Sustainability of donor programs: evaluating and informing the transition of a large HIV prevention program in India to local ownership

Sustainability is the holy grail of many development projects, yet there is limited evidence about strategies that effectively support transition of programs from donor funding to national governments. The first phase of Avahan, the India AIDS Initiative supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (2003–2009), aimed to demonstrate an HIV/AIDS prevention program at scale, primarily targeted at high-risk groups. During the second phase (2009–2013), this large-scale program will be transitioned to its natural owners: the Government of India and local communities. This paper describes the evaluation design for the Avahan transition strategy.A detailed logic model for the transition was developed. The Avahan transition strategy focuses on three activities: 1 enhancing capacities among communities, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and government entities, in line with India's national AIDS control strategy; 2 aligning technical and managerial aspects of Avahan programs with government norms and standards; and 3 promoting and sustaining commitment to services for most-at-risk populations. It is anticipated that programs will then transfer smoothly to government and community ownership, become institutionalized within the government system, and support a sustained HIV/AIDS response.The research design evaluates the implementation and effectiveness of 1 activities undertaken by the program; 2 intermediate effects including the process of institutionalization and the extent to which key Avahan organizational procedures and behaviors are integrated into government systems; and 3 overarching effects namely the impact of the transition process on the sustained delivery of HIV/AIDS prevention services to high-risk groups. Both qualitative and quantitative research approaches are employed so that the evaluation will both assess outcomes and explain why they have occurred.It is unusual for donor-supported projects in low- and middle-income countries to carefully plan transition processes, and prospectively evaluate these. This evaluation is designed so as to both inform decision making throughout the transition process and answer larger questions about the transition and sustainability of donor programs

Основы творческой деятельности веб-журналиста. Учебная программа учреждения высшего образования по учебной дисциплине для специальности: 1-23 01 08 Журналистика (по направлениям) направления специальности 1-23 01 08-03 Журналистика (веб-журналистика)

Wildfires pose a serious threat to life in many countries. For police, fire and emergency services authorities in most jurisdictions in North America and Australia evacuation is now the option that is preferred overwhelmingly. Wildfire evacuation modeling can assist authorities in planning evacuation responses to future threats. Understanding residents' behavior under wildfire threat may assist in wildfire evacuation modeling. This paper reviews North American and Australian research into wildfire evacuation behavior published between January 2005 and June 2017. Wildfire evacuation policies differ across the two regions: in North America mandatory evacuations are favored, in Australia most are advisory. Research from both regions indicates that following a wildfire evacuation warning some threatened residents will wish to remain on their property in order to protect it, many will delay evacuating, and some residents who are not on their property when an evacuation warning is issued may seek to return. Mandatory evacuation is likely to result in greater compliance, enforcement policies are also likely to be influential. Self-delayed evacuation is likely if warnings are not sufficiently informative: residents are likely to engage in information search rather than initiating evacuation actions. The wildfire warning and threat histories of a location may influence residents' decisions and actions. The complexities of behavioral factors influencing residents' actions following an evacuation warning pose challenges for wildfire evacuation modeling. Suggestions are offered for ways in which authorities might reduce the numbers of residents who delay evacuating following a wildfire warning. © 2018 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Natur

Understanding Real-World Implementation Quality and “Active Ingredients” of PBIS

Programs delivered in the “real world” often look substantially different from what was originally intended by program developers. Depending on which components of a program are being trimmed or altered, such modifications may seriously undermine the effectiveness of a program. In the present study, these issues are explored within a widely used school-based, non-curricular intervention, Positive Behavioral Intervention and Supports. The present study takes advantage of a uniquely large dataset to gain a better understanding of the “real-world” implementation quality of PBIS, and to take a first step toward identifying the components of PBIS that “matter most” for student outcomes. Data from 27,689 students and 166 public primary and secondary schools across seven states included school and student demographics, indices of PBIS implementation quality, and reports of problem behaviors for any student who received an office discipline referral (ODR) during the 2007-2008 school year. Results of the present study identify three key components of PBIS that many schools are failing to implement properly, three program components that were most related to lower rates of problem behavior (i.e., three “active ingredients” of PBIS), and several school characteristics that help to account for differences across schools in the quality of PBIS implementation. Overall, findings highlight the importance of assessing implementation quality in “real-world” settings, and the need to continue improving understanding of how and why programs work. Findings are discussed in terms of their implications for policy

Shared phylogeographic patterns and widespread chloroplast haplotype sharing in Eucalyptus species with different ecological tolerances

We examined the phylogeography of three south-east Australian trees (Eucalyptus delegatensis, Eucalyptus obliqua, and Eucalyptus regnans) with different tolerances, in terms of cold, drought, fire and soil to explore whether species with different ecologies share major phylogeographic patterns. A second aim of this study was to examine geographic patterns of chloroplast DNA (cpDNA) haplotype sharing among the three study species. Trees of E. delegatensis (n = 120), E. obliqua (n = 265) and E. regnans (n = 270) were genotyped with five cpDNA microsatellite markers. The species shared major phylogeographic disjunctions, and common patterns at proposed glacial refugia (generally high haplotype diversity) and areas thought to have been treeless during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) (low diversity). Inter-specific sharing of haplotypes was extensive, and fixation of shared, regional haplotypes was more frequent in areas postulated as having been treeless at the LGM. Despite ecological differences, chloroplast microsatellite data suggest the three species have responded to past climatic changes in a similar way, by persisting in multiple, generally common refugia. We suggest that the natural ability of eucalypt species to hybridise with others with quite different or broader ecological tolerances may provide an "insurance policy" for response to rapidly changing abiotic conditions