Transnational Migration, State Policy and Local Clinician Treatment of Asylum Seekers and Resettled Migrants

Based on interviews conducted at five Finnish reception centers and in two municipal communes during summer 2002 with 93 migrants, mainly from a variety of Southern and Eastern countries of origin, and their ethnoculturally discordant clinicians, the article compares asylum seekers and foreign-born residents in terms of health care treatment and outcome perspectives. Comparative analysis suggests that context makes a difference in post-migration medical encounters. The legally admitted foreign nationals consulted at community facilities were considerably more likely than were asylum seekers assisted at reception centers to be satisfied with the health care they had received and to be confident that the attending physician's recommendations would serve them well in the future. Policy implications related to the study's findings are explored. In Finland and elsewhere, the education of general practitioners for transnational medical encounters needs to be enhanced. International and national efforts to promote health also need to encompass political asylum and third country resettlement policies. In Finland and other migrantreceiving states, prolonged insecure immigration status can be debilitating for both asylum seeker and host society. Expedited admission to legal residence and expanded choice of physician are likely to result in improved health outcomes

Globalization, migration health, and educational preparation for transnational medical encounters

Unprecedented migration, a core dimension of contemporary globalization, challenges population health. In a world of increasing human mobility, many health outcomes are shaped by transnational interactions among care providers and care recipients who meet in settings where nationality/ethnic match is not an option. This review article explores the value of transnational competence (TC) education as preparation for ethnically and socially discordant clinical encounters. The relevance of TC's five core skill domains (analytic, emotional, creative, communicative, and functional) for migration health and the medical-school curriculum is elaborated. A pedagogical approach that prepares for the transnational health-care consultation is presented, with a focus on clinical-clerkship learning experiences. Educational preparation for contemporary medical encounters needs to include a comprehensive set of patient-focused interpersonal skills, be adaptable to a wide variety of service users and global practice sites, and possess utility in addressing both the quality of patient care and socio-political constraints on migration health

Assessment of diffuse Lewy body disease by 2-[18F]fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose positron emission tomography (FDG PET)

BACKGROUND: Lewy body disease is, after Alzheimer's disease, the second most common cause of senile degenerative dementia with progressive cognitive deterioration, fluctuation of cognitive and motoric functions and psychotic symptoms. It is characterized histologically by the occurrence of Lewy bodies in allocortical, neocortical and subcortical structures. The aim of this study was to measure the cortical glucose metabolism using FDG PET (2-[18F]fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose position emission tomography) compared to normal subjects. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Five patients (5 m, mean age 75 y) with clinically suspected diffuse Lewy body disease (DLB) were studied with FDG PET. PET studies of the head were performed with a Siemens ECAT-ART PET-scanner with attenuation correction using 137-Cs point sources. RESULTS: We found the same distribution pattern of diffuse glucose hypometabolism in the entire cortical region with relative sparing of the primary sensory-motor cortex in all the patients. The few cases reported in the literature so far describe findings similar to ours. CONCLUSION: The pattern of diffuse glucose hypometabolism in the entire cortex including the occipital region seems to be a typical feature of DLB that is distinctive from dementia of Alzheimer's disease

Beyond outputs: pathways to symmetrical evaluations of university sustainable development partnerships

As the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005–2014) draws to a close, it is timely to review ways in which the sustainable development initiatives of higher education institutions have been, and can be, evaluated. In their efforts to document and assess collaborative sustainable development program outcomes and impacts, universities in the North and South are challenged by similar conundrums that confront development agencies. This article explores pathways to symmetrical evaluations of transnationally partnered research, curricula, and public-outreach initiatives specifically devoted to sustainable development. Drawing on extensive literature and informed by international development experience, the authors present a novel framework for evaluating transnational higher education partnerships devoted to sustainable development that addresses design, management, capacity building, and institutional outreach. The framework is applied by assessing several full-term African higher education evaluation case studies with a view toward identifying key limitations and suggesting useful future symmetrical evaluation pathways. University participants in transnational sustainable development initiatives, and their supporting donors, would be well-served by utilizing an inclusive evaluation framework that is infused with principles of symmetry

Configural and featural information in facial-composite images

Eyewitnesses are often invited to construct a facial composite, an image created of the person they saw commit a crime that is used by law enforcement to locate criminal suspects. In the current paper, the effectiveness of composite images was investigated from traditional feature systems (E-FIT and PRO-fit), where participants (face constructors) selected individual features to build the face, and a more recent holistic system (EvoFIT), where they ‘evolved' a composite by repeatedly selecting from arrays of complete faces. Further participants attempted to name these composites when seen as an unaltered image, or when blurred, rotated, linearly stretched or converted to a photographic negative. All of the manipulations tested reduced correct naming of the composites overall except (i) for a low level of blur, for which naming improved for holistic composites but reduced for feature composites, and (ii) for 100% linear stretch, for which a substantial naming advantage was observed. Results also indicated that both featural (facial elements) and configural (feature spacing) information was useful for recognition in both types of composite system, but highly-detailed information was more accurate in the feature-based than the holistic method. The naming advantage of linear stretch was replicated using a forensically more-practical procedure with observers viewing an unaltered ¬composite sideways. The work is valuable to police practitioners and designers of facial-composite systems

The psychological science accelerator’s COVID-19 rapid-response dataset

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Psychological Science Accelerator coordinated three large-scale psychological studies to examine the effects of loss-gain framing, cognitive reappraisals, and autonomy framing manipulations on behavioral intentions and affective measures. The data collected (April to October 2020) included specific measures for each experimental study, a general questionnaire examining health prevention behaviors and COVID-19 experience, geographical and cultural context characterization, and demographic information for each participant. Each participant started the study with the same general questions and then was randomized to complete either one longer experiment or two shorter experiments. Data were provided by 73,223 participants with varying completion rates. Participants completed the survey from 111 geopolitical regions in 44 unique languages/dialects. The anonymized dataset described here is provided in both raw and processed formats to facilitate re-use and further analyses. The dataset offers secondary analytic opportunities to explore coping, framing, and self-determination across a diverse, global sample obtained at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which can be merged with other time-sampled or geographic data