Partnerships and new rural governance for reacting to demographic change in rural regions in Germany

Peripheral rural areas are particularly affected by demographic changes. The research question is: how the involved rural actors interact with each other to react to the resulting challenges, and why does this mode of interaction come about? The contribution presents empirical data from a survey and three case studies conducted in 2008 and 2009. The results indicate the coincidence of cooperation and unilateral action. Regional partnership is limited and every actor first tries to solve his problems by himself, and where necessary with a beggar-thy-neighbour policy. Rural actors engage in cooperation most notably to acquire funding, to exchange experiences, to prepare concepts and to conduct analyses. They develop and implement their projects, however, predominantly unilaterally.rural governance, rural development, regional cooperation, actor-centred institutionalism, Community/Rural/Urban Development, R58,

Dynamic monetary risk measures for bounded discrete-time processes

We study time-consistency questions for processes of monetary risk measures that depend on bounded discrete-time processes describing the evolution of financial values. The time horizon can be finite or infinite. We call a process of monetary risk measures time-consistent if it assigns to a process of financial values the same risk irrespective of whether it is calculated directly or in two steps backwards in time, and we show how this property manifests itself in the corresponding process of acceptance sets. For processes of coherent and convex monetary risk measures admitting a robust representation with sigma-additive linear functionals, we give necessary and sufficient conditions for time-consistency in terms of the representing functionals.Comment: 41 page

Coherent and convex monetary risk measures for bounded càdlàg processes

AbstractIf the random future evolution of values is modelled in continuous time, then a risk measure can be viewed as a functional on a space of continuous-time stochastic processes. We extend the notions of coherent and convex monetary risk measures to the space of bounded càdlàg processes that are adapted to a given filtration. Then, we prove representation results that generalize earlier results for one- and multi-period risk measures, and we discuss some examples

Improving Breast Cancer Education: The Case of an Evolving Multidisciplinary Module for Undergraduate Medical Students (Lausanne Medical School, 1993-2008)

Breast cancer is a public health issue in numerous countries. Multidisciplinary collaboration is required for patient care, research, and also education of future physicians. This paper uses Kern's framework for curriculum design to demonstrate how a breast diseases module for undergraduate medical students created in 1993 evolved over 15years. The main outcomes of program refinements were better integrated course content, the development of electronic course documents, and implementation of computer-aided small group learning. A main future challenge is to further develop efficient instructional strategies in line with well-defined learning needs for undergraduate student

Congenital Hypothyroidism Long‐Term Follow‐up Project: Navigating the Rough Waters of a Multi‐Center, Multi‐State Public Health Project

The Region 4 Midwest Genetics Collaborative, made up of seven regional states (Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin), brought together pediatric endocrinologists, state laboratory experts, public health follow‐up specialists, and parents of children with congenital hypothyroidism (CH) to identify the three‐year follow‐up management and education patterns of primary care clinicians and pediatric endocrinologists in the care of children diagnosed with CH by state newborn screening (NBS) programs. Among a number of challenges, each state had different NBS methods, data systems, public health laws, and institutional review board (IRB) requirements. Furthermore, the diagnosis of CH was complicated by the timing of the NBS sample, the gestational age, weight, and co‐morbidities at delivery. There were 409 children with CH identified through NBS in 2007 in the seven state region. The clinician of record and the parents of these children were invited to participate in a voluntary survey. Approximately 64 % of clinician surveys were collected with responses to questions relating to treatment, monitoring practices, educational resources, genetic counseling, and services provided to children with confirmed CH and their families. Nearly one‐quarter (24 %) of parents surveyed responded to questions relating to treatment, education, genetic counseling, resources, and services they received or would like to receive. De‐identified data from six of the seven states were compiled for analysis, with one state being unable to obtain IRB approval within the study timeline. The data from this collaborative effort will improve state follow‐up programs and aid in developing three‐year follow‐up guidelines for children diagnosed with CH. To aid in the facilitation of similar public health studies, this manuscript highlights the challenges faced, and focuses on the pathway to a successful multi‐state public health endeavor.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/147153/1/jgc40464.pd