Evaluating partnerships for community health improvement: tracking the footprints

Private-public partnerships are increasingly seen as an important mechanism for improving community health. Despite their popularity, traditional evaluations of these efforts have produced negative or mixed results. This is often attributed to weak interventions or an insufficient period of time to observe an impact. This study examines two additional possibilities--the need for a well-articulated shared vision and the governance and management capabilities of the partnership itself. We conducted a midstream process evaluation of twenty-five community partnerships associated with the Community Care Network (CCN) Demonstration Program. We examined how the roles of a common shared vision, strong governance, and effective management influence a partnership's ability to achieve its objectives. The findings, based on both qualitative and quantitative analyses, underscore the importance of membership organizations' perceived benefits and costs of participation and management capabilities to the partnership's progress toward a vision. Based on the qualitative data, six key governance and management characteristics are identified that separate the top performing partnerships from the lowest performing ones. We explore the implications of this research for future evaluations of public-private community health partnerships.     

Application of Lamendin's adult dental aging technique to a diverse skeletal sample

Lamendin et al. (1) proposed a technique to estimate age at death for adults by analyzing single-rooted teeth. They expressed age as a function of two factors: translucency of the tooth root and periodontosis (gingival regression). In their study, they analyzed 306 singled rooted teeth that were extracted at autopsy from 208 individuals of known age at death, all of whom were considered as having a French ancestry. Their sample consisted of 135 males, 73 females, 198 whites, and 10 blacks. The sample ranged in age from 22 to 90 years of age. By using a simple formulae (A = 0.18 x P + 0.42 x T + 25.53, where A = Age in years, P = Periodontosis height x 100/root height, and T = Transparency height x 100/root height), Lamendin et al. were able to estimate age at death with a mean error of +/- 10 years on their working sample and +/- 8.4 years on a forensic control sample. Lamendin found this technique to work well with a French population, but did not test it outside of that sample area. This study tests the accuracy of this adult aging technique on a more diverse skeletal population, the Terry Collection housed at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. Our sample consists of 400 teeth from 94 black females, 72 white females, 98 black males, and 95 white males, ranging from 25 to 99 years. Lamendin's technique was applied to this sample to test its applicability to a population not of French origin. Providing results from a diverse skeletal population will aid in establishing the validity of this method to be used in forensic cases, its ideal purpose. Our results suggest that Lamendin's method estimates age fairly accurately outside of the French sample yielding a mean error of 8.2 years, standard deviation 6.9 years, and standard error of the mean 0.34 years. In addition, when ancestry and sex are accounted for, the mean errors are reduced for each group (black females, white females, black males, and white males). Lamendin et al. reported an inter-observer error of 9+/-1.8 and 10+/-2 sears from two independent observers. Forty teeth were randomly remeasured from the Terry Collection in order to assess an intra-observer error. From this retest, an intra-observer error of 6.5 years was detected.     

Forensic handwriting examiners' expertise for signature comparison

This paper reports on the performance of forensic document examiners (FDEs) in a signature comparison task that was designed to address the issue of expertise. The opinions of FDEs regarding 150 genuine and simulated questioned signatures were compared with a control group of non-examiners' opinions. On the question of expertise, results showed that FDEs were statistically better than the control group at accurately determining the genuineness or non-genuineness of questioned signatures. The FDE group made errors (by calling a genuine signature simulated or by calling a simulated signature genuine) in 3.4% of their opinions while 19.3% of the control group's opinions were erroneous. The FDE group gave significantly more inconclusive opinions than the control group. Analysis of FDEs' responses showed that more correct opinions were expressed regarding simulated signatures and more inconclusive opinions were made on genuine signatures. Further, when the complexity of a signature was taken into account, FDEs made more correct opinions on high complexity signatures than on signatures of lower complexity. There was a wide range of skill amongst FDEs and no significant relationship was found between the number of years FDEs had been practicing and their correct, inconclusive and error rates.     

The EU,Economic Partnership Agreements and Africa

Africa has been divided into four groups of states by the European Union in the negotiation of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) that will define the relationship between Africa and Europe in the future. The EPAs are unfair. They demand reciprocity between the EU countries collectively and each African country individually and they set conditions that will be demanded by any other country or groups of countries with which African countries seek trade arrangements. Further, separate EPAs among different groupings of African countries will undermine Africa’s wider integration efforts, leaving it in thrall to EU companies. In their present form the EPAs are not in Africa’s interest and will unnecessarily undermine the potential for Europe’s improved relationship with the continent.     

The regulation of cognitive enhancement devices: refining Maslen et?al.'s model

Our (2014) model for the regulation of cognitive enhancement devices (CEDs) received a great deal of interest from those involved in European device regulation and from academic commentators. Further, since the publication of our recommendations, the number of manufacturers of brain stimulation devices for non-medical purposes has increased, underscoring the need for a regulatory response. In this paper, we clarify aspects of our original proposal and address additional regulatory issues beyond our original focus on the sale of devices. We begin with theoretical points pertaining to the definition of a CED and the distinction between treatment and enhancement. We then respond to practical challenges raised by the prospect of implementing our regulatory framework. Next, we address some wider societal considerations relating to users and other stakeholders. Finally, we revisit the broader regulatory context within which the various discussions are situated.     

Book notes

Jeffrey Mourssaieff Masson and Susan McCarthy: When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals. New York: Doubleday, 1995.

Val Plumwood: Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London: Routledge, 1993.

Karen J. Warren, ed.: Ecological Feminism. London: Routledge, 1994.

John Brinckerhoff Jackson: A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.

Wendy Harcourt, editor: Feminist Perspectives on Sustainable Development. New Jersey: Zed Books Limited and the Society for International Development, 1994.     

Japanese corporate groupings (keiretsu): A reconnaissance of implications for the future

Four trends presage a possibly somber scenario for the United States at the dawn of the 21st century. American business managers face growing shares of global markets held by foreign business, diminishing U.S. industrial capabilities, and pressure to compete in Japan for Japanese markets. And U.S. policymakers are experiencing operational difficulties, simultaneously influencing and influenced by U.S. industry performance. Thus, the U.S. political business system appears out of alignment with the emerging global competitive environment.

Many explanations and antidotes have been offered, each with its element of truth. The aim is not to deny them, rather it is to explore the significance of corporate grouping structures for Japanese and by implication world business. Long practiced habits of cooperation, mutually sustained competitive advantage, and interlocking ownership appear to be the major ingredients in the glue holding corporate groupings together.

If corporate groupings are as important as some Japanese scholars suggest then a new paradigm may be necessary for understanding their implications for the global political business environment. Thus, significant changes --in philosophies, perspectives, approaches and strategies-- may loom ahead for U.S. managers and policy makers who want to compete successfully in the 21st century.

Arguably, the most competitively potent and successful enterprises in the world are Japanese. Less visible, but of critical importance to this success, are inter-organizational support networks -- Japanese corporate groupings -- which bolster group members with capital, expertise and markets. This article is a reconnaissance for managers, scholars and policy makers detailing future implications of Japanese corporate grouping structures. The first and second sections establish four important trends and summarize popular and scholarly understandings of the corporate grouping phenomenon. If corporate groupings are as important as some Japanese scholars maintain, then perhaps we need a new paradigm which clearly identifies "strategic coupling" as a critical success factor in the new global political business environment. The third and final sections develop a framework for understanding some of the economic, institutional, organizational and strategic implications of Japanese corporate groupings.     

Creating Direct Incentives for Wildlife Conservation in Community-Based Natural Resource Management Programmes in Botswana

Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) programmes in Botswana were intended to create a wildlife conservation incentive by providing rural communities with tourism rights to wildlife—with limited effect. The 2007 CBNRM policy, increasing central control of CBNRM, is likely to further undermine communities' incentive to conserve wildlife. A complementary conservation corps is needed to create direct incentives to conserve wildlife and to reduce human-wildlife conflict. Responses to contingent behaviour questions indicate broad community support for such a programme and the availability of a suitable labour force willing to work at costs that can be financed from existing CBNRM revenues.     

The emerging political economy of austerity in Britain

This paper uses data from the British Election Study's Continuous Monitoring Surveys to investigate reactions of the British public to the economic crisis and the austerity policies the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government has adopted to deal with it. Multivariate models informed by competing valence and positional theories of electoral choice are employed to study the impact of these reactions on support for the Conservative Party and Prime Minister David Cameron and evaluations of the Conservatives' ability to handle important issues. Analyses indicate that there is widespread and growing pessimism about the prospects of resolving the economic crisis in the near future. Since the crisis began in 2008, the dynamics of these bearish attitudes have been closely linked to rising unemployment rates. Differing positions regarding the Coalition's austerity policies exert sizable effects on party support, but these attitudes have not negated the force of valence politics considerations such as party leader images, partisan attachments and global assessments of party performance.     

Politics Can Limit Policy Opportunism in Fiscal Institutions: Evidence from Official General Fund Revenue Forecasts in the American States

Governments make policy decisions in the same areas in quite different institutions. Some assign policymaking responsibility to institutions designed to be insulated from myopic partisan and electoral pressures and others do not. In this study, we claim that differences in political context and institutional design constrain the policy choices governments make. Testable propositions based on an analysis of varying electoral incentives and time horizons created by these different contexts are empirically tested using panel data on official general fund revenue forecasts in the American states, 1987 to 2008. The empirical evidence reveals that executive branch agencies and independent commissions produce more conservative forecasts than legislatures with one important exception. Executive branch revenue forecasts in states with gubernatorial term limits are indistinguishable from legislative branch forecasts. Further, we find that legislative branch forecasts are more conservative in the presence of divided partisan legislatures than unified party government. In turn, this implies that entrusting policymaking authority to either the executive branch or an independent commission may only be consequential when the political system itself fails to check legislative excesses or executive myopia.