If My Blood Pressure Is High,Do I Take It to Heart? Behavioral Effects of Biomarker Collection in the Health and Retirement Study

Starting in 2006, respondents in the biennial U.S. Health and Retirement Study were asked to submit biomarkers every other wave and were notified of several results. Rates of undiagnosed high blood pressure and diabetes according to these biomarkers were 1.5 % and 0.7 %, respectively. An intent-to-treat analysis suggests that collection and notification had small effects on the average respondent and may have reduced health care utilization. Among respondents who received notification of potentially dangerous biomarker levels, subsequent rates of new diagnosis and associated pharmaceutical usage increased by 20 to 40 percentage points, an order of magnitude above baseline. High blood glucose A1C was associated with a 2.2 % drop in weight and an increase in exercise among respondents without a previous diagnosis of diabetes. Notifications appear also to have altered health behaviors by spouses, suggesting household responses to health maintenance. Biomarker collection seems to have altered circumstances for an interesting minority of HRS respondents.     

Global Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Public Organization Review -     

Youth Allowances: Incentive & Reform

Australia's income support arrangements have come under increasing scrutiny lately reflecting a growing concern about high levels of youth unemployment and about low levels of full-time education participation. This paper aims to explore the relationship between education participation and financial incentives and to assess as a possible direction for future reform, the concept of a single and universal youth allowance. The paper begins by outlining the major forms of income support available to young people and illustrates some of the complexities in the youth income support structure. The evidence on the importance of financial factors conflicts, particularly between economists and non-economists. This is in part explained by the different conceptual frameworks used. Other possible reasons are canvassed as to why studies have so far not thrown much light on the role of financial factors in the education participation decision. The paper also outlines specific directions of distortion contained in current payment relativities. Several difficulties with the proposal for a single youth allowance as a means of increasing education participation are discussed and alternatives briefly outlined. The concluding section of the paper summarises the issues relevant to the future debate on youth income support and identifies areas for further research.     

The Development of Affect Specificity in Infants' Use of Emotion Cues

This study examined the emergence of affect specificity in infancy. In this study, infants received verbal and facial signals of 2 different, negatively valenced emotions (fear and sadness) as well as neutral affect via a television monitor to determine if they could make qualitative distinctions among emotions of the same valence. Twenty 12‐ to 14‐month‐olds and 20 16‐ to 18‐month‐olds were examined. Results suggested that younger infants showed no evidence of referential specificity, as they responded similarly to both the target and distracter toys, and showed no evidence of affect specificity, showing no difference in play between affect conditions. Older infants, in contrast, showed evidence both of referential and affect specificity. With respect to affect specificity, 16‐ to 18‐month‐olds touched the target toy less in the fear condition than in the sad condition and showed a larger proportion of negative facial expressions in the sad condition versus the fear condition. These findings suggest a developmental emergence after 15 months of age for affect specificity in relating emotional messages to objects.     

Is CSR the panacea for SMEs? A study of socially responsible SMEs during economic crisis

There is increasing research attention as to how SMEs might realize corporate social responsibility opportunities. Most studies focus on the pursuance of responsible business strategies that result in favourable business outcomes. This study investigates SMEs who actively participate in CSR activities in a south-eastern European country during the economic crisis of the Eurozone. Data collected reveals that stakeholder salience and proximity moderate the relationship between CSR and financial performance. The context of this study is important as it addresses the paucity of research carried out in countries during economic crisis and sheds light on the positive aspects of CSR practices adopted during crisis.     

Meeting the change challenge: managing growth in the nonprofit and public human services sectors

The current economic climate has been particularly hard on non-profit and public human services organizations, frequently resulting in managing organizational decline. The authors believe that the dominant concern should be with fostering organizational growth. To this end, they suggest that nonprofit board members and executives, as well as public sector leaders, need to concern themselves with the concurrent management of two agendas: Running the Shop and Meeting the Change Challenge. This can be done effectively through the use of strategic issue management, which is a set of techniques that represents a blend of traditional strategic management and change management approaches.     

An Interdisciplinary Perspective on Disasters and Stress: The Promise of an Ecological Framework

This integrative literature review examines the sources of the persistent debate over the influence of disasters on individual mental health that characterizes the disaster research literature. Using an interdisciplinary approach, this paper highlights how the connections between individuals and the systems in which they are embedded influence people's varied responses to disaster. Consistent with the emerging emphasis in the social sciences on contextualizing individual behavior, this paper examines how family, community, social structural, cultural, and environmental factors affect the development of stress in disaster populations. It concludes with recommendations for policy, practice, and research related to disaster recovery.     

Funding Strategies for Population Researchers: Perspectives from the National Institutes of Health

The purpose of this article is to briefly describe the application and funding process at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). We target our discussion to demographic and population science at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development (NICHD), but the general strategies are applicable to social and behavioral scientists for all NIH funding opportunities.     

Using a capabilities approach to understand poverty and social exclusion of psychiatric survivors

The purpose of this project is to better understand poverty and social exclusion of psychiatric survivors using a capabilities approach to social justice as part of a larger mixed-methods longitudinal study (N=380) in Ontario, Canada. Using thematic coding, four themes emerged: poverty, ‘You just try to survive’; stigma, ‘People treat you like trash’; belonging, ‘You feel like you don’t belong’; and shared concern and advocacy, ‘Everyone deserves housing’. This analysis provides a deeper understanding of poverty and other social determinants of experiences of psychiatric survivors, including the synergism of poverty and social exclusion.     

By all appearances: thoughts on colonialism,visuality and racial neoliberalism

ABSTRACT

In a Montreal neighbourhood in the fall of 2013, a community mural celebrating ‘diversity, adversity and solidarity’ was vandalized: the image of a Black woman was spray-painted white. In this paper, I take the events and discourses surrounding this incident and my personal responses to them as a starting point for examining the racialized politics of visual representation. Using critical race-class analysis informed by contemporary theories of Black visuality, I consider dynamics of Black invisibility and visibility in Canada and consider the role visual texts play in reinforcing, reproducing, and resisting racialized social relations. I argue for caution regarding politics of representation, and consider Black and Indigenous art practices for the creative forms of resistance to colonial-capitalist ideology and visual logics they offer.