Is it our turn to be CEO yet?

Physician executives continue to have ambitions for the health care CEO role, despite the difficult economic times. And though few have yet been chosen for the position, the expectation is that this will change markedly in the next five to seven years. Today, physician executives have legitimate, relevant professional experiences that directly qualify them for CEO roles in health initiatives. And no executive is more qualified to deal with medical care management issues than the physician executive. Key elements of preparedness are: Executive thinking, bundling projects, and learning to manage managers. The opportunities will be open to those who are ready to take them on.     

The right paperwork for the right audiences

Physician executives need to exercise considerable discretion, care, and judgment when they write about their professional accomplishments in the form of a résumé or curriculum vitae (CV). This paperwork is intensely personal. It must be a true reflection of you, your achievements and goals. Others read it to learn more about you. Those you fail to convince, you're likely to lose--along with your chance to meet and charm them in a personal interview. A physician executive's thoughtfully prepared résumé and CV can result in him or her being offered terrific opportunities for career growth. The paperwork is a self-constructed gateway through which you can properly approach hiring organizations--and how it reads is totally under your control. Some suggestions to consider in developing your résumé or CV are: be succinct; don't overstate; use both documents; do your homework; and be ready for the next steps.     

School Based Vision Centers: striving to optimize learning

As the average age of the Canadian population continues to increase, and providing care at home to frail older adults becomes ever more prevalent, support for family and friend caregivers remains a key social policy issue. Economic support is an important consideration given the impact of caregiving on labour force participation. Yet the caregiving/paid work relationship is not always straightforward. While caregiving often restricts employment, limited attachment to employment may also influence the decision to provide care. Isabel's story, collected as part of a study of sibling views of fairness in sharing parent care as well as parent assets, provides a case study in how siblings give different priority to care work versus career work and what support needs arise including those related to sibling conflict over differing priorities. Isabel claims she sacrificed her career to care for her ailing mother while her siblings argue that through caregiving, Isabel was sheltered from the paid workforce.     

Family Commitments under Negotiation: Dual Carers in Finland and Italy

This paper makes a comparison between Finnish and Italian working dual carers. Dual carers have responsibilities simultaneously at two different fronts. The selected Finnish and Italian samples of carers are doing similar care work in different settings. They negotiate care with a variety of actors and under differing circumstances. A care life story has been constructed for each participant. Then these care life stories have been compared with each other, especially at points where the need for negotiation has been evident, at life's various turning points. There are many individual similarities in negotiations performed in Finland and in Italy. However, their divergent contexts create considerable variation.     

Social capital as social relations: the contribution of normative structures

This paper presents a framework for social capital that highlights the normative structures through which it is manifested. The primary focus is on the ways that norms structure the relationships in which social capital is embedded. To this end, we introduce four types of normative structures which condition social capital: market, bureaucratic, associative, and communal. A field site in Japan is used to illustrate how different aspects of social capital interact. This case analysis also serves to make an important distinction between the availability and use of social capital. The central arguments are that 1) social capital is organized in different ways by the normative structures in which it is embedded; 2) there are important interactions between these different aspects of social capital that are often overlooked by simpler frameworks; 3) a useful distinction can be made between available social capital and used social capital; 4) access to social capital can be used to analyze power relations; and 5) distinguishing different aspects of social capital makes areas visible that are overlooked by other understandings of social capital. We conclude by identifying the utility of our perspective for informing public policy and guiding future research.     

Analyzing attrition in a community-based literacy program

Attrition presents a challenge for research, especially when it affects groups differentially. The present study used the strategy proposed by Cook and Campbell (1979) to investigate attrition in a community-based literacy program. The relationship of attrition to person-centered and program-centered variables, and the interactions between person-centered and program-centered variables were examined in 287 Head Start families. Thus, data from this program were used to illustrate methods for examining attrition and determine its effects. This examination revealed differences among the intervention groups in the pattern of attrition. There were interactions between intervention program-centered characteristics and person-centered characteristics of the participants that could affect the validity of the study and limit the generalizability of the results. Suggestions for dealing with these problems and preventing attrition are discussed.     

Motives for and barriers to physical activity among older adults with mobility limitations

The purpose of this study was to investigate what older adults with severe, moderate, or no mobility limitation consider motives for and barriers to engaging in physical exercise. Community-dwelling adults (N=645) age 75-81 years completed a questionnaire about their motives for and barriers to physical exercise and answered interview questions on mobility limitation. Those with severely limited mobility more often reported poor health, fear and negative experiences, lack of company, and an unsuitable environment as barriers to exercise than did those with no mobility limitation. They also accentuated disease management as a motive for exercise, whereas those with no or moderate mobility limitation emphasized health promotion and positive experiences related to exercise. Information about differences in motives for and barriers to exercise among people with and without mobility limitation helps tailor support systems that support engagement in physical activity among older adults.