Exploring Medicine Procurement through the lens of the Basel Statements: A comparative study between Australia and Nepal

It is believed that developed countries are more efficient than developing countries in managing medicine distribution and have stronger regulatory frameworks that contribute to better access to medicines. Therefore, this study aimed to compare medicine procurement practices in hospitals of developed and developing countries, Australia and Nepal respectively, based on the internationally recognized guidelines, the Basel Statements, with the objective of improving procurement practices of Nepal. Chapter 1 of this thesis is a literature review conducted to explore medicine procurement issues utilising a framework of procurement statements of the Basel Statements. Reported lack of studies and information available about medicine procurement practice in Nepal indicated the need for a thorough study on medicine procurement practice and its issues. Chapter 2 describes the methodology used for the two qualitative studies that comprise chapters 3 and 4. Chapter 3 contains the manuscript pertaining to a qualitative study about medicine procurement in hospital pharmacies of Nepal based on the Basel Statements. This study indicated that there is a need for improvement in some procurement issues; however, hospital pharmacies of Nepal are doing well in some aspects of procurement procedures. Chapter 4 contains the manuscript pertaining to a comparative study of medicine procurement practices in public hospitals of Australia and Nepal based on the Basel Statements. Procurement practices of Australia and Nepal varied in many aspects but also were similar in some aspects. Chapter 5 is a concluding chapter that summarizes and discusses major findings of this research and proposes recommendations for improving procurement practice in Nepal. Strengthening regulatory enforcement and amending existing national policies and guidelines by adopting and adapting international guidelines and procurement procedures to suit national requirements, resources and capacities are highly recommended for Nepal

A survey of the reformulation of Australian child-oriented food products

© 2013 Savio et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Background Childhood obesity is one of the most pressing public health challenges of the 21st century. Reformulating commonly eaten food products is a key emerging strategy to improve the food supply and help address rising rates of obesity and chronic disease. This study aimed to monitor reformulation of Australian child-oriented food products (products marketed specifically to children) from 2009–2011. Methods In 2009, all child-oriented food products in a large supermarket in metropolitan Adelaide were identified. These baseline products were followed up in 2011 to identify products still available for sale. Nutrient content data were collected from Nutrient Information Panels in 2009 and 2011. Absolute and percentage change in nutrient content were calculated for energy, total fat, saturated fat, sugars, sodium and fibre. Data were descriptively analysed to examine reformulation in individual products, in key nutrients, within product categories and across all products. Two methods were used to assess the extent of reformulation; the first involved assessing percentage change in single nutrients over time, while the second involved a set of nutrient criteria to assess changes in overall healthiness of products over time. Results Of 120 products, 40 remained unchanged in nutrient composition from 2009–2011 and 80 underwent change. The proportions of positively and negatively reformulated products were similar for most nutrients surveyed, with the exception of sodium. Eighteen products (15%) were simultaneously positively and negatively reformulated for different nutrients. Using percentage change in nutrient content to assess extent of reformulation, nearly half (n = 53) of all products were at least moderately reformulated and just over one third (n = 42) were substantially reformulated. The nutrient criteria method revealed 5 products (6%) that were positively reformulated and none that had undergone negative reformulation. Conclusion Positive and negative reformulation was observed to a similar extent within the sample indicating little overall improvement in healthiness of the child-oriented food supply from 2009–2011. In the absence of agreed reformulation standards, the extent of reformulation was assessed against criteria developed specifically for this project. While arbitrary in nature, these criteria were based on reasonable assessment of the meaningfulness of reformulation and change in nutrient composition. As well as highlighting nutrient composition changes in a number of food products directed to children, this study emphasises the need to develop comprehensive, targeted and standardised reformulation benchmarks to assess the extent of reformulation occurring in the food supply

Reducing the volume, exposure and negative impacts of advertising for foods high in fat, sugar and salt to children: a systematic review of the evidence from statutory and self-regulatory actions and educational measures

Purpose: To identify and review evidence on 1) the effectiveness of statutory and self-regulatory actions to reduce the volume, exposure or wider impact of advertising for foods high in fat, sugar and salt (HFSS) to children, and 2) the role of educational measures. Design/methodology/approach: A systematic review of three databases (Medline, CINAHL and PsycINFO) and grey literature was carried out. Relevant evidence included studies evaluating advertising bans and restrictions, advertising literacy programmes and parental communication styles. Relevant media included TV, internet, radio, magazines and newspaper advertising. No studies were excluded based on language or publication date. Findings: Forty-seven publications were included: 19 provided evidence for the results of statutory regulation, 25 for self-regulation, and six for educational approaches. Outcome measures varied in approach, quality and results. Findings suggested statutory regulation could reduce the volume of and children's exposure to advertising for foods HFSS, and had potential to impact more widely. Self-regulatory approaches showed varied results in reducing children's exposure. There was some limited support for educational measures. Discussion: Consistency in measures from evaluations over time would assist the development and interpretation of the evidence base on successful actions and measures to reduce the volume, exposure and impact of advertising for foods HFSS to children

On multi attribute decision making methods: Prioritizing information security controls

This study deals with the problem of prioritization of Information Security Controls where most organizations aim to address and manage them effectively. Current information security analysis methods lack a quantitative approach and mostly depend on subjective judgments of information security experts.Although, expert opinions assist organizations in measuring the effectiveness of security controls, the subjective judgments may yield different results.Hence, a more objective approach that can be quantified is an alternative.This study implements multiple attribute decision-making concepts for prioritizing and selecting security controls using Hierarchical Adaptive Weighting (HAW) and Simple Adaptive Weighting (SAW).The results of these analysis methods are reported and compared

The Lost American Tradition: American Foreign Public Engagement & the Origins of American Public Diplomacy, 1776 - 1948

Most of the existing literature on American public diplomacy focuses on both historic and present-day use. Literature by academics and practitioners, as well as government reports and studies done by think tanks, all repeatedly highlight the same problems affecting public diplomacy of the United States (from the end of World War II through today): an absence of strategy - what public diplomacy should do and how; as well as clearly defining the role of public diplomacy in American statecraft; and uneven and ineffective implementation. Interestingly, some of the literature on public diplomacy recognizes the practice to date back before the twentieth century, yet there are no studies examining public diplomacy practice prior to the twentieth century. This study offers a new approach to evaluating and understanding the use of public diplomacy in American statecraft by broadening the understanding and interpretation of diplomacy. The aim of this research is to understand how past uses and techniques of foreign public engagement evolved into modern public diplomacy as a tool of American statecraft. The study explores six historic cases where the United States’ government or private American citizens actively engaged with foreign publics, starting with the American Revolution in 1776 through the passage of the Smith-Mundt Bill of 1948. Each case looks specifically at the role foreign public engagement plays in American statecraft, while also identifying trends in American foreign public engagement and making connections between past practice of foreign public engagement and public diplomacy, and analysing how trends and past practice or experience influenced modern American public diplomacy

Regular Expressions and Transducers over Alphabet-invariant and User-defined Labels

We are interested in regular expressions and transducers that represent word relations in an alphabet-invariant way---for example, the set of all word pairs u,v where v is a prefix of u independently of what the alphabet is. Current software systems of formal language objects do not have a mechanism to define such objects. We define transducers in which transition labels involve what we call set specifications, some of which are alphabet invariant. In fact, we give a more broad definition of automata-type objects, called labelled graphs, where each transition label can be any string, as long as that string represents a subset of a certain monoid. Then, the behaviour of the labelled graph is a subset of that monoid. We do the same for regular expressions. We obtain extensions of a few classic algorithmic constructions on ordinary regular expressions and transducers at the broad level of labelled graphs and in such a way that the computational efficiency of the extended constructions is not sacrificed. For regular expressions with set specs we obtain the corresponding partial derivative automata. For transducers with set specs we obtain further algorithms that can be applied to questions about independent regular languages, in particular the witness version of the independent property satisfaction question