AAAS Risk Policy Fellow
Reports on his Year in DC

As a Risk Policy Fellow from 2000-2001, Bruce Hope spent a year working for the US Department of Agriculture's Office of Public Health and Science. Assigned to apply risk assessment techniques to issues of food safety, he concluded that the American egg — a target of his study — is essentially safe.

Hope has returned to his job as a senior environmental toxicologist for land quality with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. But he left behind a record of his experiences in the form of an essay that is posted on the website of Fellowship Focus, the newsletter of the AAAS public policy fellowship program.

"I left the fellowship with further awareness that science and policy encompass truly different world views," Hope writes in his essay. "Scientists are typically guests at, and not hosts of, policy debates, and crafting science-based policies requires scientists to take the initiative in building and maintaining relationships with policy-makers."

Anyone interested in following in Hope's footsteps, or in learning about any of the other fellowship programs available through AAAS, can obtain information through the program website, www.fellowships.aaas.org. The next application deadline is 10 January 2003.

3 December 2002