107159 research outputs found
Sort by
Pay secrecy bans and the sharing of salary information among US workers
No full textMany states bar employers from requiring or expecting employees to keep pay secret, and from retaliating against employees who discuss pay. In a nationally representative survey of 2369 US adults in 2021, people living in states with state laws barring pay secrecy reported more supportive attitudes regarding information-sharing and less concern about offending co-workers by asking about salary, but little to no difference in information-sharing behavior, beliefs or accuracy regarding the laws. Men were consistently more supportive of information-sharing than women, but the gender differential did not differ between groups of states. We randomized participants in each set of states to learn the law of their jurisdiction. In states with pay secrecy bans, participants who learned about the law reported significantly greater comfort asking others and intentions to ask others about compensation, compared to those who were not given information about the law
Towards principled adequacy for purpose in choosing evaluation methods
Get PDFMoving beyond gold standard thinking in evaluation methodology requires robust, alternative frameworks for methodological choice and justification. We develop such a framework, which we term ‘Principled Adequacy for Purpose’. We develop this account by considering recent work centring both the role of questions and values for methodological choice. While we argue that both approaches make important improvements over traditional evidence hierarchies, these frameworks by themselves also face significant limitations. We consider that combining these frameworks, while giving greater consideration to the notion of evaluative purpose, affords better guidance for methodological decision-making in evaluation. For this, we draw on recent work on Adequacy for Purpose in model evaluation, to combine these approaches under the ‘Principled Adequacy for Purpose’ umbrella
Community health workers: a comparative assessment of capacities of a global policy approach in selected European health systems
Get PDFBackground Interest in community health workers (CHWs) and the benefits for health systems are growing globally, but research is focused on low- and middle-income countries and high-income Anglo-American countries. Objective This comparative assessment focuses on community health systems and health and care workers as advocates and boundary spanners, aiming to connect global evidence to high-income European countries and assessing the capacities for transformative change. Methods A qualitative comparative approach and case study design were chosen, aligning global expertise of the CHW pioneers, Brazil and South Africa, and selected European countries: Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania, UK/England. Case studies were collected in April/May 2025, drawing on country experts and secondary sources; thematic analysis was performed following an explorative interactive consensus-based procedure. Results European countries create diverse occupational pathways into health systems that move beyond primary healthcare, clinical tasks, and CHWs as defined globally. Promising capacities emerge if occupational programs are interconnected with health system reform, community-based social and care services, the establishment of a regulated multi-professional community-centred group, and strengthening of public health and social support services. No country uses these capacities effectively. Conclusions Community-centred health and care workers need greater attention in Europe to drive health system transformations and global policy learning
On Banach subalgebras of the Dirichlet Hardy algebra ℋ ∞ consisting of lacunary Dirichlet series
Get PDF“Challenging but worth it!” The purpose of participatory research in urban health, an evaluation and derived framework
Get PDFParticipatory approaches are becoming paramount to harness the relationship between researchers, government, industry, and civil society to inform programs and policies. However, variability in implementation and limited standardized reporting hinder the systematic evaluation of their effectiveness. This study characterizes participatory methodologies in urban health research and proposes a framework for evaluating and reporting such approaches. Using an explanatory sequential design, this study evaluated 20 participatory pilot studies from the Urban Health Cluster (Horizon 2020 European Commission Programme), combining survey data and semi-structured interviews with project leads. The analysis identified four primary purposes for participatory methods: to assess health-environment correlations; raise awareness; co-create interventions; and assess health-related effects. Case studies exemplify each of these purposes. Findings informed a “purpose framework” nested within a theory-of-change model, which clarifies the rationale behind participatory approaches and maps their processes and intended impacts. The framework includes indicators for purpose, stakeholder involvement, participation mechanisms, facilitators, challenges, expected outcomes, and evaluation strategies, reported across all 20 projects. Public authorities (90 %) and civil society (85 %) are the most frequently engaged stakeholders, typically involved during project identification and deployment. Engagement was facilitated by shared motivation to address local needs, while long-term commitment posed challenges. Our results highlight the limited use of theory-of-change models in current practice and the value of structured frameworks for enhancing the reproducibility and transformative impact of participatory urban health research. The proposed framework can help align participatory methods with a theory of change and foster more effective urban health transformations
Grassroots platforms with atomic transactions: social graphs, cryptocurrencies, and democratic federations
Get PDFGrassroots platforms aim to offer an egalitarian alternative to global platforms — centralized/autocratic (Facebook etc.) and decentralized/plutocratic (Bitcoin etc.) alike. Whereas global platforms can have only a single instance—one Facebook, one Bitcoin—grassroots platforms can have multiple instances that emerge and operate independently of each other and of any global resource except the network, and can interoperate and coalesce into ever-larger instances once interconnected, potentially (but not necessarily) forming a single instance. Key grassroots platforms include grassroots social graphs, grassroots social networks, grassroots cryptocurrencies, and grassroots federations. Previously, grassroots platforms were defined formally and proven grassroots using unary transition systems, in which each transition is carried out by a single agent. However, grassroots platforms cater for a more abstract specification using transactions carried out atomically by multiple agents, something that cannot be expressed by unary transition systems. As a result, their original specifications and proofs were unnecessarily cumbersome and opaque. Here, we aim to provide a more suitable formal foundation for grassroots platforms. To do so, we enhance the notion of a multiagent transition system to include atomic transactions and revisit the notion of grassroots platforms within this new foundation. We present concise specifications of key grassroots platforms using atomic transactions: befriending and unfriending for grassroots social graphs, coin swaps for grassroots cryptocurrencies, and communities forming, joining, and leaving a federation for grassroots federations. We prove a general theorem that a platform specified by atomic transactions that are interactive is grassroots; show that the atomic transactions used to specify all three platforms are interactive; and conclude that the platforms thus specified are indeed grassroots. We thus provide a crisp mathematical foundation for grassroots platforms and a solid and clear starting point from which their implementation can commence
Buffalo politics: sovereignty and sacrificial publics in the highlands of East India
Get PDFPublic rituals of buffalo sacrifice have a prominent place in the political history of eastern India. They were productive activities in agrarian livelihoods, public stages for intercommunal politics, unifying spectacles for regional kings, and justifications for colonial military interventions. While their historical scale is much reduced today, in parts of southern Odisha, they remain important political events. Drawing on historical research and long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Odisha’s Kandhamal Hills, this article examines how public rituals of sacrifice form a site of commensuration: a space where interlocal relations of mutuality and difference are temporarily made visible, and where value is defined in the presence of diverse audiences. By focusing on one specific ritual event, I show how these “sacrificial publics” are structured around the tensions of sovereignty (togetherness and transgression) and have long been spaces where different kinds of sovereign power have become legible. Historicizing an enduring sacrificial politics at India’s upland margins, I outline a distinctly anthropological concept of sovereignty—one that reflects the ways human relationships are made commensurable in lasting political formations, sustained through interlocal and intercommunal patterns of recognition
Estimation of lifetime benefits from the optimization of secondary prevention in patients with established atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease
Get PDFLay Summary: This study estimates the potential health benefits of improving treatment for people with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (ASCVD) in seven European countries:Improving treatment for hypertension, hypercholesterolaemia, diabetes mellitus, and smoking cessation rates to 70% could save over 94 000 cardiovascular-event-free life-years annually across Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and the UK. The findings highlight the importance of closing the gap between clinical guidelines and real-world care to reduce deaths and improve cardiovascular health outcomes
Taxing top wealth: migration responses and their aggregate economic implications
No full textUsing administrative data from Scandinavian countries, we provide evidence on international migration responses to wealth taxes and evaluate their aggregate economic implications. We find significant migration responses among the wealthy: a 1pp increase in the top wealth tax rate decreases the stock of wealthy taxpayers by about 2%. A large fraction of the wealthy are business owners, and their businesses are negatively affected by owner out-migration. The aggregate effects are nevertheless modest: the migration responses to a 1pp increase in the top wealth tax rate reduce employment by 0.02%, investments by 0.07%, and value-added by 0.10%
US drug policy does not align with experts' rankings of drug harms: a multi-criteria decision analysis
Get PDFBackground United States drug policy is primarily based on the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 and largely contradicts scientific evidence about how to mitigate drugs' harms. Expert consensus on drug harms could inform policy that improves the health of people who use drugs while reducing negative societal impacts of drug use. Therefore, this study adapted and extended the relevant 2010 United Kingdom multi-criteria decision analysis, rating drug harms by criteria comprising health and social impacts to people who use drugs and their families, communities, and society.Methods Seventeen experts on drug use in the US, including three with lived experience of drug use and recovery, assessed 19 drugs across 18 criteria. Drugs were scored from 0 to 100 points on each criterion. Then, criteria were weighted to represent the experts' view of their relative importance, and each drug was assigned an overall harm score. We also created a numerical rating to represent Controlled Substances Act-defined harm.Results Fentanyl (scoring 90), methamphetamine (84), crack (83), and heroin (82) were the most harmful drugs. Cannabis (32) ranked in the middle, and mushrooms (3) were the least harmful. Drug-specific mortality and economic cost were the largest overall contributors to harm, while environmental damage was the smallest. The correlation between Controlled Substances Act-defined harm and experts' harm ratings was - 0.26.Conclusions These findings add to the growing international literature highlighting how drug policy contradicts expert assessments of drug harms across nations. To reduce these harms, public health strategies informed by evidence and expert input should be prioritized over punitive approaches