Stewardship of public assets under nonprofit conversion models: New York's Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield case study

This research describes a case study of the Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield conversion under way in New York. In January 2002, legislation approved the conversion and the disposition of $1 billion in assets: 95 percent for health care salaries and expenses and 5 percent for a foundation to promote health care for the poor. New York's approach is controversial. According to Greene and Sommerfield (2002), the New York Times considers it the largest fiscal gimmick in New York's history, and Consumers Union is challenging it in the courts, asserting the plan is illegal. This article describes New York's approach to nonprofit conversion, proposing that more research on conversions is needed and that case study research illustrating the way different states approach the issue has the potential to bring together researchers, practitioners, and policymakers in an important debate that will advance public policymaking that furthers the public good. Subsequently, on June 20, 2005, New York State's highest court dismissed the Consumers Union lawsuit, affirming the actions of the New York State legislature and bringing to an end nearly three years of state‐level litigation.     

Blacks and earnings in New York State

This research seeks to explain why earnings differences among foreign‐born Jamaicans and native‐born blacks are significantly larger in New York State than they are throughout the United States. The findings indicate that the Jamaicans in New York State are less endowed in terms of earnings‐related attributes, relative to the native born, than they are nationwide. Furthermore, even though the Jamaicans in New York State definitely are more disadvantaged with respect to earnings, this is not a manifestation of more intense discrimination. In all actuality, discrimination accounts for a relatively smaller proportion of the earnings gap in the New York State case than in the national case.     

Employment Day: Forty Years of Transitioning High School Seniors Into the Workforce

The author describes an innovative career development event that has endured for nearly 40 years: Employment Day. This is a consummate collaborative undertaking of school professionals, higher education participants, and the community of employers in the Greater Suffolk County, Long Island, New York, region. It embodies the principles of the American School Counselor Association (ASCA; 2000) national standards, the ASCA (2003) National Model, and the New York State Comprehensive Model (New York State School Counselor Association, 2004) as a culminating activity. Employment Day is an event worth replicating by professional counseling associations.     

Alcohol use among college students: responses to raising the purchase age

On December 1, 1985, New York State raised its alcohol purchase age from 19 to 21. We used a quasi-experimental research design to explore the changes in alcohol use behaviors and attitudes of undergraduates at a large central New York university before and after this legislation was enacted. The overwhelming majority of this undergraduate population is under 21 years old and is thus affected by the new legislation. A comparison of data from the two survey times revealed that 90% of the undergraduates sampled continued to drink at least occasionally. Our analysis of drinking quantity showed a slight moderation in alcohol consumption overall, with the greatest changes occurring for the heaviest drinkers--men and members of Greek organizations. Even with apparent moderation in student drinking, reported negative consequences such as physical injuries were more common. A change in drinking location to less-controlled environments, such as private rooms and unmonitored parties, is offered as one possible explanation.     

THE SOCIAL ROLE OF NOT-FOR-PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS: HOSPITAL PROVISION OF CHARITY CARE

During the 1980s the State of New York shifted from a straight block grant to a matching grant method for reimbursing hospitals, with the matching rate varying from 0 to 75 percent across years. These changes allow estimation of pure "income" and "price" effects for hospitals' supply of uncompensated care (charity and bad debts). The price efrect is positive and significant, but no income effect was found. Hospitals in more concentrated markets provide more charity care, as do teaching hospitals, and the presence of public hospitals in a market reduces private hospitals' provision of charity care.     

Informal Caregiving for Elders in Sweden: An Analysis of Current Policy Developments

The purpose of this study was to conduct a systematic review of the literature related to state policies concerning older drivers and to draw policy conclusions about which policies appear to work to reduce older driver crashes and to identify areas needed for further research. Specific policies examined in this paper concern medical reporting and medical review, license renewal processes, and driver testing. A study was included in the systematic review if it met the following criteria: published in English between 1991and January 2013; included data on human subjects aged 65 and older residing in the United States; included information on at least one policy related to older drivers; and had a transportation-related outcome variable (e.g., crash, fatality, renewal). A total of 29 studies met inclusion criteria. Twenty-two studies investigated license renewal and seven articles examined medical reporting. In-person license renewal requirements were associated with reduced risk for fatal crashes. Restricted licenses were associated with reduced number of miles driven per week. More intensive renewal requirements and being the subject of a medical report to the licensing authority was associated with delicensure. Given the importance of driving to mobility, quality of life, and public safety, more research is needed.     

A Question of Genesis: An Analysis of the Determinants of Public Authorities

One of the central questions in the study of special purposegovernments is how to explain their proliferation over the pastfifty years. Of particular concern to scholars has been therise of a hidden government that is not highly accountable throughregular democratic processes. This article looks specificallyat one form of special purpose government, known as a "publicauthority," and amends the conventional explanation that localgovernments principally create public authorities to addresspublic finance concerns. First, I argue that full "service publicauthorities," which administer and make policy about a particularservice arena, raise different concerns about democratic accountabilityfrom a "conduit authority" and are a nonparsimonious solutionto a public finance problem. Second, drawing on an archivalsurvey of the institutional choices of county governments indealing with solid waste policymaking in New York State, I findthat while public finance is a driver in the choice to createa service public authority, equally, if not more important,are the needs of local government to resolve a policy problemin a politically competitive environment.     

Juvenile Offender Recidivism: An Examination of Risk Factors

One hundred and seventy three male juvenile offenders were followed two years postrelease from a residential treatment facility to assess recidivism and factors related to recidivism. The overall recidivism rate was 23.9%. Logistic regression with stepwise and backward variable selection methods was used to examine the relationship between recidivism and nine specific variables: offense type, age at initial involvement in juvenile justice, child welfare system involvement, termination of parental rights, parental criminal history, family support, program completion status, length of treatment stay, and discharge placement. Offender type was the only factor found to have a significant impact on recidivism with general and substance-involved offenders more likely to recidivate than sex offenders. Implications for future research are discussed.     

Do Neighborhood Organizational Resources Impact Recidivism?

There is a growing literature investigating how neighborhood organizations impact crime, although recidivism or reoffending has been excluded from this discussion. Combining data on recidivism and organizational availability in Chicago with the 2000 Census and the 2007–2011 American Community Survey, this study models the effect of three types of organizations important for ex‐prisoners (emergency assistance, employment, and education) and their changes on neighborhood‐level recidivism from 2001 to 2006. Results show that changes in the availability of certain types of organizations impact recidivism. Non‐trivial losses (losing two or more organizations) of educational organizations across years increase neighborhood recidivism. Also, disadvantage moderates the effect of non‐trivial gains in organizations; specifically, in low‐disadvantage neighborhoods, gains in employment organizations decrease recidivism. These results suggest that ex‐prisoners are exposed to variability in local organizational environments, and this variability has an impact on overall recidivism. Neighborhood‐based policy aimed at lowering recidivism should not only work to increase these organizations in neighborhoods, but also work to stabilize their presence.     

Juvenile offender recidivism: an examination of risk factors

One hundred and seventy three male juvenile offenders were followed two years postrelease from a residential treatment facility to assess recidivism and factors related to recidivism. The overall recidivism rate was 23.9%. Logistic regression with stepwise and backward variable selection methods was used to examine the relationship between recidivism and nine specific variables: offense type, age at initial involvement in juvenile justice, child welfare system involvement, termination of parental rights, parental criminal history, family support, program completion status, length of treatment stay, and discharge placement. Offender type was the only factor found to have a significant impact on recidivism with general and substance-involved offenders more likely to recidivate than sex offenders. Implications for future research are discussed.     

Predictors of Alcohol Use among College Students in New York State

Abstract

The prevalence and correlates of alcohol and other drug use were determined for students attending colleges in New York State. The New York State Division of Substance Abuse Services selected a representative sample of approximately 7,700 undergraduate students randomly selected from 22 colleges. Students were given a 10-page questionnaire dealing with patterns of alcohol and other drug use. The vast majority of both males and females reported alcohol use in the past 30 days; however, males (28%) were twice as likely as females (15%) to be classified in the heavier drinking category. White college students (25%) are far more likely to be heavier drinkers than are black students (5%) even after other factors are taken into account. Students attending colleges in Upstate New York areas (24%) have higher rates of heavier drinking than do those in New York City (15%). Multivariate statistical analyses were done to determine the relative importance of various social factors in determining drinking behavior.     

Costs of Treating Depression With Individual Versus Family Therapy

Depression is one of the most common concerns that bring clients to treatment. Although marriage and family therapy has been shown to be an effective treatment, little research exists regarding the cost‐effectiveness of related services. In this study, we examined claims data for 164,667 individuals diagnosed with depression to determine (a) differences in the cost of treating depression according to type of therapy and license type, (b) differences in recidivism rates by age, gender, type of therapy, and type of mental health professional, and (c) differences in cost‐effectiveness by therapy modality and type of professional. The results showed that services provided by marriage and family therapists resulted in the lowest recidivism rate, and family therapy services were the least expensive.     

Adoption Now: a joint initiative of New York's courts and child welfare system

In November 2002, Chief Judge Judith Kaye attended the National Adoption Day festivities in Albany County and New York County (Manhattan). Although pleased that 600 adoptions were being finalized statewide on this special day, she was concerned to learn more than 6,000 other children were free for adoption but had not yet found permanent families. Judge Kaye reached out to New York State Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS) Commissioner John A. Johnson and New York City Administration for Children's Services (ACS) then-Commissioner William Bell to come together and begin a discussion to identify and resolve systemic barriers to adoption. At a press conference in May 2003, Chief Judge Kaye, Governor Pataki, New York City Mayor Bloomberg, and Judges and Commissioners representing counties from across the state announced the Adoption Now initiative that set a goal of finalizing adoptions for 5,000 children (3800 in New York City and 1200 upstate) by the end of 2003.     

An Elder Care Training Needs Assessment Among Employee Assistance Program Staff Employed by New York State Government:

A mail survey of 224 EAP staff members employed by various departments of New York State government explored the issue of elder care. Self-report questionnaire data evaluated training history competence to handle employed caregiver problems/questions, and individual department commitment. Major findings generally replicated those of a previous regional study conducted with 95 Western New York EAP staff members. Survey results showed: (1) EAP staff members estimated that one in five employees currently provides care for an older dependent; (2) the majority (56.9%) of staff members have not received any training relevant to elder care; (3) self-assessed competence to handle elder care problems was low for 13 of 17 problem-solving domains constituting the Elder Care Competence Index (ECCI); (4) the few (14.9%) EAP staff members with extensive (two or more sessions) elder care training experience achieved ECCI scores nearly 150% higher than staff members without such training, p < .001; (5) most (73.0%) departments have not dealt with elder care in any formal way and only 3.6% of the EAP staff believe this inaction to be appropriate; and (6) department commitment to the issue of elder care is predictive of both training (p < .01) and staff competence (p < .01). The implications for training, policy, and future research are discussed.     

Hiding in Plain Sight: Insights about Health-Care Trends Gained through Open Health Data

ABSTRACT

The open data movement constitutes an approach to achieving accountability for government organizations. Government agencies at the Federal and State levels have released open health data consisting of de-identified patient outcomes, costs and ratings. We applied big data analytics to understand patterns and trends in open health data. We envision the use of this data by concerned citizens to understand trends in health expenditures. We have built an open-source tool, BOAT (Big Data Open Source Analytics Tool, https://github.com/fdudatamining) to facilitate analytical exploration of open health data sets. We used BOAT to analyze data from the New York Statewide Planning and Research Cooperative System and determined that there has been a significant increase (40 percent) in the incidences of mental health issues amongst adolescents from 2009–2014. We analyzed costs for hip replacement surgery for 168,676 patients is in New York State, and showed that 88% of these patients had surgery costs of less than $30,000. This figure helps in understanding the decision by The California Public Employees’ Retirement System to cap hip replacement reimbursements at $30,000, resulting in significant savings. Our tool could enable researchers, hospitals, insurers and citizens to obtain an unbiased view on health-care expenditures, costs and emerging trends.     

New York State's Prostitution Statute:

In 1978, New York State upgraded its "patronizing a prostitute" statute from a violation to a misdemeanor offense. It was expected that upgrading the law would accomplish essentially two goals: deter prostitution by giving the police incentive to arrest patrons, and end the disparity that existed between the prositution and patronizing statutes, as prostitution had been a misdemeanor offense since 1969. These goals were not accomplished. An analysis of prostitution arrest information from Buffalo, New york, for the years 1977 through 1980, shows that the Buffalo city police arrest practices did not change despite the 1978 reform of the prostitution statute. In particular, women continued to be singled out for prostitution arrests more often than men. In addition, despite constitutional prohibition of gender based discrimination, New York State courts have not been persuaded to find unconstitutional the differential enforcement practices of the prostitution statute. One Buffalo criminal court, for example, approved gender based discrimination on the basis of insufficient police staffing. The end result was that while the new statute was to be gender neutral, the application of the law was not; police nonenforcement of patron activity perpetuated discrimination against women.     

Noisy Winter: The DDT Controversy in the Years before Silent Spring

Abstract In this paper, we examine three unanticipated findings from a social constructionist analysis of popular media coverage of the pesticide DDT from the years 1944 to 1961. The first unanticipated finding was the early (1945) appearance of negative or cautionary claims in the media source examined, the New York Times. Second, while negative or cautionary claims about the pesticide did constitute a minority voice during this time period, it was nonetheless a persistent voice. The third unanticipated finding was the predominance of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the State Agricultural Experiment Stations among those claimsmakers initially cautioning potential users about unintended and potentially deleterious impacts. The concept of "routine monitoring mechanisms" is introduced to explain this third finding. We conclude by considering the potential impact of this coverage on the subsequent development of the controversy.     

Review

For the time being: ethnography of everyday life By Richard Quinney. New York: State University of New York Press, 1998. 198 pages. $20.95 paper. ISBN: 079143852x.     

Residential Preferences: What's Terrorism Got to Do with It?

Security has long been recognized as an element in residential preference and its relative importance has risen with fear of extremist attacks on U.S. cities. Using polling data from 2004, this research investigates whether the security breaches of 9/11 in New York City influenced residential preferences in New York State. Our results confirm that perceived risks are greatest downstate but exert little overall net effect on (re)location plans. A stabilizing effect may be evident where preferences are reinforced among upstate residents who respond to downstate risk by strengthening “stay put” attitudes. An inspection of real‐estate data in the northern reaches of the New York Metropolitan Area suggests a risk‐averse hedging strategy—city residents relocating in stages by acquiring open land and the option to build and move should renewed terrorist attacks occur.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviewed in this article:
The People in the Playground . Iona Opie. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993, 240 pages. Cloth, $60.00.
Gender Play . Barrie Thorne. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1993, 237 pages. Cloth, $30.00; paper, $12.95.
Ideal Citizens: The Legacy of the Civil Rights Movement . James Max Fendrich. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1993, 202 pages. Cloth, $49.50; paper, $16.95.
The Shadow of Dionysus: A Contribution to the Sociology of the Orgy . Michel Maffesoli. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993, 167 pages. Cloth, $49.50; paper, $16.50.
Jones's Minimal: Low-Wage Labor in the United States . David Griffith. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993, xvii, 266 pages. Cloth, $44.50; paper, $14.95.
The Politics of Pensions: A Comparative Analysis of Britain, Canada, and the United States, 1880–1940 . Ann Shola Orloff. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1993, 381 pages. Cloth, $60.00; paper, $19.95.
Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor in Modern France . Robert A. Nye. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993, 316 pages.
Adolescence: An Anthropological Inquiry . Alice Schlegel and Herbert Barry III. New York: Free Press, 1991, 263 pages. Cloth, $29.95.