Not without them: realising the sustainable development goals for women migrant workers

ABSTRACT

Drawing on multiple data sources, including key informant interviews, participant observation and archival study, this paper provides an analysis of the civil society’s role in foregrounding the agenda of women migrants in migration and development (M&D) fora, and reflects on its role in realising the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Yet, the dominant narrative within the state-led Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) tends to be a gender-blind migration for development approach, which emphasises national-level economic growth at the centre of migration processes, while negating the subjectivities of women migrants and neglecting their contributions to the global economy; this approach diverts attention to a narrow focus on macro-economic development through forms of financial remittances. Based on an examination of the GFMD as a site for gender mainstreaming M&D, we reflect on lessons learned as we look forward to achieving the SDGs. We argue that while the SDGs include some significant provisions for women in migration, only critical civil society advocacy and activism networked within grassroots organisations can address the structural changes necessary (such as a re-articulation of the care economy to value economic contributions of women’s reproductive work) to transform and improve the lived realities of women in migration and realise the SDGs in a manner that fosters their empowerment.     

Relating supply performance to aircraft availability

This paper describes how the effectiveness of the supply of vital repairable items for an aircraft or weapon system can be measured in terms of the expected number of aircraft grounded because of supply shortages. The properties of this measure are compared with the three alternative methods of assessing supply performance, none of which are directly aircraft or weapon system related. The present applicability of this measure to various situations at RAF Squadron and station level are discussed, together with possible future areas of application.     

Demographic scenarios by age,sex and education corresponding to the SSP narratives

In this paper, we translate the five narratives as defined by the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) research community into five alternative demographic scenarios using projections by age, sex and level of education for 171 countries up to 2100. The scenarios represent a significant step beyond past population scenarios used in the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change context, which considered only population size. The definitions of the medium assumptions about future fertility, mortality, migration and education trends are taken from a major new projections effort by the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital, while the assumptions for all the other scenarios were defined in interactions with other groups in the SSP community. Since a full data base with all country-specific results is available online, this paper can only highlight selected results.     

Are Patients Patient? The Role of Time to Appointment in Patient Flow

The current state of outpatient healthcare delivery is characterized by capacity shortages and long waits for appointments, yet a substantial fraction of valuable doctors’ capacity is wasted due to no‐shows. In this study, we examine the effect of wait to appointment on patient flow, specifically on a patient's decision to schedule an appointment and to subsequently arrive to it. These two decisions may be dependent, as appointments are more likely to be scheduled by patients who are more patient and are thereby more likely to show up. To estimate the effect of wait on these two decisions, we introduce the willingness to wait (WTW), an unobservable variable that affects both bookings and arrivals for appointments. Using data from a large healthcare system, we estimate WTW with a state‐of‐the‐art non‐parametric method. The WTW, in turn, allows us to estimate the effect of wait on no‐shows. We observe that the effect of increased wait on the likelihood of no‐shows is disproportionately greater among patients with low WTW. Thus, although reducing the wait to an appointment will enable a provider to capture more patient bookings, the effects of wait time on capacity utilization can be non‐monotone. Our counterfactual analysis suggests that increasing wait times can sometimes be beneficial for reducing no‐shows.     

Benefits of Surgical Smoothing and Spare Capacity: An Econometric Analysis of Patient Flow

In this study, we examine the hospital's ability to admit patients from its emergency department. From a medical perspective, the number of patients being admitted should depend solely on the patients’ clinical conditions. Using a large‐scale econometric study that includes detailed operational and clinical data on all cardiac patient encounters from a set of 128 hospitals over a period of four years, we show that this is not the case. In particular, we find that independent of their medical condition, many emergency patients are denied hospital admission because of a lack of inpatient beds. Our analysis suggests that having one more inpatient bed at the start of a day can increase the likelihood of an emergency room patient admission by around 3% on average. We examine two policies – active discharge and demand smoothing – that can help hospitals improve patient access. We find that some hospitals actively discharge inpatients when beds become scarce; hospitals that follow such an active discharge protocol are, on average, able to admit more patients. We also investigate to what extent the hospital's ability to smooth its surgical schedule impacts hospital admissions. Hospitals tend to schedule their elective patients early in the week (Mondays and Tuesdays), and discharge them by the weekend in order to minimize weekend staffing, effectively maximizing bed occupancy during the middle of the week. This “weekend effect” artificially induces variability, and reduces effective system capacity. We find that by scheduling patients more uniformly over the week, hospitals can dramatically increase patient access, obviating the need for active discharges or additional capacity investment. Our analysis quantifies these effects, and can help hospitals make effective capacity management decisions in order to improve patient flow.     

Teamwork among midwives during neonatal resuscitation at a maternity hospital in Nepal

Problem

The ability of health care providers to work together is essential for favourable outcomes in neonatal resuscitation, but perceptions of such teamwork have rarely been studied in low-income settings.

Death by disconnection: the missing public health voice in newspaper coverage of a fuel poverty-related death

Determinants of population health such as fuel poverty (inability to afford adequate household temperatures) are difficult to highlight in the media. In this paper we analyse newspaper reports of the death of a Pacific migrant, Mrs Muliaga, who could not afford her electricity bill, and reflect on using individual cases to highlight the importance of the social determinants of health, such as fuel poverty. We undertook a thematic analysis of 368 articles published in major New Zealand newspapers. Four key themes were identified: personal tragedy, conflicting evidence, institutionalised racism, and responsibility. The on-going focus on the medical status of Mrs Muliaga continued the media trend of highlighting personal behaviours as the root cause of health problems in New Zealand, and justified a medically focused policy response. We argue that public health advocates should consider using media advocacy to make fuel poverty a priority on the policy agenda.