Community acceptance and implementation of HIV prevention interventions for injection drug users

In 1997, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) reviewed evidence of the effectiveness of HIV prevention programs for injection drug users (IDUs) and recommended that three types ofinterventions be implemented to prevent transmission of HIV among IDUs: 1) community-based outreach, 2) expanded syringe access (including needle exchange programs [NEP] and pharmacy sales), and 3) drug treatment. Progress on increasing the acceptance and feasibility of implementing these programs has been made at the national level, but their implementation has been varied at the local level.Understanding the conditions under which communities accept and implement interventions can help guide effective strategies to foster the implementation of these interventions in areas where programs do not currently exist

Real and Complex Monotone Communication Games

Noncooperative game-theoretic tools have been increasingly used to study many important resource allocation problems in communications, networking, smart grids, and portfolio optimization. In this paper, we consider a general class of convex Nash Equilibrium Problems (NEPs), where each player aims to solve an arbitrary smooth convex optimization problem. Differently from most of current works, we do not assume any specific structure for the players' problems, and we allow the optimization variables of the players to be matrices in the complex domain. Our main contribution is the design of a novel class of distributed (asynchronous) best-response- algorithms suitable for solving the proposed NEPs, even in the presence of multiple solutions. The new methods, whose convergence analysis is based on Variational Inequality (VI) techniques, can select, among all the equilibria of a game, those that optimize a given performance criterion, at the cost of limited signaling among the players. This is a major departure from existing best-response algorithms, whose convergence conditions imply the uniqueness of the NE. Some of our results hinge on the use of VI problems directly in the complex domain; the study of these new kind of VIs also represents a noteworthy innovative contribution. We then apply the developed methods to solve some new generalizations of SISO and MIMO games in cognitive radios and femtocell systems, showing a considerable performance improvement over classical pure noncooperative schemes.Comment: to appear on IEEE Transactions in Information Theor

2009 Writing Contest Winners

The Writing Contest is sponsored by the College Writing Committee and is presented during Transformations conference (formally titled Scholar\u27s Day) at SUNY Cortland.https://digitalcommons.cortland.edu/transformationsprograms/1033/thumbnail.jp

A Preventative Intervention: Staff Experiences Providing Harm Reduction in the Niagara Region

Harm reduction is a pragmatic philosophy and practice within health care which emphasizes disease reduction and social accessibility of health services over law enforcement and judicial punishment for drug use. There is a breadth of literature studying the impact of harm reduction practices on clients, but little on the people who facilitate these services. This project uses a political economy of health theoretical approach to examine the role of harm reduction and harm reduction workers within neoliberal state frameworks. Using an interpretive-critical analysis of qualitative interviews, this project highlights an NEP servicing the Niagara Region as a site of resistance to neoliberal restructuring which is also constrained by its policies. By providing public health care and referral to external resources such as housing, the site acts as a form of retrenchment from the neoliberal state while still being hindered by precarious labour and austerity policies in relation to funding. A key finding is that workers engage in emotional labour, boundary negotiation, and debriefing to offset burnout to better perform their labour, which is an unspoken but necessary part of the job. The findings of this research lay the foundation for future research in harm reduction labour and operation as well as emphasizing the blend between service and health care work that is necessary for effective harm reduction practice

EVALUATION OF THE NATIONAL YOUTHREACH PROGRAMME. ESRI RESEARCH SERIES NUMBER 82 MAY 2019

This report provides a comprehensive evaluation of the National Youthreach Programme. Commissioned by SOLAS, the study is part of an agreed schedule of independent evaluations of key Further Education and Training (FET) provision under the Department of Education and Skills-led FET Strategy 2014-2019 Implementation Plan. Established in 1989, the Youthreach programme continues to be the government’s primary response to early school leaving by providing second-chance education for young people who leave mainstream second-level school before Leaving Certificate level. Youthreach is provided in 112 Youthreach centres and 35 Community Training Centres (CTCs) nationally, with 11,104 learners taking part in the programme in 2017 and with a total cost of €98.7 million (SOLAS, 2018). Reflecting the multiple challenges (including socio-economic disadvantage and special educational needs) faced by many Youthreach learners and the necessity to capture a broader range of outcomes in assessing programme effectiveness, this study adopts a mixed methods approach combining survey data on centres as well as in-depth interviews with staff and learners. This report therefore draws on a range of data sources, including a survey of senior managers at Education and Training Board (ETB) level, a survey of Youthreach co-ordinators and CTC managers, in-depth qualitative data collected as part of case studies in ten centres and two consultative workshops with key national stakeholders in the areas of education and social inclusion. The case studies are a significant feature of the report in that they utilise the multiple perspectives of learners, staff and coordinators/ managers. The report emphasises the voice of young people who have disengaged from school by capturing their views about the Youthreach programme. Using this broad range of data, this report examines all aspects of Youthreach provision including: the profile of learners; referral to the programme; governance and reporting structures; programme funding; curriculum and approaches to teaching and learning; and the learner experience and outcomes