Trends in the Health of Young Children in California

Analyzes trends in key health indicators for California's 0- to 5-year-olds -- including health insurance status and type, source of care, and percentage of overweight children -- by family income and race/ethnicity. Makes recommendations

“I Just Bought a Flat Screen T.V. in Kolkata?” Application of Laws for International Outsourcing Related Identity Theft

Because the internet makes it economical to do so, many American companies have sent their customer service jobs overseas. Workers in these outsourced jobs often have access to personal financial information of American citizens. Recent identity thefts, both in America and abroad, highlight the need for laws mandating tighter security by the companies that hold and trade personal information. This paper explores American legislation attempting to deal with identity theft crime as well as parallel laws in India, where many of the outsourced jobs are located. Furthermore, this paper suggests that any federal legislation ought not to preempt state law, as California law is currently protecting consumer privacy stronger than proposed legislation would

Minnesota 4-H Youth Program Quality Improvement Model

The University of Minnesota Extension Center for Youth Development made an organizational decision in 2011 to invest in a system-wide approach to implement youth program quality into the 4-H program using the Youth Program Quality Assessment (YPQA) tool. This article describes the four key components to the Minnesota Youth Program Quality Improvement model, the reasons for investing in this work, and recommendations for other states that may build youth program quality improvement models

Indigenous Community Information Preferences: An Interpretive Research Study

Communities should be able to select and develop technology that incorporates or even enhances their own communication traditions and cultures. Australia’s indigenous communities typically have cultures based on oral traditions for communication. The location of information system design in the community context raises issues not usually considered in organisational information system design. It is important for indigenous communities to be able to apply traditional and indigenous knowledge and approaches to assist with their own community development and sustainability, and community knowledge is an important consideration in community development. This paper describes research in progress exploring the design and use of information and communications technology by remote and rural indigenous communities to support their efforts to negotiate native title

Situational Complexity and the Perception of Credible Evidence

Situational complexity is the distinction between simple, technically complicated, socially complicated, and complex situations. Programs that operate in simple situations are usually able to follow a prescribed course of action, or recipe, while programs operating in more complicated or complex situations must be flexible and responsive. In this article, the authors present findings from an exploratory, multiple-case study of the credibility of evidence in four distinct program situations ranging from simple to complex. Key informant interviews were conducted with 16 key informants, both internal and external to Extension. The findings were generally that the more complex the situation, the more likely that flexible or mixed-methods approaches were employed to strengthen program credibility. Across all the cases, the relationships that Extension educators have built with stakeholders played a pivotal role in building credibility of evidence. We conclude that sometimes situational complexity matters, sometimes methods matter, sometimes reporting style matters, but what always matters is the trusting relationship between the delivery organization and the stakeholder

A Comparative Analysis of Infection Control Processes and Outcomes between the United States and Ireland

After studying abroad in Ireland, infection control rates were compared to that of the USA.Through experiences with Irish nursing faculty and nurses, we learned about, as well as observed, the differing and innovative methods for infection control. The clinical differences between each country were analyzed alongside healthcare associated infections. The goals of this project are to shed light on the variability of infection control approaches from the USA and Ireland and how these procedures affect the actual rates of infection in each country

Science of Agriculture Challenge report

This archival publication may not reflect current scientific knowledge or recommendations. Current information available from the University of Minnesota Extension: https://www.extension.umn.edu.The Science of Agriculture Challenge completed its pilot year of implementation in 2014-2015. Twelve teams distributed throughout the state took part in the final showcase which was a 2.5 day event on the St. Paul University of Minnesota campus. This report highlights the project and key evaluation findings

Quantifying the Effect of Socio-Economic Predictors and Built Environment on Mental Health Events in Little Rock, AR

Proper allocation of law enforcement resources remains a critical issue in crime prediction and prevention that operates by characterizing spatially aggregated crime activities and a multitude of predictor variables of interest. Despite the critical nature of proper resource allocation for mental health incidents, there has been little progress in statistical modeling of the geo-spatial nature of mental health events in Little Rock, Arkansas. In this article, we provide insights into the spatial nature of mental health data from Little Rock, Arkansas between 2015 and 2018, under a supervised spatial modeling framework while extending the popular risk terrain modeling (Caplan et al., 2011, 2015; Drawve, 2016) approach. We provide evidence of spatial clustering and identify the important features influencing such heterogeneity via a spatially informed hierarchy of generalized linear models, spatial regression models and a tree based method, viz., Poisson regression, spatial Durbin error model, Manski model and Random Forest. The insights obtained from these different models are presented here along with their relative predictive performances. The inferential tools developed here can be used in a broad variety of spatial modeling contexts and have the potential to aid both law enforcement agencies and the city in properly allocating resources