The National Science Foundation's (NSF) Tokyo Office periodically receives and disseminates reports on research developments in Japan that are related to the Foundation's mission. NSF-sponsored researchers currently working in Japan prepare many of these reports. These reports present information for use by NSF program managers and policy makers; they are not statements of NSF policy. .
Mr. Kevin Kavanaugh, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland, prepared the following report. Mr. Kavanaugh was a participant in the 1998 Summer Institute sponsored by NSF/NIH/USDA and the Science and Technology Agency of Japan. Dr. Yoneatsu Osaki of the Department of Epidemiology at the National Institute of Public Health (NIPH) in Tokyo, Japan, hosted Mr. Kavanaugh. Mr. Kavanaugh can be reached via email at: kavanaughk@aol.com
In the post-Cold War era the policy-making community is increasingly
confronted with significant new challenges to the security and prosperity of
the citizens over which they preside. Policy-makers must now address
diffuse threats to state interests, particularly renewable resource scarcities,
environmental degradation, and international migration. Indeed the rise of
'low politics' to the national security agenda of the modern state requires that
social scientists design new 'tools of analysis': models that explain current
developments and that predict future outcomes in order to guide policy. My
research in Japan this summer is helping me to establish a new 'tool' of
analysis for policymakers, a framework that examines the effects of
emerging and re-emerging infectious disease (ERID) at the unit level, and
then analyzes the implications of these findings for interstate relations at the
systems level.
My research argues that traditional concepts of security have ignored the greatest source of human misery and mortality, the microbial penumbra that surrounds our species. This research will demonstrate that it is time to consider the additional form of ecological predation wherein the physical security and prosperity of a state's populace is directly threatened by the global phenomena of emerging and re-emerging infectious disease. My particular focus concerns a comparative analysis of the infectious disease control systems in Korea and Japan.
My participation in the Summer Institute program allowed me a unique opportunity to study infectious disease control at the local, regional and national level. It also allowed me to visit facilities throughout Japan and learn the overall system for a future comparative analysis. It gave me access to such facilities as Hansen's Disease sanatoriums, the National Institute for Infectious Disease Control and other related institutes. In short, it allowed me to collect data not available outside of Japan and to establish extensive contacts within the infectious disease control community - a once in a lifetime opportunity. It also allowed me to establish personal and professional friendships with my colleagues in Japan, an equally important result.