Strengthening family planning stewardship with a total market approach: Mali,Uganda, and Kenya experiences

To improve overall market sustainability, governments and their donors are ramping up efforts to strengthen stewardship in developing country health markets. Key stewardship functions include generating intelligence that enable policymakers, ministerial leaders, and program managers to develop evidence‐based policies and strategies to improve the resource management, supply, and use of health products and services. The total market approach (TMA), an analytic and policy framework, generates market intelligence and improves evidence‐based decision‐making, and also strengthens other stewardship functions, such as building and sustaining partnerships, strengthening tools for implementation, aligning government policy with market interventions, and ensuring accountability/transparency. TMA evolved in response to the phase out of donor support for reproductive health (RH) and family planning (FP) programs and the need to improve coordination among public, private, nongovernmental organizations, and civil society to achieve greater equity, health impact, and market sustainability. To assess TMA's role in strengthening the stewardship of RH/FP markets, this article reviews three countries that applied TMA principles: Mali, Uganda, and Kenya. It identifies how TMA processes influenced stewardship functions and assesses to what degree these processes have contributed to concrete actions to improve market efficiency and sustainability.     

Analysis of legal cases for prevention of elder abuse: decisions from New Zealand

Elder abuse is a universal concern and is gaining greater public and professional attention. This increased concern to protect elders is internationally evident in policy reform, multidisciplinary research and education. Yet neglect in care settings continues. This research responds by contributing to the international effort to promote humane care for elders who are in a position of dependence, particularly in residential facilities. The legal cases that result from some complaints by aggrieved elders and their advocates may offer insights that are relevant for prevention. While the law is often viewed merely as a system of control, it may also be a resource for learning, particularly in the context of abuse prevention. Although the analysis references New Zealand law, the discussion may have broader application by indicating factors that precede, or trigger, unacceptable conduct. By understanding what went wrong and why, we may decrease the likelihood of future incidents. Also, understanding the legal ramifications may have a deterrent effect. Many advocates and activists have asked how we can ensure that abuses do not recur; some answers may lie within the legal cases themselves. How may recent legal cases be used to prevent mistreatment of elders in residential facilities? This question is applied to select decisions of New Zealand's Health and Disability Commissioner, Human Rights Review Tribunal and Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal. While each body has distinct functions, relevant factors identified within the cases may reveal information that is of interest to elderly people and their advocates, caregivers, health educators and professional registration bodies. The research is timely in light of New Zealand's Review of Elder Abuse and Neglect Prevention Services in New Zealand (Department of Child Youth and Family Services, 2004) and New Zealand's Positive Ageing Strategy (Office of Senior Citizens, 2001). This article incorporates current debates regarding the use and analysis of legal cases and suggests that such analyses offer learning opportunities.     

Spatial displacement and diffusion of benefits among geographically focused policing initiatives: a meta-analytical review

Objectives  

To undertake a systematic review of the extent to which geographically focused policing initiatives appear to displace crime (simply relocate it to other places) or diffuse benefits (lead to reductions elsewhere).     

The Sutta on Understanding Death in the Transmission of Borān Meditation From Siam to the Kandyan Court

This article announces the discovery of a Sinhalese version of the traditional meditation (borān yogāvacara kammaṭṭhāna) text in which the Consciousness or Mind, personified as a Princess living in a five-branched tree (the body), must understand the nature of death and seek the four gems that are the four noble truths. To do this she must overcome the cravings of the five senses, represented as five birds in the tree. Only in this way will she permanently avoid the attentions of Death, Māra, and his three female servants, Birth, Sickness and Old Age. In this version of the text, when the Princess manages not to succumb to these three, Māra comes and snatches her from her tree and rapes her. The Buddha then appears to her to explain the path to liberation. The text provides a commentary, padārtha, which explains the details of the symbolism of the fruit in terms of rebirth and being born, the tree in terms of the body, etc. The text also offers interpretations of signs of impending death and prognostications regarding the next rebirth. Previously the existence of Khmer and Lānnā versions of this text have been recorded by Francois Bizot and Francois Lagirarde, the former publishing the text as Le Figuier a cinq branches (Le figuier à cinq branches, 1976). The Sinhalese version was redacted for one of the wives of King Kīrti Śrī Rājasiṅha of Kandy by the monk Vara?āṇa Mahāthera of Ayutthayā. This confirms earlier speculation that this form of borān/dhammakāya meditation was brought to Sri Lanka with the introduction of the Siyam Nikāya in the mid-eighteenth century. It also shows that in Sri Lanka, as in Ayutthayā, this form of meditation—which in the modern period was to be rejected as ‘unorthodox’—was promoted at the highest levels of court and Saṅgha.     

Racism and resource colonization∗

The attacks on our sovereignty and treaties are really attacks on our way of life, our way of viewing things. The environment is critical to our being. The same attacks to separate us from our resources and land are being used in Brazil, Alaska, and elsewhere. It's really racism, with many different names and faces     

A mobile system for postmortem genital examinations with colposcopy: SART-TO-GO

The interpretation of genital findings in the deceased is a vital and timely issue. A paucity of information exists on the nature and appearance of the anogenital tissues in the postmortem interval. The traditional postmortem genital examination consists of gross visualization, which may preclude detection of the subtler trauma that usually constitutes injury in sexual assault. The mobile system grew out of a need to bring the examiner to the patient, e.g., in jurisdictions that lack a centralized morgue. The theoretical framework of the methodology lies in the sexual activity that culminates in the death of the sexual homicide victim. This sequential methodology was based on the Sexual Assault Response Team (SART) model, with adaptation to the autopsy milieu. Colposcopy is well-established for the medical-legal investigation of living sexual assault victims. During the author's initial rape-homicide examinations, only gross visualization was available. It soon became apparent that a system that facilitated detailed scrutiny of the anogenital tissues at various postmortem intervals was needed. Colposcopy was selected as the examination method because of its magnification, photodocumentation, and peer review potential. The sequential protocol was developed and refined during an ongoing accumulation of baseline cases. The role of the forensic nurse examiner is described within a defined scope of expertise and as a collaborative member of the homicide investigative team.     

Women's Studies: Between a Rock and a Hard Place or Just Another Cell in the Beehive?

The article traces the history of Women's Studies from its beginnings as the ‘intellectual arm of the women's movement’. It argues that the complex story of Women's Studies has been marked by both ambiguity and uncertainty as well as sustained political commitment in the face of both institutional opposition and feminist ambivalence about Women's Studies as a field of scholarship. The development of Women's Studies occurs through crucial shifts in the theoretical paradigms of feminism and the political preoccupations of the women's movement. These shifts have both deconstructed the founding premises of feminist theory and generated a greater depth to feminist thinking and research. These challenges to Women's Studies have paralleled a different set of problems arising from the increasingly market-oriented direction pursued throughout the tertiary education sector. In spite of these difficulties Women's Studies continues to survive and constitutes an important and contested site of contemporary feminist thought.