A Turbulent Opposition: The ACA and the South

This report is part of a series of 21 state and regional studies examining the rollout of the ACA. The national network ---- with 36 states and 61 researchers ---- is led by the Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public policy research arm of the State University of New York, the Brookings Institution, and the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania.The South is often been portrayed as being resistant to "Obamacare." It is from many of these states that legal challenges were filed against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) after its enactment. Rather than operate their own exchanges, many southern states have defaulted to the federal health insurance exchange. Most have refused or deferred on Medicaid expansion. Some states have employed obstructionist tactics to complicate enrollment assistance provided by navigators and others. What accounts for this posture? Electoral politics and ideological differences among the parties certainly play roles. But as our preliminary research indicates, there are other factors as well that reflect ambivalence, caution, and uncertainty about state administrative and fiscal capacity, health demographics, and market conditions. Through the review of nine state-level field reports conducted under the auspices of the Managing Health Reform research network and through analysis of other relevant literature and data, this report concentrates on the intensity and sources of opposition within the southern states towards the ACA

West Virginia: Round 1 - State Level Field Network Study of the Implementation of the Affordable Care Act

This report is part of a series of 21 state and regional studies examining the rollout of the ACA. The national network -- with 36 states and 61 researchers -- is led by the Rockefeller Institute of Government, the public policy research arm of the State University of New York, the Brookings Institution, and the Fels Institute of Government at the University of Pennsylvania.As noted throughout this report, West Virginia's experience is a tale of two reforms or experiences. The state has adopted a hands-off, but nonhostile, posture toward the health insurance exchange. Unique policy and political dynamics contributed to the state first embracing the concept of its own exchange and then moving toward a very passive role in a state-federal partnership. In contrast, the state has been proactive in reaching out and enrolling those newly eligible under Medicaid expansion. As ACA implementation gains traction and best practices are discovered and shared, West Virginia's aggressive approach of utilizing SNAP enrollment lists as a means of reaching potential Medicaid applicants may be one of those stories that come to the fore

Looking Back Across the Years: Alumni Reflections on a Community Design Service Learning Experience

This paper examines the perceptions of alumni on a service learning experience they engaged in as graduate students. As students, they were enrolled in West Virginia University’s Master of Public Administration program and participated in the West Virginia Community Design Team. Since 1997, the Community Design Team (CDT) program has engaged the state’s rural communities through volunteer teams of faculty, professionals, and students who assist in community efforts to assess and envision their futures. Through a curricular-based approach of integration and reflection, students are able to incorporate their CDT experiences into their overall graduate education. After briefly describing how integration and reflection are pursued through portfolio and capstone requirements, the paper then focuses on alumni recollections of how they encountered small rural communities, their lasting lessons gained from the experience, their evaluations of the place of service learning in graduate education, and their advice to others seeking to engage communities through university outreach and service projects. Data was gathered for this paper through in-depth interviews with alumni who participated in the CDT program as students. The results also suggests that alumni perspective is important not only in assessing service learning experiences but in reinforcing lessons learned by revisiting the experience years later. The research also seeks to add to our understanding of service learning in graduate education. KEYWORDSservice learning; graduate education; community engagemen

Online Connectivity : A Social Study of Educators’ Affinity for Teaching and Learning Using Social Media

This qualitative study investigated an online space for educators, known as #sschat, for the purpose of helping to inform and shape more formal professional learning experiences. Participants were able to engage in asynchronous and synchronous discussions related to social studies education by interacting in any of the four hashtags associated with the #sschat affinity space (i.e., #engsschat, #hsgovchat, #sschat, #worldgeochat), the #sschat Facebook page, the archived #chat sessions, and/or by contributing to the creation of the weekly #worldgeochat questions. Seven common elements of Gee’s affinity spaces conceptual framework were used to frame this study. This framework drew attention to the practices of self-directed learners who were guided by their passions related to teaching and learning. By engaging as an insider during this one-month study of #sschat, I was able to consider what was happening in this affinity space from the participants’ perspective. I collected and analyzed more than 6,000 tweets and almost 300 Facebook posts along with the websites associated with the #sschat affinity space and shared by the participants. The question that guided this study was: what could be learned from online spaces such as #sschat that can help inform and shape more formal professional development experiences. Through a deep analysis of the data, three important findings emerged that help to provide insight into the types of experiences that are likely to be valued by educators and conducive to learning. The first finding concerns how the diverse experiences and needs of the participants seemed to affect the interactions that occurred in the #sschat affinity space. The second key finding involved how the combination of social media platforms and functions, participants’ knowhow and experiences, and their practices appeared to contribute to a participatory environment that facilitated a wide range of interactions in support of social studies education. The third key finding of my study suggests that professional learning is a personal experience; educators want the ability to choose with whom they interact, the design of the space, and the manner in which they engage in these experiences. Digital technologies were leveraged by participants making it possible for them to engage in crowdsourcing, reflective thinking, and role-shifting activities. This study expands the notion of affinity spaces beyond a space for individuals to engage in activities involving their personal interests and passions. A deep analysis of the data suggests that affinity spaces may also be beneficial for professionals, such as educators who want to engage in experiences involving teaching and learning

The Military Families Learning Network: A Model for Extension-Based Virtual Learning Communities

This article provides an overview of Extension\u27s Military Families Learning Network. The network is an example of Extension\u27s commitment to building virtual learning networks in the support of targeted professional and lay audiences. The network uses well-established and emergent pedagogical approaches focusing on adult-centered learning while employing state-of-the-art online learning technologies. We present a four-dimensional model of learning activities to illustrate how the network offers different options for and approaches to adult-centered learning and training. The Military Families Learning Network can serve as a model for broader adoption of such entities across the Extension community

Can LLMs Demystify Bug Reports?

Bugs are notoriously challenging: they slow down software users and result in time-consuming investigations for developers. These challenges are exacerbated when bugs must be reported in natural language by users. Indeed, we lack reliable tools to automatically address reported bugs (i.e., enabling their analysis, reproduction, and bug fixing). With the recent promises created by LLMs such as ChatGPT for various tasks, including in software engineering, we ask ourselves: What if ChatGPT could understand bug reports and reproduce them? This question will be the main focus of this study. To evaluate whether ChatGPT is capable of catching the semantics of bug reports, we used the popular Defects4J benchmark with its bug reports. Our study has shown that ChatGPT was able to demystify and reproduce 50% of the reported bugs. ChatGPT being able to automatically address half of the reported bugs shows promising potential in the direction of applying machine learning to address bugs with only a human-in-the-loop to report the bug

Assessment of stable coronary artery disease by cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging: Current and emerging techniques

Coronary artery disease (CAD) is a leading cause of death and disability worldwide. Cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR) is established in clinical practice guidelines with a growing evidence base supporting its use to aid the diagnosis and management of patients with suspected or established CAD. CMR is a multi-parametric imaging modality that yields high spatial resolution images that can be acquired in any plane for the assessment of global and regional cardiac function, myocardial perfusion and viability, tissue characterisation and coronary artery anatomy, all within a single study protocol and without exposure to ionising radiation. Advances in technology and acquisition techniques continue to progress the utility of CMR across a wide spectrum of cardiovascular disease, and the publication of large scale clinical trials continues to strengthen the role of CMR in daily cardiology practice. This article aims to review current practice and explore the future directions of multi-parametric CMR imaging in the investigation of stable CAD