International Relations

FSI researchers strive to understand how countries relate to one another, and what policies are needed to achieve global stability and prosperity. International relations experts focus on the challenging U.S.-Russian relationship, the alliance between the U.S. and Japan and the limitations of America’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.

Foreign aid is also examined by scholars trying to understand whether money earmarked for health improvements reaches those who need it most. And FSI’s Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center has published on the need for strong South Korean leadership in dealing with its northern neighbor.

FSI researchers also look at the citizens who drive international relations, studying the effects of migration and how borders shape people’s lives. Meanwhile FSI students are very much involved in this area, working with the United Nations in Ethiopia to rethink refugee communities.

Trade is also a key component of international relations, with FSI approaching the topic from a slew of angles and states. The economy of trade is rife for study, with an APARC event on the implications of more open trade policies in Japan, and FSI researchers making sense of who would benefit from a free trade zone between the European Union and the United States.

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Although the fields of organization theory and social movement theory have long been viewed as belonging to different worlds, recent events have intervened, reminding us that organizations are becoming more movement-like - more volatile and politicized - while movements are more likely to borrow strategies from organizations. Organization theory and social movement theory are two of the most vibrant areas within the social sciences. This collection of original essays and studies both calls for a closer connection between these fields and demonstrates the value of this interchange. Three introductory, programmatic essays by leading scholars in the two fields are followed by eight empirical studies that directly illustrate the benefits of this type of cross-pollination. The studies variously examine the processes by which movements become organized and the role of movement processes within and among organizations. The topics covered range from globalization and transnational social movement organizations to community recycling programs.

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Cambridge University Press in "Social Movements and Organization Theory", ed Gerald Davis
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How successful are HIV prevention programs? Which HIV prevention programs are most cost effective? Which programs are worth expanding and which should be abandoned altogether? This book addresses the quantitative evaluation of HIV prevention programs, assessing for the first time several different quantitative methods of evaluation.

The authors of the book include behavioral scientists, biologists, economists, epidemiologists, health service researchers, operations researchers, policy makers, and statisticians. They present a wide variety of perspectives on the subject, including an overview of HIV prevention programs in developing countries, economic analyses that address questions of cost effectiveness and resource allocation, case studies such as Israel's ban on Ethiopian blood donors, and descriptions of new methodologies and problems.

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Yale Press in "Quantitative Evaluation of HIV Prevention Programs", Kaplan EH, Brookmeyer R, eds.
Authors
Douglas K. Owens
Ross D. Shachter
Number
0300087519
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OBJECTIVES: This study determined the cost-effectiveness of expanding methadone maintenance treatment for heroin addiction, particularly its effect on the HIV epidemic.

METHODS: We developed a dynamic epidemic model to study the effects of increased methadone maintenance capacity on health care costs and survival, measured as quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs). We considered communities with HIV prevalence among injection drug users of 5% and 40%.

RESULTS: Additional methadone maintenance capacity costs $8200 per QALY gained in the high-prevalence community and $10,900 per QALY gained in the low-prevalence community. More than half of the benefits are gained by individuals who do not inject drugs. Even if the benefits realized by treated and untreated injection drug users are ignored, methadone maintenance expansion costs between $14,100 and $15,200 per QALY gained. Additional capacity remains cost-effective even if it is twice as expensive and half as effective as current methadone maintenance slots.

CONCLUSIONS: Expansion of methadone maintenance is cost-effective on the basis of commonly accepted criteria for medical interventions. Barriers to methadone maintenance deny injection drug users access to a cost-effective intervention that generates significant health benefits for the general population.

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American Journal of Public Health
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Margaret L. Brandeau
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To understand "managed care," one needs to understand the traditional model of health care organization and finance that managed care was intended to replace. That model was aptly characterized "Guild Free Choice" by Charles Weller to indicate that "free choice" was being used as a restraint of trade to block the emergence of any form of economic competition among doctors. Its principles were: "Free choice of doctor at all times;" "free choice of treatment, i.e. nobody 'interferes with the doctor's decisions and recommendations;'" "fee for service payment;" "direct doctor-patient negotiation of fees;" and "solo (or small single-specialty group) practice." The model was widely accepted because of the pre-Wennberg view of most people that "the medical care they receive [is] a necessity provided by doctors who adhere to scientific norms based on previously tested and proven treatments." In combination with well-insured patients, there was no way that employers or insurers could control health spending in this model. Organized medicine is still fighting to hold on to parts of it. Some people say that managed care is "anything other than Guild Free Choice."

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Presented at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston's 50th economic conference
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Alain C. Enthoven

Department of Anesthesia H3580
Stanford University School of Medicine
Stanford, CA 94305-5640

(650) 723-6411 (650) 725-8544
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Professor of Anesthesia and, by courtesy, of Health Research and Policy
alex_macario.jpg MD, MBA

Alex Macario is a professor of anesthesiology and, by courtesy, of Health Research and Policy. He completed his undergraduate, medical school and business school training at the University of Rochester. He trained in anesthesiology at Stanford University and was chief resident. He then completed a fellowship in heath services research.

Dr. Macario has gained international recognition for his pioneering studies on operating room management, and the economics of surgery and anesthesia. He is particularly interested in the hospitalization costs for surgical patients, economic assessment of new drugs and devices for use in surgical care, and information technology to help physician leaders with clinical and administrative decision support in the surgery suite.

He is director of a Fellowship in the Management of Perioperative Services, based in the Department of Anesthesia. This postgraduate fellowship program trains several physicians per year in management science and applications to the delivery of surgical and anesthesia care.

Stanford Health Policy Associate
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Basingstoke and Macmillan (New York) and St Martin's Press in association with the International Economic Association in "Contemporary Economic Issues: Economic Behavior and Design" (Chapter Five), M Sertel (ed).
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By the year 2050, the population of the United States is projected to be approximately half white and half non-white. Yet the knowledge of child development within ethnic minority groups lags markedly behind knowledge of child development for white Americans, and it is increasingly clear that the rich diversity within minority groups is masked by studies focusing on between-group comparisons. Children of Color: Research, Health, and Public Policy Issues, a collection of original essays, brings together researchers from the fields of education, family and child ecology, nursing, psychology, sociology, pediatrics, anthropology, and social work to explore the rich cultural, familial, and individual diversity of all ethnic minority groups. The essays were generated by round table discussions sponsored by the Society for Research in Child Development and the Irving Harris Foundation, and they cover a broad range of topics including immigration policy, social policy, health status of immigrant infants, children and families, and educational policies related to minority children.

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Garland Publishing, Inc. (New York and London) in "Children of Color: Research, Health, and Policy Issues", Fitzgerald H, Lester B, Zuckerman B (ed).
Authors
Fernando S. Mendoza
Number
0815322887
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