In this article, the authors report on the efforts of more than 200 foot patrol officers during the summer of 2009 in Philadelphia. The results suggest that targeted foot patrols in violent crime hotspots can significantly reduce violent crime levels as long as a threshold level of violence exists initially. The authors suggest that intensive foot patrol efforts in violent hotspots may achieve deterrence at a microspatial level, primarily by increasing the certainty of disruption, apprehension, and arrest.

Opioid overdoses are an important public health concern. Concerns about police involvement at overdose events may decrease calls to 911 for emergency medical care thereby increasing the chances than an overdose becomesfatal. To address this concern, Washington State passed a law that provides immunity from drug possession charges and facilitates the availability of take-home-naloxone (the opioid overdose antidote) to bystanders in 2010.

In the face of a growing global burden of resistance to existing antibiotics, a combination of scientific and economic challenges has posed significant barriers to the development of novel antibacterials over the past few decades. Yet the bottlenecks at each stage of the pharmaceutical value chain—from discovery to post-marketing—present opportunities to reengineer an innovation pipeline that has fallen short.

This article evaluated the effectiveness of a comprehensive rental housing–based lead law adopted in Rochester, New York, in 2005 by integrating analyses of city inspections data, a survey of landlords, landlord focus groups, and health department data on children’s blood lead levels from the first 4 years of implementation of the 2005 law. Although many uncertainties remain, this study's analysis suggests that the lead law has had a positive impact on children’s health.