Immigrant Health Care Access and the Affordable Care Act

In spite of major coverage expansions under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), a large proportion of immigrants will continue to remain outside the scope of coverage. Because various provisions of the ACA seek to enhance access, advancing knowledge about immigrant access to health care is necessary. The authors apply the well‐known Andersen model on health care access to two measures—one focusing on perceptions of unmet health care needs and the other on physician visits during the last year. Using data from the New Jersey Family Health Survey, the authors find that prior to implementation of the ACA coverage expansions, immigrants in New Jersey reported lower levels of unmet health care needs despite poorer self‐rated health compared with U.S.‐born residents. The article concludes with a discussion of the use of Andersen model for studying immigrant health care access and the broader implications of the findings.     

A study of sexual dimorphism in the femur among North Indians

Determination of sex of unknown skeleton remains is the most important step in the identification process. Racial and regional differences in the populations create and maintain specificity in their dimorphic characteristics. Moreover, considering continued secular changes in the population structure, constant revision of osteometric standards becomes mandatory. In an effort to establish osteometric standards for the femur of contemporary North Indian populations, 122 adult femora of known sex (M: 94; F: 28) were collected in the Department of Forensic Medicine, IMS, BHU, Varanasi. Eight standard parameters were measured and analyzed by discriminant function analysis using SPSS 16. The accuracy of sex prediction ranged from 70.5% to 83.6% with single variables. In stepwise analysis, epicondylar breadth, proximal breadth, and antero-posterior diameter of the lateral condyle were found to be the most discriminating variables providing an accuracy of 90.2%. The results clearly indicate the importance of the ends of femur in the determination of sex.     

Public Management Decision Making: Effects of Decision Content

One obvious aspect of public management decisions and decision making has largely escaped attention—decision content. We examine the effects of decision content by asking the following questions for budget cutback and information technology decisions: How does content affect the time required for decision making? How does content affect who participates? How does content affect the decision criteria employed? How does content affect the information quality used in the decision-making process and red tape? The results suggest that information technology and budget cutback decisions differ in important ways. For information technology decisions, cost-effectiveness is not a significant criterion, average decision time is much longer, and decisions are generally viewed as permanent and stable. For cutback decisions, cost-effectiveness is a significant criterion, decisions are made much more quickly, and they are viewed as unstable and changeable. Surprisingly, decision content does not appear to affect the number of participants.     

Allele frequency profile of three STR loci in nine North Indian populations

POPULATION: Bhargavas (n=120), Chaturvedis (n=120), Brahmins (n=120), Muslim Sunni (n=120), Muslim Shiya (n=120), Kayastha (n=120), Mathurs (n=120), Rastogies (n=120), and Vaish (n=120).     

Is There a Nonprofit Advantage? Examining the Impact of Institutional Context on Individual–Organizational Value Congruence

This article addresses an important question: do nonprofit organizations have an advantage over public organizations in fostering individual–organizational value congruence? The authors argue that nonprofit organizations do have an advantage. This is because institutional differences between the two sectors become manifest through nonprofit status and the extent of external control, which influences the organization and the individual. External control and sector status (nonprofit versus public) determine the extent of centralization, organizational goal ambiguity, and work autonomy. In turn, these three organizational characteristics shape individual–organizational value congruence. Although the results provide support for the nonprofit advantage thesis, it is worth noting that organizational effects on individual–organizational value congruence are more powerful. Indeed, the results suggest that managerial and organizational actions, compared with sector status, are more likely to influence individual–organizational value congruence.