Capacity building : just rhetoric, or a way forward in addressing health inequality?

Issue addressed: It is time to move beyond defining the problem of health inequality to taking action. The response required is complex and calls for system wide action. It is in this context that a discussion of increasing the capacity of the health system to respond to health inequality is both timely and essential. Methods: This paper looks at a capacity building framework that has been developed by the New South Wales Health Department and provides an example of a number of projects that have applied capacity building strategies. Conclusion: Addressing health inequality presents a significant challenge to health promotion practitioners. Emerging capacity building theory provides direction for strategies to build the capacity of a health system to address equity. It proposes a set of practical actions using the five focus areas of organisational development, workforce development, resource allocation, partnerships and leadership. So what?: A capacity building approach by itself will not provide the mandate and framework for the action that needs to be taken to address health inequality, but it helps to ensure that once potential solutions are identified the health system has the capacity to respond

A value-added approach to determine the relationships of mentoring to novice teacher classroom effectiveness.

The purpose of the study was to determine the relationship between scores of the new teachers' classroom effectiveness with numerical indexes of mentor support, mentor infrastructure, and workplace ecology. In addition, this study sought to determine the effect of various demographics (i.e., gender, age, race, degree, teaching level, and certification route) on the Classroom Effectiveness Index (CEI) scores of first-year teachers, and to determine the differences, if any, between the Classroom Effectiveness Index scores of first-year teachers who remained on campus, switched campuses, or left the district. This study is primarily correlational in nature - looking for relationships between quantifiable variables. The subjects are 68 first-year teachers. The mandatory mentoring program the subjects were involved in consisted of a paid, veteran teacher who worked on the same campus as the first-year teacher and assisted in instructional or behavioral needs. This study measured the impact of the first-year teachers' mentoring experiences to the Classroom Effectiveness Index scores and teacher retention. The findings suggest that the Classroom Effectiveness Index scores might not be an appropriate tool for uncovering which aspects of mentoring contribute to student achievement and retention. Adding the value-added measurement tool to the categories of mentor support (MS), mentor infrastructure (MI), and workplace ecology (WE), rendered no statistically significant results. Therefore, further research is necessary to continue to define the effective characteristics of mentoring and its impact on classroom effectiveness and retention

The Performance Assessment Framework: experiences and perceptions of NHS Scotland. A Report to the Analytical Service Division, Directorate of Performance Management and Finance, Scottish Executive Health Department

The new Performance Assessment Framework (PAF) was introduced in NHSScotland in October 2001 and used in the annual NHS Board Accountability Reviews in 2002 and 2003. The PAF was assigned three objectives outlined in Our National Health: (1) ‘Support and encourage sustained improvement in the performance of NHS Scotland by focussing on key measures in relation to health priorities.' (2) ‘Reinforce and support the role of the 15 NHS Boards in managing the performance of their local NHS systems.' (3) ‘Enable NHS Scotland to account systematically for its performance both locally and through the Scottish Executive to the Scottish Parliament and to the people of Scotland.' The success with which the PAF appears to be meeting those objectives forms the focus of this investigation. A key element determining how and whether the PAF affects the behaviour of decision-makers within the organisations and subsequently NHS Scotland performance is the perception of the PAF and the signals it generates. Thus it is important to determine what these perceptions and understandings are. It is necessary to capture these views in order to appreciate fully the impact of the PAF within the NHS in Scotland and to appraise its salience and power as a performance tool

Millipeds (Arthropoda: Diplopoda) of the Ark-La-Tex. I. New Distributional and State Records for Seven Counties of the West Gulf Coastal Plain of Arkansas

Unlike the Diplopoda of the Ozark Mountains region of north Arkansas, the millipeds of the West Gulf Coastal Plain of the state are poorly known. During the winter months of 2001-2002, we collected millipeds in four counties (Hempstead, Lafayette, Little River, and Miller) of southwest Arkansas and three counties (Columbia, Nevada, and Ouachita) of south Arkansas. We found the following species/subspecies Eurymerodesmus dubuis and Pseudopolydesmus pinetorum from Hempstead County; E. birdi birdi, E. mundus, Oxidus gracilis, and Pseudopolydesmus ? minor from Lafayette County; Aniulus (Hakiulus) diversifrons diversifrons, P. pinetorum, and a possible new species of Tiganogona in Little River County; Abacion ? texense, E. Mundus, 0. gracilis, P. pinetorum, Thrinaxoria lampra, and a new species of Aniulus (Hakiulus) from Miller County; Auturus louisianus louisianus, E. dubuis, Cambala minor, O. gracilis, P. pinetorum, and a female xystodesmid of the tribe Pachydesmini from Columbia County; Virgoiulus minutus, C. minor, P. pinetorum, and A. l. louisianus from Nevada County; and P. pinetorum, Eurymerodesmus sp., Narceus americanus, and C. minor from Ouachita County. A new state record is documented for T. lampra from Miller County, and the finding of V. minutus in Miller and Nevada counties represents the southwesternmost distributional records for the genus and species. To our knowledge, all millipeds reported herein for Little River County are the first ever documented for that county, including a potentially new species of Tiganogona, a genus known previously from Carroll, Clay, Sebastian, and Washington counties, Arkansas, Lincoln Parish, Louisiana, and more distant locales in Missouri and Indiana

Evaluation of striped bass stocks in Virginia, monitoring and tagging studies, 2010-2014 Progress report, 1 September 2011 - 31 August 2012

This report presents the results of striped bass (Morone saxatilis) tagging and monitoring activities in Virginia during the period 1 September 2011 through 31 August 2012. It includes an assessment of the biological characteristics of striped bass taken from the 2012 spring spawning run, estimates of annual survival and fishing mortality based on annual spring tagging, and the results of the study that documents the prevalence of mycobacterial infections of striped bass in Chesapeake Bay. The information contained in this report is required by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission and is used to implement a coordinated management plan for striped bass in Virginia, and along the eastern seaboard

Prenatal development is linked to bronchial reactivity: epidemiological and animal model evidence

Chronic cardiorespiratory disease is associated with low birthweight suggesting the importance of the developmental environment. Prenatal factors affecting fetal growth are believed important, but the underlying mechanisms are unknown. The influence of developmental programming on bronchial hyperreactivity is investigated in an animal model and evidence for comparable associations is sought in humans. Pregnant Wistar rats were fed either control or protein-restricted diets throughout pregnancy. Bronchoconstrictor responses were recorded from offspring bronchial segments. Morphometric analysis of paraffin-embedded lung sections was conducted. In a human mother-child cohort ultrasound measurements of fetal growth were related to bronchial hyperreactivity, measured at age six years using methacholine. Protein-restricted rats' offspring demonstrated greater bronchoconstriction than controls. Airway structure was not altered. Children with lesser abdominal circumference growth during 11-19 weeks' gestation had greater bronchial hyperreactivity than those with more rapid abdominal growth. Imbalanced maternal nutrition during pregnancy results in offspring bronchial hyperreactivity. Prenatal environmental influences might play a comparable role in humans

Commit and Connect: VCU Goes Green

In alignment with Theme IV of VCU’s Quest for Distinction, this university volunteer project will help to commit and connect faculty, staff, students, and alumni with a community education partner to help launch a green or sustainable project while promoting, teaching and educating participants on the value of sustainable living

Trapping and Wiggling: Elastohydrodynamics of Driven Microfilaments

We present a general theoretical analysis of semiflexible filaments subject to viscous drag or point forcing. These are the relevant forces in dynamic experiments designed to measure biopolymer bending moduli. By analogy with the ``Stokes problems" in hydrodynamics (fluid motion induced by that of a wall bounding a viscous fluid), we consider the motion of a polymer one end of which is moved in an impulsive or oscillatory way. Analytical solutions for the time-dependent shapes of such moving polymers are obtained within an analysis applicable to small-amplitude deformations. In the case of oscillatory driving, particular attention is paid to a characteristic length determined by the frequency of oscillation, the polymer persistence length, and the viscous drag coefficient. Experiments on actin filaments manipulated with optical traps confirm the scaling law predicted by the analysis and provide a new technique for measuring the elastic bending modulus. A re-analysis of several published experiments on microtubules is also presented.Comment: RevTex, 24 pages, 15 eps figs, uses cite.sty, Biophysical