Why does the Engel method work? Food demand, economies of size and household survey methods

Estimates of household size economies are needed for the analysis of poverty and inequality. This paper shows that Engel estimates of size economies are large when household expenditures are obtained by respondent recall but small when expenditures are obtained by daily recording in diaries. Expenditure estimates from recall surveys appear to have measurement errors correlated with household size. As well as demonstrating the fragility of Engel estimates of size economies, these results help resolve a puzzle raised by Deaton and Paxson (1998) about differences between rich and poor countries in the effect of household size on food demand

Treating patients as persons : a capabilities approach to support delivery of person-centered care

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Who wants to be involved in health care decisions? Comparing preferences for individual and collective involvement in England and Sweden

Background: Patient and public involvement (PPI) is framed as positive for individuals, the health system, public health, as well as for communities and society as a whole. We investigated whether preferences for PPI differed between two countries with Beveridge type health systems-Sweden and England. We measured willingness to be involved in individual treatment decisions and in decisions about the organization and provision of local health and social care services. Methods: This was a comparative cross-sectional study of the general population's preferences. Together, the two samples included 3125 respondents; 1625 in England and 1500 in Sweden. Country differences were analysed in a multinomial regression model controlling for gender, age and educational attainment. Results: Overall, 68% of respondents wanted a passive patient role and 44% wanted to be involved in local decisions about organization and provision of services. In comparison with in Sweden, they were in England less likely to want a health professional such as a GP or consultant to make decisions about their treatment and also more likely to want to make their own decisions. They were also less likely to want to be involved in local service development decisions. An increased likelihood of wanting to be involved in organizational decision-making was associated with individuals wanting to make their own treatment decisions. Women were less likely to want health professionals to make decisions and more likely to want to be involved in organizational decisions. Conclusions: An effective health system that ensures public health must integrate an effective approach to PPI both in individual treatment decisions and shaping local health and social care priorities. To be effective, involvement activities must take in to account the variation in the desire for involvement and the implications that this has for equity. More work is needed to understand the relationship between the desire to be involved and actually being involved, but both appear related to judgements of the impact of involvement on health care decisions

Measuring organisational readiness for patient engagement (MORE) : an international online Delphi consensus study

Date of Acceptance: 28/01/2015. © 2015 Oostendorp et al.; licensee BioMed Central. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise statedWidespread implementation of patient engagement by organisations and clinical teams is not a reality yet. The aim of this study is to develop a measure of organisational readiness for patient engagement designed to monitor and facilitate a healthcare organisation’s willingness and ability to effectively implement patient engagement in healthcarePeer reviewedFinal Published versio

Properties of recent IBAD-MOCVD Coated Conductors relevant to their high field, low temperature magnet use

BaZrO3 (BZO) nanorods are now incorporated into production IBAD-MOCVD coated conductors. Here we compare several examples of both BZO-free and BZO-containing coated conductors using critical current (Ic) characterizations at 4.2 K over their full angular range up to fields of 31 T. We find that BZO nanorods do not produce any c-axis distortion of the critical current density Jc(theta) curve at 4.2 K at any field, but also that pinning is nevertheless strongly enhanced compared to the non-BZO conductors. We also find that the tendency of the ab-plane Jc(theta) peak to become cusp-like is moderated by BZO and we define a new figure of merit that may be helpful for magnet design - the OADI (Off-Axis Double Ic), which clearly shows that BZO broadens the ab-plane peak and thus raises Jc 5-30{\deg} away from the tape plane, where the most critical approach to Ic occurs in many coil designs. We describe some experimental procedures that may make critical current Ic tests of these very high current tapes more tractable at 4.2 K, where Ic exceeds 1000 A even for 4 mm wide tape with only 1 micron thickness of superconductor. A positive conclusion is that BZO is very beneficial for the Jc characteristics at 4.2 K, just as it is at higher temperatures, where the correlated c-axis pinning effects of the nanorods are much more obvious

Wake up, wake up! It's me! It's my life! patient narratives on person-centeredness in the integrated care context: a qualitative study

Person-centered care emphasizes a holistic, humanistic approach that puts patients first, at the center of medical care. Person-centeredness is also considered a core element of integrated care. Yet typologies of integrated care mainly describe how patients fit within integrated services, rather than how services fit into the patient's world. Patient-centeredness has been commonly defined through physician's behaviors aimed at delivering patient-centered care. Yet, it is unclear how 'person-centeredness' is realized in integrated care through the patient voice. We aimed to explore patient narratives of person-centeredness in the integrated care context

Silicon-based molecular electronics

Molecular electronics on silicon has distinct advantages over its metallic counterpart. We describe a theoretical formalism for transport through semiconductor-molecule heterostructures, combining a semi-empirical treatment of the bulk silicon bandstructure with a first-principles description of the molecular chemistry and its bonding with silicon. Using this method, we demonstrate that the presence of a semiconducting band-edge can lead to a novel molecular resonant tunneling diode (RTD) that shows negative differential resistance (NDR) when the molecular levels are driven by an STM potential into the semiconducting band-gap. The peaks appear for positive bias on a p-doped and negative for an n-doped substrate. Charging in these devices is compromised by the RTD action, allowing possible identification of several molecular highest occupied (HOMO) and lowest unoccupied (LUMO) levels. Recent experiments by Hersam et al. [1] support our theoretical predictions.Comment: Author list is reverse alphabetical. All authors contributed equally. Email: rakshit/liangg/ ghosha/[email protected]

Adjuncts or adversaries to shared decision-making? Applying the Integrative Model of behavior to the role and design of decision support interventions in healthcare interactions

Background A growing body of literature documents the efficacy of decision support interventions (DESI) in helping patients make informed clinical decisions. DESIs are frequently described as an adjunct to shared decision-making between a patient and healthcare provider, however little is known about the effects of DESIs on patients' interactional behaviors-whether or not they promote the involvement of patients in decisions. Discussion Shared decision-making requires not only a cognitive understanding of the medical problem and deliberation about the potential options to address it, but also a number of communicative behaviors that the patient and physician need to engage in to reach the goal of making a shared decision. Theoretical models of behavior can guide both the identification of constructs that will predict the performance or non-performance of specific behaviors relevant to shared decision-making, as well as inform the development of interventions to promote these specific behaviors. We describe how Fishbein's Integrative Model (IM) of behavior can be applied to the development and evaluation of DESIs. There are several ways in which the IM could be used in research on the behavioral effects of DESIs. An investigator could measure the effects of an intervention on the central constructs of the IM - attitudes, normative pressure, self-efficacy, and intentions related to communication behaviors relevant to shared decision-making. However, if one were interested in the determinants of these domains, formative qualitative research would be necessary to elicit the salient beliefs underlying each of the central constructs. Formative research can help identify potential targets for a theory-based intervention to maximize the likelihood that it will influence the behavior of interest or to develop a more fine-grained understanding of intervention effects. Summary Behavioral theory can guide the development and evaluation of DESIs to increase the likelihood that these will prepare patients to play a more active role in the decision-making process. Self-reported behavioral measures can reduce the measurement burden for investigators and create a standardized method for examining and reporting the determinants of communication behaviors necessary for shared decision-making

Stoichiometry of a regulatory splicing complex revealed by single-molecule analyses

Splicing is regulated by complex interactions of numerous RNA-binding proteins. The molecular mechanisms involved remain elusive, in large part because of ignorance regarding the numbers of proteins in regulatory complexes. Polypyrimidine tract-binding protein (PTB), which regulates tissue-specific splicing, represses exon 3 of α-tropomyosin through distant pyrimidine-rich tracts in the flanking introns. Current models for repression involve either PTB-mediated looping or the propagation of complexes between tracts. To test these models, we used single-molecule approaches to count the number of bound PTB molecules both by counting the number of bleaching steps of GFP molecules linked to PTB within complexes and by analysing their total emissions. Both approaches showed that five or six PTB molecules assemble. Given the domain structures, this suggests that the molecules occupy primarily multiple overlapping potential sites in the polypyrimidine tracts, excluding propagation models. As an alternative to direct looping, we propose that repression involves a multistep process in which PTB binding forms small local loops, creating a platform for recruitment of other proteins that bring these loops into close proximity

Understanding the UK hospital supply chain in an era of patient choice

Author Posting © Westburn Publishers Ltd, 2011. This is a post-peer-review, pre-copy-edit version of an article which has been published in its definitive form in the Journal of Marketing Management, and has been posted by permission of Westburn Publishers Ltd for personal use, not for redistribution. The article was published in Journal of Marketing Management, 27(3-4), 401 - 423, doi:10.1080/0267257X.2011.547084 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0267257X.2011.547084The purpose of this paper is to investigate the UK hospital supply chain in light of recent government policy reform where patients will have, inter alia, greater choice of hospital for elective surgery. Subsequently, the hospital system should become far more competitive with supply chains having to react to these changes as patient demand becomes less predictable. Using a qualitative case study methodology, hospital managers are interviewed on a range of issues. Views on the development of the hospital supply chain in different phases are derived, and are used to develop a map of the current hospital chain. The findings show hospital managers anticipating some significant changes to the hospital supply chain and its workings as Patient Choice expands. The research also maps the various aspects of the hospital supply chain as it moves through different operational phases and highlights underlying challenges and complexities. The hospital supply chain, as discussed and mapped in this research, is original work given there are no examples in the literature that provide holistic representations of hospital activity. At the end, specific recommendations are provided that will be of interest to service to managers, researchers, and policymakers