Visual Demonstration of Academic Performance and Parental Involvement in Ghana

Visual Demonstration of Academic Performance and Parental Involvement in Ghan

Youth and Savings in AssetsAfrica

As youth transition to adulthood, their ability to save and accumulate assets becomes very important as they begin to accept financial responsibilities and plan for the future. In this paper, we investigated the effects of an asset building intervention on youth asset accumulation in Masindi, a rural area in Uganda. Two waves of data were collected on youth, between 15 and 35 years of age, for both the treatment and comparison groups. We used a Propensity Score Matching (PSM) technique and Difference-in-Difference model to estimate the effects of the asset building intervention. We find that the mean difference in financial assets ($763.17), total wealth ($897.75) and net-worth ($1,17.83) are statistically significant in favor of the youth in the treatment group. However, the mean difference in productive assets ($3.77) is not statistically significant. The results show that youth in rural Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are able to accumulate substantial assets that may well contribute to their well-being in the long-term

Assets and Child Well-Being in Developing Countries: A Research Review

The impact of assets on child well-being in developing countries has received considerable attention in the last decade. Increased recognition of the critical role played by assets in enhancing children’s well-being has spurred efforts to study the relationship between assets and a range of outcomes for children. This chapter reviews current studies (i.e., conducted within the past 10 years) that explore the relationship of asset ownership and a range of outcomes. The studies we have included in this review illustrate the impact that assets can have on children’s outcomes in the area of health, education, and child labor. Overall, the studies reviewed show that asset ownership improves children’s health conditions, advance schooling outcomes, and decrease incidence of child labor. Further research on the asset effects for child outcomes can inform progressive asset-building initiatives that will provide impetus for programs and policies to enhance household well-being in developing countries

Food and nutrition security situation in Ghana: Nutrition implications for national development

Achieving food and nutrition security is fundamental to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) due to its strong interdependence with economic growth and development. Eradicating hunger and all forms of malnutrition (SDG 2) remain high on the global agenda and is at the forefront of high panel deliberations because poor dietary intake has long term negative consequences on individuals and economic advancement. The goal to end hunger and malnutrition can be achieved when food and nutrition insecurity is properly tackled through investment in agriculture parallel to economic and social protection programmes. In Ghana, about 1.5 million of the population are estimated to be food insecure while undernutrition, overnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies persist across the life stages. Challenges to food and nutrition security in Ghana have been identified as: poverty, climate change, rapid urbanization and population growth, gender inequalities and poor infrastructure. Poor economic growth, health, education, hygiene and environmental  exploitation are implications of these challenges. Addressing these implications sets long-term foundation for the development of the nation by prioritising policies that are nutrition sensitive which directly address the complexity of malnutrition. The level of food and nutrition insecurity in Ghana can be reduced through a national commitment towards addressing the four pillars of food security coupled with programmes that bring about resilience through sustainable systems. To this end, intervention programmes have been introduced by government to reduce the poverty burden on households. These programmes are in the form of social interventions, governmental flagship projects, and research-driven agricultural interventions to improve yield that withstand the effect of climate change. This review is aimed to present the food and nutrition security situation in Ghana and emphasise the challenges that exacerbate the problem while bringing to light the nutritional implications to national development. It is hoped that the recommendations from this review will help the government in achieving food and nutrition security in Ghana

How Do Student and School Characteristics Influence Youth Academic Performance in Ghana? A Hierarchical Linear Modeling of Baseline Data From the YouthSave Ghana Experiment

Student and school characteristics are associated with academic performance of high school students. However, few attempts have been made to examine the simultaneous influence of student and school factors on academic performance of youth in sub-Saharan Africa. Using hierarchical linear modeling, we examine student- and school- level predictors of academic performance of Ghanaian junior high school students. As other researchers have found, we note that age and gender are significant predictors of academic performance. Student traits, including academic self-efficacy and commitment to school, are positively associated with math and English scores. Class size and presence of a toilet facility are significant predictors of English scores. No school-level characteristic is significantly associated with math performance. Through this study, we suggest that student characteristics have more impact on youth’s academic performance than school characteristics

The Impact of Household Possessions on Youth\u27s Academic Achievement in the Ghana YouthSave Experiment

Households play an important role in youth’s academic achievement. Household assets as part of youth’s family background have been found to have a significant impact on youth’s academic achievement. In this study, the impact of household possessions on youth’s academic achievement in the Ghana YouthSave experiment is investigated. Findings support the hypothesized positive direction of the impact of household possessions on academic achievement of youth. Using propensity score optimal matching and matching estimators, results show youth from households that reported owning at least one of the five household items measured scored almost 1 unit higher on English than their peers from households that do not own any. However, results indicate ownership of household possessions do not have a statistically significant impact on Math scores of youth in the Ghana YouthSave experiment. Although the impact of ownership of household possessions on English scores is consistent across different tests used in this study, the impact of ownership of household possessions on Math scores is less conclusive. Policy implications are discussed

Emergency Contraceptive (EC) Use in Indigent Populations

The indigent population in America is defined as persons who do not have the financial means to support themselves and are below the federal/state poverty line. According to the 2010 United States Census, 13.8% of Americans are living below the poverty line. Indigent populations often rely on the help of others to provide for their basic needs, whether the help of family and friends or government support. Indigent women are disproportionately affected by unwanted, unplanned pregnancies. It is a continuous cycle that plagues families, often causing poverty and an increased dependence on the welfare system. In Medicaid-eligible populations, many women have reported inconsistency in taking their normal birth control after having their first child which may result in another unplanned and/or unwanted pregnancy. This has led to a push for contraceptive education, both routine and emergency, to be integrated in as many places as possible, including schools, doctors’ offices, women’s clinics, and pharmacies

Development of a Novel Aspirin Suppository Formulation and Evaluation of the Acetylation of COX-1 Via a HT-29/Caco-2 Cell Absorption Assay Used to Detect the Absorption of Aspirin Formulated With Various Bases and Excipients

As the baby-boomer population ages, hospitalization rates will rise, increasing the number of patients who are NPO. Research indicates that aspirin use also increases with advanced age. With the increased prevalence of this demographic, there continues to be a growing need for alternative dosage forms for aspirin administration. A common and limited-risk alternative is rectally administered aspirin. However, there appears to be only one commercially available aspirin suppository and it has yielded erratic results as shown in previous research. Aspirin is considered a pro-drug; once it is inside the body, the acidic environment cleaves the aspirin molecule down to salicylic acid, its active form. Rectal cells may not provide an acidic environment needed to cleave the aspirin molecule into salicylic acid, thereby inhibiting the absorption and rate of onset of the drug. With this thought in mind and with the erratic results from the literature, the aim of this study, to be completed by summer of 2015, is to create a novel aspirin suppository. The study will be a prospective preclinical in-vitro design conducted in the Cedarville University Pharmaceutical Sciences lab. The samples will include two colonic adenocarcinoma cell lines, Caco-2 and HT-29. A standard curve will be developed as a baseline by using a 12(S)-HETE ELISA Assay using purified 12(S)-HETE. The two cell lines will be cultured, then incubated. Aspirin will be added to the samples and incubated again for 30 minutes. After incubation, medium samples will be taken and the same ELISA Assay will be performed on the results. The cell line that yields the most consistent results will be selected. The various aspirin formulations will be tested on this cell line in the same fashion. The ELISA assay will be performed and the concentration of 12(S)-HETE will be determined, plotted, and compared to the standard curve. A repeated-measures ANOVA will then be performed to analyze statistical significance

Harmonizing longitudinal and survival data using a joint-modeling framework: An efficient approach to assessing social interventions

Objective: This article is an exposition of the joint-modeling approach to testing intervention effects through the harmonization of longitudinal and timeto- event data. We demonstrate the advantages of the joint-modeling approach over the classical approach of separately analyzing these types of outcome data. Method: We used a subset of 150 participants from the Illinois Birth through Three Title IV-E Waiver intervention study, which collected longitudinal Devereux Early Childhood Assessment for Infants and Toddlers (DECA-I/T) scores and time-to-permanence data for up to 3 years. We ran and contrasted three competing models: Cox proportional hazard, linear mixed-effects, and joint modeling. Results: If analyzed separately, the DECA-I/T scores are highly nonsignificantly related to time to permanence (p 5:929). However, when analyzed jointly, the significance level drops 88 percentage points, from.929 to.105. Because of its efficiency in addressing information loss when longitudinal and survival data are incorporated together, the joint model properly accounts for outcome-dependent missingness. Conclusion: This article highlights the utility of joint modeling in randomized longitudinal intervention studies by demonstrating its ability to preserve information from both longitudinal and time-to-event data, produce unbiased estimates, and retain higher statistical power than the traditional approach