Catalytic Leadership: Reconsidering the Nature of Extension\u27s Leadership Role

Extension\u27s role in leading change in communities must shift from traditional notions of leadership to one of catalytic leadership. The expertise, programming-driven leadership model of Extension\u27s past must be replaced with one of activating and convening stakeholders and facilitating problem-solving processes that address public issues collaboratively. This article introduces the basic skills of catalytic leadership, offers two illustrative examples from Extension in Iowa, and connects this leadership model with Public Issues Education. It concludes with some suggestions for how Extension units can move toward the catalytic model

Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis: A Systematic Review of Occupational Therapy Interventions

Background: The purpose of this systematic review is to describe the current role of occupational therapy (OT) in the treatment of Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA). JIA is an umbrella term that encompasses six subtypes of the disease. JIA is one of the most common childhood chronic diseases and can be accompanied by symptoms such as pain, stiffness, and loss of function, as well as psychosocial impacts. JIA participants generally receive pharmacological treatment, but less commonly receive therapeutic interventions to help reduce symptoms. Individualized treatment plans are necessary for clients with JIA due to the diverse nature of the disease. Occupational therapists are uniquely suited to deliver interventions due to the holistic nature of the profession. Methods: The OTPF-3 helped guide the systematic review as it is the definitive document that identifies the scope of occupational therapy practice. This study followed the PRISMA guidelines and searched the PubMed and CINAHL databases. Fifteen studies were identified by three researchers, based on identified inclusion and exclusion criteria. Results: After analyzing the data, six main themes were identified as the most common interventions. These themes are: aquatic/pool therapy, active range of motion, passive range of motion/stretching, orthotics/splints/casting, aerobic exercise, and modalities. Of the fifteen studies, four studies reported statistically significant findings and one study reported a clinically significant finding. Conclusions: Due to most studies having multiple interventions, it was difficult to determine which individual interventions were effective in improving outcomes. Aerobic exercise and aquatic therapy showed clinically significant changes. Modalities are also effective in helping to reduce pain and increase range of motion. Although occupational therapists did not deliver all the interventions in these studies, the profession has used most of them in practice and would be able to apply them to JIA clients. This systematic review identified interventions within the scope of occupational therapy practice that have the potential to be effective in treatment for individuals with JIA

Ten golden rules for optimal antibiotic use in hospital settings : the WARNING call to action

Publisher Copyright: © 2023. BioMed Central Ltd., part of Springer Nature.Antibiotics are recognized widely for their benefits when used appropriately. However, they are often used inappropriately despite the importance of responsible use within good clinical practice. Effective antibiotic treatment is an essential component of universal healthcare, and it is a global responsibility to ensure appropriate use. Currently, pharmaceutical companies have little incentive to develop new antibiotics due to scientific, regulatory, and financial barriers, further emphasizing the importance of appropriate antibiotic use. To address this issue, the Global Alliance for Infections in Surgery established an international multidisciplinary task force of 295 experts from 115 countries with different backgrounds. The task force developed a position statement called WARNING (Worldwide Antimicrobial Resistance National/International Network Group) aimed at raising awareness of antimicrobial resistance and improving antibiotic prescribing practices worldwide. The statement outlined is 10 axioms, or "golden rules," for the appropriate use of antibiotics that all healthcare workers should consistently adhere in clinical practice.Peer reviewe

Performance-Related Funding of Universities – Does More Competition Lead to Grade Inflation?

German universities are regarded as being under-financed, inefficient, and performing below average if compared to universities in other European countries and the US. Starting in the 1990s, several German federal states implemented reforms to improve this situation. An important part of these reforms has been the introduction of indicator-based funding systems. These financing systems aimed at increasing the competition between universities by making their public funds dependent on their relative performance concerning different output measures, such as the share of students obtaining a degree or the amount of third party funds. This paper evaluates whether the indicator-based funding created unintended incentives, i.e. whether the reform caused a grade inflation. Estimating mean as well as quantile treatment effects, we cannot support the hypothesis that increased competition between universities causes grade inflation.Im Vergleich zu Universitäten in anderen europäischen Ländern und in den USA werden deutsche Universitäten als unterfinanziert, ineffizient und - bezogen auf ihre Leistung - als unterdurchschnittlich betrachtet. Seit den 1990er Jahren werden in Deutschland Reformen zur Verbesserung dieser Situation durchgeführt. Ein wichtiger Teil dieser Reformen war die Einführung indikatorenbasierter Finanzierungsmodelle. Diese Finanzierungsysteme sollten den Wettbewerb zwischen den Universitäten fördern, indem Teile der öffentlichen Mittel in Abhängigkeit von Leistungsindikatoren, wie beispielsweise der Anteil der Absolventen oder der Höhe der Drittmittel, verteilt wurden. Dieses Papier untersucht, ob die indikatorbasierte Mittelverteilung unbeabsichtigte Anreize geschaffen hat, d.h. ob die Reform zu einer Noteninflation geführt hat. Anhand von geschätzten Mittelwerts- und Quantils-Treatmenteffekten können wir die Hypothese, dass mehr Wettbewerb zwischen den Hochschulen Noteninflation verursacht, nicht unterstützen

Precision, time, and cost: a comparison of three sampling designs in an emergency setting

The conventional method to collect data on the health, nutrition, and food security status of a population affected by an emergency is a 30 × 30 cluster survey. This sampling method can be time and resource intensive and, accordingly, may not be the most appropriate one when data are needed rapidly for decision making. In this study, we compare the precision, time and cost of the 30 × 30 cluster survey with two alternative sampling designs: a 33 × 6 cluster design (33 clusters, 6 observations per cluster) and a 67 × 3 cluster design (67 clusters, 3 observations per cluster). Data for each sampling design were collected concurrently in West Darfur, Sudan in September-October 2005 in an emergency setting. Results of the study show the 30 × 30 design to provide more precise results (i.e. narrower 95% confidence intervals) than the 33 × 6 and 67 × 3 design for most child-level indicators. Exceptions are indicators of immunization and vitamin A capsule supplementation coverage which show a high intra-cluster correlation. Although the 33 × 6 and 67 × 3 designs provide wider confidence intervals than the 30 × 30 design for child anthropometric indicators, the 33 × 6 and 67 × 3 designs provide the opportunity to conduct a LQAS hypothesis test to detect whether or not a critical threshold of global acute malnutrition prevalence has been exceeded, whereas the 30 × 30 design does not. For the household-level indicators tested in this study, the 67 × 3 design provides the most precise results. However, our results show that neither the 33 × 6 nor the 67 × 3 design are appropriate for assessing indicators of mortality. In this field application, data collection for the 33 × 6 and 67 × 3 designs required substantially less time and cost than that required for the 30 × 30 design. The findings of this study suggest the 33 × 6 and 67 × 3 designs can provide useful time- and resource-saving alternatives to the 30 × 30 method of data collection in emergency settings

Efficiency of European public higher education institutions: a two-stage multicountry approach

The purpose of this study is to examine efficiency and its determinants in a set of higher education institutions (HEIs) from several European countries by means of non-parametric frontier techniques. Our analysis is based on a sample of 259 public HEIs from 7 European countries across the time period of 2001–2005. We conduct a two-stage DEA analysis (Simar and Wilson in J Economet 136:31–64, 2007), first evaluating DEA scores and then regressing them on potential covariates with the use of a bootstrapped truncated regression. Results indicate a considerable variability of efficiency scores within and between countries. Unit size (economies of scale), number and composition of faculties, sources of funding and gender staff composition are found to be among the crucial determinants of these units’ performance. Specifically, we found evidence that a higher share of funds from external sources and a higher number of women among academic staff improve the efficiency of the institution

Approaching effects of the economic crisis on university efficiency: a comparative study of Germany and Italy

In this paper, we compare the efficiency of the Italian and German universities in the process of transforming public funding into the multiple outputs of a university, i.e. graduating students, publishing research, and patenting activity. We do this with a particular focus on the policies implemented following the financial crisis in 2008. Using a sample of 133 public universities, of which 73 public universities in Germany and 60 public universities in Italy observed over the period 2006–2011 we find that Italian universities perform significantly better in terms of output maximization than German universities. The crisis does not show a general impact, while the treatment effect indicates that Italian universities coped better during the crisis than their German counterparts at a highly significant level