Health investments and economic growth : macroeconomic evidence and microeconomic foundations

This paper reviews the correlations and potential links between health and economic growth and summarizes the evidence on the role of government in improving health status. At the macroeconomic level, the evidence of an impact of health on growth remains ambiguous due both to difficulties in measuring health, and to the methodological challenges of identifying causal links. The evidence on the micro linkages from health investments to productivity and income are robust. Progress in life expectancy over the past two centuries has been spectacular, fueled by: improved agriculture that has increased food quantity; knowledge of disease transmission, and effective public health interventions that have controlled communicable diseases such as malaria, yellow fever, and hookworm; and, most recently and importantly, investments in very young children that pay off in healthier and more productive adults. Whether public investments in medical care affect health hinges on the quality of health institutions. In much of the developing world, factors such as chronic absenteeism among public providers, poor budget execution, ineffective management, and virtually no accountability weaken public efforts. Institutional issues are central in efforts to enhance public health investments, which in turn have a direct impact on the population's welfare and, perhaps over the long term, improvements in national income.Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Health Systems Development&Reform,Population Policies,Health Economics&Finance,Disease Control&Prevention

Obituary: Ross McDonald Parish (1928 - 2001)

Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

The new unionism: Industrialisation and industrial unions in South Africa, 1925-1930

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented February 1977Hitherto, and since its inception in the 1880's, the labour movement in South Africa had been dominated by craft unions, with the exception of the Mine. Workers' Union, which increasingly drew its membership from semi-skilled and unskilled whites. These unions, with their activities centred, upon the mines, had waged an intermittent and sometimes violent struggle against the mine owners over job reservation, which culminated in the Rand Revolt of 1922. The suppression of the strike by the Smuts government' dealt a shattering blow to the MWU, from which it never really recovered. Trade Union membership in South Africa fell from 108,242 to 81,861 in the aftermath of the strike. The defeat also hastened the collapse of the central coordinating body, the South African Industrial Federation, which was already reeling under the increasingly authoritarian direction of its General Secretary, Archie Crawford. On the railways, members of the AEU who had struck were victimized. The general effect of the failure of the 1922 strike was to make the unions very wary of strike action

Rural contradictions and class consiousness: Migrant labour in historical perspective : the Ciskei in the 1880s and 90s

African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented May 1985In a recent work Shula Marks and Richard Rathbone have brought together a collection of articles intended to expand understanding "both of the overall contours of the political economy and more especially of the black experience." The theoretical discourse in which it is intended that this ‘experience’ should be analysed is explicitly that derived from Edward Thompson, both in his work on the ‘making’ of the English working class and subsequently in his attack on the methodologies of ‘structuralism’ Marks and Rathbones’ main concern is with the active ‘agency’ exerted by Africans in the process of proletarianisation. The central concept which they adopt is that of ‘consciousness’, which they define, after Thompson, as "the way in which...experiences are handle, in cultural terms: embodied in traditions, value systems, ideas and institutional forms"

Evaluation of the Newburg Sandstone of the Appalachian Basin as a CO2 Geologic Storage Resource

The West Virginia Division of Energy is currently evaluating several deep saline formations in the Appalachian basin of West Virginia, which may be potential carbon dioxide (CO2) sequestration targets. The Silurian Newburg Sandstone play, developed in the 1970\u27s, primarily involves natural gas production from reservoir rock with welldeveloped porosity and permeability. High initial pressures encountered in early wells in the Newburg indicate that the overlying Silurian Salina Formation provides a competent seal. Due to the large number of CO2 point sources in the region and the favorable reservoir properties of the formation; including an estimated 300 billion cubic feet (bcf) of natural gas production, a serious evaluation of the Newburg Sandstone may expand our available targets for geologic storage of CO2. Within the Newburg play, there are several primary fields separated geographically and geologically by salt water contacts and dry holes. Previous studies have determined the storage potential within these individual fields. This study will show that the Newburg is more suitable for smallscale injection tests, instead of large-scale, regional storage operations

look at yourself

In some ways, it isn\u27t at all natural to care for others--we all have a certain sense of self-preservation, and a certain amount of self-love is necessary to having a healthy mind and spirit. Given that, and the idea that we cannot, try as we might, ever access the unfiltered contents of another\u27s mind, our means of understanding the world around us hinges on our ability to understand ourselves. This poem is a proposition (a relatively undeveloped one, if we\u27re honest), just trying to find a means of understanding and caring for the world around us while accounting for self-love, what Hass called life\u27s violent, automatic life\u27s companion. Looking at yourself as you might look at another might just help us reconcile the infinite chasm between what is perceived and what is most true

Dear Mabel (Please allow me to inhabit your pain awhile)

This started as a note that I would have sent a patient I treated while working as a paramedic in Central Maine. Despite best intentions in caring for patients, we don\u27t always walk away having won. The practice of medicine is difficult for everyone, but it is necessarily a process and life-long endeavor