Reviewing child deaths—learning from the American experience

Current systems for investigating child deaths in England, Wales and Northern Ireland have come under intense scrutiny in recent years and questions have been raised about the accuracy of child death investigations and resulting statistics. Research has highlighted the ways in which multidisciplinary input can contribute to investigative and review processes, a perspective which is further supported by recent UK policy developments. The experience of creating multidisciplinary child death review teams (CDRTs) in America highlights the potential benefits the introduction of a similar system might have. These benefits include improved multi‐agency working and communication, more effective identification of suspicious cases, a decrease in inadequate death certification and a broader and more in‐depth understanding of the causes of child deaths through the systematic collection and analysis of data. While a lack of funding, regional coordination and evaluation limit the impact of American CDRTs, the positive aspects of this process make it worthwhile, and timely, to consider how such a model might fit within our own context. Current policy developments such as the Home Office review of coroner services, the Children Bill and related Department for Education and Skills (DfES) work on developing screening groups demonstrate that strides have been made in respect of introducing a multidisciplinary process. Similarly, the development of local protocols for the investigation and[sol ]or review of child deaths in England, Wales and Northern Ireland highlights an increased focus on multidisciplinary processes. However, key issues from the American experience, such as the remit of CDRTs[sol ]screening panels, the need for national coordination and the importance of rigorous evaluation, can inform the development of a similar process in the UK. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Equitable agendas: agendas ensuring identical sincere and sophisticated voting decisions

 Sophisticated voting under amendment procedure using majority rule usually results in a decision that is distinct from the decision obtained through sincere voting. In this article it is shown that the underlying majority tournament (determined by the voters’ preferences) admits an agenda so that the sincere and sophisticated decisions are identical if and only if the initial strong component of the tournament is not a 3-cycle. As a result, most tournaments, in an asymptotic sense, admit an agenda so that the sincere and sophisticated decisions are identical. Received: 31 August 1993/Accepted: 28 August 1995     

Banks That Don't Lend? Unlocking Credit to Spur Growth in Developing Countries

This article explores the level of liquidity within the banking systems of developing countries and the potential impact on rates of economic growth from prudently redirecting a portion of liquid assets into credit to the private sector. It finds that banks in developing countries are extremely liquid and growth rates per capita might increase substantially in response to heightened lending to the private sector. It then summarises the primary obstacles to this and presents several policy reforms that can augment the level of credit to the private sector in developing countries.     

Comparing Offers and Take‐ups of Employee Health Insurance across Race,Gender, and Decade*

How often do U.S. employees receive health insurance offers from employers? When offered, how often do they take up their employer‐based health insurance? This article uses the 1992 and 2002 waves of the National Study of the Changing Workforce (NSCW) to investigate changes in access to (offers) and employees electing to accept, take, or purchase their employers’ health insurance plans (take‐ups) among wage and salaried workers. Although much research has studied employee health benefits, little has examined the intersection of gender and race regarding both offers and take‐ups of such benefits. Logistic regression results indicate that offers and take‐ups of personal health benefits declined from 1992 to 2002, net of salient controls. Further analyses demonstrate that these declines did not affect all workers identically. Offers declined somewhat for both women and men among whites and African Americans, but declined more among Hispanic women and men. Among other ethnoracial groups, offers declined the most among men, but increased among comparable women. Take‐ups declined among white men and Hispanic workers. However, white and African American women's take‐ups did not change and among African American men take‐ups increased. We discuss the need to examine gender and race simultaneously and urge researchers to more closely examine changes in health benefit offers and take‐ups.     

On probability matching priors

First‐order probability matching priors are priors for which Bayesian and frequentist inference, in the form of posterior quantiles, or confidence intervals, agree to a second order of approximation. The authors show that the matching priors developed by Peers (1965) and Tibshirani (1989) are readily and uniquely implemented in a third‐order approximation to the posterior marginal density. The authors further show how strong orthogonality of parameters simplifies the arguments. Several examples illustrate their results.     

When a family member has an intellectual handicap

Oral histories of ten close relatives of people over the age of 50 defined as intellectually handicapped have been collected as part of the New Zealand Ageing and Intellectual Handicap study. Many of the individuals with intellectual handicap were institutionalized from an early age; some had little or no contact with family members for a very long time; others lived continuously at home. The qualitative data record over 50 years' experience of having a family member with intellectual handicap, from early childhood through to middle or old age, and outline concerns about deinstitutionalisation and the future. It is concluded that families cannot go it alone and that the full participation of people with disabilities in community life and culture depends on well-resourced public policies and programmes of inclusion.