The Effects On Population Health Status of Using Dedicated Property Taxes To Fund Local Public Health Agencies

Background: In the United States, a dedicated property tax describes the legal authority given to a local jurisdiction to levy and collect a tax for a specific purpose. We investigated for an association of locally dedicated property taxes to fund local public health agencies and improved health status in the eight states designated as the Mississippi Delta Region. Methods: We analyzed the difference in health outcomes of counties with and without a dedicated public health tax after adjusting for a set of control variables using regression models for county level data from 720 counties of the Mississippi Delta Region. Results: Levying a dedicated public health tax for counties with per capita income above $28,000 is associated with improved health outcomes of those counties when compared to counties without a dedicated property tax for public health. Alternatively, levying a dedicated property tax in counties with lower per capita income is associated with poor health outcomes. Conclusions: There are both positive and negative consequences of using dedicated property taxes to fund public health. Policymakers should carefully examine both the positive association of improved health outcomes and negative impact of taxation on poor populations before authorizing the use of dedicated local property tax levies to fund public health agencies

The role of law and ethics in developing business management as a profession

Currently, business management is far from being recognised as a profession. This paper suggests that a professional spirit should be developed which could function as a filter of commercial reasoning. Broadly, management will not be organised within the framework of a well-established profession unless formal knowledge, licensing, professional autonomy and professional codes of conduct are developed sufficiently. In developing business management as a profession, law may play a key role. Where the idea is that business management should be more professsionalised, managers must show that they are willing to adopt ethical values, while arriving at business decisions. The paper argues that ethics cannot survive without legal regulation, which, in turn, will not be supported by law unless lawyers can find alternative solutions to the large mechanisms of the official society, secured by the monopolised coercion of the nation state. From a micro perspective of law and business ethics, communities can be developed with their own conventions, rules and standards that are generated and sanctioned within the boundaries of the communities themselves

Give it up for climate change : a defence of the beneficiary pays principle

This article focuses on the normative problem of establishing how the burdens associated with implementing policies designed to prevent, or manage, climate change should be shared amongst states involved in ongoing international climate change negotiations. This problem has three key features: identifying the nature and extent of the burdens that need to be borne; identifying the type of agent that should be allocated these burdens; and distributing amongst the particular ‘tokens’ of the relevant ‘agent type’ climatic burdens according to principles that none could reasonably reject. The article defends a key role in climatic burden-sharing policy for the principle that states benefiting most from activities that cause climate change should bear the greatest burden in terms of the costs of preventing dangerous climate change. I outline two versions of this ‘beneficiary pays’ principle; examine the strengths and weakness of each version; and explore how the most plausible version (which I call the ‘unjust enrichment’ account) could be operationalized in the context of global climate governance

On the effect of separated oxygen and carbon dioxide injections on the stabilisation of diluted oxyfuel flames

International audienceOxyfuel combustion with exhaust gas recycle coupled with CO 2 capture and storage (CCS) is a promising way to meet low CO 2 emission standards in industrial facilities with limited economical impact. In such systems, the flame stability is very sensitive to the dilution by injection of exhaust gases, particularly in configurations where they are not premixed with the oxygen, making the design of the burners more complex but offering a larger operation flexibility and a better control of flame heat transfer. In order to study the strategies of injection of the oxygen and exhaust gases, this paper presents an experimental study of the aerodynamic mechanisms influencing the stabilization of CO 2-diluted oxy-fuel flames, for four different configurations of 23 kW quadri-coaxial burners with separated injections for oxygen and carbon dioxide. The four burners have same axisymmetric geometry consisting in injections of methane in the center surrounded successively by a first oxygen (O 2i) inner annular jet, the CO 2 co-flow and a second oxygen (O 2e) outer annular jet. Dimensions of burners are chosen to keep constant CH 4 and O 2i injections and to be able to change independently CO 2 and O 2e velocities for constant thermal power, total equivalence ratio, oxygen repartition and dilution ratio. The interaction between combustion and the aerodynamic features is investigated by CH* chemiluminescence imaging and Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV). Mean tomographic images of the flame structure are obtained by Abel's inversion of averaged chemiluminescence images. PIV measurements are performed for two fields of view in order to obtain the global aerodynamic features of the turbulent oxyfuel flames and a more precise characterization in the vicinity of the burner exit. For the latter, the spatial resolution of the measurements is optimized by the development of a specific multi-step PIV processing. Low flow-velocity and high flow-velocity configurations are tested at maximum CO 2 dilution allowed by the burners. Different structures of flames are obtained with a long continuous annular shape or with local extinction for some operating conditions. The intensity of the mixing processes and the resulting stability of the flame depend largely on the shear constraints between CO 2 and O 2e jets. A better stabilization is found for low CO 2 velocity, which favors its mixing with outer oxygen annular jet prior to direct dilution of the flame. An increase of O 2e velocity further improves centrifugal entrainment of CO 2 and then reduces the radial stratification around the flame. These results obtained in a reference configuration are useful guides for the design of flexible and efficient oxy-fuel industrial burners for CCS units

Coordination of Public Health Response: The Role of Leadership in Responding to Public Health Emergencies

Public health emergencies are becoming more commonplace every year. Naturally occurring public health emergencies, such as hurricanes, typhoons, tsunamis, and floods cause significant devastation to property and people. Although these emergencies are becoming more and more common, response is still very challenging. A root cause of failed response is a lack of coordination between national, regional, and local public health agencies. These failed and unsuccessful responses are seen with naturally occurring public health emergencies, including pandemics. This chapter addresses coordination, its barriers and challenges, with a focus on the role of leadership in response to public health emergencies. Coordination leadership is a critical aspect of successful and effective response to emergencies. Leadership styles will be discussed and examples of effective leadership. Lessons learned will be presented, as well as research findings. Examples discussed include Hurricane Katrina, the tsunami of 2004 in Thailand, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, Sustainable Development Goals