Posted on June 22, 2001 at 4:50 p.m.

BIRMINGHAM, AL — Steven M. Becker, Ph.D., has received a one-year, $20,000 intramural grant from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Lister Hill Center for Health Policy to examine policy implications of the recent foot-and-mouth disease epidemic in the United Kingdom.

Becker, an assistant professor in the UAB schools of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Public Health and Medicine, will examine the lessons for preparedness and response and for bioterrorism policy that can be learned from the foot-and-mouth disease epidemic in the United Kingdom. Becker will seek to identify unanticipated problems, impacts, issues and resource needs that have arisen in connection with the outbreak that has cost the United Kingdom food, agriculture and tourism industries billions of pounds.

“The enormous scale of this tragic epidemic means that it raises social, economic, political, administrative and policy issues that would not arise in a smaller, more limited episode,” Becker said. “The proposed research is intended to help capture this vitally important information and to trace out its implications for policy.”

Becker’s research interests deal primarily with the problems of major environmental disasters. His research focus includes the public health, human services and public policy implications of contamination incidents, the social and psychological impacts of toxic disasters and the development of effective programs and policies to address such effects.

Becker teaches one of the nation’s only university-level courses on environmental disasters. He is also on the faculty of UAB’s Center for Disaster Preparedness.

The Lister Hill Center for Health Policy, located in the UAB School of Public Health, facilitates health policy research through programs such as the Intramural Grants Program. The program provides grant awards up to $20,000 to UAB scholars to encourage and foster health policy and health services research on campus.