1,721,090 research outputs found
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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Non-Permanent Contraceptive Methods in India: Exploring the Inter-play of Ethics, Policy, and Cultural Influences
Get PDFUniversal access to reproductive health and the promotion of reproductive rights were key goals articulated at the International Conference on Population and Development in 1994. The role of contraception in meeting these goals is critical. Access to contraception helps women avoid unintended pregnancies, improves maternal and infant health by spacing births, and reduces the need for abortions. The benefits of modern contraception also extend beyond the realm of health to economic and social gains for women. Women who delay pregnancy are more likely to remain in school and participate in the labor force. While the past decades have witnessed significant increases in the provision of modern contraceptive methods, there are still more than 200 million women around the globe who want to delay or stop pregnancy, but do not have access to contraception. Women in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa suffer disproportionately from poor health related to pregnancy and childbirth, and thus, stand to gain the greatest benefit from investments in contraception policies and programs. In India, state-sponsored family planning programs have been promoted since 1951. The predominant focus has been on permanent methods, and female sterilization currently accounts for nearly 60% of modern contraceptive use. The use of non-permanent contraceptive methods, including oral contraceptive pills, injectable contraceptives, and intra-uterine devices, remains low. This dissertation sought to explore women's experiences with making decisions about, and using, non-permanent contraceptive methods, taking into account individual, family, and community influences. Building upon those women's experiences and their reasons for using non-permanent methods, this research then explores key opinion leaders' attitudes towards, and the policy landscape of, injectable contraceptives within India, a method that has been controversial within that country. Finally, a new theoretical framework of autonomy is proposed for analyzing women's reproductive and contraceptive decision-making, and rights to self-determination
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Evidence to Policy: Do Voucher Programs Improve Maternal Health in Developing Countries?
Get PDFMaternal mortality has been one of the most daunting public health problems facing developing countries for several decades. The average lifetime risk of maternal death in least developed countries is 1 in 22 compared with 1 in 8000 in industrialized countries. Such vast regional differences demonstrate how available and accessible resources can completely change the picture. Even in low-resource settings, it has been shown that basic district health systems can deliver the services needed to save women's lives. But women face many barriers to accessing care including distance, transportation, cost, perceived poor quality or actual poor quality. One mechanism that researchers and policy makers have been experimenting with to address several of these barriers is a voucher. Within a health voucher program, a woman can purchase a voucher for a fraction of the cost of services or receive it for free and redeem it an accredited health facilities (public or private) for specific services. Facilities are reimbursed for the care they deliver through government or development aid. Voucher programs aim to give patients the economic power to demand high-quality healthcare, to target aid to high-risk or low-income patients for critical services and to increase utilization rates within these populations.Funders and policymakers have already shown support for this concept but more evidence is needed in order to evaluate if these programs should be taken to greater scale. This dissertation aims to address gaps in evidence and to work towards building stronger and more evidence- based policy around maternal health vouchers.The first component of this dissertation is a systematic review of the literature on voucher programs for health goods and services in developing countries. The review aims to assess whether the evidence for voucher programs thus far has shown that they are achieving their objectives and examines contextual factors associated with program success. The second component is an evaluation of how a reproductive health voucher programs impacts the job satisfaction of management and frontline health care providers in Uganda. The third component is a qualitative assessment of the experiences of women who are eligible to receive a reproductive health voucher in Cambodia and assesses facilitative and inhibitive factors that affect voucher use.As a result of this dissertation experience, next steps for improved policymaking around vouchers have been identified and include the need to focus efforts on evaluating if policy makers should use health voucher to support broader health system strengthening and how program implementers can use the experiences of beneficiaries (providers and patients) to tailor voucher programs to the local context while maintaining program fidelity
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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Providing Medication Assisted Treatment (MAT) as an HIV Prevention Intervention: Programmatic Strategies to Maximize Service Utilization in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Get PDFOver the past decade, myriad social and economic factors have fueled a burgeoning population of people who inject heroin in sub-Saharan Africa, creating an urgent need for HIV prevention and treatment services tailored to this marginalized group. While the epidemic in the region remains largely driven through heterosexual risk behavior, a higher probability of disease acquisition per exposure can lead to rapid transmission among people who inject drugs (PWID). Stigma and discrimination isolates PWID from accessing available HIV care services designed for the general population and has contributed to HIV prevalence in PWID up to four times greater than country averages. To address this crisis, a few trailblazing governments with support from international HIV/AIDS funders have begun to develop and in the case of Tanzania, implement, comprehensive national harm reduction services for people who use and inject drugs. This dissertation contributes to the growing body of implementation science literature on medication assisted treatment programs (MAT) for PWID in sub-Saharan Africa. This dissertation takes a three-paper model to identify programmatic and policy strategies to enroll, retain and support patients in MAT programs, focusing on Tanzania. The first paper, a systematic review of the literature on methadone as an HIV prevention intervention, describes evidence-based best practices and applies key findings to make recommendations about service delivery in a limited resource setting. Results suggest that enhanced outreach and increased dosing can help maximize service utilization. The second and third papers delve into the experiences of the first MAT program on mainland sub-Saharan Africa, located at Muhimbili National Hospital in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The program has successfully implemented a continuum of harm reduction care, culminating in methadone treatment for PWID. However, monitoring and evaluation data highlight a gender disparity in service utilization, with women comprising less than 10% of clients. Relying on in-depth interviews and observational data collected over three field visits from July 2011 to February 2013, the last two articles look at ongoing service needs for women in treatment and identify strategies to bring more women into care. Results suggest that women face distinct hardship in treatment, needing increased psychosocial support services and economic development interventions to help them heal histories of sexual trauma and regain custody of their children. Additionally, outreach tailored to women can help increase treatment enrollment. Findings from this dissertation have implications for MAT programs in Tanzania and in other areas in the region with similar epidemiological and cultural environments
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Increasing Women’s Access to Information about Safe Abortion Methods through Local and Global Hotlines
Get PDFThe World Health Organization estimates that 56 million abortions take place each year, approximately 25 million (or 45%) of which are considered unsafe. Unsafe abortions mainly occur in countries with restrictive laws or policies and carry significant risk of injury, disability, and death, accounting for 8-18% of maternal deaths worldwide. Misoprostol offers a high- quality, safe alternative to unsafe methods of clandestine abortion and is associated with decreased abortion-related morbidity and mortality in countries where abortion is legally restricted, however a large percentage of women do not know that this option exists, or where to access it. There is also a lack of information on the correct dosage of misoprostol, its side effects, and when to seek emergency care. To mitigate these barriers, a number of organizations have set hotlines to connect women with unwanted pregnancies to information on misoprostol and other safe methods of abortion. This dissertation analyses the factors that have impeded and facilitated the implementation of these local hotlines, as well as an international hotline that attempted to reach women in Nicaragua, a country with some of the most restrictive abortion laws.Chapter 1 investigates the three main challenges that face local hotlines: 1) ensuring that women who call in have access to safe abortion medicines and services, 2) promoting their hotlines in a way that prevents them from getting shut down by the government, and 3) procuring the resources necessary to make their hotlines sustainable. It also investigates the strategies that local hotlines have used to overcome these challenges. Examples include training pharmacists to disseminate correct information, setting up a rotating fund to subsidize costs for low-income women, using volunteers to staff the hotlines, and finding inexpensive loopholes in telecommunication services. It concludes by discussing the main challenge that remains: reaching women on a large scale, and suggests several strategies that could be used to overcome it.Chapter 2 investigates public experiences of abortion in Nicaragua, a country where restrictive abortion and freedom of information laws have prevented even the most active feminist groups from starting up a hotline. A study of 1,200 men and women from across the country investigates the demographic, knowledge and geographic factors associated with knowing a women who terminated her pregnancy, and the factors associated with the use of safe abortion methods. The population most likely to carry out an abortion are adolescent females that have a secondary education or higher. The only factor significantly associated with knowing a woman who terminated her pregnancy safely was exposure to at least one of three safe abortion campaigns/programs. These findings that suggest that public information plays a central role in promoting safe abortion.Chapter 3 analyzes an innovative intervention that attempted to apply the lessons learned from local hotlines to the Nicaraguan context. The Global Hotline for Women’s Health is a project that was supposed to connect women in countries with restrictive abortion policies to a hotline in Mexico City, providing information about the safe abortion options available without putting hotline operators at risk. This study identifies both factors that facilitated and impeded the implementation of the Global Hotline guided by the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research. While full implementation was never realized, many lessons emerged that may be useful to future efforts to implement a global hotline for safe abortion or to implement another harm reduction strategy carried out in low and middle income countries with restrictive abortion policies. The dissertation concludes by delineating a set of policy recommendations for improving access to safe abortion and avenues for future research
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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Examining Public Health System Responses to the Chronic Diseases of HIV/AIDS and Diabetes: Experiences from Mexico and Brazil
Get PDFBackground: Health systems around the world have historically been oriented toward acute care, but over the past century chronic diseases have become the leading causes of death globally. It has been estimated that 80% of the burden of chronic diseases occur in low and middle-income countries. However, there is a gap in the scientific literature regarding how these countries are addressing their burgeoning chronic disease burden, how chronic disease management models inform public health system organizations, and how health sector reform efforts intersect with chronic disease and its management. Purpose: The current work aims to address this specific gap by examining the public health system responses to HIV/AIDS and type 2 diabetes in the middle-income countries of Mexico and Brazil. Methodology: After reviewing existing models of chronic disease care and health systems, a new model was developed to examine the public health system responses to chronic diseases. The model was used to guide a literature review on health sector reform, HIV/AIDS, and diabetes in Mexico and Brazil. Quantitative and qualitative secondary data was supplemented by information gathered through qualitative interviews with experts in both countries from federal government, state/municipal government, non-governmental organizations, and academia working in the area of HIV/AIDS or diabetes. Data were analyzed according to the proposed model, and case studies were developed. Findings: The proposed model examines financing and expenditures, policy (including prevention), service delivery, medical products, self-management support, workforce, and health information technology. The study revealed the need to incorporate community involvement into the model and a number of additional indicators. A centralized procurement and health information system to monitor and control dispensation of medications, similar to Brazil's system for antiretroviral medications, would likely reduce long term costs and improve patient care in Mexico and elsewhere. Utilization of a primary care approach using multidisciplinary health teams may be the best mechanism to improve overall processes for chronic care and health outcomes. A civil rights, social justice approach employed by the citizenry to engage governments was critical in Brazil and Mexico to garner support for services and resources to combat HIV/AIDS and stimulate health sector reform
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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