Closing the gap: a capability framework for working effectively with people with combined mental health and substance use problems (dual diagnosis)

Abstrac

Closing the Gap: A Research Agenda for the Study of Health Needs among American Indian/Native Hawaiian Transgender Individuals

Objectives: To explore health research needs of American Indian and Native Hawaiian (AIINH) transgender individuals. Methods: This qualitative study is composed of four focus groups and one informal meeting, totaling 42 AIINH transgender individuals in four major cities. The theoretical and methodological approaches combined grounded theory with the principles of community based participatory research. Results: Healthcare and resiliency are two main themes that emerged as research needs with important subcategories within them. Access to quality care from medical professionals and access to care that is unique to their trans gender status were subcategories within healthcare. Lived experiences, culture, and history were factors found to contribute to their resiliency. Conclusions: There are a number of factors that lead to health disparities among AIINH people. They include the lack of quality care due to the negative encounters with health providers, health care providers\u27 limited knowledge of trans gender issues, and lack of transgender specific services. This must be researched further along with health provider care, attitudes, beliefs, and education. Understanding the lived lives of AIINH trans gender individuals and utilizing their culture and history in health interventions may improve their health and overall wellbeing

Cultural competency in the delivery of health services for Indigenous people

Aim and objectives This review aims to examine available evidence on cultural competence in health care settings to identify key approaches and strategies that can contribute to improving the development and implementation of Indigenous health services and programs. The objectives are to: 1. define cultural competency –– we consider the significance of cultural competence and how it has been defined in international and local literature, including the use of similar terms and meanings 2. report on the quantity, nature and quality of available evidence –– we look at available evidence on cultural competency in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States, including how cultural competence has been measured, and assess the quality of the evidence against basic methodological criteria 3. identify approaches and strategies that are effective in improving cultural competency among health services staff 4. examine the relationship between cultural competency and health outcomes 5. develop an evidence-informed conceptual framework of cultural competency

Bridging The Divide: How Business Ownership Can Help Close the Racial Wealth Gap

Our nation faces significant challenges addressing the growing racial wealth gap. This white paper, written by Joyce Klein, Director of FIELD at the Aspen Institute, outlines the role that business ownership can and does play in building wealth for people of color.Latinos and African Americans holder relatively low levels of business assets, contributing to their lower levels of wealth overall. Yet there are trends in the right direction: rates of business creation among these entrepreneurs are increasing, and now exceed those of whites. Particularly among African Americans, higher levels of college attainment combined with expanded contracting opportunities are enabling movement into more lucrative markets and sectors.While there are positive signs, low levels of personal wealth and challenges in accessing business credit continue to be primary factors limiting the growth of firms owned by Latinos and African Americans. Relatively high and growing levels of student debt further complicate the financial challenges faced by entrepreneurs of color. Lower levels of education among Latinos constrain their ability to move into higher-growth, higher-revenue sectors, and also affect the skills they bring to businesses they create.The white paper outlines short- and long-term recommendations to address the racial wealth gap through business ownership strategies. In the short-term, continuing and expanding efforts to increase access to capital, skills, networks, and markets will be needed to realize the promise that business ownership holds for addressing the racial wealth gap. In the long-term, universal policies to narrow the racial wealth gap -- such as those aimed at raising the quality of education, building savings, and increasing financial inclusion -- will be critical

Intermediary's Elicitation and Patron's Retrieval Satisfaction

[[abstract]]An elicitation is a verbal request for information reflecting one's interests, concerns or perplexities in conversation. Elicitation behavior in studies of information retrieval interaction is, in fact, the micro-level of information-seeking behavior in which the user and the intermediary exchange information to fill the gaps in one's internal state of knowledge. This study aims to understand the intermediary's elicitation behavior in terms of linguistic forms, communicative functions (illocutionary force) and utterance purposes (semantic contents) and further to identify the relationship between intermediary's individual differences and search results satisfaction. Research methods include participatory observation, conversation analysis, content analysis and statistical analysis of elicitation frequencies and questionnaires. Our research results successfully identify the three dimensions of intermediary's elicitation behavior and characterize intermediary's inquiring minds and elicitation styles. Further analysis shows that there exists a significant relationship between inquiring minds/elicitation styles and user's relevance judgment of search results.

Symmetry-based Indicators of Band Topology in the 230 Space Groups

The interplay between symmetry and topology leads to a rich variety of electronic topological phases, protecting states such as the topological insulators and Dirac semimetals. Previous results, like the Fu-Kane parity criterion for inversion-symmetric topological insulators, demonstrate that symmetry labels can sometimes unambiguously indicate underlying band topology. Here we develop a systematic approach to expose all such symmetry-based indicators of band topology in all the 230 space groups. This is achieved by first developing an efficient way to represent band structures in terms of elementary basis states, and then isolating the topological ones by removing the subset of atomic insulators, defined by the existence of localized symmetric Wannier functions. Aside from encompassing all earlier results on such indicators, including in particular the notion of filling-enforced quantum band insulators, our theory identifies symmetry settings with previously hidden forms of band topology, and can be applied to the search for topological materials.Comment: 9+21 pages; (2+1) figures, (4+20) tables; v2: references added; title changed; results for quasi-2D and 1D systems adde