Communities in Action
Communities in Action

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2017-04-27

Total Pages: 583

ISBN-13: 0309452961

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

Unequal Treatment
Unequal Treatment

Author: Institute of Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2009-02-06

Total Pages: 781

ISBN-13: 030908265X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Racial and ethnic disparities in health care are known to reflect access to care and other issues that arise from differing socioeconomic conditions. There is, however, increasing evidence that even after such differences are accounted for, race and ethnicity remain significant predictors of the quality of health care received. In Unequal Treatment, a panel of experts documents this evidence and explores how persons of color experience the health care environment. The book examines how disparities in treatment may arise in health care systems and looks at aspects of the clinical encounter that may contribute to such disparities. Patients' and providers' attitudes, expectations, and behavior are analyzed. How to intervene? Unequal Treatment offers recommendations for improvements in medical care financing, allocation of care, availability of language translation, community-based care, and other arenas. The committee highlights the potential of cross-cultural education to improve provider-patient communication and offers a detailed look at how to integrate cross-cultural learning within the health professions. The book concludes with recommendations for data collection and research initiatives. Unequal Treatment will be vitally important to health care policymakers, administrators, providers, educators, and students as well as advocates for people of color.

Programmed Inequality
Programmed Inequality

Author: Mar Hicks

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2018-02-23

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 0262535181

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This “sobering tale of the real consequences of gender bias” explores how Britain lost its early dominance in computing by systematically discriminating against its most qualified workers: women (Harvard Magazine) In 1944, Britain led the world in electronic computing. By 1974, the British computer industry was all but extinct. What happened in the intervening thirty years holds lessons for all postindustrial superpowers. As Britain struggled to use technology to retain its global power, the nation’s inability to manage its technical labor force hobbled its transition into the information age. In Programmed Inequality, Mar Hicks explores the story of labor feminization and gendered technocracy that undercut British efforts to computerize. That failure sprang from the government’s systematic neglect of its largest trained technical workforce simply because they were women. Women were a hidden engine of growth in high technology from World War II to the 1960s. As computing experienced a gender flip, becoming male-identified in the 1960s and 1970s, labor problems grew into structural ones and gender discrimination caused the nation’s largest computer user—the civil service and sprawling public sector—to make decisions that were disastrous for the British computer industry and the nation as a whole. Drawing on recently opened government files, personal interviews, and the archives of major British computer companies, Programmed Inequality takes aim at the fiction of technological meritocracy. Hicks explains why, even today, possessing technical skill is not enough to ensure that women will rise to the top in science and technology fields. Programmed Inequality shows how the disappearance of women from the field had grave macroeconomic consequences for Britain, and why the United States risks repeating those errors in the twenty-first century.

Challenges and Successes in Reducing Health Disparities
Challenges and Successes in Reducing Health Disparities

Author: Institute of Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2008-06-13

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 030918570X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In early 2007, the Institute of Medicine convened the Roundtable on Health Disparities to increase the visibility of racial and ethnic health disparities as a national problem, to further the development of programs and strategies to reduce disparities, to foster the emergence of leadership on this issue, and to track promising activities and developments in health care that could lead to dramatically reducing or eliminating disparities. The Roundtable's first workshop, Challenges and Successes in Reducing Health Disparities, was held in St. Louis, Missouri, on July 31, 2007, and examined (1) the importance of differences in life expectancy within the United States, (2) the reasons for those differences, and (3) the implications of this information for programs and policy makers.

geographic inequity in a decentralized anti-poverty program:
geographic inequity in a decentralized anti-poverty program:

Author: Martin Ravallion

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 33

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Abstract: The central governments of many developing countries have chosen to decentralize their anti-poverty programs, in the expectation that local agents are better informed about local needs. The paper shows that this potential advantage of decentralized eligibility criteria can come at a large cost, to the extent that the induced geographic inequities undermine performance in reaching the income- poor nationally. These issues are studied empirically for (probably) the largest transfer-based poverty program in the world, namely China's Di Bao program, which aims to assure a minimum income through means-tested transfers. Poor municipalities are found to adopt systematically lower eligibility thresholds, reducing the program's ability to reach poor areas, and generating considerable horizontal inequity.

Quadratic Programming and Affine Variational Inequalities
Quadratic Programming and Affine Variational Inequalities

Author: Gue Myung Lee

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2006-03-30

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0387242783

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Quadratic programs and affine variational inequalities represent two fundamental, closely-related classes of problems in the t,heories of mathematical programming and variational inequalities, resp- tively. This book develops a unified theory on qualitative aspects of nonconvex quadratic programming and affine variational inequ- ities. The first seven chapters introduce the reader step-by-step to the central issues concerning a quadratic program or an affine variational inequality, such as the solution existence, necessary and sufficient conditions for a point to belong to the solution set, and properties of the solution set. The subsequent two chapters discuss briefly two concrete nlodels (linear fractional vector optimization and the traffic equilibrium problem) whose analysis can benefit a lot from using the results on quadratic programs and affine variational inequalities. There are six chapters devoted to the study of conti- ity and/or differentiability properties of the characteristic maps and functions in quadratic programs and in affine variational inequa- ties where all the components of the problem data are subject to perturbation. Quadratic programs and affine variational inequa- ties under linear perturbations are studied in three other chapters. One special feature of the presentation is that when a certain pr- erty of a characteristic map or function is investigated, we always try first to establish necessary conditions for it to hold, then we go on to study whether the obtained necessary conditions are suf- cient ones. This helps to clarify the structures of the two classes of problems under consideration.

The Future of Nursing 2020-2030
The Future of Nursing 2020-2030

Author: National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine

Publisher:

Published: 2021-09-30

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9780309685061

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The decade ahead will test the nation's nearly 4 million nurses in new and complex ways. Nurses live and work at the intersection of health, education, and communities. Nurses work in a wide array of settings and practice at a range of professional levels. They are often the first and most frequent line of contact with people of all backgrounds and experiences seeking care and they represent the largest of the health care professions. A nation cannot fully thrive until everyone - no matter who they are, where they live, or how much money they make - can live their healthiest possible life, and helping people live their healthiest life is and has always been the essential role of nurses. Nurses have a critical role to play in achieving the goal of health equity, but they need robust education, supportive work environments, and autonomy. Accordingly, at the request of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, on behalf of the National Academy of Medicine, an ad hoc committee under the auspices of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine conducted a study aimed at envisioning and charting a path forward for the nursing profession to help reduce inequities in people's ability to achieve their full health potential. The ultimate goal is the achievement of health equity in the United States built on strengthened nursing capacity and expertise. By leveraging these attributes, nursing will help to create and contribute comprehensively to equitable public health and health care systems that are designed to work for everyone. The Future of Nursing 2020-2030: Charting a Path to Achieve Health Equity explores how nurses can work to reduce health disparities and promote equity, while keeping costs at bay, utilizing technology, and maintaining patient and family-focused care into 2030. This work builds on the foundation set out by The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health (2011) report.

Supporting Children and Their Families Facing Health Inequities in Canada
Supporting Children and Their Families Facing Health Inequities in Canada

Author: Miriam J. Stewart

Publisher: University of Toronto Press

Published: 2021-07-30

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1487533209

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Supporting Children and Their Families Facing Health Inequities in Canada fills an urgent national need to analyze disparities among vulnerable populations, where socio-economic and cultural factors compromise health and create barriers. Offering solutions and strategies to the prevalent health inequities faced by children, youth, and families in Canada, this book investigates timely issues of social, economic, and cultural significance. Chapters cover a diverse range of socio-economic and cultural factors that contribute to health inequality among the country’s most vulnerable youth populations, including mental health challenges, low income, and refugee status. This book shares scientific evidence from thousands of interviews, questionnaires, surveys, and client consultations, while also providing professional insights that offer key information for at-risk families experiencing health inequities. Timely and transformative, this book will serve as an informed and compassionate guide to promote the health and resiliency of vulnerable children, youth, and families across Canada.

Building Capacities to Evaluate Health Inequities: Some Lessons Learned from Evaluation Experiments in China, India and Chile
Building Capacities to Evaluate Health Inequities: Some Lessons Learned from Evaluation Experiments in China, India and Chile

Author: Sanjeev Sridharan

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2017-06-21

Total Pages: 145

ISBN-13: 1119420008

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The World Health Organization defines health inequities as differences in health outcomes that are systematic, avoidable, and unjust; and the result of poor social policies, unfair economic arrangements, and bad politics. This volume describes the role that evaluations can play in addressing health inequities. A key focus is on the types of capacities that need to be built to evaluate inequities. Bringing alive these questions around evaluation capacities are theory and practice studies from China, Chile, and India. This volume: Focuses on inequities in evaluation capacity building initiatives. Argues evaluations can be interventions themselves. Explores how evaluations can have influence in addressing inequities. Recognizes that innovations in evaluation capacity experiments are occurring in diverse countries and we have the opportunity to learn from such initiatives. This is the 154th issue in the New Directions for Evaluation series from Jossey-Bass. It is an official publication of the American Evaluation Association.