As this conference is being organized, Ebola is receiving global attention and generating a number of responses on a continuum ranging from risk management to sheer panic. Historians have been studying responses to epidemics for some time and one can hardly evoke Ellis Island without the fear of tuberculosis? This panel focuses on comparative responses of contemporary health hazards and whether systems can import innovations. The conference call invites us to understand current "contradictions" with reference to the past. The central research question thus regards the weight of history qua institutions and laws, and what it entails in terms of organizational beliefs and routines that street-level bureaucrats ultimately must interpret to make decisions.

This panel brings social scientists and informed practitioners who have worked on HIV, Hepatitis, cancer, and obesity as cross-border phenomena that require states "responses." The cases reveal both cross-national differences and within country variations. They call into question isomorphic processes and provide a range of empirically informed explanations that tease out the respective role of administrative structures, decision-making settings organizational features, and the agency of social actors. Ultimately our panelists identify the capacity to appropriate new ways of handling diseases.