Dr. Rodrigo Soares, a postdoc in the Department of Agriculture, Landscape, and Environment received an NSF Rapid Grant which is the NSF 1-year research program aiming to investigate urgent matters. Soares’ project is to evaluate risk and crisis communication strategies around the A/H5N1 – Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza virus which historically affected wild birds, but a recent outbreak has been reported in dairy cattle. As of October 2024, 14 US states have reported cases of A/H5N1 in livestock herds. Outbreaks in dairy cattle create new potential pathways for transmission of the disease to humans, which have already been reported. Infections in humans have a high mortality rate of 30-50% so the spread of the disease is an urgent and serious health threat.
In addition to Dr. Soares, Dr. Scott Merrill, a Research Associate Professor in the Department of Agriculture, Landscape and Environment, and Dr. Julie Smith, a Research Professor in the Department of Animal and Veterinary Sciences, complete the ¶¶Òõ̽̽ team on this project, which is also a collaborative effort with researchers at Clemson University. The study will assess the efficacy of biosecurity recommendation messages in real time as this crisis unfolds. Most studies of this type happen post-crisis; Rodrigo’s study is a rare and timely opportunity to assist in the assessment and development of biosecurity recommendations during the onset of a health-related crisis. This timing provides an unprecedented chance for message testing and theory building in the domain of risk and crisis communications. 
Besides monitoring the risk and crisis narrative in social media and traditional media, the study will interview subject-matter experts and producers to understand their perceptions of communication as the crisis unfolds. Two primary goals of this continuous evaluation are to identify and recommend best practices for biosecurity, and to inform consumers of food-related risks. The study can contribute to message design for both biosecurity and consumer safety, with the potential of improving the effectiveness of instructional risk and crisis communication about H5N1 in dairy cattle. The project will also provide a unique data set that will contribute with the instructional risk and crisis communication scholarship, particularly in health-related risks and crises. Access
Toyib Aremu is pursuing a doctorate in Sustainable Development Policy, Economics, and Governance. This year his research on evidence-informed policymaking was awarded an NSF grant for fieldwork in Nigeria. His focus is to understand if federal policymakers and lawmakers use scientific evidence in decision making. Part of his research also compares two national policies: the gender in agriculture policy and the national livestock policy, to understand the role that science has played in developing these policies. 
Aremu’s wants his work to help Nigerians as well as others involved in the influence of science on policymaking “We are hopeful that when we present the results that it will initiate conversations on where the country should head in terms of the role of sound science in policymaking and hopefully leads to legislation that mandates the use of the best available science in policy proposals."
He’s is grateful for the support from the NSF. “The money is helpful to be able to travel, to go to conferences to disseminate the findings, and pay for open access publishing to reach a wider audience. It’s also really important to be able to travel back to Nigeria to share the results with the decision makers.â€
Vitoria Cardoso completed her Master’s in Agribusiness and Development by working with smallholder family farmers. For her dissertation, she is working with Brazilian farmers, studying the intersection between vegetable producers, policymakers, relational values, and the adoption of agroecological farming practices. Her funding will allow her to do fieldwork in Brazil to gather information on how policymakers' and farmers' values are or are not aligned and how this can affect policy performance.
For her case study, she will be performing qualitative interviews with both groups, analyzing adoption, reaching out to all the stakeholders with her findings. She hopes to discern the relational values at play in the two groups. She believes this work can help in the creation of policy briefs and help the design of policy to better incentivize adoption of agroecological practices by understanding what the farmer/adopters value.