Health Policy Commons^™

Finger Lickin’ Good: An Analytical Investigation Into The Urban Diet, Jennifer T.R. Tomlinson

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

In this analysis, the origins, customs and implications of fast-food culture will be explored with important focus on the customs of fast-food urban eating. Research indicates that lower-income urban areas are more likely to consume fast-food. The high consumption of fast-food subsequently results in the development of social and economical implications, which include health implications, economic dilemmas, a disconnection between consumers and their consumption and issues of social classification. This analysis also explores the customs of fast-food culture of Pine Hills, Florida with added emphasis on Pine Hills’ cultural uniqueness.

Using The Commons To Facilitate Health Communication, Anna Liebzeit, Karen Adams, Mat Jakobi

Aboriginal Policy Research Consortium International (APRCi)

No abstract provided.

Avoiding Tough Policy Choices In An Influenza Pandemic: The Role Of Kettl's Rocket Science Model In Public Health, Danny Lambert

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The security and social inequality approaches to public health present distinct answers to policy objectives relative to a pandemic. However, each approach leaves us with tough choices between the most valued objectives. I demonstrate how the networked approach, which Kettl's Rocket Science Model (RSM) exemplifies, does not leave us with such choices. Furthermore, I connect the epidemiological concepts public health practitioners apply toward communicable disease pandemics to RSM concepts. Finally, drawing on the disease parameters of a worst-case scenario influenza pandemic, I demonstrate how the networked approach helps public health practitioners expand capacity such that tough choices are unnecessary.

Understanding School Travel: How Residential Location Choice And The Built Environment Affect Trips To School, Yizhao Yang, Marc Schlossberg, Robert Parker, Bethany Johnson

TREC Final Reports

This project investigates issues related to parents’ decisions about children’s school transportation. This has become an important area of research due to the growing concerns that increased reliance on private automobile in school travel has led to adverse health impacts on children and negative impacts on environment. This study examines school transportation in the context of where families live and how families make decisions about school travel in the process of choosing their residence.

Using a middle-sized school district in Oregon State, we conducted a 5500-household survey and a number of interviews and focus groups. The study shows that parents …

Strengthening Security And Oversight At Biological Research Laboratories, Michael Greenberger

Michael Greenberger

With the advent of the Anthrax attacks in the fall of 2001, this Nation has been confronted with a serious policy conundrum. On the one hand, we have strengthened programs that encourage the use of our best scientific resources to develop countermeasures to the weaponization of highly dangerous biopathogens. On the other hand, research on those countermeasures requires the use of the very biopathogens we seek to defeat. There have been many mishaps in the handling of those pathogens, which raises the frightening prospect that the research may be as (or more) dangerous than the potential bioterrorist acts themselves. Indeed, …

Strengthening Security And Oversight At Biological Research Laboratories, Michael Greenberger

Congressional Testimony

With the advent of the Anthrax attacks in the fall of 2001, this Nation has been confronted with a serious policy conundrum. On the one hand, we have strengthened programs that encourage the use of our best scientific resources to develop countermeasures to the weaponization of highly dangerous biopathogens. On the other hand, research on those countermeasures requires the use of the very biopathogens we seek to defeat. There have been many mishaps in the handling of those pathogens, which raises the frightening prospect that the research may be as (or more) dangerous than the potential bioterrorist acts themselves. Indeed, …

Worksite Wellness And The 10 Essential Public Health Services, William C. Mcpeck

William C. McPeck

This white paper examines how the 10 Essential Public Health Services being promoted by the CDC relate to worksite wellness.

Evaluating The Healthy States Initiative Policy Forums, Jessica Harmon

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Since 2005, The Council of State Governments (CSG) has participated in a cooperative agreement funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) called the Healthy States Initiative. The initiative promotes public health by providing information resources to state legislators through publications and public health forums. CSG is interested in information about the impact of the public health forums on state legislators. More specifically, they would like to know if the forums have encouraged the participants to produce public health legislation, to support funding for public health projects, and to work closely with colleagues and various groups to improve …

The Influence Of Veterinary Schools On The Veterinary Labor Market, Kyle Bosh

MPA/MPP/MPFM Capstone Projects

Problem Statement:

Does the presence of a veterinary school in a state influence the supply of veterinarians practicing in that state? Citizens and animals in states without a veterinary school are at a disadvantage if the presence of a veterinary school significantly improves public health and access to medical services in those states that have a veterinary school.

Research Strategy:

The unit of analysis in this study is 50 states and the District of Columbia. The study is designed as a cross-sectional analysis of 2006 pet, 2002 livestock, 2006 human, labor, and economic data. The study uses simultaneous equations to …

Public Health Decision Makers’ Informational Needs And Preferences For Receiving Research Evidence, Maureen Dobbins, Susan Jack, Helen Thomas, Anita Kothari

Anita Kothari

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to identify decision-makers’ preferences for the transfer and exchange of research knowledge. This article is focused on how the participants define evidence-based decision-making and their preferences for receiving research evidence to integrate into the decision-making process.

Methods: Semistructured interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of 16 Ontario public health decision-makers from six Ontario public health units in this fundamental qualitative descriptive study. The sample included nine program managers, six directors, and one Medical Officer of Health. Participants were asked to define the term evidence-based decision-making and identify preferred research dissemination strategies. The …

Las Vegas: A Sustainable Urban Environment For Health?, Nancy Menzel

Nevada Journal of Public Health

The rapid growth of Las Vegas has resulted in negative consequences for the health of its residents to a level that threatens the area’s sustainability. This article reviews key indicators of population health in Las Vegas through the framework of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Healthy People in Healthy Places and concludes that public health professionals, citizens, businesses, and political leaders must act now to protect and improve population health.

Ethiopian Language Policy And Health Promotion In Oromia, Begna Dugassa

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

In the time of HIV/AIDS, epidemics for which we have no vaccination or cure, public health is bound entirely to depend on the traditional health education strategies to stop or contain this disease. This reality demands that we travel extra miles and thoroughly employ every health promotion tool at our disposal. The Ottawa Charter for health promotion stressed the need for public policy to create supportive social conditions for health. This necessitates a commitment to enduring social conditions for health and raises topics that have been neglected by the traditional public health scholars. A close examination of the colonial language …

Taking Liberties, Matt Kozusko

English Faculty Publications

The 'place' scholars have assigned to the stage in early modern London is as much a reflection of the procedures of contemporary literary criticism as a reflection of the cultural function of popular drama in the early modern period. Modern critics are often not engaged in re-examining available data, preferring instead to rest on a conjectural paradigm or heuristic that has hardened, over the past couple of decades, into a New Historicist version of 'fact'. Critics have collapsed boundaries and important distinctions in London jurisdiction and geography in the interest of a unified critical narrative that characterizes the theatre as …

Health And Foreign Policy, David P. Fidler, Nick Drager

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Calibrating The Wealth And Health Of Nations: Trade, Health, And Foreign Policy After The Wto's First Decade, David P. Fidler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

One of the most important themes to emerge from the relationship between trade and health in the first ten year's of the WTO's existence is the challenge of achieving policy coherence. This task is a foreign policy challenge for WTO Members, which requires looking at the relationship between trade and health against the backdrop of the making and implementing of foreign policy. Policy coherence has generally become a major concern for foreign policymakers because post-Cold War trends, such as accelerating globalization, seriously challenge traditional foreign policy assumptions, practices, and institutions. Part of this new context for foreign policy involves the …

Health As Foreign Policy: Between Principle And Power, David P. Fidler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

No abstract provided.

Spending Health Care Dollars Wisely: Can Cost-Effectiveness Analysis Help?, Milton C. Weinstein

Center for Policy Research

Are we getting the most health improvement possible for our money. In other words, are all the things that we do in medicine really worth it? That is where cost-effectiveness comes in. As a nation, we have been unwilling, at least publicly, to look explicitly at the value, in terms of improved health outcome, that we get for our health care dollars. With advances in medical technology putting unsustainable pressure on health care costs, our historical reluctance to measure value for health care may have to change. I start this brief by describing cost-effectiveness analysis as a method of determining …

Unhealthy Politics Of Oral Health, Michele Leonardi Darby

Dental Hygiene Faculty Publications

Editorial. Comments that a survey conducted by national advocacy group Oral Health America found that people from the U.S. are underachievers in access to dental hygiene. Measurement of success in oral health care; Proposal to implement dental hygiene practice laws; Shortage of dentists in rural and inner city communities.

Does Chronic Illness Affect The Adequacy Of Health Insurance Coverage?, Kevin T. Stroupe, Eleanor D. Kinney, Thomas J. Kniesner

Center for Policy Research

Although chronically ill individuals need protection against high medical expenses, they often have difficulty obtaining adequate insurance coverage due to medical underwriting practices used to classify and price risks and to define and limit coverage for individuals and groups. Using data from healthy and chronically ill individuals in Indiana, we found that illness decreased the probability of having adequate insurance, particularly among single individuals. Chronic illness decreased the probability of having adequate coverage by about 10 percentage points among all individuals and by about 25 percentage points among single individuals. Pre-existing condition exclusions were a major source of inadequate insurance. …

Introduction, James Jennings

Trotter Review

The Summer 1995 issue of the Trotter Review, "Public Health and Communities of Color: Challenges and Strategies," provides a range of essays and two personal commentaries on facets of public health, race, and ethnicity in urban America. The essays are written by scholars and activists familiar with public health and issues of race, access, and diversity. The first article is the Executive Summary of the Institute of Medicine's national report, Balancing the Scales of Opportunity: Ensuring Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Health Professions. This report focuses on the problem of underrepresentation of Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans in the …

Can The Health Needs Of African American Men Be Met Through Public Health Empowerment Strategies?, Deborah Prothrow-Stith, Eric Whitaker

Trotter Review

Health promotion and disease prevention efforts, which use empowerment strategies and emphasize community control, are essential to overcoming the legacy of medical malfeasance and successfully improving the health status of black males. This discussion depicts the legacy of harm and presents the case for empowerment strategies; it also describes one Boston community-based program example of utilizing an empowerment strategy and concludes with a challenge to all health professionals to become enablers of empowerment rather than obstructions to it.

Quantitative Economic Evaluations Of Hiv-Related Prevention And Treatment Services: A Review, David R. Holtgrave, Ronald O. Valdiserri, Gary A. West

RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002)

Dr. Holtgrave and colleagues at the CDC set forth an extensive taxonomy of HIV prevention and treatment services and review reports of efforts to subject some of those services to formal economic evaluation. They find few services thus far to have been so evaluated, no evaluation to have focused solely upon behavioral outcomes and most economic evaluations to lack formal quantitative analyses.

Risk And Rationality: The Centers For Disease Control And The Regulation Of Hiv-Infected Health Care Workers, Mary Anne Bobinski

Faculty Articles

The publicity surrounding the Bergalis case has created a new and powerful fear for some-the fear of contracting a fatal disease while obtaining medical or dental care. Following Bergalis' congressional testimony, Congress passed a bill requiring states to regulate HIV-infected health care workers (HCWs). Responding to constituents' fears, state legislatures had already been debating a wide range of bills designed to confront the risk of HIV transmission in health care settings. Private actors, such as hospitals and insurers, feared litigation or loss of business if the public perceived them to be ignoring the problem of HIV infection among HCWs. As …