Community Building for Children’s Health: Lessons From Community Partnerships for Healthy Children

· This article describes Community Partnerships for Healthy Children (CPHC), a 10-year, $17 million initiative of the Sierra Health Foundation targeted at improving children’s health in northern California by mobilizing communities to use their assets. Implementation grants were modest ($50,000 annually), but technical assistance and communications support were also provided. · The initiative rolled out in four phases. Overall, a total of 31 communities participated in the initiative. Twenty-six communities remained through phase three, with 18 engaging in the final fourth phase. · Evidence indicates that CPHC improved the health of some children in some communities with regard to some outcomes, but did not improve the health of children at the population level. Community building appears to be well-suited to devising and implementing successful strategies to address straightforward health issues in the short term; more time, resources, and expertise are needed for more complex problems. · The community collaboratives achieved many of the intermediate goals of the initiative. The evidence is strong that communities did identify and respond to needs. · Most of the collaboratives on their own had access to few resources initially, but over time they were able to gather fiscal and human resources from a variety of sources and combine them to provide services such as recreation programs or family resource centers. Collaboratives involved in the final grant stage had been able to raise from other sources an amount nearly twice the foundation’s investment in CPHC. · The collaboratives were similar in role but differed in many other ways, such as the geographic scope and the existing assets. Collaboratives that had members with certain skills (such as grantwriting, public relations, and computer skills) had greater success

Workers Who Care: A Graphical Profile of the Frontline Health and Health Care Workforce

Presents data about the professionals and paraprofessionals who provide a range of direct patient care and client services, including occupational growth outlook, per capita employment, demographic information, and wage outlook and trends

Fibroblast growth factors 1 and 2 in cerebrospinal fluid are associated with HIV disease, methamphetamine use, and neurocognitive functioning.

BackgroundHuman immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and methamphetamine use commonly affect neurocognitive (NC) functioning. We evaluated the relationships between NC functioning and two fibroblast growth factors (FGFs) in volunteers who differed in HIV serostatus and methamphetamine dependence (MAD).MethodsA total of 100 volunteers were categorized into four groups based on HIV serostatus and MAD in the prior year. FGF-1 and FGF-2 were measured in cerebrospinal fluid by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays along with two reference biomarkers (monocyte chemotactic protein [MCP]-1 and neopterin). Comprehensive NC testing was summarized by global and domain impairment ratings.ResultsSixty-three volunteers were HIV+ and 59 had a history of MAD. FGF-1, FGF-2, and both reference biomarkers differed by HIV and MAD status. For example, FGF-1 levels were lower in subjects who had either HIV or MAD than in HIV- and MAD- controls (P=0.003). Multivariable regression identified that global NC impairment was associated with an interaction between FGF-1 and FGF-2 (model R(2)=0.09, P=0.01): higher FGF-2 levels were only associated with neurocognitive impairment among subjects who had lower FGF-1 levels. Including other covariates in the model (including antidepressant use) strengthened the model (model R(2)=0.18, P=0.004) but did not weaken the association with FGF-1 and FGF-2. Lower FGF-1 levels were associated with impairment in five of seven cognitive domains, more than FGF-2, MCP-1, or neopterin.ConclusionThese findings provide in vivo support that HIV and MAD alter expression of FGFs, which may contribute to the NC abnormalities associated with these conditions. These cross-sectional findings cannot establish causality and the therapeutic benefits of recombinant FGF-1 need to be investigated

Associations between Cognition, Gender and Monocyte Activation among HIV Infected Individuals in Nigeria.

The potential role of gender in the occurrence of HIV-related neurocognitive impairment (NCI) and associations with markers of HIV-related immune activity has not been previously examined. In this study 149 antiretroviral-naïve seropositive subjects in Nigeria (SP, 92 women and 57 men) and 58 seronegative (SN, 38 women and 20 men) were administered neuropsychological testing that assessed 7 ability domains. From the neuropsychological test scores was calculated a global deficit score (GDS), a measure of overall NCI. Percentages of circulating monocytes and plasma HIV RNA, soluble CD163 and soluble CD14 levels were also assessed. HIV SP women were found to be younger, more educated and had higher CD4+ T cell counts and borderline higher viral load measures than SP men. On the neuropsychological testing, SP women were more impaired in speed of information processing and verbal fluency and had a higher mean GDS than SN women. Compared to SP men, SP women were also more impaired in speed of information processing and verbal fluency as well as on tests of learning and memory. Numbers of circulating monocytes and plasma sCD14 and sCD163 levels were significantly higher for all SP versus all SN individuals and were also higher for SP women and for SP men versus their SN counterparts. Among SP women, soluble CD14 levels were slightly higher than for SP men, and SP women had higher viral load measurements and were more likely to have detectable virus than SP men. Higher sCD14 levels among SP women correlated with more severe global impairment, and higher viral load measurements correlated with higher monocyte numbers and sCD14 and sCD14 levels, associations that were not observed for SP men. These studies suggest that the risk of developing NCI differ for HIV infected women and men in Nigeria and, for women, may be linked to effects from higher plasma levels of HIV driving activation of circulating monocytes

REFLECTIONS ON MY WHITE PRIVILEGE AND UNDERSTANDING IT: THOUGHTS FROM A TEACHER EDUCATOR

The topic of White Privilege continually appears in a variety of contexts. As one of those contexts is teacher education, the author reflects on how he came to understand his White Privilege in this article. To frame his reflection, the author first unpacks the term “White Privilege” by drawing from other scholarly works and then explains how he came to understand its meaning. The author put forward his reflections as a way of sharing his experiences, in hopes they may help other White educators become aware of their own White Privilege and begin living socially conscious lives

Getting Ready for the Test: The Impact of School Restructuring on High School English Teachers

As debates about how to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) continue, educational stakeholders need to consider the impact that No Child Left Behind’s (NCLB) accountability policies put on teachers working in low performing schools. Specifically, schools that annually struggle to achieve adequate yearly progress based on student test scores are narrowing the curriculum they offer students down to only teaching testable skills (Crocco & Costigan, 2007). As such, students who attended a school that taught them a narrowed curriculum only learned how to take high stakes tests and not how to compete in the 21st century world (Schoen & Fusarelli, 2007). B ecause of the pressure from high stakes tests, I wanted to understand how teachers who taught an NCLB tested subject at a low performing school were impacted by these accountability policies. In this study, I investigated how high school English teachers working in an urban high school experienced NCLB’s school restructuring policies. To conduct my study, I identified a low performing high school that was required to restructure according to NCLB. I then interviewed six of the school’s English teachers and the assistant principal, who was selected to lead the school’s restructuring. After analyzing my collected interview data, I created experience-based narratives for each of my participants. I temporally presented the narratives because teachers who taught at the school before and during its early stages of restructuring had a different experience than teachers who taught during the later stages of the school’s restructuring. My findings confirmed previously conducted research that detailed how NCLB’s accountability policies resulted in the narrowing of the curriculum and English teachers being viewed as solely responsible for students’ writing abilities (Anagnostopoulos & Rutledge, 2007; Darling-Hammond, 2007; Smith & Kovacs, 2011). Moreover, I identified six different ways my participants were impacted by the school’s restructuring and created a term for each. The terms I developed include turnaround, producing results, threats, student behavior, top-down decision making, and sustained and unsustained reforms efforts. I then closed by discussing each term and how it relates back to my participants’ experiences

Теоретический и практический аспекты ценового внутрихолдингового управления

This article presents the aspects of intercompany price management. It investigates its price management and shows pricing methods applied to intercompany level of price control. It also considers their positive and negative sides. The article shows the level of advanced management in three areas: price management, internal management and methodological management support.Este artículo presenta las características de la gestión de precios en los holdings e investiga los problemas que pueden surgir. En el documento se han fundamentado los métodos de fijación de precios en la aplicación a nivel intrínseco de la gestión de precios y se han examinado sus aspectos positivos y negativos. El artículo muestra el nivel de avance de la esfera de administración en tres direcciones: la gestión de precios, la gestión interna y la gestión metodológica.Este artigo apresenta as características da gestão de preços, holdings e investiga os problemas que podem surgir. No documento foram fundamentado, os métodos de fixação de preços na aplicação a nível intrínseco da gestão de preços e analisado seus aspectos positivos e negativos. O artigo mostra o nível de avanço na esfera da administração em três direções: a gestão de preços, da gestão interna e a gestão metodológica.В статье представлены аспекты ценового внутрихолдингового управления. Исследованы проблемы ценового управления. Обоснованы методы ценообразования в применении к внутрикорпоративному уровню ценового управления, а также рассмотрены их положительные и отрицательные стороны. Статья показывает уровень продвинутости управленческой сферы в трёх направлениях: ценовое управление, внутрикорпоративное управление и методологическое обеспечение управления