New generation of harm‐reduction workers: Helton's concerns

Tracey Helton has been running peer programs for a decade, and involved with harm‐reduction work for two. Her “real” day job is working for San Francisco, a job that includes benefits and enables her to support her children. But it also allows her to run harm‐reduction services “from my closet,” as she puts it. We called her because we wanted to learn more about how she views the field.     

Market‐based Price‐risk Management for Coffee Producers

Coffee is characterised by high levels of price fluctuation, which exposes producers to price risk. Its wide trading in international commodity futures markets offers scope for producers to manage the risk by hedging on these markets, the mechanism for which is based on the use of put options. This article uses historical data of actual put‐options contracts to estimate the costs of the mechanism, the benefits being inferred from field evidence. It emerges that the costs are relatively low and outweighed by the benefits for most producers. The article then looks at the operational feasibility of the mechanism for producers and compares it with other hedging mechanisms.     

Leadership in faith‐based nonprofits

This case study illustrates the unique challenges of leading a faith‐based nonprofit organization within a multifaith constituency in Asia. The core themes of the case are based on research conducted with the staff, executive team, and board members of an international faith‐based nonprofit organization in Asia. Specifically, the case focuses on three identity‐based leadership dilemmas in relation to (1) creating a shared sense of organizational identity, (2) talent management, and (3) board governance. By describing the challenges faced by the CEO, the case shows how a strong faith‐based identification can positively bind an organization together, but also result in organizational blind spots with unintended consequences.     

“Those who come to do harm”: The Framings of Immigration Problems in Costa Rican Immigration Law

This article examines the political rationales at work behind the particularly repressive 2006 Costa Rican immigration law and subsequent immigration reform process and resulting 2010 law through an analysis of two rival framings of immigration in Costa Rica. First, I examine how the rushed nature of the 2006 law constructed a crisis in which migrants, particularly Nicaraguans, represented urgent threats to national security. Next, I examine the 2010 law that emerged from the reform process and the alternative framings of immigration as an issue of human rights and integration that migration advocates contributed to the new law. I argue that the juxtaposition of integration and security frameworks in the new law reinforces the law's most repressive measures, contributing to an overall project of securitization and marginalization of immigrants.     

AMA COVID‐19 recommendations: MAT,pain and harm reduction

Last month, the American Medical Association (AMA) made recommendations to help guide policymakers in reducing the stress experienced by patients with opioid use disorder (OUD) and pain, and urges the support of harm reduction.     

Collaborations with faith‐based social service coalitions

Based on the first national survey of faith‐based social service coalitions in the United States, this article presents data on the degree to which these nonprofit organizations collaborate with other specific organizational types, as well as the range and intensity of these collaborations. In general, faith‐based coalitions tend to collaborate most frequently with other faith‐based agencies, a pattern especially characteristic of the more religiously expressive ones. However, collaboration with non‐faith‐based organizations is also quite common. Based on seven organizational characteristics, we are able to predict which faith‐based coalitions are most likely to collaborate with different types of organizations: coalitions that have more explicitly religious policies and practices with reference to clients and staffs are less likely to participate in intense collaborations with some types of secular organizations, and consistently less likely to do so with all types of governmental agencies.     

Organizational transformation of a community‐based clinic

This article reports a case study of the planned transformation of a volunteer‐run community crisis‐care center into a community clinic. The data for this study are drawn from organizational records and participant observation. During the transformation, the clinic had to plan an orderly transition from volunteer to paid staff, from paper records to an integrated management information system, from primarily crisis care to chronic care, from primarily (physical) medical care to integrated case management. Along the way, some of the planned activities proved impossible to implement, some of what turned out to be key events were completely unanticipated, and many activities were finally accomplished but in a fashion very different from what was proposed in the plan. Four lessons were drawn from this case. First, as much as the caseload increased, the need for supportive services grew at a much faster rate. Second, the case demonstrates the need to develop productivity benchmarks that are speci.c to the group being served. Third, the case demonstrates the need for .exibility to go “off plan” to accomplish a larger goal. Fourth, the case illustrates how “big money” and rapid growth can threaten the sustainability of an organization. “What we think of as idyllic only looks that way to sightseers from other places, and other times.” —Carolyn Heilbrun, The Last Gift of Time     

Organizational networks of collaboration for community‐based living

This exploratory study of the Texas Community Awareness and Relocation Services (CARS) Project examines organizational networks of collaboration for community‐based living. A high degree of collaboration in these networks is needed to help nursing facility residents negotiate the complex process of moving to community‐based settings. Social network analysis reveals considerable variations in local organizational networks of collaboration among lead nonprofit providers before and after implementation of the CARS Project in five test sites. These variations probably affected their collaborative capacity of each site and, ultimately, the project's outcomes.     

14‐Month‐olds anticipate others’ actions based on their belief about an object's identity

Past research has accumulated evidence regarding infants’ false‐belief understanding, measuring their gaze patterns or active helping behaviors. However, the underlying mechanisms are still debated, specifically, whether young infants can compute that others represent the world under a certain aspect. Such performance requires holding in mind two representations about the same object simultaneously and attributing only one to another person. While 14‐month‐olds can encode an object under different aspects when forming first‐person representations, it is unclear whether infants at this very age could also predict others’ behavior based on their beliefs about an object's identity. Here, we investigate this question in a novel eye‐tracking‐based unexpected‐identity task. We measured 14‐month‐olds’ anticipatory looks combined with their looking time, using a violation‐of‐expectation paradigm. Results show that 14‐month‐olds look longer to an actor's reach that is incongruent with her false belief about the identity of an object compared to a congruent reach. Furthermore, infants correctly anticipated the actor's reach based on her false belief. Thus, as soon as infants represent dual identities they can integrate them in belief attributions and use them for consequent behavioral predictions. Such data provide evidence for the flexibility of false‐belief attributions and support proposals arguing for infants’ rich theory‐of‐mind abilities.     

Monitoring Partnership‐based Aid Relationships: A Note

Based on the premise that moves towards partnership‐based aid relationships require that the monitoring and evaluation of such relationships should be jointly conducted or sponsored, this note draws attention to an experiment conducted in Tanzania for monitoring by an independent group, drawn from the recipient country and from outside. It seeks to identify the key ingredients of successful use of such a model and urges its wider adoption.     

Small,minority‐based nonprofits in the information age

Pundits of information technology stress that the Internet opens new arenas for nonprofits through the ability to share information both locally and globally. New technology also changes funders' and other evaluators' expectations regarding proposals. Although new technology makes life easier for organizations with budgets, time, and familiarity with technology to buy and use these new tools, nonprofits that lack these resources fall even further behind in their quest to support and improve their programs. Based on ethnographic research in Kenosha, Wisconsin, this article explores the role of changing technology in the ability of small nonprofits to succeed in implementing their organizational mission. Using case studies, this article compares the experience of nonprofits and church mission projects based in the African American and Latino communities in this small city to that of two mainstream organizations in gaining funding and the general perception of those agencies in the local community. The article argues that expectations about the use of technology increase the gaps between a community's haves and have‐nots. Kenosha organizations based in communities of color are particularly at risk due to already low funding and lack of staff familiar with new technologies. The article demonstrates that the key is often not access to technology or technical assistance but the time to make the best use of available technology.     

NASEM report changes term from MAT to medication‐based

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) released a report last month that calls for medications to treat opioid use disorder. And the report flatly declares what many in the field have suspected for years: medication‐assisted treatment (MAT) is not the right term.