Spiritual development in adolescence: toward enriching theories, research, and professional practice

The author notes that she finds the case for making spiritual development a priority surprisingly compelling-"surprisingly" because although she is an expert on adolescent development, she has not done research or previously written about spiritual development. She suggests that a systems analysis occur first, before engaging frontline youth workers in this realm, to identify the interests of key stakeholder groups and ways to unleash creativity and engagement in each of them. The key will be framing engagement of spiritual development in ways that include rather than divide sectors and groups.     

Alcohol and Road Safety: Some Criticisms of Research and Policy

This paper exposes and criticises some basic assumptions that inform research and policy on alcohol and road safety. Numerous official enquiries on road safety have identified alcohol as the greatest single contributing factor to accidents involving death and injury. Policy-makers have, furthermore, given priority to removing the drink-driver from the road through a combination of enhanced detection and law enforcement procedures. Few researchers or policy-makers, however, have questioned the effectiveness of focussing on the individual driver while the structure of the transport system remains essentially unchanged. They have, in the main, adopted a managerial approach to the problem of road death and injury, and failed to examine the theories on accident causation that underpin current road safety strategy. The paper outlines a road safety strategy which aims to reduce the probability of collisions by redressing the chronic imbalance in the uses of the motor car and other (particularly public) means of transport.     

An Alternative Approach to Dietary Exposure Assessment

The method of dietary exposure assessment currently used by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Dietary Residue Evaluation System (DRES), combines a consumption distribution derived from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) 1977-1978 Nationwide Food Consumption Survey (NFCS) with a single estimate of residue level. The National Academy of Sciences'¹' recommended that EPA incorporate both the distribution of residues and the distribution of consumption into their exposure assessment methodology and proposed using a Monte Carlo approach. This paper presents an alternative method, the Joint Distributional Analysis (JDA), that combines the consumption and residue distributions, without relying on random sampling or fitting theoretical distributions like the Monte Carlo method. This method permits simultaneous analysis of the entire diet, including assessing exposure from residues in different foods.     

Management of medically fragile infants and children

Medically fragile infants and children present a host of challenges. The neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) is initially the mainstay of care for these infants, but it does not meet the critical developmental interactive needs of the child and parents to ensure positive psychosocial bonding. The care of these infants is further complicated by high daily costs (ranging from $1,000 to $2,500 per neonatal intensive care bed day) and lengthy, expensive inpatient stays (typically ranging from one week to five months or more). FHP Utah, a managed care organization, met these challenges through an innovative case management-oriented home care program called "Welcome Home." The program has produced a major impact on the quality and the cost of care for medically fragile infants. This article summarizes the first year's experience in implementing and operating the program.     

Materialist/postmaterialist values and their association with psychological health and health locus of control: A population-based study

This study investigates the association between Ronald Inglehart's materialist/postmaterialist index, a psychological aspect of the material pathway to inequalities in health, and health locus of control and psychological health. The data used is from the 2008 public health survey in Skåne, a cross-sectional postal questionnaire study with 28,198 respondents (response rate 54%), conducted in southern Sweden during the fall of 2008. Psychological health (GHQ12), health locus of control (external vs. internal) and the four-item Inglehart's index were assessed. A Multiple Logistic Regression Model was used to control for age, sex, country of origin, socioeconomic status and interpersonal trust. External locus of control was observed among 32.7% of the respondents. Poor psychological health was found in 18.2% of the women and 13.8% of the men. Materialist values were positively associated with low socioeconomic status, while a reverse association between postmaterialist values and low socioeconomic status was observed. External health locus of control was strongly and positively associated with materialist values among both men and women. Psychological health was not associated with materialist/postmaterialist values. The materialist/postmaterialist index, a psychological aspect of the material pathway to inequalities in health, is associated with health locus of control but not with mental health.     

A Long‐Term Disability Care and Support Scheme for Australia: Opportunities for Disability Sector Reform

Social insurance schemes in Australasia have a long‐standing involvement in leading systemic change as well as funding services for eligible scheme participants. Establishing a long‐term disability care and support scheme for Australia provides opportunities to remove barriers to community access and improve the employment participation of all Australians with a disability, and to increase the use of evidence in policy development and in the delivery of disability supports. Using the examples of successful models in Australia and New Zealand, the authors will propose a model for the development and management of a long‐term disability care and support scheme that enables sector reform in employment participation, barriers to access and participation in all aspects of community life, and funding of disability research to benefit all Australians with a disability.