In this paper structures that actively use bending as a self-forming process are reviewed. By bringing together important material developments and various historical as well as recently built ...samples of such structures, the aim is to show coherences in their design approach, structural systems and behaviour. Different approaches to bending-active structures are defined and described. By making this work accessible and categorising it, this paper aims to contribute to an emerging development.
A differentiation of such structures is suggested based on their design approaches. Three such approaches are differentiated: the behaviour based approach, the geometry based approach and current research that seeks to integrate the two. In this paper the nature of these approaches and some important project samples are discussed.
Monitoring health inequality is a practice that fosters accountability and continuous improvement within health systems. The cycle of health inequality monitoring helps to identify and track health ...differences between subgroups providing evidence and feedback to strengthen equity-oriented policies programmes and practices. Through inequality monitoring and the use of disaggregated data countries gain insight into how health is distributed in the population looking beyond what is indicated by national averages. Data about health inequalities underlie health interventions that aim to reach vulnerable populations. Furthermore they constitute an evidence base to inform and promote equity-oriented health initiatives including the movement towards equitable universal health coverage. _x000D__x000D_ _x000D__x000D_ This Handbook is a user-friendly resource developed to help countries establish and strengthen health inequality monitoring practices. The handbook elaborates on the steps of health inequality monitoring including selecting relevant health indicators and equity stratifiers obtaining data analysing data reporting results and implementing changes. Throughout the handbook examples from low- and middle-income countries are presented to illustrate how concepts are relevant and applied in real-world situations; informative text boxes provide the context to better understand the complexities of the subject. The final section of the handbook presents an expanded example of national-level health inequality monitoring of reproductive maternal and child health. _x000D__x000D_.
Unequal Treatment Smedley, Brian D; Stith, Adrienne Y; Care, Committee on Understanding and Eliminating Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health
11/2002
eBook
Open access
Racial and ethnic disparities in health care are known to reflect access to care and other issues that arise from differing socioeconomic conditions. There is, however, increasing evidence that even ...after such differences are accounted for, race and ethnicity remain significant predictors of the quality of health care received.
In Unequal Treatment , a panel of experts documents this evidence and explores how persons of color experience the health care environment. The book examines how disparities in treatment may arise in health care systems and looks at aspects of the clinical encounter that may contribute to such disparities. Patients' and providers' attitudes, expectations, and behavior are analyzed.
How to intervene? Unequal Treatment offers recommendations for improvements in medical care financing, allocation of care, availability of language translation, community-based care, and other arenas. The committee highlights the potential of cross-cultural education to improve provider-patient communication and offers a detailed look at how to integrate cross-cultural learning within the health professions. The book concludes with recommendations for data collection and research initiatives. Unequal Treatment will be vitally important to health care policymakers, administrators, providers, educators, and students as well as advocates for people of color.
In this book by the award-winning author of Just Healthcare, Norman Daniels develops a comprehensive theory of justice for health that answers three key questions: what is the special moral ...importance of health? When are health inequalities unjust? How can we meet health needs fairly when we cannot meet them all? Daniels' theory has implications for national and global health policy: can we meet health needs fairly in ageing societies? Or protect health in the workplace while respecting individual liberty? Or meet professional obligations and obligations of justice without conflict? When is an effort to reduce health disparities, or to set priorities in realising a human right to health, fair? What do richer, healthier societies owe poorer, sicker societies? Just Health: Meeting Health Needs Fairly explores the many ways that social justice is good for the health of populations in developed and developing countries.
Half the world's people currently live in rural and remote areas. The problem is that most health workers live and work in cities. This imbalance is common to almost all countries and poses a major ...challenge to the nationwide provision of health services. Its impact, however, is most severe in low income countries. There are two reasons for this. One is that many of these countries already suffer from acute shortages of health workers - in all areas. The other is that the proportion of the population living in rural regions tends to be greater in poorer countries than in rich ones. The World Health Organization (WHO) has therefore drawn up a comprehensive set of strategies to help countries encourage health workers to live and work in remote and rural areas. These include refining the ways students are selected and educated, as well as creating better working and living conditions. The first step has been to establish what works, through a year-long process that has involved a wide range of experts from all regions of the world. The second is to share the results with those who need them, via the guidelines contained in this document. The third will be to implement them, and to monitor and evaluate progress, and - critically - to act on the findings of that monitoring and evaluation. The guidelines are a practical tool that all countries can use. As such, they complement the WHO Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel, adopted by the Sixty-third World Health Assembly in May 2010. The Code offers a framework to manage international migration over the medium to longer term. The guidelines are a tool that can be used straight away to address one of the first triggers to internal and international migration - dissatisfaction with living and working conditions in rural areas. Together, the code of practice and
these new guidelines provide countries with instruments to improve workforce distribution and enhance health services. Doing so will address a long-standing problem, contribute to more equitable access to health care, and boost prospects for improving maternal and child health and combating diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.
Visualizations are now widely used across disciplines to understand and communicate data. The benefit of visualizations lies in leveraging our natural visual perception. However, the sole dependency ...on vision can produce unintended discrimination against people with visual impairments. While the visualization field has seen enormous growth in recent years, supporting people with disabilities is much less explored. In this work, we examine approaches to support this marginalized user group, focusing on visual disabilities. We collected and analyzed papers published for the last 20 years on visualization accessibility. We mapped a design space for accessible visualization that includes seven dimensions: user group, literacy task, chart type, interaction, information granularity, sensory modality, assistive technology. We described the current knowledge gap in light of the latest advances in visualization and presented a preliminary accessibility model by synthesizing findings from existing research. Finally, we reflected on the dimensions and discussed opportunities and challenges for future research.
•To-bus accessibility and by-bus accessibility significantly affect housing prices in the bus-dependent city.•Spatial heterogeneity exists in the price effects of bus accessibility.•Bus frequency ...exerts a larger price effect in the peripheral area than in the central.
Accessibility to transit facilities is perceived to affect property prices. However, accessibility by transit has rarely elicited adequate scholarly attention in property price analyses. Additionally, previous studies on how transit accessibility affects property prices mainly focused on rail and bus rapid transit systems, while conventional bus transit, which is very popular in many contexts, has seldom been investigated. Moreover, whether there is spatial heterogeneity in the price (or capitalization) effects of conventional bus accessibility remains to be explored. To fill these gaps, this study aims to investigate the role of accessibility to and by bus in determining housing prices in a bus-dependent city where urban transit service is offered mainly by a bus system rather than other transit systems. Using a database of 4966 condominium units in Xiamen, China, this study develops a battery of spatial econometric models to estimate global and local relationships between to-bus and by-bus accessibility and housing prices. The findings are as below: (1) to-bus accessibility (measured by the number of nearby bus stops) is positively associated with nearby housing prices; (2) by-bus accessibility (measured by travel time to city centers by bus and bus frequency) significantly affects nearby housing prices; (3) spatial heterogeneity exists in the price effects of bus accessibility; and (4) bus frequency exerts a larger price effect in the peripheral area than in the central. Finally, practical and policy implications are discussed.
The diffusion of super(125)I super(-) in compacted Gaomiaozi (GMZ) bentonite was investigated by capillary in-diffusion method. Apparent and effective diffusion coefficients and accessible porosity ...of iodide in GMZ bentonite were obtained, and the effect of ionic strength on diffusion parameters was studied. The apparent diffusion coefficients of iodide in compacted GMZ bentonite are in the range of 1.0-6.0 x 10 super(-10) m super(2) s super(-1) under the conditions of dry bulk density 1,500 kg m super(-3) and temperature 298 K, and increase with increasing ionic strength. This effect was explained through the analysis of microscopic structure of compacted bentonite. The iodide can only diffuse in unbound interparticle pore solution of compacted bentonite. The apparent diffusion coefficient is a function of accessible porosity which is decided by the thickness of diffusion double layer, and the thickness is in turn controlled by ionic strength.
Reimagining global health Farmer, Paul; Kleinman, Arthur; Kim, Jim ...
2013., 20130918, 2013, 2013-09-07, Volume:
26
eBook
Bringing together the experience, perspective and expertise of Paul Farmer, Jim Yong Kim, and Arthur Kleinman, Reimagining Global Health provides an original, compelling introduction to the field of ...global health. Drawn from a Harvard course developed by their student Matthew Basilico, this work provides an accessible and engaging framework for the study of global health. Insisting on an approach that is historically deep and geographically broad, the authors underline the importance of a transdisciplinary approach, and offer a highly readable distillation of several historical and ethnographic perspectives of contemporary global health problems. The case studies presented throughout Reimagining Global Health bring together ethnographic, theoretical, and historical perspectives into a wholly new and exciting investigation of global health. The interdisciplinary approach outlined in this text should prove useful not only in schools of public health, nursing, and medicine, but also in undergraduate and graduate classes in anthropology, sociology, political economy, and history, among others.
