Cultivating Reform: Richard Nixon\u27s Illicit Substance Control Legacy, Medical Marijuana Social Movement Organizations, And Venue Shopping

Over the course of the last two decades, organizations representing the medical marijuana social movement have campaigned for, proposed state level legislation, and supported numerous legal arguments that challenge and attempt to reform U.S. federal illicit substance policies. This set of social regulatory policies, commonly known as the Controlled Substance Act of 1970 (CSA), were drafted, promoted, and implemented by the Nixon Administration then subsequently entrenched by multiple presidents with acquiescent congresses adopting supplemental supply-side resource allocating legislation. My dissertation research uncoils the convoluted history and institutional dynamics of path dependent U.S. illegal drug control policies to answer the question of how social movement organizations (SMOs) challenge and reform executively entrenched policies. First, I examine the Nixon Administration\u27s decision-making process via archival materials in order to understand why and how the CSA was framed, introduced, and ratified. Second, two presidential illicit substance control case studies (Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush) are presented to demonstrate how U.S. illicit substance control is executively entrenched. Third, periodical challenges prior to the first state-level medical marijuana law are presented as antecedent and instructional to contemporary SMO institutional mobilization. Last, through interviews, media portrayals, and institutional rulings I demonstrate how medical marijuana SMOs have reframed the drug\u27s definition then shopped institutional venues for the purpose of reforming existing policies

Analyzing Granger causality in climate data with time series classification methods

Attribution studies in climate science aim for scientifically ascertaining the influence of climatic variations on natural or anthropogenic factors. Many of those studies adopt the concept of Granger causality to infer statistical cause-effect relationships, while utilizing traditional autoregressive models. In this article, we investigate the potential of state-of-the-art time series classification techniques to enhance causal inference in climate science. We conduct a comparative experimental study of different types of algorithms on a large test suite that comprises a unique collection of datasets from the area of climate-vegetation dynamics. The results indicate that specialized time series classification methods are able to improve existing inference procedures. Substantial differences are observed among the methods that were tested

ARCH 14 - International Conference on Research on Health Care Architecture - November 19-21, 2014, Espoo, Finland - Conference Proceedings

Healthcare Architecture has grown rapidly in recent years. However, there are still many questions remaining. The commission, therefore, is to share the existing research knowledge and latest results and to carry out research projects focusing more specifically on the health care situation in a variety of contexts. The ARCH14 conference was the third conference in the series of ARCH conferences on Research on Health Care Architecture initiated by Chalmers University. It was realized in collaboration with the Nordic Research Network for Healthcare Architecture .It was a joint event between Aalto University, Finnish Institute of Occupational Health (FIOH) and National Institute of Health and Welfare (THL International).The conference gathered together more than 70 researchers and practitioners from across disciplines and countries to discuss the current themes

Unlocking the value of expanded access ethical, statistical, and policy considerations

Patients with life-threatening or seriously debilitating diseases who cannot benefit from registered therapies or trial participation, may seek access to unapproved drugs through 'expanded access' programs. Expanded access programs offer a legal, regulated pathway to access otherwise unavailable medicine for patients in dire need.The value of these programs, both for current and future patients, remains undetermined. In this thesis, we laid the groundwork by quantifying the clinical value of accessing medicines in development for current patients. Furthermore, future patients may benefit from data collection in expanded access programs, as we show that regulators, reimbursement bodies, and researchers increasingly use said data.The increasing use of data from expanded access programs raises statistical concerns. We have developed a method to dynamically incorporate information from expanded access programs into trial analyses, by combining work from causal inference and bayesian dynamic borrowing. As these programs can be viewed as controversial, we devoted a large portion of our thesis to discussing the ethics of expanded access programs. The evolution of expanded access programs—from primarily serving as a treatment avenue to becoming a research prospect—necessitates a revision of the existing policies and requires further ethical and statistical exploration.<br/

Unlocking the value of expanded access ethical, statistical, and policy considerations

Patients with life-threatening or seriously debilitating diseases who cannot benefit from registered therapies or trial participation, may seek access to unapproved drugs through 'expanded access' programs. Expanded access programs offer a legal, regulated pathway to access otherwise unavailable medicine for patients in dire need.The value of these programs, both for current and future patients, remains undetermined. In this thesis, we laid the groundwork by quantifying the clinical value of accessing medicines in development for current patients. Furthermore, future patients may benefit from data collection in expanded access programs, as we show that regulators, reimbursement bodies, and researchers increasingly use said data.The increasing use of data from expanded access programs raises statistical concerns. We have developed a method to dynamically incorporate information from expanded access programs into trial analyses, by combining work from causal inference and bayesian dynamic borrowing. As these programs can be viewed as controversial, we devoted a large portion of our thesis to discussing the ethics of expanded access programs. The evolution of expanded access programs—from primarily serving as a treatment avenue to becoming a research prospect—necessitates a revision of the existing policies and requires further ethical and statistical exploration.<br/

The Role of Innovation Intermediaries in Developing Healthcare Innovation Ecosystems: Value Co-Creation through Platforms

Thesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2021.ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Creating sustainable agile innovative environments is a persistent challenge, which has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 global pandemic. The disruption in services has highlighted the need to foster innovation, build resilient health systems, operationalise technology banks and build more domestic capacity whilst harnessing global cooperation. These are the mandates of the 3rd, 9th and 17th Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). One organisation cannot maintain and develop these systemic dynamics alone, hence ecosystems of actors ranging in structure and size are formed. These are the foundational precepts of this dissertation as it explores how to manage innovation ecosystems. Though such concerns are across diverse industries, this study was in healthcare. The aim was to inform under-resourced countries on how to ensure sustainability on projects often funded by foreign funders, which is rampant in the Global South. This study contributed to the discourse of ecosystems research by developing an Ecosystem Evolution and Emergence Framework that assists in the management of the innovation ecosystem. Ecosystems research has mainly focussed on the structure of ecosystems and less attention has been devoted to the emergence of ecosystems. Thus,this study contributes to shedding some light on ecosystem emergence.The framework has two pillars for the innovation intermediary: outlining the key tasks to undertake at each ecosystem stage and the key aspects that are important to identify, monitor or cultivate in the ecosystem for the ecosystem actors. A constructivist perspective was used to better understand the relationship between innovation intermediation and innovation ecosystems. Conceptually, the framework development process was guided by Soft Systems Methodology with an emphasis on learning from the history of past projects addressing the same issues. These theoretical tools were deduced from established theories in innovation systems and complexity science embedded in a narrative explanation-Event Structure Analysis. This analysis was utilised through applying event colligation and displaying through Causal Loop Diagrams Empirically, a comparison of the emergence sequences from three healthcare innovation ecosystems was undertaken. These are the Maternal Alliance for Mobile Action (MAMA), Mom Connect and the District Health Information System (DHIS2). The activities and functions were mapped in the study across the innovation ecosystem development stages of birth, expansion and self-renewal using the framework. This resulted in the identification of 39 core ecosystem events deemed leverage points–each with a myriad of activities. The evaluated framework culminated in five distinct leverage categories of structural, technological, social, knowledge and political leverage. This is presented as an ecosystem management tool that enables: 1) building of innovation ecosystems; 2) facilitating improvement and sustainability of existing innovation ecosystems; and 3) providing the ecosystem manager with tools to address commonly experienced challenges. The tool’s main aim is to provide guidelines on how ecosystems emerge and are governed. The systematic approach followed in the study lends itself to future development and expansion with various other computerised tools.AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Raadpleeg teks vir opsommingDoctorat