Water markets hold potential for helping communities in the western United States adapt to water scarcity, but market activity remains low. Reforms to policies and institutions could spur more market activity but could also be politically infeasible if water users opposed them. Improving complementary tools like seasonal forecasts and consumptive use monitoring can help only if the tools are used. We surveyed 248 water users in four sub-basins of the Columbia River in Washington State to measure (a) their existing knowledge of and participation in water markets, (b) their demand for hypothetical future policy changes and (c) their use of these complementary tools. Only half of water rights holders were familiar with the concept of water markets, though participation was relatively high among those who were. Three quarters reported 'difficulty' knowing what a fair price for their water right would be, and a majority voted in favor of a hypothetical policy to mandate disclosure of water market transaction prices. A large majority supported repealing relinquishment (i.e., 'use-it-or-lose-it') rules. A majority of irrigation district growers said they would advise their Boards of Directors to vote for a 1 year program to lease water out of the district, but to vote against a 5 year 'dry-year option' program. Only one-third used long-range (1-7 months) forecasts of precipitation, snowpack, temperature or water availability, and less than a quarter measure their consumptive use.

Introduction: Mass dog vaccination prevents human rabies deaths by interrupting transmission in source populations. However, resources, including trained personnel, cold chain and infrastructure constrain vaccination delivery strategies and impact their effectiveness. We investigate the interaction between delivery strategies and performance of dog vaccination programmes. Methods: Leveraging a three-year cluster-randomised controlled trial in Mara region, Tanzania (population 2.3 million, 112 wards), we compared a centralised annual team-led strategy with a decentralised community-led hybrid enabling year-round delivery, made possible by vaccine thermotolerance. We used regression analysis to undertake controlled comparisons of effectiveness and cost-effectiveness. Findings: The community-led strategy achieved superior coverage, increasing by 10% per 1,000 dog vaccinations per ward (p<0.001). It sustained coverage above the 40% herd immunity threshold for 7–8 months annually, a 33% increase in temporal protection versus annual team-led delivery, which experienced 39% coverage declines without re-vaccination. The community-led approach cost approximately $800 per ward to reach the threshold, compared to $2,100 for team-led delivery. Interpretation: Dog vaccination delivery timing and structure strongly influence programme performance. Community-led strategies offer a cost-efficient pathway to sustaining herd immunity in resource-limited settings, addressing the challenge of attaining and maintaining sufficient vaccination coverage to interrupt transmission and reduce exposure risks.

Under the prior appropriation doctrine of the Western United States, persistent nonuse of a water right may lead to its forfeiture. Although water right forfeiture is statutorily defined, its incidence remains poorly understood. This paper analyzes water right forfeiture in Washington State from 1967 to 2019 to address this knowledge gap. The data primarily come from water right change requests, but we also examine court decisions in general adjudications and orders issued by the regulatory agency. We show that forfeiture following review of a water right change request was relatively uncommon before the 2000s but became substantially more frequent thereafter. We further show that forfeiture rates vary geographically, with some subbasins experiencing much higher rates than others. Additionally, forfeiture incidence varies across water right type, purpose of use, and type of owner, among other dimensions. Compared with change authorizations, forfeiture resulting from State-issued orders has occurred less often, especially in recent years. Finally, we found that adjudication accounts for the majority of the state's forfeiture by volume of water. This analysis provides valuable information for evaluating forfeiture policy and managing water rights.

INTRODUCTION:The burden of rabies remains high in low-income countries, where limited access to life-saving post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) leads to preventable deaths. Lack of evidence on the implications of PEP provisioning strategies impedes policy development. We evaluate three PEP strategies under consideration in Tanzania, comparing current limited access, improved access with free provision, and free provision combined with Integrated Bite Case Management (IBCM). METHODS:We examined data from IBCM implementation on PEP delivery practices, healthcare-seeking, and rabies risk across four Tanzanian regions. Using these data within a decision tree model, we evaluate health outcomes and economic impacts of proposed PEP policies from the healthcare provider perspective, projecting vaccine requirements, costs, and deaths across Tanzania over a five-year period (2026-2030). RESULTS:We project approximately 59,000 (95 % PI: 32,000-96,000) rabies exposures nationwide over five years. With this exposure risk, current PEP access leads to around 800 deaths annually (95 % PI: 400-1200). Improved PEP access increases patients starting PEP, driving vaccine requirements to around 24,000 (95 % CI: 14,000-34,000) vials per year and reducing deaths by >40 %. Introducing IBCM reduces total projected deaths over 2026-2030 from 2300 to 2000 while remaining highly cost-effective at $181 per death averted. CONCLUSION:Tanzania's current PEP practice fails to meet the demand for rabies prevention, leading to preventable deaths. Free PEP is a more effective alternative, and implementing IBCM would further strengthen the country's rabies response and accelerate progress toward the target to end human rabies deaths by 2030.

IntroductionRabies is a fatal but preventable zoonotic disease that is still endemic in many low- and middle-income countries. Mass dog vaccination is central to rabies control, but identifying delivery strategies that are both effective and economically feasible continues to be a challenge in low-resource settings.MethodsWe assessed the cost-effectiveness of a community-led hybrid MDV strategy compared to the standard team-led approach in northern Tanzania. We estimate three key economic metrics from both the provider and the societal perspective: cost per dog vaccinated, marginal cost per dog vaccinated, and the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER).ResultsThe community-led strategy incurred higher annual costs at the ward level ($1,729, 95% CI: $1,641–$1,816) compared to the team-led approach ($884, 95% CI: $729–$937, p< 0.001), but twice as many dogs were vaccinated (768 vs. 350 annual average). The difference in average cost per dog vaccinated (team-led: $2.851 (95% CI: 2.705–2.996) vs community-led: $2.703 (95% CI: 2.404–3.001)) was not significant (p = 0.380), but the median cost was significantly higher for the team-led ($2.297 vs $2.608; Wilcoxon p< 0.001). The cost per dog varied by location, with team-led delivery being cheaper in urban settings (mean $2.942 vs. $5.267: p = 0.016) whilst community-led delivery performed better in rural settings (mean $2.275 vs. $2.820: p< 0.001). The adjusted ICER for community-led delivery over team-led delivery was $2.072 (95% CI: $1.954–$2.217) per additional dog vaccinated, while the regression model indicated that both strategies exhibited economies of scale with costs decreasing as the number of dogs vaccinated increased.ConclusionBoth delivery strategies are viable to increase dog rabies vaccination, but their cost-effectiveness is context-specific. Community-led vaccination emerges as a more efficient option in rural areas, while team-led delivery may be preferable in densely populated environments. These results provide policymakers with practical insights to guide strategic investment and national implementation of rabies vaccination programmes.

The Water Resources Research Act of 1964 (WRRA) established the network of Water Resource Research Institutes (WRRIs). 60 years on, 54 Institutes carry out water research, education, and science communication for the benefit of the state or territory in which each resides. This article summarizes organizational and fiscal characteristics of the WRRIs and their activities based on Institute reports submitted to the U.S. Geological Survey for the period 2016-2020. The data show that these Institutes are highly diverse fiscally, organizationally, and in the focus of their activities, suggesting that the WRRA provides critical support to sustain the network of Institutes and allows the flexibility to address local challenges in locally relevant and effective ways.

An agent-based model (ABM) is developed to simulate the function of lease markets for surface water irrigation rights operating at the watershed scale. The ABM examines the effect of drought on trading activity and gains from trade under three market models: bilateral trading with random matching, a “smart market” that actively matches bidders based on bids and asks, and a full-information optimization model that represents the efficient benchmark against which to assess other market models. The model allows for variation in farm characteristics, water rights seniority, diversion location, and includes a watershed accounting system as a novel component. Results suggest gains from trade and market participation are largest with moderate drought severity than with severe or weak drought. Smart markets provide larger gains than bilateral trade, but both are lower (half or less) than the efficient benchmark. We also show that higher watershed complexity and certain distributions of agents across the watershed can significantly reduce market participation and gains from trade. The applications presented in this paper illustrate the broad applicability of the framework to water resource problems under appropriative water rights systems of the Western United States.

Low dietary diversity is a key driver of undernutrition and remains a significant public health challenge in low- and middle-income countries. This study evaluated the effect of nutritional counselling and the provision of livestock feed, aimed at sustaining milk production during dry periods, on the dietary diversity of women and children in a pastoralist setting. Methods: A cluster randomized controlled trial was conducted among households in Laisamis subcounty, north-eastern Kenya, which were assigned to one of three arms: (1) an intervention arm providing livestock feed during critically dry periods, (2) an intervention arm providing livestock feed plus enhanced nutritional counselling (provided once a week, covering topics including hygiene and sanitation, breastfeeding, maternal nutrition, immunization and complementary feeding) or (3) a control arm. The dietary diversity of mothers and children was assessed every six weeks over two years. Panel difference-in-difference regression models were used to estimate intervention effects on dietary outcomes including child minimum dietary diversity (MDD), minimum acceptable diet (MAD), women's dietary diversity (MDD-W) and food security. Results: A total of 1734 households participated (639 in arm 1, 585 in arm 2, and 510 in the control arm). The provision of livestock feed alone had significant gains in child MAD (OR 1.20; 95% CI 1.08-1.34), child MDD (OR 1.15; 1.11-1.20), and MDD-W (OR 1.10; 1.01-1.19) whereas combined livestock feed with counselling, reduced child food poverty (OR 0.89; 95% CI 0.81-0.99), increased child MAD (OR 1.39; 1.22-1.52), and improved MDD-W (OR 1.21; 1.16-1.28) relative to control. Neither intervention increased child minimum meal frequency relative to control. Purchasing livestock was associated with higher odds of meeting dietary-diversity indicators but a lower meal frequency (OR 0.80; 0.80-0.90); in contrast, cash-transfer receipt was linked to reduced odds of achieving child MDD (OR 0.90; 0.87-0.94), child MAD (OR 0.95; 0.85-0.97), and women's MDD (OR 0.73; 0.54-0.89). Conclusions: Livestock feed provision sustains milk consumption and improves dietary diversity in pastoralist populations. When combined with nutritional counselling, these interventions strengthen the link between animal and human health, with important implications for food security.

Streamflow augmentation can support endangered fish during low-flow periods. Irrigated agriculture being the largest out-of-stream consumptive use, there is potential to augment streamflow by temporarily leasing from agriculture. This potential has not been fully realized, perhaps due to a focus on leasing at the extensive margin where land is either irrigated or not. Leasing at the intensive-margin-applying less water on the full land extent-has received limited attention but could be promising, especially related to short-term pulse flows for fish. We address this with two questions: Can a concurrent short-term pause of irrigation withdrawals meaningfully increase streamflow for fish during critical periods? What is the associated foregone crop production and revenue loss? We used the CropSyst model to simulate irrigation demands, yield impacts from a 15-day pause, and resulting revenue reductions for three focal watersheds in eastern Washington State of the United States, and generated water supply curves that provide the marginal cost of augmentation. We evaluated the strategy's ability to bring flows to levels beneficial for fish for at least two consecutive days. Results indicate that a short-term irrigation pause can provide meaningful levels of pulse-flows if conducive conditions related to upstream crop mix, acreage, and augmentation needs are met. The mean cost from lost revenue across years from reduced yields ranged from $1 to $125/acre in scenarios where the targeted streamflow was achieved. This water leasing strategy has potential in some locations to represent a win-win situation for agricultural and environmental stakeholders and warrants further exploration.

BACKGROUND:We aimed to determine if vaccination against rotavirus (RV) or pneumococcus (PCV13) is associated with reduced colonization with extended-spectrum cephalosporin-resistant Enterobacterales (ESCrE) in children (<15 years) living in Guatemala. METHODS:Questionnaire information, vaccine records, and stool samples were collected from enrolled participants. Specimens were plated onto selective media with antibiotic susceptibility confirmed using a VITEK®2. We employed an instrumental variables approach with maximum likelihood for a system of three nested probit regression equations for binary outcomes of RV or PCV13 vaccination, diarrhea or clinic visits, and ESCrE colonization. RESULTS:Participants (n = 406) ranged from 0 to 14 years old, 123 (30.3 %) were 0-2 years old, 103 (25.4 %) were 3-5 years old, and 180 (44.3 %) were 6-14 years old. PCV13 vaccination had indirect negative effects on ESCrE colonization (-0.092, P < 0.01) mediated through clinic visits (-0.461, P < 0.01), while antibiotic use had a direct positive effect on clinic visits (0.226, P < 0.01), but no significant effects on ESCrE colonization. Effects of RV on ESCrE colonization were inconclusive likely due to the limited sample size of RV-unvaccinated children. Protective effects of yogurt consumption on ESCrE colonization (-0.064, P < 0.01; -0.062, P < 0.01) and positive direct effects of land used for agriculture (0.232, P < 0.01; 0.224, P 〈001) were detected in both RV and PCV13 models, respectively. Report of diarrhea in the past 30 days had a direct positive effect on colonization (0.731, P < 0.01) in the RV model, and indirect positive effects on ESCrE colonization (0.090, P < 0.01) in the PCV13 model. INTERPRETATION:Vaccination for pneumococcal disease was associated with a reduction in colonization with ESCrE bacteria. Antibiotic use did not contribute directly or indirectly to ESCrE colonization. These findings should be confirmed through studies designed to collect clinical outcomes data. Findings from this and other studies suggest that ESCrE colonization is mediated by a complex interplay of factors.

Rural development projects often depend on local community members to coordinate community participation. Using a randomized controlled trial, this paper examines how pay-for-performance for community coordinators affects participation in dog vaccination events to prevent human rabies in Tanzania. Three treatments were implemented: fixed payment only, pay-for-performance only, or a mix of fixed payment and pay-for-performance. Using dog vaccination histories, the experiment equalizes the total expected payment across treatments, isolating the effect of payment type. Mixed payment increases dog vaccinations by 16 percent compared to fixed payment. Each 10 percent increase in per-dog payment raises vaccinations by 0.4 percent. Changing the fixed payment rate has a negligible effect. Thus, pay-for-performance induces higher effort than the fixed component. The findings suggest pay-for-performance can improve the effectiveness of rural development projects such as mass immunization events.

Optimal allocation of agricultural water in the event of droughts is an important global problem. In addressing this problem, many aspects, including the welfare of farmers, the economy, and the environment, must be considered. Under this backdrop, our work focuses on several resource-matching problems accounting for agents with multi-crop portfolios, geographic constraints, and fairness. First, we address a matching problem where the goal is to maximize a welfare function in two-sided markets where buyers' requirements and sellers' supplies are represented by value functions that assign prices (or costs) to specified volumes of water. For the setting where the value functions satisfy certain monotonicity properties, we present an efficient algorithm that maximizes a social welfare function. When there are minimum water requirement constraints, we present a randomized algorithm which ensures that the constraints are satisfied in expectation. For a single seller--multiple buyers setting with fairness constraints, we design an efficient algorithm that maximizes the minimum level of satisfaction of any buyer. We also present computational complexity results that highlight the limits on the generalizability of our results. We evaluate the algorithms developed in our work with experiments on both real-world and synthetic data sets with respect to drought severity, value functions, and seniority of agents.

Livestock abortion is a source of economic loss for farmers, but its economic impact has not been estimated in many Low and Middle-Income Countries. This article presents an estimation methodology and estimates for the gross and net cost of an abortion based on a sample of livestock-owning households in three regions of northern Tanzania and market data. We then generate aggregate estimates of abortion losses across Tanzania. We estimate annual gross and net annual losses of about $263 Million (about TZS 600 billion) and $131 million (about TZS 300 billion), respectively.

BACKGROUND:Livestock-dependent communities in Africa's drylands disproportionately experience acute malnutrition, especially during drought seasons. We detail the design and implementation of the Livestock for Health (L4H) study aimed at determining the effect of providing livestock feed and nutritional counselling to prevent seasonal spikes of acute malnutrition.METHODS:The L4H study employed a 3-arm cluster randomized controlled trial to compare households in pastoralist settings in northern Kenya receiving livestock feeds during critical dry periods, with or without nutritional counseling, with control households. Over 4 dry seasons, 2019 to 2021, the study collected data on household milk production, consumption patterns, mothers'/children's nutritional status, household socioeconomic status, herd dynamics, and human and animal health status every 6 weeks.RESULTS:L4H recruited 1734 households, with 639, 585, and 510 households assigned to intervention arms 1 and 2 and control arm 3, respectively. From these households, 1734 women and 1748 children younger than 3 years were recruited. In total, 19 419 household visits were completed, obtaining anthropometric measures 9 times on average for each child and mother. Eighty-one households (5%) were lost from the study due to the mother's death, child's death, migration, and withdrawal for other reasons.DISCUSSION:L4H's success in a challenging environment was possible due to strong community engagement, formative studies to inform trial design, collaboration with local authorities, and effective interdisciplinary collaboration. Subsequent manuscripts will report the study findings.TRIAL REGISTRATION:The study was registered October 29, 2020, and is online at ClinicalTrials.gov (ID: NCT04608656).

East Coast fever (ECF) is a cattle disease caused by a protozoan parasite called Theileria parva (T. parva). Theileria parva is transmitted among cattle by ticks. It is endemic in parts of central, eastern, and southern Africa and imposes an economic burden through illness and death of approximately a half of a billion U.S. dollars annually. This paper reviews existing science on the economics of ECF. We utilize a conceptual model that defines primary categories of economic costs due to ECF and use it to organize a synthesis of the literature on aggregate and micro level direct costs of the disease and the costs and benefits related to various ECF management strategies. We then identify knowledge gaps to motivate for future research.

Significance This randomized, controlled trial demonstrates that by relieving a constraint on household nutritional assets, here through reducing chicken mortality through vaccination, households make dietary choices for young children that increase consumption of protein- and micronutrient-rich foods and decrease relative consumption of high-carbohydrate, low-protein grains. The study provides causal evidence that this shift in diet results in improved height for age, a key measure of childhood stunting. Given the high prevalence of childhood growth failure in rural Africa, these results highlight the potential to increase the utility of a common household animal asset to reduce the burden of childhood stunting in these communities.

BACKGROUND:Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) such as soil transmitted helminths (STH) and human rabies represent a significant burden to health in East Africa. Control and elimination remains extremely challenging, particularly in remote communities. Novel approaches, such as One Health based integrated interventions, are gaining prominence, yet there is more to be learned about the ways in which social determinants affect such programmes.METHODOLOGY:In 2015 a mixed method qualitative study was conducted in northern Tanzania to determine community perceptions towards integrated delivery of two distinct healthcare interventions: treatment of children for STH and dog vaccination for rabies. In order to assess the effectiveness of the integrated approach, villages were randomly allocated to one of three intervention arms: i) Arm A received integrated mass drug administration (MDA) for STH and mass dog rabies vaccination (MDRV); ii) Arm B received MDA only; iii) Arm C received MDRV only.PRINCIPLE FINDINGS:Integrated interventions were looked upon favourably by communities with respondents in all arms stating that they were more likely to either get their dogs vaccinated if child deworming was delivered at the same time and vice versa. Participants appreciated integrated interventions, due to time and cost savings and increased access to essential health care. Analysis of qualitative data allowed deeper exploration of responses, revealing why people appreciated these benefits as well as constraints and barriers to participation in integrated programmes.CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE:An interdisciplinary One Health approach that incorporates qualitative social science can provide key insights into complex local perceptions for integrated health service delivery for STH and human rabies. This includes providing insights into how interventions can be improved while acknowledging and addressing critical issues around awareness, participation and underlying health disparities in remote pastoralist communities.

Wildfire is a natural phenomenon with substantial economic consequences, and its management is complex, dynamic, and rife with incentive problems. This article reviews the contribution of economics to our understanding of wildfire and highlights remaining knowledge gaps. We first summarize economic impacts to illustrate scale and trends. We then focus on wildfire management in three phases: mitigation before fires occur, response during fires, and response after fires. The literature highlights economic interdependencies and spillover effects across fire-prone landscapes as the source of economic inefficiencies and motivation for public institutional response. The literature illustrates the complexity of this problem with its myriad threads, including the trade-offs of living in fire-prone environments, the prospects for using controlled fire and mechanical fuel removal for reducing wildfire severity, the decision-making environment that firefighters face, and the economic consequences of wildfire smoke on health. Economics provides valuable insights, but fundamental questions remain unanswered.

AbstractThis article examines the relationships between livestock vaccinations, herd introduction decisions, and livestock disease–related outcomes. We develop a theoretical model and derive testable hypotheses about the relationships between these outcomes and practices and test them using two-stage least squares regression analysis. We find that vaccinations reduce disease-related livestock deaths, implying that vaccine availability and use may improve herd and household welfare. We do not find robust evidence of increase in disease-related illness due to herd introductions. Our results highlight the role of livestock vaccinations in safeguarding herd value, which is connected to broader household welfare for livestock keepers of Eastern Africa.