Tackling and Mitigating Health Inequalities – Policymakers and Practitioners ‘Talk and Draw’ their Theories

In the context of a long‐standing academic acceptance of the socially structured nature of health inequalities, there has been a growing literature that critically examines policies that aim to reduce them. This has demonstrated inadequate policy assessment of the nature of the problem of health inequalities and correspondingly partial solutions that privilege interventions that focus on individual lifestyle solutions over more structural approaches. Much of the research that has been undertaken in this field to explore competing theories of inequalities has analyzed national policy documents or the views of senior policy advisers rather than practitioners. This study uses Raphael’s ‘seven discourses of the social determinants of health’ to understand the implicit theories of health inequalities of both practitioners and policymakers working within a single health care system as they talk about different policy typologies. To help penetrate potentially well‐rehearsed discourses about health inequalities, it tests a visual method of stimulating discussion about how different types of policy might operate to narrow/widen existing gaps in outcomes. Building on Raphael, it finds that individuals’ theories of health inequalities contain co‐existing although not synthesized material and behavioural explanations and that, although the social patterning of material disadvantage was recognized, the role of power and politics is underplayed. Variations between participants did not align with role (policy/practice) and using visual methods to represent the impact of different policy types on health inequalities, though challenging for participants, stimulated reflection about a subject matter that has otherwise become rather stagnant.     

The governance of primary mental health planning by Primary Health Networks

The establishment of Primary Health Networks (PHNs) was accompanied by assignment of responsibility for funding for primary mental healthcare. To ensure this funding is spent in line with government priorities, the Federal government developed a planning document with established priorities and guidance documents for how the planning document should be completed. This paper examines how these documents shape service delivery through enabling some activities and excluding others and identifies the assumptions that underpin these documents. Data were drawn from discourse and content analysis of completed planning documents from the PHNs and of the guidance documents and from reflection upon mental health planning from 55 interviews with key personnel from six PHNs. Service delivery is shaped by outcome measures that promote service access, cost‐effectiveness and clinical effectiveness, contributing to service options that favour self‐management for mild mental illness and clinical (but not social) services for people with severe mental illness. There is also limited scope for mental health promotion with prevention activities focused upon populations identified by the government as being at‐risk. This occurs to the detriment of other at‐risk populations.     

Understanding Policy Reform in Colorado's Domestic Violence Offender Treatment Standards

This study examines the perceived conditions leading to Colorado adopting revised Standards for treating domestic violence offenders from the perspective of Kingdon's multiple streams theory. A within‐case analysis of ten semi‐structured interviews explores the Domestic Violence Offender Management Board in Colorado's process for revising Colorado's 2001 Treatment Standards. Findings suggest a benign political stream, supported by technically feasible and value‐accepted policy ideas, feedback and indicators of the problem, promoted a favourable setting for change. At least two policy entrepreneurs championed the decision‐making process. Agenda setting and policy formulation depended on three elements: feedback from existing programmes, indicators of continued difficulty in effectively treating offenders, and the existence of a suitable policy alternative. This study contributes a rare application of multiple streams theory to a criminal justice context in a sub‐national government. Future research should explore whether the presence of a benign political stream influences the development and revision of domestic violence policy in other policy environments.     

绿色就业的国际探索——美国和孟加拉国的发展经验

美国的绿色就业已经获得了政府、法律、财政和社会的支持。孟加拉国绿色就业的发展主要体现在政策支持、项目干预、服务供应、财政投资与科技研发等方面。美国和孟加拉国的绿色就业均始于能源部门,获得了政府和非政府组织的支持,采用以项目为原点的发展方式。两国绿色就业的评估有空白和重叠之处,政府与社会的兼容尚不完善,国家强制力较弱。借鉴美国和孟加拉国的经验,我国的绿色就业应增进政府与社会的对话;增加财政投入,发展绿色市场;建立绿色就业体系,促进绿色技能培训;健全绿色政策,完善法律保障。     

印孟关系中的非法移民问题

孟加拉国人向印度移民有着历史、地缘、政治和经济因素。他们的大量涌入让印度非常担忧,认为它给印度的政治团结、经济发展、社会稳定和国家安全带来了威胁。为了防范和打击孟加拉国非法移民,印度采取了包括遣返、修建隔离网、筑造边界公路、增设边界哨所、实施＂多用途身份证＂在内的一系列措施。由于孟加拉国拒不承认非法移民问题,两国经常为此发生外交纠纷。非法移民问题日益成为制约两国关系改善的一个重要因素。     

有效防御气象灾害的法制建设研究

我国的气象灾害防御法律体系独具特色,是我国气象防灾减灾体系的重要内容。当前最重要的工作在于落实“一法三例”,强化各级政府的气象灾害防御职责,进一步规范人工影响天气工作,构建效率更高的气象防灾减灾工作体系,维护气象灾害防御的科学基础。继续完善气象灾害防御各项法律制度,适应防灾减灾新要求,必须着力弥补薄弱环节的法规缺失,加快完善气象灾害防御法制体系,推进气象法治进程。     

Do remittances reduce school dropout in Bangladesh? The role of government’s administrative and structural support

In the development literature, the impact of remittances on educational outcomes is a contentious topic and remains at the heart of policy discussions on enhancing quality education in developing countries. Bangladesh being one of the world’s top remittance recipients, it’s crucial to understand the influence of remittances on educational outcomes and school dropout rates. In this study, we examine the impact of internal remittances (from inside Bangladesh) and international remittances (from outside Bangladesh) on school dropout at the household level using a unique, national, and two most recent datasets covering migration and remittance-related information from the Bangladesh Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES). Considering the methodological issues such as endogeneity sources and self-selection, we used the Instrumental Variable Cox Proportional Hazard model and included asset scores in the models as a proxy measure of households’ wealth index. Furthermore, all the outcomes using the econometric approaches were segregated into three groups: i) those who received no remittances, ii) those who received internal remittances, and iii) those who received international remittances for both HIES 2010 and HIES 2016. This analysis provides a critical picture of the influence of remittances on school dropouts in Bangladesh by giving us a significant positive outcome of the remittances as a whole on education. With the increase in remittance inflows in Bangladesh, the risk of children aged 6-18 dropping out of education are more likely to fall. Aside from the positive impact, this study suggests that government should take the initiative of reducing the costs of sending remittances to Bangladesh. Moreover, the government should provide procedural and structural support to migrants.     

Integrating service delivery in a regional homelessness service system

All tiers of government in Australia are focused on service integration as a key response to homelessness. However, service integration strategies need to consider particular service system characteristics and location‐specific conditions. This paper reports on an investigation of service integration strategies suitable for a regional context undertaken in 2010 and 2011. A three‐phase participatory action research (PAR) framework was utilised to collect data about the homelessness service system in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, and about the existing and potential service integration strategies in the region. The findings suggest that strategies for better integration should take into account specific local conditions and be developed and implemented at a local level with support from government. The paper concludes by presenting an argument that the development and implementation of strategies should be based on a place‐based assessment of demand and suitability.     

Policy Changes in Community Mental Health: Interventions and Strategies Used in Sweden over 20 Years

The deinstitutionalization of mental health care has changed the responsibilities of involved authorities and has led to a continuous need for new treatment forms and interventions. This article describes this development in Europe, and in particular how these new conditions have been handled in Sweden over the past 20 years at the level of governmental policy‐making. Three major policy documents from 1994, 2009 and 2012 were included in this study. To increase our understanding of the policies' contents, we have used theoretical concepts concerning governance, implementation and political risk management. Although our main interest was to find out how the government handles interventions for users of the mental health care system, we found that the policy work is progressing stepwise. The first document, from the deinstitutionalization era, did not discuss interventions clearly. Instead, it was mainly concerned with both practical and economical areas of responsibility. The second document, from the post‐deinstitutionalization era, was more focused on what services should be delivered to the users, while the most recently published document to a greater extent addressed the question of how the support is supposed to be designed. The trend in European community mental health policy has been to advocate services in open forms that are integrated into the society's other care systems. This is also the case in Sweden, and continuous work is being done by the government to find strategies to support the development, and to meet the needs at both political and local levels.     

A place of our own: a narrative review of the family housing services literature

The problem of family homelessness has been widely recognized by both policymakers and social service providers. What is not clear, however, is the overall effectiveness of housing intervention services provided to homeless families. This narrative review of the literature discusses 10 studies from 1991 to 2013 on both transitional and supportive housing in order to assess under what conditions and for whom these interventions are most effective. More specifically this review evaluates the research regarding which elements of intervention services are most helpful to families, the outcomes associated with these programmes, and the short‐ and long‐term effectiveness of housing interventions. Evidence suggests that while these programmes produce positive outcomes for families, a one‐size‐fits‐all model of housing may not be effective for all families. Limitations and directions for future research are also discussed.     

Social enterprise and sustainable development in Bangladesh and Korea: Opportunities and challenges

The aim of this paper was to understand the similarities and differences between social enterprise (SE) systems in Korea and Bangladesh in terms of the emergence, background, development, and current status of the SE's policies and support systems in these two countries. This study employs a conceptual qualitative analysis, and the data used in this study were obtained from multiple reliable literature reviews. The data were analyzed based on a text‐by‐text comparison of social enterprises in the two countries, and the results were revealed through written explanation. In Korea, the SE system emerged as social employment creation plan after the currency crisis in 1997. Later, in 2007, this movement turned into the “Social Enterprise Promotion Act.” Conversely, in Bangladesh, the SE system emerged as a result of NGOs’ activities to “alleviate poverty” and “facilitate job creation” after the War of Independence in 1971 in an informal socioeconomic conditions. There is no explicit legal form of SEs in Bangladesh. This study also suggests the nature and scope of SEs and the barriers to sustainability of SEs in both countries. The study also emphasized the foundations to develop relevant policies as well as clear regulations for the future sustainability of the SEs of these two countries.     

Ageing Society Issues in Korea*

Korean society is facing unprecedentedly higher population ageing, particularly in the first half of the 21st century. The implications of population ageing have a much wider effect than the welfare of the elderly. From a broader and long‐term perspective, understanding population ageing may require a new paradigm. Korea has attempted to model its policies for ageing society on those of advanced welfare states, but as these no longer seem viable, Korean policy‐makers are searching for more effective and efficient measures to deal with its rapid ageing population. Reflecting a broader and long‐term perspective, the Korean government recently produced a comprehensive national policy plan to deal with the consequences of rapid population ageing. This article outlines the phenomenon of population ageing in Korea and the recent development of national policies for population ageing, describing the Korean comprehensive national policy plan for responding to it and examining major issues and problems related to developing and implementing the plan. This article finally suggests a new, age‐integrated social system approach to an ageing society.     

Legal Control over Big Data Criminal Investigation

The rapid growth of big data technology has become a major trend affecting the pattern of world development. Big data criminal investigation is a new type of criminal detection used extensively in the course of police practice at home and abroad. Its emergence indicates a trend in criminal justice towards ensuring security at the expense of privacy and exchanging rights for information. Big data criminal investigation highlights the backwardness and dysfunction of the traditional framework of legal norms, evident in doubts about the legal attributes of such investigation and the obvious limitations of techniques for distinguishing data content from metadata. This leaves a vacuum in the regulation of investigative power at the preliminary stage of investigation. Big data criminal investigation itself is a double-edge sword; in order to forestall the possible abuses it may entail in terms of deep and broad interventions in basic civil rights, big data criminal investigation should be brought under the necessary legal control. We therefore propose adopting a dual regulatory approach comprising investigative and data norms, selectively adopting the traditional normative framework of the principle of legality and the principle of proportionality, and at the same time supplementing it with other legal principles and mechanisms concerning the protection of personal information and data.     

The socio-cultural context of child marriage in a Bangladeshi village

This article focuses on the reasons for child marriage in a Bangladeshi village. Although the mean age of marriage for women in Bangladesh is currently 20.2, nearly half of all girls are married before the age of 18. In Bangladesh, female sexuality is controlled through early marriage and the custom of purdah , which limits the social interactions between men and women. The methodology of this research was participant observation, supplemented by questionnaires, discussions, interviews and the construction of case studies. The study was conducted in a village in Bangladesh, and looked at why the rural people of Bangladesh marry off their daughters at an early age, whether they think that they will profit from it, and how. Cost-benefit analysis in exchange theory provides the theoretical framework. This study finds that child marriage occurs as a result of the profit-making motive of the people of Bangladesh, despite the huge costs to the individuals involved, the local community and society as a whole.     

Economic and social inclusion of person with disability and transgender through skills development program of BRAC: A qualitative study

This article is based on the Skills Training for Advancing Resources (STAR) project for the youth initiative of the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) in Bangladesh. The objective was to explore the consequences of social and economic inclusion of this project for the persons with disability (PWDs) and transgender (TG) youth people. The research focused on how inclusive programmatic interventions created multidimensional impacts among the “marginalized” and “excluded” PWD and TG youths at the grassroots level. This study adopted a qualitative approach where in-depth case interviews and observation were applied for data collection. PWD and TG graduates, master craft persons (MCPs), employers, and program staff members were the participants in this study. Results found that PWD and TG youths faced vulnerabilities and social stigma in their lives and livelihood trajectories due to their physical inability and low level of social dignity. The STAR project has a certain level of contribution to the livelihoods of PWD and TG people, where these helped them to gain their social, cultural, and economic capital. Findings would be an important guideline for policymakers, NGO managers, and human rights workers.     

论我国东北老工业基地的改造战略

中央、地方、国有企业在东北老工业基地的改造中各自承担着相应的战略职责。中央政府要运用各种财政金融杠杆,推动产业结构的调整,推进审批权改革,促进老工业区统一市场的形成和对外开放;地方政府负责管理各项改造基金,推动老工业基地的技术改造,制定改造规划;国有企业要加快现代企业制度建设,实施科技创新。三方应在完善社会保障、促进就业等方面互联互动,通力合作。     

文件治理中的政策采纳及其影响因素研究:基于国家和省级政府政策文本(2008—2018)数据

“文件治国”是中国国家治理的基本表现形态，不同中央政策在各地被采纳与实施的情况也是国家治理问题的核心研究议题。本文尝试突破以往政策扩散研究多只关注特定单项中央政策在各地扩散过程的局限，结合长时段大样本农村政策文本数据，对中央政府2008—2018年发布的多项农村政策在各地的扩散过程进行实证分析，相对系统地考察了中央层面的行政压力和经济激励，以及地方层面的执行能力和内在动力等因素及其交互作用对政策采纳的影响，进而对中国正式政策文件运作的基本过程和内在机制进行探讨。研究显示，自上而下的行政压力越大，经济激励越大，地方层面的执行能力越强，地方政府采纳中央农村政策的概率就越容易显著增加。从交互关系来看，中央政府对农村议题重视程度的提高会减小不同执行能力省份的政策采纳差异，也会减小不同经济激励政策的采纳差异。     

唐代一桩贪污案始末分析—从元稹《弹奏剑南东川节度观察处置等使严砺文》说起

两《唐书》对严砺贪污案有涉及,但只是一个大概而已。元稹《弹奏剑南东川节度观察处置等使严砺文》首尾俱全,对严砺贪污案记载得十分详细,从中可以了解唐代弹劾文的结构情况、官府之间公文的运作经过、裁判劾奏案件的大概程序等。更为重要的是,通过对这桩贪污案始末的分析,可以看出唐代中后期吏治的腐败情况及宪宗朝对官吏贪污行为的惩治情况。     

Developing Early Years Childcare in England, 1997–2002: The Choices for (Working) Mothers

The UK has long been near the bottom of the EU “childcare league”. Attitudes of policymakers towards employment for the mothers of young children were ambivalent up to and including the Thatcher years, and the problem of “reconciling” work and family was historically deemed to be a private decision. This changed in 1998, when the Labour government put forward the first ever national childcare strategy. This paper argues that the aims behind the strategy were intimately linked to the attack on poverty and social exclusion in that: (1) efforts to stimulate provision focused on disadvantaged neighbourhoods; (2) subsidy was provided for early years education , rather than care (in order to give children a better start in life); and (3) stimulating provision was intended to promote women's employment, especially among lone‐mother families, thereby improving the material welfare of poor families. The means of expanding childcare have taken the form of a complicated set of demand‐ and supply‐side subsidies, reflecting the ongoing commitment to a mixed economy of childcare. The paper argues that this has implications for access and quality, and that there are tensions between the social investment approach to childcare on the one hand, and the desire to promote mothers’ employment on the other.     

经济法视角下住宅房地产价格调控研究

我国自实行城镇住房制度改革后,房地产业飞速发展,在推动经济发展的同时,也导致我国部分地区出现了住宅房地产价格过高、上涨过快等问题.住宅房问题事关国计民生,国家政府运用经济的、法律的、行政的手段在调控房地产价格时,始终应当坚持权力法制、秩序稳定、社会公平的原则.在住宅房地产价格调控时,要修改和完善《价格法》,完善土地调控法律制度,完善住房保障法律体系,制定专门法规调整我国住宅房地产,逐步扩大经济适用房等保障性住房惠及的范围,完善相关调控主体法律责任.