Session 21: Public Policy and Dinosaurs

Stigma plays an important role in the mitigation of the opioid epidemic in the United States and often is cited as a barrier to healthcare access for many people who use drugs. In response to these high levels of overdose and overdose deaths, many health departments and nonprofits organizations, particularly those in the Midwest, began communicating the risk of addiction as well as ways in which those afflicted with substance-use disorders can be connected with human and health services. While stigma is regularly reinforced by other community members, health departments and health-related professionals may also unknowingly contribute to perceptions of stigma. A better understanding of how public and nonprofit health and human services can communicate to their publics may ultimately connect more people who use drugs with the necessary resources to combat the opioid crisis in the United States. Some ways include the dissociation of behavior from identity, choosing to use alternative words, as well as the communication of specific, anti-stigma messages. This paper will explore these different aspects of the opioid crisis, focusing particularly on how stigma is communicated to various community members and how this impacts available treatments.

Evolution is the uniting feature of every organism on Earth. The study of it is essential to understanding not only how modern organisms got here, but how evolutionary relations to other organisms affect the current ecology of Earth. Birds live on as the only living dinosaurs, so studying their survival and adaptations can give us better insights into the lives of ancient creatures and the ecology of historic Earth. This paper aims to demystify the evolutionary course of modern birds and firmly establish their evolutionary ties to theropod dinosaurs. In order to do this, texts such as Dinosaurs! (Scientific America), A Dinosaur Primer (Gene Kritsky), The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs (Steve Brusatte), and Dinosaurs Rediscovered (Thames and Hudson) will be thoroughly analyzed and their findings will be summarized in accompaniment with phylogenetic trees personally created using the Mesquite program. These trees clearly relate the morphological features found in modern birds, fossilized avians, and theropod dinosaurs into a sequence of evolutionary correlation that reflects the evolutionary history discussed and supports the descent of modern birds from theropod dinosaurs.