A policy transformed by politics: the case of the 1973 Australian Community Health Program

During an era of health policy reform in Australia, community health advocates believed that community health centers (CHCs) could form a solid foundation for a new system of health care delivery. Instead, a proposal for national health insurance (Medibank) emerged as the predominant structural reform. Community health proposals were not abandoned, however, and a policy designed to give federal grant assistance for the establishment of CHCs was implemented in 1973. The historical account of how the 1973 Australian Community Health Program (CHP) was developed in the early 1970s is relevant to dilemmas faced by contemporary policy makers. Specifically, how did the CHP "survive" even though government leaders had moved away from traditional direct service models, choosing to focus more attention on indirect insurance reimbursement?     

Consultation with state and local officiaLs prior to awarding community health center grants--PHS. Notice

Section 1923 of the Public Health Service (PHS) Act (42 U.S.C. 300y-2) requires that if a State does not apply for a Primary Care Block Grant under section 1924 of the PHS Act (42 U.S.C. 300y-3), or does not qualify for such a grant, the Secretary of Health and Human Services will use those funds not allotted to States participating in the block grant to make grants under section 330 of the PHS Act (42 U.S.C. 254c) to individual community health centers (CHCs). Section 1923 also requires that the Secretary consult with the chief executive officer of the State and with appropriate local officials before making such grants for community health centers in a State. This notice describes the manner in which the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) will fulfill the requirement for consultation. In addition, it solicits comments from local officials regarding CHCs in their areas.     

Consultations with state and local officials prior to awarding community health center grants--HRSA. Notice

Section 1923 of the Public Health Service (PHS) Act (42 U.S.C. 300y-2) requires that if a State does not apply for a Primary Care Block Grant under section 1924 of the PHS Act (42 U.S.C. 300y-3), or does not qualify for such a grant, a Secretary of Health and Human Services will use those funds not allotted to States participating in the block grant to make grants under section 330 of the PHS Act (42 U.S.C. 254c) to individual community health centers (CHCs). Section 1923 also requires that the Secretary consult with the chief executive officer of the State and with appropriate local officials before making such grants for community health centers in a State. This notice describes the manner in which the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) will fulfill the requirement for consultation. In addition, it solicits comments from local officials regarding CHCs in their areas. A State may elect to supply comments under the system established in accordance with 45 CFR Part 100, "Intergovernmental Review of the Department of Health and Human Services Programs and Activities." (See 48 FR 29188, June 24, 1983.)     

Accelerating commercialization: a new model of strategic foundation funding

Venture philanthropy presents a new model of research funding that is particularly helpful to those fighting orphan diseases, which actively manages the commercialization process to accelerate scientific progress and material outcomes. This paper begins by documenting the growing importance of foundations as a source of funding academic research as traditional funding from industry and government sources decline. Foundations are known for their innovative techniques and we consider the evolution of the ways that foundations fund academic research and form partnerships across academia and industry. We examine the example of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and the development of the drug Kalydeco^® as a demonstration of the principals of strategic foundation funding. The Cystic Fibrosis Foundation adapted to a venture philanthropy model and took an active role in drug development, stewarding the commercialization process from funding basic scientific work in academic institutions, to making an equity investment in a start-up firm. We conclude by evaluating the advantages and disadvantages to venture philanthropy for the academic researchers, industry partners, foundations, and universities and consider an agenda for future research.     

Differences between voluntary and public organizations: the behavior of hospitals in England and Wales

This study confronts the following questions: what are the conditions under which a society decides to do things in the public and voluntary nonprofit sectors, and in what ways do organizations behave differently, depending on whether they are in the public or the voluntary nonprofit sector? To address these questions, the study focuses on English and Welsh hospitals during the twentieth century but prior to the National Health Service. The study argues that as long as the sources of funding for public and voluntary organizations diverge, their behavior will diverge. Because English and Welsh voluntary hospitals prior to the National Health Service were heavily dependent on the voluntary sector for funding and the public hospitals were primarily dependent on the public sector for their funding, the data set is especially valuable for observing how divergent sources of funding influence the behavior of organizations.     

Canada announces new funding for domestic and global fight against AIDS

In a flurry of announcements that came just weeks before it called a federal election, the federal government doubled the funding for its domestic HIV/AIDS strategy, doubled its contribution to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and announced a significant contribution to the World Health Organization (WHO) 3 by 5 Initiative. AIDS organizations welcomed the announcements but were critical of the fact that the increased funding for the domestic strategy will take five years to implement. They also criticized the fact that funding for the global initiatives is not new money; it will come out of increases for development assistance previously announced.     

THE EFFECTS OF LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT BLOCK GRANTS ON SERIOUS CRIME*

Research Summary The Local Law Enforcement Block Grants (LLEBG) Program was second only to the Community‐Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Program in its funding levels. Some $3 billion was dispensed to local jurisdictions to reduce crime and improve public safety; yet the effects of LLEBG funding on crime have been all but ignored. Accordingly, panel data from more than 5,000 cities covering a 12‐year period (1990–2001) were collected, and index crime rates were regressed on LLEBG funding and appropriate demographic controls. Additional controls for police levels and other federal grants were also introduced, proper checks for endogeneity of grants (and police levels) were performed, and the models were subjected to an array of robustness checks. A consistent message emerged: LLEBG Program funding was associated with significant reductions in serious crime. Policy Implications Although LLEBG funding seemed to reduce serious crime, the results also revealed that the decrease did not occur through the hiring of additional police officers, even though many funds were used for that purpose. Other mechanisms were thus at work, but the data did not provide insights into what these mechanisms were. In any case, every $1 in LLEBG funding per capita was associated with approximately 59 fewer index crimes per 100,000 people. When combined with the findings from recent studies of the effects of community policing grants on crime, this study suggests additional federal support for local law‐enforcement agencies should be considered.     

基金会资助绩效何以提升?——基于信任理论的多案例研究

【问题】基金会资助正日益成为我国草根公益组织继政府购买服务和社会捐赠之外的重要资金来源。资助关系建立的前提是组织间信任,但目前人们对于信任如何影响基金会资助绩效这一问题还所知甚少。【方法】基于信任理论,对国内3家资助型基金会展开多案例研究,借助质性研究工具NVivo进行资料分析了基金会与资助对象之间信任关系建立的影响因素,以及行为策略及对资助绩效的影响。【发现】(1)基金会与资助对象之间的信任建立受特征因素、过程因素及纽带因素的影响。不同因素的作用程度与基金会选择的资助形式有关。特征因素在公开招募方式中作用更突出,纽带因素与过程因素在推荐制和定向邀请中作用更明显。(2)不同的信任前因会影响基金会资助行为策略选择。对于特征因素建立的信任,基金会偏好采用契约行为;对于纽带因素建立的信任,基金会偏好采取关系行为;对于过程因素建立的信任,基金会则倾向双措并举。(3)在资助过程中,基金会综合运用契约行为和关系行为有利于促进项目目标实现、合作意愿强化及伙伴能力提升。【贡献】研究不仅从理论角度丰富了基金会相关研究,拓宽了组织间信任的研究领域;还从实践角度为基金会实现有效资助以及草根公益组织获得基金会资助提供了行动参考。     

Public attitudes toward funding preschool programs to prevent violence

Public policy on violence prevention has increasingly focused on early childhood interventions to reduce violence over the life course. This paper examines public attitudes toward funding of programs in schools to enhance learning and to reduce violence. The data come from telephone surveys in a large Southern US City collected from 2004 to 2007. The paper explores the relationship between public funding of programs and increased taxes for programs. PLUM Ordinal Regression models were used to predict attitudes toward prevention programs controlling for demographic variables and political affiliation. Implications of these findings are discussed for understanding of attitudes toward school-based programs and their funding.     

Commons committee recommends significant increase in funding for AIDS strategy

A House of Commons committee says that current funding for the Canadian Strategy on HIV/AIDS should be more than doubled. It calls for designated funding for inmates and First Nations and Inuit peoples, and for HIV vaccine research. Finally, it says that more federal government departments need to become involved in the response to AIDS.     

Distributing State Children's Health Insurance Program funds: a critical review of the design and implementation of the funding formula

The development of formulas to distribute federal funds to states based on demographic data continues to challenge data and policy analysts. Analysts must forward the best objective statistical analysis and data inputs to formula specifications while acknowledging the politics of the legislative process that authorizes federal funding formulas. This article evaluates the federal funding formula for the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) using key formula components of need, effort, capacity, and performance. We also examine the operationalization and measure of the target population in the SCHIP funding formula. Legislative decisions on formulas are, by nature, based on compromises that balance competing policy objectives. The analyst's role is to continually review current research standards, data quality, and relevant formula inputs and make recommendations to refine federal funding formulas to better target resources to their intended populations.     

Funding the Cause: How Public Interest Law Organizations Fund Their Activities and Why It Matters for Social Change

Most of the work of public interest law organizations does not make money. How do these organizations survive, given the economic realities of law practice? Drawing on survey data from a national random sample of public interest law firms, we investigate how funding models vary across public interest organizations and how funding sources affect these organizations’ activities. We find funding structures have, over time, shifted away from foundation support toward government grants. Compared to other organizations, however, conservative organizations draw significantly less of their budget from federal and state grants, and significantly more of their budget from private contributions. Conservative organizations are significantly less likely than other organizations to rely on funding that prohibits engaging in class actions, receiving attorney's fees, or lobbying. Respondents reported that funding restrictions hamper their ability to negotiate favorable settlements, bring about systemic change, and represent vulnerable client communities. We close with a comparative institutional analysis of different funding models.     

Local Governance and Redistributive Policy: Explaining Local Funding for Public Defense

In many American states, public defense is provided at the county rather than state level (Langton & Farole 2009 ). Local governments have discretion over implementing and funding the right to counsel, resulting in considerable variability in programs and funding levels. Placing this issue in the theoretical context of redistributive policies and politics, we investigate decisions on funding this service across upstate New York counties. Using as a point of departure Paul Peterson's classic explication of community politics, we first model variation in funding as a function of counties' fiscal capacity, need for services, and costs of supplying legal representation. We also test Peterson's prediction that local political factors will play little if any role in budget decisions. Second, through interviews with program administrators we explore the characters of twelve defender programs in which expenditures departed from the model's predictions. We find that three factors—which we term “influence,” “infrastructure,” and “ideas"”—also vary directly with levels of funding. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings for theoretical thinking about due process policies and local politics, and for policy debate over how best to ensure adequate counsel in criminal court.     

Innovation in the public sphere: reimagining law and economics to solve the National Institutes of Health publishing controversy

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) are responsible for the largest proportion of biological science funding in the United States. To protect the public interest in access to publicly funded scientific research, the NIH amended terms and conditions in funding agreements after 2009, requiring funded Principal Investigators to deposit published copies of research in PubMed, an Open Access repository. Principal Investigators have partially complied with this depository requirement, and the NIH have signaled an intent to enforce grant agreement terms and conditions by stopping funding deposits and engaging in legal action.The global economic value of accessible knowledge offers a unique opportunity for courts to evaluate the impact of enforcing ‘openness’ contract terms and conditions within domestic and international economies for public and economic benefit. Through judicial enforcement of Open Access terms and conditions, the United States can increase economic efficiency for university libraries, academic participants, and public consumers, while accelerating global innovation, improving financial returns on science funding investments, and advancing more efficient scientific publishing models.     

Fostering industry-science cooperation through public funding: differences between universities and public research centres

This paper analyses behavioural additionality of subsidies by regional and EU framework programme public funding granted to business enterprises in terms of the ??instalment?? of research cooperation between industry and science. Acknowledging their specificities in terms of research orientation, research scale, and management of research, the science component is divided in universities and public research centres. Drawing on firm level data provided by the OECD bi-annual business R&D surveys of 2004 and 2006 for Belgium, the main result is that funding by regional governments fosters the instalment of industry-science research cooperation. However, this positive effect is limited to the case of cooperation with public research centres (and not with universities). The prerequisite of commercialisation of research in the case of funding by regional governments could explain this. Public funding provided by the EU framework programme did not exert an impact on the instalment of industry-science cooperation, neither with universities nor with public research centres. This could be due the fact that EU funding is targeted at firms that are already cooperating and does not favour the set-up of new cooperation.     

Third Party Funding in Arbitration: Questions and Justifications

Utility of third party funding is an undeniable fact, especially where a party is under financial strain, yet its increased usage in private arbitration has given rise to a number of substantive and procedural issues. In view of this, the present paper attempts to map the growing utility or otherwise of the mechanism of third party funding, and analyses its various nuances and legal sustainability within the framework of international arbitration. Further, an attempt is made to analyse the ways and means of ameliorating the utility of third party funding and for enhancing its acceptance in the global arbitration community.

     

Minimum funding requirements and minimum funding excise taxes--Internal Revenue Service. Notice of proposed rulemaking

This document contains proposed regulations relating to the minimum funding requirements for employee pension benefit plans, and to excise taxes for failure to meet the minimum funding standards. Changes to the applicable tax law were made by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974. The regulations would provide the public with guidance needed to comply with that Act and would affect all pension plans subject to the provisions of the Act. The proposed amendments would apply generally for plan years beginning after 1975, but earlier (or later) in the case of some plans as provided for meeting the minimum funding requirements under the Act. The proposed rules pertaining to the frequency of actuarial valuations, and to the time for making contributions, generally would not be effective prior to the publication of final regulations.     

Barack Obama vs Bristol Palin: why the President’s sex education policy wins

The federal government has exponentially increased funding for abstinence‐only sex education over the last few decades, a position supported by former vice‐presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s daughter Bristol. Unfortunately, empirical research indicates that abstinence‐only education is ineffective and may have negative consequences for adolescents. Despite encouragement of abstinence, adolescents continue to engage in sexual relationships, indicating that a different approach to sex education should be supported. This situation raises a number of justice issues because it is important for the government to fund sex education curricula that instruct adolescents on how to protect themselves from pregnancy and STDs. The majority of parents also disagree with the federal funding of abstinence‐only education and support more comprehensive education. This indicates that funding abstinence‐only education is diametrically opposed to community sentiment. Federal funding of abstinence‐only sex education is also problematic as such policies violate a number of adolescents’ constitutional rights. Therefore, the federal government must revise its current sex education policies. President Obama’s proposed plan has the potential to overcome many of these issues associated with abstinence‐only education.     

Structural Funding in the Management of Cultural Heritage in Poland

ABSTRACT

This article concerns structural funding for Polish cultural heritage for the years 2007–13, focusing on the largest operational program, “Infrastructure and Environment,” financed by the European Regional Development Fund. It presents the results of empirical research based on a questionnaire study of a specifically selected group of projects funded under this program. The objective of the study was to analyze the outcomes of this funding upon completion of the financial perspective, presenting tangible and intangible results as well as potential external effects. The empirical data allowed the development of conclusions and recommendations, stressing the importance of the continuing improvement and development of the funding scheme.     

Research centers in transition: patterns of convergence and diversity

Governments continue to play a central role in the way research is conducted and organized by defining new models for research centers. How do existing research centers adapt to changes in their environment? Institutional theory suggests that organizations pursue efficiency and legitimacy by conforming to isomorphic pressures in their organizational field, which will eventually lead to a reduction of diversity in organizational practices and strategies. Resource-dependence theory assumes a more active agency and calls attention to the diverse strategic responses of organizations to institutional processes. Based on funding microdata and qualitative information at center level, this study undertakes to analyze changes in two populations of Spanish research centers (government laboratories and technology centers) in a time of evolving policy paradigms, emergence of new models for research centers, and increasing competition in the field of R&D. We find that a large share of the existing government laboratories and technology centers have progressively conformed to a funding strategy based on diversifying sources and increasing competitive public funding, although both populations are still characterized by some degree of internal diversity regarding funding portfolios. Structural heterogeneity also remains as regards management practices such as research planning and agenda setting.