A Critical Literature Synthesis of Low-Income Oral Health Disparities in the United States and Interventions for Improved Access to Care

Over a decade ago the United States Surgeon General released a report about oral health in America which highlighted the disparities that exist between high and low-income populations. The current rates of untreated dental disease in low-income adults and children remain higher in low-income populations. This literature review examines low-income oral health disparities in the United States and the interventions that have been completed to increase access to dental treatment. An unequal distribution of dental providers and high costs for treatments contribute to the access issues that low-income individuals experience. This paper examines interventions at the individual, community, and policy levels. Innovations such as making changes in the dental workforce and expanding the role of mid-level dental providers are discussed. Evidence from the literature suggests that changes in government sponsored insurance policies have had the greatest impact on access to dental treatment. Behavioral interventions have been successful at changing oral health behaviors but further research needs to be done on how to best change the behavior of seeking dental treatment. Increasing the role of primary care providers was identified as an interdisciplinary collaboration to increase access for children. The untreated dental disease of low-income populations is a significant public health problem and further research needs to be done to determine the most effective innovations and interventions to increase access to care

Information practices of disaster preparedness professionals in multidisciplinary groups

OBJECTIVE: This article summarizes the results of a descriptive qualitative study addressing the question, what are the information practices of the various professionals involved in disaster preparedness? We present key results, but focus on issues of choice and adaptation of models and theories for the study. METHODS: Primary and secondary literature on theory and models of information behavior were consulted. Taylor's Information Use Environments (IUE) model, Institutional Theory, and Dervin's Sense-Making metatheory were used in the design of an open-ended interview schedule. Twelve individual face-to-face interviews were conducted with disaster professionals drawn from the Pennsylvania Preparedness Leadership Institute (PPLI) scholars. Taylor's Information Use Environments (IUE) model served as a preliminary coding framework for the transcribed interviews. RESULTS: Disaster professionals varied in their use of libraries, peer-reviewed literature, and information management techniques, but many practices were similar across professions, including heavy Internet and email use, satisficing, and preference for sources that are socially and physically accessible. CONCLUSIONS: The IUE model provided an excellent foundation for the coding scheme, but required modification to place the workplace in the larger social context of the current information society. It is not possible to confidently attribute all work-related information practices to professional culture. Differences in information practice observed may arise from professional training and organizational environment, while many similarities observed seem to arise from everyday information practices common to non-work settings

Family Control and the Rent-Seeking Society

The small number of very large family-controlled corporate groups in many countries combined with their long continuity of control and ability to act discretely give these organizations a comparative advantage in political rent-seeking. This advantage is a key part of a self-reinforcing system whereby oligarchic family corporate control, political rent seeking, and low general levels of trust combine to stymie growth.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39971/3/wp585.pd

How Judicial Hostility Toward Environmental Claims and Intimidation Tactics by Lawyers Have Formed the Perfect Storm Against Environmental Clinics: What\u27s the Big Deal About Students and Chickens Anyway?

Since 1976, when the first environmental clinic was started at the University of Oregon’s law school, clinics have proliferated. Today, approximately one out of five law schools has an environmental clinic. With respect to clinics in general, the Association of American Law Schools Directory of Law Teachers lists “nearly 1400 full-time faculty teaching clinical courses.” Yet far from being an uncontroverted part of the academic landscape, clinics—particularly environmental clinics—have endured political blowback from challenging the environmentally destructive behavior of major economic interests. The effectiveness of environmental clinics is no greater than established environmental organizations—perhaps less effective given the length of time it takes for law students guided by faculty to mount a legal challenge and the complexity and difficulty of the cases these clinics take on. Nonetheless, environmental clinics repeatedly find themselves the target of efforts to shut them down, restricted in the types of cases and/or clients they can take on, and limited by supervisory boards with the power of case approval. Why is this? What is it about law students working for credits and grades that powerful interests find so threatening that they spend their resources on eliminating clinics instead of confronting them in court? Is the attack on clinics part of a broader attack on public access to the courts for righting environmental wrongs? Do these attacks reflect something about the nature of the attacker and her victim? This article seeks to answer those questions, and concludes that clinics, like environmental organizations, function in an environment that is exceptionally hostile to the types of clients they represent and the cases they bring. This means that the claims environmental clinics file, like those filed by the national groups, will be met with a barrage of opposing filings based on a number of jurisdictional and other challenges enabled by the U.S. Supreme Court’s anti-public interest jurisprudence. Unlike the well-funded, publicly visible, and widely supported national organizations, environmental clinics are more vulnerable to less conspicuous attacks brought directly by the economic interests they challenge and their political supporters. Perhaps clinics unwittingly invite these attacks that in turn weaken their ability to function in this already hostile environment. The combination of the two can create a perfect storm for environmental clinics. Even more curious is the role that lawyers play in attacks on clinics and the bullying techniques they use to discourage clinic-initiated litigation. There is something about students that brings the bully out in those who face them across the table that goes beyond the usual reasons given for these attacks—namely, that environmental clinics empower people who are otherwise without power to confront those who disregard their interest, that they are successful, and that they have enormous staying power and endless student enthusiasm. This behavior, although part of the general incivility problem afflicting the legal profession, is something more, and has to do with the nature of today’s lawyers and the context in which they learned how to be lawyers and practice law. Although many articles have been written about attacks on environmental clinics, none has identified this second reason—the milieu in which lawyers are educated and trained—and placed it in the broader context of judicial hostility toward environmental claims brought against established economic interests. This article lays the groundwork for these conclusions by first briefly discussing the origins of clinics and clinical pedagogy in general. Then it describes the various attacks on the clinics, some consequences of those attacks, and how certain responses to those attacks run afoul of basic ethical precepts as well as notions of academic freedom. The third part of the article, after briefly listing some of the conventional reasons for these attacks, focuses on a less conventional one—namely, that they are fueled by the asocial behavior of lawyers who are in the vanguard of many of these attacks. It shows how such behavior is akin to that of a schoolyard bully who, in sensing a weaker opponent, acts out in ways that have been fodder for psychological literature. This part of the article also describes the various barriers the Court has erected that make it difficult for public interest litigants, particularly poorly funded and understaffed environmental clinics, to prosecute legal claims representing individuals who threaten the economic and political status quo. The article concludes that the more conventional explanation for the attacks against clinics are incomplete because they neither explain the persistence of the attacks nor show how the combination of intimidation and hostile judicial doctrine make it extremely difficult for environmental clinics to do their job

How Judicial Hostility Toward Environmental Claims and Intimidation Tactics by Lawyers Have Formed the Perfect Storm Against Environmental Clinics: What\u27s the Big Deal About Students and Chickens Anyway?

Since 1976, when the first environmental clinic was started at the University of Oregon’s law school, clinics have proliferated. Today, approximately one out of five law schools has an environmental clinic. With respect to clinics in general, the Association of American Law Schools Directory of Law Teachers lists “nearly 1400 full-time faculty teaching clinical courses.” Yet far from being an uncontroverted part of the academic landscape, clinics—particularly environmental clinics—have endured political blowback from challenging the environmentally destructive behavior of major economic interests. The effectiveness of environmental clinics is no greater than established environmental organizations—perhaps less effective given the length of time it takes for law students guided by faculty to mount a legal challenge and the complexity and difficulty of the cases these clinics take on. Nonetheless, environmental clinics repeatedly find themselves the target of efforts to shut them down, restricted in the types of cases and/or clients they can take on, and limited by supervisory boards with the power of case approval. Why is this? What is it about law students working for credits and grades that powerful interests find so threatening that they spend their resources on eliminating clinics instead of confronting them in court? Is the attack on clinics part of a broader attack on public access to the courts for righting environmental wrongs? Do these attacks reflect something about the nature of the attacker and her victim? This article seeks to answer those questions, and concludes that clinics, like environmental organizations, function in an environment that is exceptionally hostile to the types of clients they represent and the cases they bring. This means that the claims environmental clinics file, like those filed by the national groups, will be met with a barrage of opposing filings based on a number of jurisdictional and other challenges enabled by the U.S. Supreme Court’s anti-public interest jurisprudence. Unlike the well-funded, publicly visible, and widely supported national organizations, environmental clinics are more vulnerable to less conspicuous attacks brought directly by the economic interests they challenge and their political supporters. Perhaps clinics unwittingly invite these attacks that in turn weaken their ability to function in this already hostile environment. The combination of the two can create a perfect storm for environmental clinics. Even more curious is the role that lawyers play in attacks on clinics and the bullying techniques they use to discourage clinic-initiated litigation. There is something about students that brings the bully out in those who face them across the table that goes beyond the usual reasons given for these attacks—namely, that environmental clinics empower people who are otherwise without power to confront those who disregard their interest, that they are successful, and that they have enormous staying power and endless student enthusiasm. This behavior, although part of the general incivility problem afflicting the legal profession, is something more, and has to do with the nature of today’s lawyers and the context in which they learned how to be lawyers and practice law. Although many articles have been written about attacks on environmental clinics, none has identified this second reason—the milieu in which lawyers are educated and trained—and placed it in the broader context of judicial hostility toward environmental claims brought against established economic interests. This article lays the groundwork for these conclusions by first briefly discussing the origins of clinics and clinical pedagogy in general. Then it describes the various attacks on the clinics, some consequences of those attacks, and how certain responses to those attacks run afoul of basic ethical precepts as well as notions of academic freedom. The third part of the article, after briefly listing some of the conventional reasons for these attacks, focuses on a less conventional one—namely, that they are fueled by the asocial behavior of lawyers who are in the vanguard of many of these attacks. It shows how such behavior is akin to that of a schoolyard bully who, in sensing a weaker opponent, acts out in ways that have been fodder for psychological literature. This part of the article also describes the various barriers the Court has erected that make it difficult for public interest litigants, particularly poorly funded and understaffed environmental clinics, to prosecute legal claims representing individuals who threaten the economic and political status quo. The article concludes that the more conventional explanation for the attacks against clinics are incomplete because they neither explain the persistence of the attacks nor show how the combination of intimidation and hostile judicial doctrine make it extremely difficult for environmental clinics to do their job

NASA/DoD Aerospace Knowledge Diffusion Research Project. Paper 31: The information-seeking behavior of engineers

Engineers are an extraordinarily diverse group of professionals, but an attribute common to all engineers is their use of information. Engineering can be conceptualized as an information processing system that must deal with work-related uncertainty through patterns of technical communications. Throughout the process, data, information, and tacit knowledge are being acquired, produced, transferred, and utilized. While acknowledging that other models exist, we have chosen to view the information-seeking behavior of engineers within a conceptual framework of the engineer as an information processor. This article uses the chosen framework to discuss information-seeking behavior of engineers, reviewing selected literature and empirical studies from library and information science, management, communications, and sociology. The article concludes by proposing a research agenda designed to extend our current, limited knowledge of the way engineers process information

The solution-seeking behavior of small Hungarian enterprises between 2006 and 2010

This paper describes the results of an investigation into the finance-related innovative ability of Hungarian micro, small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) by using two datasets (from 2006 and 2010). The author explored SMEs’ levels of openness to new financial solutions and identified features which influence their innovative solution-seeking behavior. Additionally, changes in innovation between 2006 and 2010 were analyzed according to the SME sector and whether there is a correlation between having an active solution seeking attitude and business performance was examined. The findings show that shared/multiple ownership in businesses (having interests in different enterprises simultaneously) has a significant positive effect on flexibility and innovative ability. However, the size of the business, industrial sector, type of ownership and market of the SME also have some effect. Furthermore, the hypothesis that an active solution-seeking attitude increases after-tax performance per employee was confirmed

Graduate Catalog, 2001-2002

https://scholar.valpo.edu/gradcatalogs/1028/thumbnail.jp