Improving Medicaid Managed Care for Youth With Serious Behavioral Health Needs: A Quality Improvement Toolkit

Profiles successful initiatives by Medicaid managed care organizations in a collaboration to implement systems of care emphasizing early identification, coordination and management, and various services and supports in the least restrictive settings

Health and Prisoner Reentry: How Physical, Mental, and Substance Abuse Conditions Shape the Process of Reintegration

Documents the health challenges released prisoners face and the impact of physical health conditions, mental illness, and substance abuse on the reentry process, including finding housing and employment, reconnecting with family, and avoiding recidivism

Partnering with Medicaid to Advance and Sustain the Goals of the Child Welfare System

The purpose of this paper is to serve as a practical guide for child welfare directors who are looking to expand or sustain services for the children and families that they serve. This paper focuses on ways to partner with Medicaid to leverage opportunities to provide high quality services for children in child welfare who have behavioral health needs. It also includes information that will provide a foundational understanding of the behavioral health needs of children involved with the child welfare system, with an emphasis on describing child behavior through the lens of child development, adaptive functioning, and trauma; the services that can effectively address those behavioral and trauma related responses that can disrupt a child's skills and abilities; and, examples from states and counties who are providing these services and supports

Understanding the Corpus of E-Government Research: An analysis of the literature using co-citation analysis and social network analysis

YesThe growing body of published e-government literature highlights the importance of e-government in society and the need to make sense of e-government by academia. In order to understand the future of e-government, it is important to understand the research that has been conducted and highlight the issues and themes that have been identified as important by empirical study. This paper analyses the corpus of e-government research published from 2000 to 2013 using Bibliometric and Social Network Analysis (SNA) methods to develop an intellectual structure of e-government research. Factor analysis, multidimensional scaling and centrality measurement are also applied to the e-government dataset using UCINET to identify the core influential articles in the field. This study identifies three core clusters of e-government research that centre around (i) e-government development models (ii) adoption and acceptance of e-government, and (iii) e-government using social media and highlights areas for future research in the field. Discover the world's researc

Child Care Investments and Policies in the Upper Valley, in the Pandemic and Beyond: “People have to hurry because this ARPA funding isn’t going to last forever”

In this brief, the authors illustrate New Hampshire and Vermont’s different responses to supporting the early childhood education and care sector during the COVID-19 pandemic and examine the limited publicly available data on pandemic relief funds through the lens of the interstate Upper Valley region. While data limitations preclude the authors from identifying which child care pandemic relief programs worked best and for whom, the authors find spatial and program type differences in relief receipt. Using data from interviews with early childhood educators in the Upper Valley, the authors identify the role that temporary relief funds have played in keeping the sector afloat during the pandemic. While relief funds served the role of “keeping the doors open” for many providers, these short-term funds are unable to address the deep-seated challenges of the sector’s unsustainable economic model, a challenge that predated the pandemic and has worsened since. The authors conclude by identifying important policy steps to support the sector in New Hampshire, Vermont, and beyond

Digital Government Implementation in Chaotic Environment - Case Study of Libya

YesNot many studies are available to address whether it is possible to offer and implement e-Government services in places suffer from chaotic situation. This paper is intended to study the opportunity of implementing such services in a chaotic environment. An exploratory study was conducted in March/April 2015 using government officials of the state of Libya that survived a transition period upon the revolt of 2011. The study found that the Libyan government has recently and successfully implemented online services namely: National Identity Number - NID and e-Passport. The finding indicated that there are opportunities to establish e-services in countries regardless of their environmental status and clearly showed similar Critical Success Factors are need to be considered whether in chaotic or stable environment. However, their rank of importance will be differ. Lessons learned from the implementation of both services showed that Government determination has played crucial role in achieving this factual success

The Prospects of E-government Implementation in Chaotic Environment – Government and Citizens’ Perspectives - Case Study of Libya

yesUsing compulsory e-government services is increasingly difficult and challenging given the impact of corruption, political instability, armed conflict, and a chaotic environment. Post the 2011 uprising, Libya experienced serious and deep-rooted conflicts. The chaos destabilized and dismantled government institutions throughout the country. Utilizing the lens of institutional theory, this paper presents the pressures experienced by the formal institutions in the absence of law and safety, to implement the necessary e-government services and provide it to citizens all over the country. In addition, to explore the role of informal institutions in providing and using the compulsory services offered by the government and to what extent alternative services could be made available. Two qualitative pilot studies, conducted in 2015 and 2016, explored the feasibility of implementing e-government from both the government officials and the citizens’ perspectives, respectively. From the e-services provided during this time period, only the E-passport and National Identity number were found to be the only successful. Critical Success Factors - CSF of e-government implementation were defined from conducting an in-depth literature review; these were compared with our findings. Both the government officials and the citizens found corruption, infrastructure and geographical nature to be influencing factors. The social collaboration between citizens was found to be the driving factor in the success of the e-passport, despite the difficult geographical nature and the limited infrastructure all over the country

Technical Report on Deploying a highly secured OpenStack Cloud Infrastructure using BradStack as a Case Study

Cloud computing has emerged as a popular paradigm and an attractive model for providing a reliable distributed computing model.it is increasing attracting huge attention both in academic research and industrial initiatives. Cloud deployments are paramount for institution and organizations of all scales. The availability of a flexible, free open source cloud platform designed with no propriety software and the ability of its integration with legacy systems and third-party applications are fundamental. Open stack is a free and opensource software released under the terms of Apache license with a fragmented and distributed architecture making it highly flexible. This project was initiated and aimed at designing a secured cloud infrastructure called BradStack, which is built on OpenStack in the Computing Laboratory at the University of Bradford. In this report, we present and discuss the steps required in deploying a secured BradStack Multi-node cloud infrastructure and conducting Penetration testing on OpenStack Services to validate the effectiveness of the security controls on the BradStack platform. This report serves as a practical guideline, focusing on security and practical infrastructure related issues. It also serves as a reference for institutions looking at the possibilities of implementing a secured cloud solution.Comment: 38 pages, 19 figures

Bradford Multi-Modal Gait Database: Gateway to Using Static Measurements to Create a Dynamic Gait Signature

YesAims: To create a gait database with optimum accuracy of joint rotational data and an accu-rate representation of 3D volume, and explore the potential of using the database in studying the relationship between static and dynamic features of a human’s gait. Study Design: The study collected gait samples from 38 subjects, in which they were asked to walk, run, walk to run transition, and walk with a bag. The motion capture, video, and 3d measurement data extracted was used to analyse and build a correlation between features. Place and Duration of Study: The study was conducted in the University of Bradford. With the ethical approval from the University, 38 subjects’ motion and body volumes were recorded at the motion capture studio from May 2011- February 2013. Methodology: To date, the database includes 38 subjects (5 females, 33 males) conducting walk cycles with speed and load as covariants. A correlation analysis was conducted to ex-plore the potential of using the database to study the relationship between static and dynamic features. The volumes and surface area of body segments were used as static features. Phased-weighted magnitudes extracted through a Fourier transform of the rotation temporal data of the joints from the motion capture were used as dynamic features. The Pearson correlation coefficient is used to evaluate the relationship between the two sets of data. Results: A new database was created with 38 subjects conducting four forms of gait (walk, run, walk to run, and walking with a hand bag). Each subject recording included a total of 8 samples of each form of gait, and a 3D point cloud (representing the 3D volume of the subject). Using a Pvalue (P<.05) as a criterion for statistical significance, 386 pairs of features displayed a strong relationship. Conclusion: A novel database available to the scientific community has been created. The database can be used as an ideal benchmark to apply gait recognition techniques, and based on the correlation analysis, can offer a detailed perspective of the dynamics of gait and its relationship to volume. Further research in the relationship between static and dynamic features can contribute to the field of biomechanical analysis, use of biometrics in forensic applications, and 3D virtual walk simulation