Philippine mortality in changing times

Hand in hand with an increasing recognition of mortality as one of the most important demographic processes interacting with development in the Philippines, there is more awareness of the need for identification of major health issues and analysis of the relevant available data. This thesis responds to the need by undertaking an extensive appraisal of the mortality conditions of the Philippines. Given the inadequacy of most statistics in the Philippines, the thesis includes the assessment of socioeconomic and health-related statistics, registered deaths, census data and the 1983 National Demographic Survey (NDS). This critical evaluation reveals that: (1) Published socioeconomic and healthrelated statistics are useful for the analysis of covariates of mortality and the construction of a composite index of development at the provincial level; (2) Techniques applied to obtain estimates of the level of completeness of death registration are largely consistent and can be used to correct the registered deaths for overregistration or underregistration of deaths, and to generate life tables for 1960, 1970, 1975 and 1980 at the provincial, regional and national levels; (3) Age-reporting is more or less accurate in the 1960 to 1980 censuses, particularly at ages below 55 years; the age-heaping found at ages 55 years and above is minimized by grouping into five-year standard intervals; (4) There are some problems in the classification of marital status in the 1975 census; (5) There are no indications of marked peculiarities or measurement errors of the 1960,1970 and 1980 data used in the regression analyses; (6) The extent of omission of births by women aged 45-49 years and misplacement of dates of births by women aged 40-44 years is not so great as to seriously distort the birth histories of the 1983 NDS; and (7) There is a close fit between the generated life tables and the United Nations Latin American model life tables at all ages and both with the United Nations Latin American and Coale-Demeny model life tables at childhood ages for the nation as a whole and all regions except Mindanao. The life tables produced are used, along with the 1978 Philippines Fertility Survey and the 1983 NDS, to re-examine mortality trends. The long-term rapid pace of mortality reduction before 1960 decelerated for males during 1960-1970, slightly hastened during 1970-1975 and slackened again during 1975-1980; the same trend occurred for women but with an acceleration during 1975-1980. The level of infant and child mortality has plateaued since 1960. There is evidence of some coincidence between mortality and economic growth trends. The changes in socioeconomic and health-related variables are quantified and related to changes in the structure of mortality relationships through estimations of a number of equations based upon data from the periods 1960-1970, 1960-1980 and 1970-1980. These yield no significant changes during 1960-1970, the decade of retardation of economic growth and mortality decline. During 1960-1980, there were significant changes related to the effects of road density, but such changes did not mean fast improvements in this indicator nationwide, but some improvement in selected areas, or sharply reduced intensity of exogenous factors, thus worsening or maintaining the gap between the affluent and non-affluent areas. During 1970-1980, changes in the effects of exogenous factors omitted in the regression equations, such as health programs and improvements in personal health practices, are more dominant than changes in the effects of road density. Such changes appear to have benefited females but not males as seen from the accelerating female mortality decline but decelerating male mortality decline during the 1975-1980 period. The excess male mortality over time, especially among the single and widowers, is consistent with findings of other analysts that all causes mortality increased clearly in the Philippine male population but decreased in the female population during the period 1964-1976. Examination of the relationship between socioeconomic and health-related variables and overall male and female survival and infant mortality at the provincial level of analysis using multiple regression analysis has shown that the factors strongly associated with overall and male survival, are road density, motor vehicles, safe drinking water supply and toilet sanitation; in the case of female survival, the factors are road density, motor vehicles, electricity, literacy, safe drinking water supply, toilet sanitation and use of midwife; and in the case of infant mortality, they are road density, motor vehicles, literacy and use of physician. It is evident that education, as measured by literacy, is positively and inversely related to female life expectancy and infant mortality, respectively, but not to male life expectancy. Education and other development variables dominate over health variables in affecting female life expectancy and infant mortality. While this appears to be the case for male life expectancy in early years, health factors seem to be of equal importance or of dominance in influencing life expectancy in recent years. Estimates of the relative impact of a variety of socioeconomic, demographic, health relatedenvironmental and proximate factors upon the risk of neonatal, post-neonatal, overall infant and child death using log-linear models, reveal net independent effects of maternal education, preceding birth interval, birth order and maternal age at childbirth on neonatal mortality; of household income, maternal education, preceding birth interval, birth order, maternal age at birth of child, time period of birth, housing quality and toilet sanitation on post-neonatal and child mortality; and of almost the same seven predictors, with housing quality replaced by source of drinking water on overall infant mortality. While the demographic variables are more dominant during infancy, the socioeconomic and health related-environmental factors are prominent at later childhood ages. Breastfeeding, immunization and supplemental feeding are found important, but their measured effects are attenuated through circular causation and censoring problems, which are not accounted for in the analysis. There are no significant net independent effects of prenatal care, place of maternal delivery and birth attendance on child mortality, at any age. On the whole, while other countries have recorded remarkable successes in reducing mortality, the Philippines, faced with an ailing economy, has followed a deceleration in mortality decline. The varying patterns of effects of socioeconomic, health-related and demographic factors on the components of child mortality, the differing trend in and patterns of influence of socioeconomic and health-related factors on male and female mortality and the lack of substantial structural and developmental changes shine a spotlight on the reasons of this retardation

Improving quality of care in FP/RH of selected communities of Pangasinan Province: An intervention study

This intervention study was designed to improve the quality of family planning (FP) services within the Integrated Family Planning and Maternal Health Program of the Pangasinan Population and Family Planning Program in the Philippines. It addresses high unmet need and studies the feasibility of enhancing quality of services by training service providers in fixed clinics and orienting outreach workers on the method of identifying women who have unmet need for FP. Four municipalities were chosen from the 47 municipalities comprising the province of Pangasinan and randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. Four indicators were used to match the chosen municipalities: population size, ratio of married women to population, ratio of FP service providers to population, and ratio of outreach workers to population. As noted in this report, the intervention consisted of training health service providers on counseling to enhance their information-giving capabilities, introducing outreach workers to the unmet need algorithm to identify women with unmet need for FP services, and training supervisors in supportive supervision

Encouraging Entrepreneurship: Microfinance, Knowledge Support, and the Costs of Operating in Institutional Voids

This study focuses on the supplemented strategies of microfinance institutions (MFIs), in which the MFI offers nonfinancial services, such as entrepreneurship related knowledge, in addition to financial services to impoverished borrowers at the bottom of the pyramid (BoP). We examine two contextual factors–foreign direct investment (FDI) and loan defaults–to better understand the relationship between providing knowledge support to encourage entrepreneurship and costs of operating at the BoP for MFIs. In contexts where FDI is low and loan defaults are high, providing knowledge support to encourage entrepreneurship aggravates the MFI\u27s costs of operating at the BoP. However, in contexts where FDI is high and loan defaults are low, providing knowledge support to encourage entrepreneurship among impoverished borrowers does not aggravate the MFI\u27s costs of operating at the BoP. Hence, in emerging markets where governments welcome FDI and curb loan defaults, MFIs can viably support entrepreneurship among the poor

PHILIPPINE NAVY MARITIME SITUATIONAL AWARENESS SYSTEM: CURRENT SITUATION, GAPS, AND POTENTIAL ROLE OF MARITIME SPECIAL OPERATIONS FORCES

The Philippines needs a comprehensive maritime domain awareness (MDA) capability to counter increased state and non-state maritime threats. One of the goals of the Philippine military modernization program is to improve maritime situational awareness through the Philippine Navy Maritime Situational Awareness System (PNMSAS). The primary aim of this research is to understand the current status of the PNMSAS, the gaps, and the potential role of maritime special operations forces in enhancing the Philippines’ maritime situational awareness. This qualitative research utilizes data gleaned from government documents and key informant interviews, as well as information obtained from published literature. The Philippine Navy has undertaken several initiatives to date. These include the establishment of new coast watch stations and the upgrading of existing ones, and the procurement of new naval platforms that can augment information collection for maritime situational awareness. The Philippines, however, is hampered by scant resources and the long-term delivery of acquired land-based and mobile sensors, and thus needs to look for a cost-effective information collection system that does not depend on expensive technology alone. This thesis examines the potential role of maritime special operations forces as a low cost/low technology solution that will augment existing initiatives and enhance the Philippine Navy’s maritime domain awareness capability.Commander, Philippine NavyApproved for public release. distribution is unlimite

Exergy-loss analysis of a typical geothermal power plant system in the Philippines

Energy-loss minimization is now considered the modern effective resource utilization evaluation technique. This method has been applied to almost all forms of resources. Currently, it is extensively applied in energy resource utilization and in process and equipment design. This work deals with exergy-loss analysis on a typical geothermal power plant system in the Philippines. The goal of the study is to determine the benefits of exergy-loss evaluation to effectively optimize the design of a geothermal power plant system in the Philippines. This is done by identifying design parameters that grossly affect or significantly influence the efficiency of a geothermal power plant system. Results show that wellbore design parameters such as diameter, pipe smoothness and total depth significantly influence exergy-loss on production wells. Likewise, the diameter, smoothness, length and pipeline accessories (e.g., valves, etc.) of cross-country and downcomer pipelines and thickness of insulation grossly affect exergy-loss in the steam gathering system. The parameter that influence exergy-loss in the power plant, however, is the fluid exit temperature. All these parameters are within the control of designers and investors the proper evaluation of these parameters leads to minimum exergy losses and virtually improve over-all efficiency. Other parameters that also significantly affect exergy losses: fluid and dead state properties, are beyond the designers\u27 control

Non-parametric modeling of industrial systems using variable discrimination in wavelet

This paper presents a new non-parametric modeling technique. The method is simple and yet efficient and robust compared to existing non-parametric modeling procedures such as artificial neural network (ANN), principal component regression (PCR), and the traditional stepwise regression. It can solve regression problems with multiple collinearities and improve models by removing redundant parameters that other methods cannot handle. The procedure is: first, discriminate the variables to separate the collinear and non-collinear variables by examining the behavior of the variance inflation factor (VIF) or the diagonal of the correlation matrix in the rectified wavelet coefficients in scale. Collinear variables\u27 VIF increase in scale while those noncollinear variables show fluctuating or slightly decreasing trend. The best model subsets are created from the results of discrimination. Then the best model is selected from the best model subsets using the criteria relative mean square error (rmse), PRESS residual, PRESS, Fstat, R2adj and the number of explanatory parameters included in the model. Application of the procedure is illustrated using computer-generated data with up to 20 and up to three explanatory and response variables, respectively. Other tests made include data from published researches of model with bilinear, quadratic and integer terms. Two industrial studies are also presented. These are modeling of the secondary coating line for fiber optic cable production of Eupen Cable Asia, Incorporated and the occurrence of high chloride in the National Power Corporation Tiwi Geothermal Power Plant. The method worked successfully. The variability in the type of systems were the methods works could mean that the method can be extended to other types of system regardless of the nature of the parameters included

Move UBC Final Report and Executive Summary

The aim of this report was to evaluate the effectiveness of current marketing strategies implemented by Move UBC and on how they can be improved by looking analyzing the potential barriers people at UBC face. These strategies were designed to target the student and staff population at UBC to help them meet the recommended physical activity guidelines of 150 minutes per week of moderate-to-vigorous aerobic exercise (Canadian Society of Exercise Physiology, 2019). With this focus on physical activity, we examined whether students and staff were meeting the recommended guidelines and gained insight into the potential barriers they may have faced. Our report introduces Move UBC and their goals of promoting physical activity around campus. The target population of the study was the non-participant population of staff/faculty and students. To qualify for this study, participants had to be current students or staff/faculty members at UBC. The student population included both undergraduate and graduate students, while the staff population included staff, faculty and teaching assistants. An evaluation for Move UBC was achieved by surveying non-participants and finding out why they did not participate in the physical activity campaign. With this data we will be able generate recommendations on how Move UBC can create a better, more effective physical activity campaign. An online survey created by Google Forms was used to get data from our participants. Our survey consisted of 10 questions including yes/no, short answer and open-ended questions. Access to the survey was given via emails sent out by our group members to staff/faculty and students here at UBC. A consent disclaimer was included at the top of the survey to give participants the autonomy to choose whether they wanted to participate or not. By the end of our study we had 22 participants in total, 13 students and 9 staff and faculty. The report also includes the results of our findings and a discussion on the data that we collected. It also contains recommendations for Move UBC in improving their promotional efforts. We analyzed the responses from our questions and included figures which displayed the data. Reading the responses, we were then able to identify common themes relating to the non-participant population and see where Move UBC can improve for future campaigns. Our study found that most students and staff were aware of Move UBC’s campaign (63.6 %). However, most of them did not participate in Move UBC events (36.4 %). There are still barriers that prevent some non-participants from meeting their recommended amount of physical activity. Further research can be done on a larger sample size of the UBC population that includes a greater variety of students and staff from different faculties. See conclusion for detailed discussion of results, limitations and recommendations. Disclaimer: “UBC SEEDS provides students with the opportunity to share the findings of their studies, as well as their opinions, conclusions and recommendations with the UBC community. The reader should bear in mind that this is a student project/report and is not an official document of UBC. Furthermore readers should bear in mind that these reports may not reflect the current status of activities at UBC. We urge you to contact the research persons mentioned in a report or the SEEDS Coordinator about the current status of the subject matter of a project/report.”Education, Faculty ofKinesiology, School ofUnreviewedUndergraduat