Coalition for a Healthier Community: Lessons learned and implications for future work

The Coalition for a Healthier Community (CHC) initiative was implemented to improve the health and well-being of women and girls. Underpinning CHC is a gender-based focus that uses a network of community partners working collaboratively to generate relevant behavior change and improved health outcomes. Ten programs are trying to determine whether gender-focused system approaches are cost-effective ways to address health disparities in women and girls. Programs implemented through coalitions made up of academic institutions, public health departments, community-based organizations, and local, regional, and national organizations, are addressing health issues such as domestic violence, cardiovascular disease prevention, physical activity, and healthy eating. Although these programs are ongoing, they have made significant progress. Key factors contributing to their early success include a comprehensive needs assessment, robust coalitions, the diversity of populations targeted, programs based on findings of the needs assessments, evaluations taking into consideration the effect of gender, and strong academic–community partnerships. A noteworthy impact of these programs has been their ability to shape and impact public, social, and health policies at the state and local levels. However, there have been challenges associated with the implementation of such a complex program. Lessons learned are discussed in this paper.     

An approximation of logarithmic functions in the regression setting

We consider a method of moments approach for dealing with censoring at zero for data expressed in levels when researchers would like to take logarithms. A Box–Cox transformation is employed. We explore this approach in the context of linear regression where both dependent and independent variables are censored. We contrast this method to two others, (1) dropping records of data containing censored values and (2) assuming normality for censored observations and the residuals in the model. Across the methods considered, where researchers are interested primarily in the slope parameter, estimation bias is consistently reduced using the method of moments approach.     

民族互嵌社区精准治理的理论向度与实践路径——以贵州省兴义市S街道社区为例

民族互嵌社区是中华民族多元一体格局空间场域延展的实践形态,是对“各民族相互嵌入式的社会结构和社区环境”这一时代命题的现实阐释。现代城市社区功能的集聚和细化为民族互嵌的再造及重释提供了场域空间,由于民族互嵌社区具有公共性、聚合性和互动性的本质特征,从而形成了立体化嵌套结构,催生出精准互嵌理论和实践的“双重愿景”:理论层面,要深刻把握民族互嵌社区精准治理的目标向度、方法向度、内容向度;实践层面,要精准识别民族互嵌社区的场域情境,以智能技术描绘民族互嵌过程的“全景图”和“晴雨表”,通过社区制度体系的精准供给,提升民族互嵌社区精准治理的效能。     

国家权力与城市空间:当代中国城市基层社会治理变革

确立和调整城市治理的空间策略是现代国家的重要任务。改革前中国的单位体制,使国家能够依靠单位实现“单元分隔”式的治理模式。改革以来,这种整齐划一的空间战略无法适应新的城市社会变迁。在城市社区管理体制改革中,出现了三种不同的国家空间战略,即“政党国家”,“行政国家”和“社会化国家”模式。当前城市社区改革的困难和复杂性体现了以上三种空间战略的对立和冲突。     

从杜夫海纳的困境中突围——《审美经验现象学》中的文学作品理论

作为现象学美学经典文本的《审美经验现象学》对审美活动进行了深入的剖析,但令人遗憾的是,杜夫海纳在该书中却回避了对同为艺术作品的文学作品的分析,这种回避源自杜夫海纳对于语言优先性的坚持。如果从语言的陈述性入手,或许可以为文学理论的构建提供一个新的思路。     

创新活动的思维机制

创新思维是具有实践性、整合性和开创性的思维 ,创新的思维发生主要表现在 :发现导致创新的问题 ,想象可能创新的空间 ,洞察推出创新的机遇 ,反馈动态创新的信息。创新思维是在不确定、不完全信息、博弈行为中展开的。创新思维要开发隐含知识和利用软件系统     

Predicting body fat using weight–height indices

While body fat is the most accurate measure of obesity, its measurement requires special equipment that can be costly and time consuming to operate. Attention has thus typically focused on the easier to calculate body mass index (BMI). However, the ability of BMI to accurately identify obesity has been increasingly questioned. This paper focuses attention on whether more general body mass indices are appropriate measures of body fat. Using a data set of body fat, height, and weight measurements, general models are estimated which nest a wide variety of weight–height indices as special cases. In the absence of a race and gender categorisation, the conventional BMI was found to be the appropriate index with which to predict body fat. When such a categorisation was made, however, the BMI was never selected as the appropriate index. In general, predicted female body fat was some 10 kg higher than that of a male of identical build and predicted % body fat was over 11 percentage points higher, but age effects were smaller for females. Considerable racial differences in predicted body fat were found for males, but such differences were less marked for females. The implications of this finding for interpreting recent research on the effect of obesity on health, society, and economic factors are considered.     

Notes on Interval Estimation of Odds Ratio in Matched Pairs under Stratified Sampling

We develop four asymptotic interval estimators and one exact interval estimator for the odds ratio (OR) under stratified random sampling with matched pairs. We apply Monte Carlo simulation to evaluate the performance of these five interval estimators. We note that the conditional score test-based interval estimator with a monotonic transformation and the interval estimator based on the Mantel–Haenszel (MH) type point estimator with the logarithmic transformation are generally preferable to the others considered here. We also note that the conditional exact confidence interval can be of use when the total number of matched pairs with discordant responses is small.