Retrospective information on health status and its application for population health measures

Healthy life expectancies are almost always calculated by using health data from cross-sectional surveys. This type of calculation is done partly because data from longitudinal surveys are not always available, and when they are available, they are collected at intervals that are longer than one year. In such cases, collecting health information retrospectively for the years skipped by the survey is useful. The main purpose of this paper is to show how retrospective health information can be used to estimate life expectancies in different health states. Healthy life expectancies are estimated with and without using data on retrospective health information, and the corresponding estimates are compared. The two sets of estimates are similar. We conclude that retrospectively assessed health information based on a one-year recall period can be used to estimate years of life in various health states and that estimates based on such information will closely approximate estimates based on concurrent health information.     

Coparenting and nonresident fathers’ involvement with young children after a nonmarital birth

We use data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study to investigate the association between coparenting quality and nonresident fathers' involvement with children over the first five years after a nonmarital birth. We find that about one year after a nonmarital birth, 48% of fathers are living away from their child, rising to 56% and then to 63% at three and five years, respectively Using structural equation models to estimate cross-lagged effects, we find that positive coparenting is a strong predictor of nonresident fathers' future involvement, whereas fathers' involvement is only a weak (but significant) predictor of future coparenting quality. The positive effect of coparenting quality on fathers' involvement is robust across several techniques designed to address unobserved heterogeneity and across different strategies for handling missing data. We conclude that parents' ability to work together in rearing their common child across households helps keep nonresident fathers connected to their children and that programs aimed at improving parents' ability to communicate may have benefits for children irrespective of whether the parents' romantic relationship remains intact.     

Health care issues among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) populations in the United States: Introduction

This supplemental issue of the Journal of Homosexuality presents research that explores a variety of health care issues encountered by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) population groups in the United States over the 10-year period from 1993 to 2002. Topics include access to health care, utilization of care, training of medical and mental health providers, and the appropriate preparation of clinical offices and waiting areas. Authors used a variety of community-based public health research methods, including participant and provider surveys and retrospective chart reviews of patients, to develop this body of research, providing a recent-historical perspective on the complex health care and health-related needs of sexual and gender minorities. Particularly for transgender and intersex populations, the state of research describing their health care needs is in its infancy, and much remains to be done to design effective medical and mental health programs and interventions.     

Testing the proportional odds model for interval-censored data

This paper discusses the goodness-of-fit test for the proportional odds model for K-sample interval-censored failure time data, which frequently occur in, for example, periodic follow-up survival studies. The proportional odds model has a feature that allows the ratio of two hazard functions to be monotonic and converge to one and provides an important tool for the modeling of survival data. To test the model, a procedure is proposed, which is a generalization of the method given in Dauxois and Kirmani [Dauxois JY, Kirmani SNUA (2003) Biometrika 90:913–922]. The asymptotic distribution of the procedure is established and its properties are evaluated by simulation studies     

Management competencies required in ambulatory care settings

A study was conducted to identify the most important competencies physician executives in medical groups and other ambulatory settings will need to have in the next five years. The specific job skills, knowledge, and abilities (SKA) that physician executives will need to acquire these competencies were also explored. The Delphi techniques were used to analyze responses from two surveys from members of the American College of Medical Practice Executives. The most important competencies were grouped into 13 management domains, each with specific SKAs. "Managing health care resources to create quality and value" and "fundamentals of business and finance" were rated as the most important competencies. The most frequently rated SKA was the "ability to build and maintain credibility and trust."     

Hypothesis Testing of Hazard Ratio Parameters in Marginal Models for Multivariate Failure Time Data

Marginal hazard models for multivariate failure time data have been studied extensively in recent literature. However, standard hypothesis test statistics based on the likelihood method are not exactly appropriate for this kind of model. In this paper, extensions of the three commonly used likelihood hypothesis test statistics are discussed. Generalized Wald, generalized score and generalized likelihood ratio tests for hazard ratio parameters in a marginal hazard model for multivariate failure time data are proposed and their asymptotic distributions examined. The finite sample properties of these statistics are studied through simulations. The proposed method is applied to data from Busselton Population Health Surveys.     

Aalen's Linear Model for Sampled Risk Set Data: A Large Sample Study

Borgan and Langholz (1997) describe a method for estimating the parameter functions in Aalen's linear hazard regression model from sampled risk set data. Using a counting process formulation and the martingale central limit theorem, we provide a study of the asymptotic distributional properties of the estimator. The results are applied to study the efficiencies of the nested case-control and counter-matched designs relative to a full cohort analysis.     

中国进入国际市场带来的机会和风险

1978年12月在十一届三中全会上作出的重大决策标志着中国进入了一个新的发展阶段。对这个决策应当如何来理解?中国以往的三十多年来(即从1949年10月1日全国解放以后)从事了一个空前规模的建设工作。中国在1949年这场革命主要目的是要改变社会,国家的生产资料所有制,从而使生产关系与生产力作了相应的调整。虽然中国的学者与政治家对中国革命和社会改革的发展有明显的阶段性并无异议。但对如何具体划分阶段则意见很不一致。因为解放三十年来,每个阶段都有激烈的政治运动,有人就建议用这些政治运动来作为区分阶     

《中国的文学理论》绪论

为了清楚阐述本书所讨论的对象、性质和范围,首先,我认为应该对各种不同种类的文学研究加以确切的区别。一般认为,文学的研究可以划分为两个主要的分支——文学史和文学批评——虽然有时也可分为三类:文学理论、文学批评和文学史。这后一种分类中的文学批评,实际上是指实用批评。尽管这一说法还未得到普遍的承认,许多作家还在继续以“文学批评”这一术语来概括理论探讨和实用批评。我却认为应该保持二者的区别,而把它们都看作是文学批评的再划分。然后,就理论性批评来说,在文学理论(the—     

如何加快浏览器的速度

要加快速度,方法是很多的,现在介绍给大家的只是通过设置浏览器本身来达到加快速度的目的,就给大家带来最流行的两种浏览器Netscape Navigator和MicrosoftInternet Explorer吧,看看是怎样来提高WWW浏览速度的? 一个最简单、最直接的方法就是使用“纯文本方式”。在WWW中您所查找的页面多数是附有图像的。虽然图像看上去很美观,但它们需要花去不少的传输时间。如果不是真正需要,可以把图像关闭,从而不再因下载它们而浪费时间。这样虽然只能看到文字性的东西,但可使浏览速度加快很多。在原本应看到