Effect of spoken language on primary care choice refugee health assessment program patients seen at Boston Medical Center

PURPOSE: There are approximately 21.3 million refugees worldwide. Connection to primary care is essential for these patients because of the potential for long-term and complex care that they require. Primary care and continuity of care also leads to better health outcomes. This study examined what effect primary language had on primary care choice by Refugee Health Assessment Program (RHAP) patients seen at Boston Medical Center (BMC) and whether patients who chose non-BMC primary care eventually returned to BMC. METHODS: A retrospective cohort study was conducted examining RHAP patients’ primary language, and whether those patients continued care at BMC or sought care elsewhere. RESULTS: Significant results were seen among subjects who identified Chinese, Haitian Creole, Somali, Spanish and Vietnamese as their primary language. Spanish, Chinese, and Vietnamese speakers had greater odds of seeking care outside of BMC. Haitian Creole and Somali speakers had greater odds of seeking care at BMC compared to English speakers. 80% of subjects returned to BMC after seeking care elsewhere. CONCLUSIONS: Primary language does effect choice of primary care provider within the refugee population. Providers should use these results to encourage refugee patients less likely to seek care to connect with a primary care provider

Listen to the Mocking Word

I wish you would stop apologising

Social Housing and Social Exclusion 2000-2011

By some definitions, social housing, social housing tenants are necessarily socially excluded. In other terms, in 2000, social housing tenants were at greater risk of being socially excluded than owner occupiers and private renters on measures of income, employment, education, health, and housing and neighbourhood quality. However, by 2011, basic housing quality in social housing had overtaken that in home ownership, and slight reductions in social exclusion of social tenants in terms of income, employment, and neighbourhood quality at least disproved arguments of inevitable tenurial polarisation. There is evidence that housing and regeneration policies contributed to these changes, but the economy was also important, and population turnover is likely to have played a role. Finally, the gains of 2000-2011 may not be sustained.Social housing, social exclusion, inequality, worklessness, housing quality, neighbourhood quality, participation

Status of Chiral-Scale Perturbation Theory

Chiral-scale perturbation theory $\chi$PT$_\sigma$ has been proposed as an alternative to chiral $SU(3)_L\times SU(3)_R$ perturbation theory which explains the $\Delta I = 1/2$ rule for kaon decays. It is based on a low-energy expansion about an infrared fixed point in three-flavor QCD. In $\chi$PT$_\sigma$, quark condensation $\langle\bar q q \rangle_\mathrm{vac} \neq 0$ induces nine Nambu-Goldstone bosons: $\pi, K, \eta$ and a QCD dilaton $\sigma$ which we identify with the $f_0(500)$ resonance. Partial conservation of the dilatation and chiral currents constrains low-energy constants which enter the effective Lagrangian of $\chi$PT$_\sigma$. These constraints allow us to obtain new phenomenological bounds on the dilaton decay constant via the coupling of $\sigma/f_0$ to pions, whose value is known precisely from dispersive analyses of $\pi\pi$ scattering. Improved predictions for $\sigma \to \gamma \gamma$ and the $\sigma NN$ coupling are also noted. To test $\chi$PT$_\sigma$ for kaon decays, we revive a 1985 proposal for lattice methods to be applied to $K \to \pi$ on-shell.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figure. Presented at the 8th International Workshop on Chiral Dynamics, 29 June 2015 - 03 July 2015, Pisa, Italy. Revision: references and comment adde

Is Targeting Deprived Areas an Effective Means to Reach Poor People? An assessment of one rationale for area-based funding programmes

Area-based programmes have long been a feature of urban policy in the UK. One rationale is that they are an effective means to target poor people. Area deprivation indices are used to identify areas for targeting. This paper reviews the different results produced by these indices. It then examines the effectiveness of the current Index of Multiple Deprivation in targeting the poor, demonstrating that area targeting using the IMD 2000 is a more complete way of reaching the poor than has been claimed by opponents of area-based targeting in the past. However, it is more effective in reaching some sub-groups, particularly children, than others, and is also relatively inefficient. There is a trade off between efficiency and completeness. The use of area targeting should depend on the type of intervention, the costs and benefits of producing complex targeting mechanisms, and the particular balance between completeness and efficiency in each case.area targeting, deprivation, area-based initiatives, neighbourhoods

Teenage housing tenure and neighbourhoods and the links with adult outcomes: evidence from the 1970 cohort study

This study is one of a pair funded by the Homes and Communities Agency and the Tenant Services Authority. The other report can be found at http://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/case/. This pair of studies develops the findings of two previous reports on the relationship between housing and life chances (Feinstein et al, 2008, Lupton et al, 2009). These previous reports examined housing circumstances in childhood for those born in 1946, 1958, 1970 and 2000, and the relationship between childhood housing and adult outcomes across a range of measures for those born in 1946, 1958 and 1970. They found as yet unexplained connections between being ‘ever’ in social housing in childhood and worse adult outcomes on an overall measure of deprivation and a range of individual measures for those born in 1958 and in 1970 (but not for those born in 1946) (Feinstein et al, 2008, Lupton et al, 2009). Statistically significant associations remained after using a very large set of more than 50 controls for family and individual characteristics, for many outcomes and many ages, although the size of all of the associations was substantially reduced

Building the Big Society

Papers are a contribution to the debate and set out the authors ’ views only Localism and the Big Societ

Communications satellite systems capacity analysis

Analog and digital modulation techniques are compared with regard to efficient use of the geostationary orbit by communications satellites. Included is the definition of the baseline systems (both space and ground segments), determination of interference susceptibility, calculation of orbit spacing, and evaluation of relative costs. It is assumed that voice or TV is communicated at 14/11 GHz using either FM or QPSK modulation. Both the Fixed-Satellite Service and the Broadcasting-Satellite Service are considered. For most of the cases examined the digital approach requires a satellite spacing less than or equal to that required by the analog approach