 11:45 am — Break

 

11:45 am – 1:00 pm — Panel 2: Health, Trees, and Thermal Comfort: Urban Strategies
 

  • Chair: Neta Lipman, Professional Director, The New Environmental School, Tel Aviv University; Former Deputy Director, Natural Resources and Climate Resilience, Israel Ministry for Environmental Protection


PANELISTS

  • Eitan Ben Ami, Director, Environment & Sustainability Authority, Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality
  • Rachel Malarich, City Forest Officer, Los Angeles Public Works
  • David Pearlmutter, Professor, Ben Gurion University
  • Marta Segura, Chief Heat Officer & Director, Climate Emergency Mobilization Office, City of Los Angeles
  • Leeor Carasso, Tel Aviv University
     

1:00 - 2:00 pm — Lunch

 

2:00 - 3:30 pm — PARALLEL SESSIONS

Panel 3a (East Wing): Financing Climate Resilience in Local Government
 

  • Chair: Blas L. Pérez Henríquez, Founding Director, The California Global Energy, Water & Infrastructure Innovation Initiative, Stanford University


PANELISTS

  • Hend Halabi, Israel Ministry of Environmental Protection, Climate Adaptation Division
  • Dr. Michael Roth, Energy-Water Resilience Support Specialist, Golden Colorado
  • Tamar Zandberg, Director of Climate Policy Center, Ben Gurion University; Past Minister of Environmental Protection, Israel
  • Abby Edwards, CA Governor's Office of Land Use and Innovation
  • Snir Schwartz, Tel Aviv University Law School

 

Panel 3b (West Wing): Preparing for Sea Level Rise – Local Strategies
 

  • Chair: David Behar, Climate Program Director, San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, and Chair, Practitioner Exchange for Effective Response to Sea Level Rise (PEERS)


PANELISTS

  • Udi Carmely, Architect & Urban Planner, Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality
  • Galit Cohen, Senior Researcher, Israel Institute for National Security Studies; Director, Jewish Climate Trust
  • Daniella Hirschfeld, Assistant Professor, Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning, Utah State University
  • Eric Klinenberg, Helen Gould Shepard Professor in the Social Sciences, New York University
     

3:30 - 3:45 pm — Break

 

3:45 - 5:00 pm — Panel 4: Forest Fire Prevention, Cities and the Climate Crisis
 

  • Chair: Chris Field, Melvin and Joan Lane Professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies; Perry L. McCarty Director, Woods Institute for the Environment, Stanford University


PRESENTERS

  • Frank Bigelow, Community Wildfire Preparedness & Mitigation Deputy Director, Cal Fire
  • Colin Price, Professor, Department of Geophysics, Tel Aviv University; Chair, Planet Zero Initiative
  • Yoav Perlman, Director of Birdlife Israel, Society for Protection of Nature in Israel 

 

5:00 - 6:30 pm — Stanford Campus Sustainability Tours — Optional, Pick Up to One 
 

  • Stanford Central Energy Facilty (Energy Efficiency “Living lab” with three heat recovery tanks, micro-grid and novel heat recovery system)
    • Host: Dr. Lincoln Bleavans, Executive Director, Sustainability Utilities & Infrastructure, Stanford University
  • Ecoloigcal walking tour (Biodiversity and Conservation projects on campus)
    • Host: Dr. Alan Launer, Director, Conservation Planning, Stanford University
  • O'Donohue Family Stanford Educational Farm (Exceptional Environmental Educationl Center and Garden develoing agroecological relationships and natural diversity to grow over 200 varieties of vegetables, flowers, herbs, field crops and fruit)
    • Host: Gordon Bloom, Director, Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Lab (SE Lab)- Human & Planetary Health; Founder, Social Entrepreneurship Collaboratory (SE Labs), Stanford University

 

6:15 - 7:00 pm — Reception in Courtyard

 

7:00 - 9:00 pm — Dinner and Keynote Address in Auditorium
 

  • Moderator: Larry Diamond, Mosbacher Senior Fellow of Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and Professor, by courtesy, of Sociology and of Political Science


KEYNOTE ADDRESS

  • Professor Steven Chu, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Physics and Professor of Energy Science and Engineering, Stanford University; 1997 Nobel Prize for Physics; U.S. Secretary of Energy 2009-2013


Return to top, click FRIDAY, MAY 30 for Day 2 agenda 

FAQ
 

  • Can I attend only one day of the conference?
    Yes. Please note this in your registration.
  • Will meals be served? What if I have allergies or dietary needs?
    Yes, we will provide all meals listed on the schedule. Please indicate in your registration what your dietary restrictions are.
  • Where should I park?
    The closest parking to Paul Brest Hall is the Wilbur Field Garage (560 Wilbur Dr, Stanford). Permits are required and enforced Monday through Friday from 6:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Please visit the Stanford Transportation website for information about parking at Stanford and how to pay for parking.
  • Can I bike to and from the conference?
    Yes! Stanford is a bike-friendly campus. Moreover, there are plenty of spots to park bikes all over campus.
  • Is there a cost to attend the conference?
    No. However, once you sign up, we expect you to attend.
  • I am coming from out of town. Where can I stay?
    We have reserved a room block at the Sheraton Palo Alto Hotel with a negotiated rate. Let them know you are with our conference to receive that rate.
  • I have other questions. Who should I ask?
    Email Aleeza Schoenberg, Israel Program Manager at CDDRL.
  • I am a member of the media interested in covering this event. Who should I reach out to?
    Please send an email to CDDRL Communications and provide your name, outlet, number of people you will be traveling with, and what equipment you plan to bring.
     

We are grateful to Tel Aviv University, The Diane and Guilford Glazer Foundation, the Jewish Climate Trust, and Hillel@Stanford for their support in making this conference possible.

The conference was held at Paul Brest Hall on Stanford's campus. Two-hundred people attended. Read about it in the news.

Conferences
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When is enough, enough? Humanitarian rights and protection for children in conflict settings must be revisited

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Protecting the lives of children in Gaza and other conflicts requires changes to the rules of engagement and global responses to all conflicts affecting civilian populations, argue Zulfiqar Bhutta, Georgia Dominguez, and Paul Wise.

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BMJ
Authors
Paul H. Wise
Number
386:e081515

VinhHuy Le

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CDDRL Honors Student, 2023-24
vinhhuy_le.jpg

Major: Economics
Hometown: Allen, TX
Thesis Advisor: José Ignacio Cuesta

Tentative Thesis Title: Big Pharma Mergers and Their Effects on Medicare Drug Prices

Future aspirations post-Stanford: Taking a gap year after graduation to teach English abroad, then coming back to go to law school.

A fun fact about yourself: I’m an avid rock climber, and I’m working on my pilot’s license, even though I’m afraid of heights.

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Beyond Climate Dread

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When you think of the climate crisis and the major impact it will have upon all corners of the world, one nation stands out as the epicenter of the unfolding cataclysmic changes: Bangladesh.

When Stephen Luby, MD, began working there two decades ago, the South Asian country was facing tremendous climate stress brought on by intermittent floods, extreme heat, cyclones and drought that threatened human life.

 

Continue reading in Stanford Magazine

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Beyond Climate Dread cover image Anuj Shrestha
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Stephen Luby is among a growing number of Stanford Medicine community members dedicated to finding solutions to urgent problems of planetary and human health.

Didi Kuo and Co-author Andrew S. Kelly Awarded 2023 Leonard S. Robins Award for Best Paper on Health Politics and Policy

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Nora Sulots
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Please join us in congratulating Didi Kuo, Center Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FS), and co-author Andrew S. Kelly, Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Sciences at California State University, East Bay, on being awarded the 2023 Leonard S. Robins Award for the Best Paper on Health Politics and Policy by the American Political Science Association (APSA)!

The Robins Award is named in honor of Leonard S. Robins, who, through his presence and gentle questioning at virtually every health politics panel, graciously nurtured the scholarship of both junior and senior scholars. The award recognizes the best paper on any subject that fits under the rubric of Health Politics and Policy presented at the previous annual APSA meeting.

Kuo and Kelly's award-winning paper, "State Capacity and Public Health: California and COVID-19," investigates the comparative COVID-19 policy response across counties and regions within California. In the description of the 2022 APSA panel "The Politics of Pandemic Response and the Opportunities for Health Policy Reform," during which they presented their paper, it notes that "In moving beyond a consideration of formal state and public health capacity, Kuo and Kelly argue that the more robust policy response of the Bay Area was, in part, a product of partnerships between state and community-based actors. Drawing on the concept of 'embedded autonomy,' Kuo and Kelly reconceptualize public health capacity and consider it within broader issues of state capacity and democracy."

An abstract of the paper can be found below:
 

On March 17, 2020, six counties in the Bay Area jointly issued the nation’s first shelter-in-place orders in response to the COVID-19 crisis. Cities and states across the United States quickly followed suit, with varying degrees of success. Public health officials have been critical in setting policies, enforcing behavioral and non-pharmaceutical interventions, and communicating with the public. This paper explores the determinants of public health capacity, distinguishing between formal institutional capacity (ie budget, staff) and informal embedded capacity (ie community ties, insulation from political pressures). It argues that informal embedded capacity is critical to public health capacity, but difficult to measure empirically. It concludes by relating public health capacity to broader issues of state capacity and democracy.

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Didi Kuo, FSI Center Fellow
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Didi Kuo, Expert on Comparative and American Politics, Announced as FSI’s Newest Center Fellow

As a Center Fellow, Kuo will continue to advance her research agenda at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, exploring both the challenges facing American democracy today and their roots.
Didi Kuo, Expert on Comparative and American Politics, Announced as FSI’s Newest Center Fellow
Voter information packets for 2022 midterm elections
Commentary

What to make of the 2022 midterm results and what it might mean for 2024

Some takeaways from the 2022 midterms: surprising, a possible return to normalcy, and a “relief”– of sorts, Stanford scholars say.
What to make of the 2022 midterm results and what it might mean for 2024
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News

ARD Launches Podcast on Politics of COVID-19 in the Arab World

The Program on Arab Reform and Democracy (ARD) at CDDRL, in partnership with the Arab Studies Institute, is pleased to announce the launch Mofeed-19, a 19-minute video podcast that discusses research efforts pertaining to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Arab world.
ARD Launches Podcast on Politics of COVID-19 in the Arab World
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Didi Kuo and Andrew S. Kelly with APSA logo
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The award recognizes Kuo and Kelly's paper, “State Capacity and Public Health: California and COVID-19,” as the best paper on health politics and policy presented at the 2022 American Political Science Association (APSA) conference.

The Impact of Community Masking on COVID-19: A Cluster-Randomized Trial in Bangladesh

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We conducted a cluster-randomized trial to measure the effect of community-level mask distribution and promotion on symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections in rural Bangladesh from November 2020 to April 2021 (N = 600 villages, N = 342,183 adults). We cross-randomized mask type (cloth vs. surgical) and promotion strategies at the village and household level. Proper mask-wearing increased from 13.3% in the control group to 42.3% in the intervention arm (adjusted percentage point difference = 0.29 [0.26, 0.31]). The intervention reduced symptomatic seroprevalence (adjusted prevalence ratio (aPR) = 0.91 [0.82, 1.00]), especially among adults 60+ years in villages where surgical masks were distributed (aPR = 0.65 [0.45, 0.85]). Mask distribution and promotion was a scalable and effective method to reduce symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections.

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A randomized trial of community-level mask promotion in rural Bangladesh during COVID-19 shows that the intervention increased mask-use and reduced symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections.

Journal Publisher
Innovations for Poverty Action
Authors
Stephen P. Luby

Displacing fishmeal with protein derived from stranded methane

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Methane emitted and flared from industrial sources across the United States is a major contributor to global climate change. Methanotrophic bacteria can transform this methane into useful protein-rich biomass, already approved for inclusion into animal feed. In the rapidly growing aquaculture industry, methanotrophic additives have a favourable amino acid profile and can offset ocean-caught fishmeal, reducing demands on over-harvested fisheries. Here we analyse the economic potential of producing methanotrophic microbial protein from stranded methane produced at wastewater treatment plants, landfills, and oil and gas facilities. Our results show that current technology can enable production, in the United States alone, equivalent to 14% of the global fishmeal market at prices at or below the current cost of fishmeal (roughly US$1,600 per metric ton). A sensitivity analysis highlights technically and economically feasible cost reductions (such as reduced cooling or labour requirements), which could allow stranded methane from the United States alone to satisfy global fishmeal demand.

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Stanford researchers reveal how to turn a global warming liability into a profitable food security solution

Journal Publisher
Nature Sustainability
Authors
Stephen P. Luby
Number
47–56 (2022)
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