bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Evidence from cohort studies
Authors: Siegrist Johannes , Li Jian
Published: February 2024

This chapter aims at informing readers on essentials of the current state of the art in research on psychosocial work environments and their effects on health. By and large, evidence is based on prospective observational cohort studies. In this account, no attempt is made to provide a systematic review or meta-review of a field of research characterized by dynamic growth. Rather, the content focuses on the main theoretical models, with the intention to offer explanations based on robust data. Four major chronic disorders are selected as health outcomes (cardiovascular diseases, depression, metabolic disorders, musculoskeletal disorders), and we illustrate some promising expansions of knowledge of other, less frequently studied disorders (addictive disorders, sleep disturbances, reduced cognitive functioning (including dementia), and infectious diseases, in particular COVID-19). Taken together, despite some obvious heterogeneity of findings, a solid basis of new knowledge results from this review. Two additional aspects are included. Firstly, the social distribution of psychosocial work environments across employed populations is illustrated, using data from a European-wide survey. Finally, a core research question is addressed: the contribution of adverse working conditions towards explaining health inequalities, referring to the notions of mediation and moderation analysis.
Courts’ review of monetary and financial stability decisions
Authors: Lamandini Marco , Muñoz David Ramos
Published: February 2024

This chapter deals with case law on the substantive review of monetary and financial stability decisions. As seen in Chapter 4, these decisions present problems of justiciability. When they are eventually reviewed by courts, these tend to adopt a deferential standard of review. Even so, the expansion of the role and powers of authorities entrusted with monetary and financial stability after the 2007–2009 crisis presented new challenges, which, in the European Union, resulted in several landmark cases (Gauweiler and Weiss). The chapter also discusses open issues, such as lender of last resort (LoLR) powers, or the appointment of central bank members.
An Anatomy of Issues in Private Law Disputes
Authors: Lamandini Marco , Muñoz David Ramos
Published: February 2024

This introductory chapter provides an overview or ‘anatomy’ of disputes in private law, which serves as an introduction for the analysis of case law in Chapters 9 to 11, mirroring Chapter 3 for public law disputes, anayzed in Chapters 4 to 7. It delineates the main problems that courts are called upon to address in private law disputes. First, courts must address issues of vertical allocation of powers between the federal level (e.g. securities or banking law) and the state level (e.g. contract, tort, or corporate law) in the US, and between supranational and national level in the EU. Secondly, courts must address issues of jurisdiction and applicable law, under conflicts of law rules. Thirdly, courts must determine how (mandatory) regulatory provisions can affect private law rules and doctrines in contract, tort, or property. Fourthly, courts have often been called upon to analyse private plaintiffs’ access to justice through class actions and collective redress mechanisms. Fifthly, courts have had to ponder the mechanisms of contract interpretation in cases where such contracts are based on ‘boilerplate’ clauses or market-wide standards.
Courts and the Law of Liability for Misstatements in Securities Offerings
Authors: Lamandini Marco , Muñoz David Ramos
Published: February 2024

This chapter analyses how courts and their case law have developed the law of securities liability, or liability for misstatements in securities offerings in the US, and are in the process of doing so in the EU. First, the chapter analyses how US courts ‘implied’ a private right of action in securities’ regulatory provisions, like section 10b of the Exchange Act, and how they shaped a doctrine of liability and its elements, including materiality, causation and reliance, with the ‘fraud-on-the-market’ theory, the respective role of federal and state levels, and the limited role of insider trading rules in civil liability. Secondly, the chapter analyses the incipient state of case law in the EU on liability for misstatements, centred in prospectus liability, and the initial obstacles, such as the need to remedies that vary by jurisdiction, or the different approaches to ‘causation’ and ‘reliance’, as well as the role of other provisions, notably insider trading, as a basis for civil liability. Thirdly, the chapter analyses the specialties of the liability of ‘secondary actors’ or ‘gatekeepers’, such as underwriters, auditors or rating agencies, including its constitutional dimension (free speech and opinions), private law dimension, with the different approaches to limit damages, and regulatory dimension, with the possibility that gatekeepers may be responsible for the statements by listed companies, and/or under specific rules on secondary actor liability.
Courts in insolvency, collateral, and creditor coordination disputes
Authors: Lamandini Marco , Muñoz David Ramos
Published: February 2024

This chapter analyses the disputes over insolvency and property in a financial context, but also, more generally, inter-creditor coordination disputes under contract, and it complements, in that way, Chapter 10. First, the chapter analyses insolvency’s ‘claw-back risk’ where assets are transferred to a special purpose vehicles (SPVs), including avoidance, recharacterization, or substantive consolidation. Secondly, it analyses insolvency disputes over derivatives, and their collateralization. Thirdly, it analyses more generally insolvency disputes over financial collateral, and the challenges of segregating money and instruments, and of characterizing the proprietary or security interest. Fourthly, the chapter analyses inter-creditor disputes, and the enforcement of clauses that seek to ensure the bankruptcy-remoteness of an SPV, used to shield assets or cash flows. Fifthly, it analyses inter-creditor coordination disputes over enforcement ‘triggers‘, and restructuring disputes, where creditors allege disenfranchisement or oppression. Finally, the chapter analyses the role, in creditor coordination disputes of agent banks and trustees, including their duties and responsibilities, and the clauses used to shape their discretion and liability.
COMBEE
Authors: Fields-Black Edda L.
Published: February 2024

This book offers the first full account of Harriet Tubman's Civil War service and the Combahee River Raid. It details how Tubman commanded a ring of spies, scouts, and pilots and participated in military expeditions behind Confederate lines. It also recounts the story of enslaved families living in bondage and fighting for their freedom, using their own distinct and individual voices. The book uses more than 175 US Civil War pension files of the regiments of Second South Carolina Volunteers, including Tubman's. It is based on original documentation and written by a descendent of the enslaved men and women who fought in it, and in the process liberated themselves.
Two of Us
Authors: Fields-Black Edda L.
Published: February 2024

This chapter considers Harriet Tubman as the only Black Northern volunteer to participate in the Port Royal Experiment until Charlotte Forten arrived in October 1862. It describes Tubman as a 40-year-old married woman that was old enough to have been Charlotte Forten’s mother, while Forten thought of Tubman as a favorite aunt. It also points out Tubman’s contrast to Charlotte, such as Tubman’s inability to read or write while Forten was highly educated and classically trained. The chapter mentions John Greenleaf Whittier, a stalwart of Massachusetts’ abolition movement and long-time close friend of the Forten family, who suggested that Charlotte go to Port Royal. It reviews the discrimination Charlotte faced despite her distinguished heritage in Northern states, pointing out how she and her parents were barred from restaurants and stores.
Day Clean
Authors: Fields-Black Edda L.
Published: February 2024

This chapter talks about Minus Hamilton’s inability to provide an official military report of his experience on the plantation where he was held in bondage. It touches on the illiteracy of Harriet Tubman, the overwhelming majority of soldiers in the First and Second South Carolina Volunteers, and those people enslaved on the Combahee rice plantations. It also recounts Colonel Thomas Higginson’s recording of Hamilton’s story, noting how it was a rare privilege to view the raid through the eyes of an enslaved person who secured liberation from bondage. The chapter points out Hamilton’s view on how the usual enslaved person would not look a white person in the eye and how the Black soldiers who wore the Union blue coats, in contrast stood with their backs straight and held their heads up. It reveals what Hamilton saw after the Second South Carolina Volunteers left the Yankee gunboats, describing how they set ablaze the slaveholder’s barn.
“Some Credit”
Authors: Fields-Black Edda L.
Published: February 2024

This chapter considers Beaufort as the command center of the US federal government’s Port Royal Experiment and the clearing house for freedom seekers who could make their way there on foot or by water to Union lines. It points out enslavers that still held people a few miles west of Beaufort, months after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect. It also details how the Creoles who had been enslaved in different places made contact with one another for the first time. The chapter highlights the return of the Combahee refugees from a successful raid into the Confederate enemy’s country, bringing home 780 freedom seekers and valuable Confederate property. It explores the extensive damage that Colonel James Montgomery, the Second South Carolina, and Third Rhode Island Artillery did to private property.
Reaping Dead Men
Authors: Fields-Black Edda L.
Published: February 2024

This chapter discusses the letter journalist Frank Sanborn published in the Boston Commonwealth, where he made it clear that Harriet Tubman needed contributions to continue her work in South Carolina. It mentions women’s rights activist Amelia Jenks Bloomer, who wrote that a woman’s slavery to clothes made her a corseted, crippled, dragged-down creature and that women should be free. It also highlights William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator, which published several articles in the early 1850’s about the virtues of bloomer costume for reform-minded women, including women’s rights activists and abolitionists. The chapter points out Harriet Tubman’s pride in wearing pants and carrying a musket, haversack, and canteen on expeditions. It recounts Tubman’s work at the Contraband Hospital No. 5, which was a refuge for freedom seekers in Union-occupied Beaufort.
Beyond Distress Screening
Authors: Zebrack Brad , Doherty Meredith , Ellis Katrina
Published: February 2024

Managing distress in cancer patients via a comprehensive system of screening, assessment, triage, intervention, and outcome monitoring is an evidence-informed approach to whole-person care that optimizes a range of health and quality-of-life outcomes. The chapter addresses the importance of assessing patients’ material needs, as well as their psychological and emotional concerns, as necessary for reducing distress and delivering high-quality cancer care, particularly for patients from socially marginalized and historically oppressed populations. It emphasizes structural competency—an understanding and acknowledgment within clinical care settings of how social and environmental factors influence vulnerability and needs among cancer patients—as critical for mitigating distress among cancer patients and achieving health equity. Achieving enhanced patient experience, improved population health, and cost containment will require a transformation of medical care, in general, and cancer care, specifically, including role delineation and standardization of competencies for oncology and palliative care social workers.
Leadership Development in Oncology and Palliative Care Social Work
Authors: Damaskos Penelope , Mathew Linda , Jackson LaKeisha
Published: February 2024

This chapter describes leadership efforts that promote the unique functions and challenges leaders face in oncology and palliative care social work. The chapter reviews current oncology and palliative care social work training programs. It also discusses the challenges and opportunities to develop leadership skills at the macro, mezzo, and micro areas of practice. This chapter covers leadership training specifically for Black, Indigenous, people of color (people/persons of color); Asian American, Pacific Islander (AAPI); and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex (LBGTQI) social workers throughout their professional development. This chapter also includes best practices for leadership development through educational forums, supervision, and diversification of social work staff as goals both for leadership development and professional growth.
Capturing the Contribution of International Oncology and Palliative Social Work
Authors: Lee Geok Ling , Wan Chan Cecilia Lai
Published: February 2024

This chapter discusses person-centered care in an international context, focusing on patients and family with diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds. This chapter introduces elements in culture- and religion-sensitive social work practices in oncology and palliative care. The concepts of emotional and spiritual pain and suffering, use of rituals, and creative innovations in oncology and palliative social work are discussed with special reference to Chinese, Indian, and Muslim religious perspectives. The chapter also addresses how challenges that naturally arise during the trajectory of the cancer journey overlapped with the world pandemic of COVID-19. The case studies suggest potential innovations in culturally safe care.
Collaborations to Improve Maternal Health
Authors: Cilenti Dorothy , Buzi Ruth S.
Published: February 2024

Cross-sector collaborations are alliances among partners from various sectors, including health, education, and business, working together to address complex issues. These alliances are key to addressing inequities in maternal health outcomes. The seven chapters in this section outline examples of successful collaborations, provide information on barriers to, and facilitators of, successful collaboration, or describe opportunities to engage with traditional or nontraditional stakeholders invested in maternal health. Community engagement is also important in building cross-sector collaborations aimed at addressing inequities. The chapters of this section will give readers a better understanding of models for collaborations and community engagement that can be adapted and employed to address inequities in maternal health.
Bringing Together Clinical and Community Partners for Better Patient Care: Bootheel Perinatal Network
Authors: Gleason Barbara , Burger Rebecca , Nesselrodt Morgan , Kendig Susan , Adimu Tanisa Foxworth
Published: February 2024

With the high rates of rural hospital closures, birthing people living in rural communities face challenges in accessing clinical maternity care. One solution is the clinical–community approach, which is a framework for integrating clinical partners with community-based organizations. In 2019, the Maternal and Child Health Bureau’s Rural Maternity and Obstetrics Management Strategies (RMOMS) program provided funding for the clinical–community approach. This chapter provides an overview of the history of collaboration among partners in the RMOMS Bootheel Perinatal Network (BPN). The chapter describes BPN strategies, challenges, and solutions for improving maternal health outcomes in the Missouri Bootheel region as well as a framework for effective collaboration that results in the successful implementation of maternal health strategies in rural communities.
The Broward Healthy Start Program: Cross-Sector Collaboration—Improving Pregnancy Outcomes and Birth Equity Using a Collective-Impact Framework
Authors: Ronik Marci , King Monica Figueroa , Remikie Sharetta , Wilson Roneé
Published: February 2024

In Broward County, Florida, community-invested stakeholders including funders, health care providers, and community members, across various sectors and systems formed a collaborative to address infant and maternal mortality. The Broward County Healthy Babies are Worth the Wait® (HBWW) initiative chose to use collective impact (CI) and results-based accountability (RBA) as frameworks for their collaborative. The initiative also used quantitative and qualitative data to inform decisions and to assess progress. In this chapter we describe how HBWW integrated the five conditions of CI and the strategies of RBA. Additionally, we discuss the importance of prioritizing Black women’s narratives and provide a list of the key components for successful collaboration.
Equity and Systemic Racism
Authors: Webb Jonathan
Published: February 2024

Community-based organizations have on-the-ground experience with health inequities, such as maternal mortality and morbidity, and understand the social determinants of health that contribute to these inequities, including racism. Building strong partnerships is necessary to change systems that contribute to these inequities. When a group of multi-sector partners came together to test change ideas to improve Black maternal health in Atlanta, there were unique challenges and opportunities. This chapter explores this experience and how building quality improvement capacity among partners, centering the voices of Black women, using an equity framework, and fostering shared leadership facilitated tests of change to improve Black maternal health outcomes in an urban, southeastern city.
Garbage In, Garbage Out: Examining How Maternal Health Data Tools Misuse Race
Authors: Plaisime Marie V.
Published: February 2024

The data systems we have are only as good as the data metrics we use. We often use medial tools, calculators, and algorithms as part of data systems and as ways to examine maternal health. This chapter describes two examples of data tools that are based on flawed data and that can lead to poor perceptions and negative beliefs about Black women. The vaginal birth after cesarean (VBAC) calculator and body mass index (BMI) are commonly used to assess maternal health conditions, but they rely on biased, racialized data. There have been updates to the VBAC calculator to mitigate poor health outcomes, but there is no consensus about ongoing use of BMI. Stakeholders who are making decisions about research or patient health using these tools must consider the origins of these and other measures and think critically about the implications of such tools for maternal healthcare. The chapter includes a list of key questions investigators can ask before beginning a research project.
Innovations to Improve Maternal Health
Authors: Verbiest Sarah , Beltran Monica
Published: February 2024

Innovations are defined as new processes, policies, products, or programs aimed at improving maternal health. This section covers innovations in mindsets and approaches; renaissance of practices previously ignored or deemed inappropriate; technology, such as telemedicine and telehealth; and models to address mental health. Innovations should be evaluated by, and created with, the communities we serve. Organizations that prioritize reproductive justice, maternal and child health, and social determinants of health are leading the development of innovations that can reduce inequities in maternal health outcomes.
Innovations in Virtual Care
Authors: deRosset Leslie , Neeley Halle , Palmquist Aunchalee
Published: February 2024

Telemedicine has been used since the 1950s to provide specialized healthcare to patients who could not otherwise access needed services. However, it was not until the late 1980s and early 1990s that technological advancements allowed telemedicine to become more available to both patients and healthcare providers. Between 2016 and 2019, telemedicine utilization in the United States doubled, from 14% to 28%. Telemedicine and telehealth help patients and healthcare providers to communicate using electronic platforms that include audio and video that are either synchronous or asynchronous. Since its inception, telehealth has failed to address the structural inequities of access to healthcare. Access to telemedicine, telehealth, and remote services is not equitable in the United States. Telehealth is most challenging for people with low digital literacy, those who are non-English-speaking and need an interpreter, people living in rural areas (where broadband is insufficient or limited), and those without access to computers or devices (or who must share them with other family members).
Driving Access, Health Equity, and Innovation in Maternal Healthcare through Medicaid
Authors: Smith Jessica C. , Heberlein Emily , Snyder Angela , Minyard Karen
Published: February 2024

This chapter focuses on Medicaid’s effects on healthcare access, health equity, and innovations in maternal health. Approximately half of women who are uninsured when they become pregnant gain access to insurance coverage through Medicaid or CHIP (the Children’s Health Insurance Program). The coverage provides access to the full range of Medicaid benefits, allowing women to receive care in inpatient and outpatient settings, to fill prescriptions, and to receive services from healthcare providers from the time they become pregnant through at least 60 days after delivery. While variation can lead to disparities in healthcare access and quality between states, it can also spur innovation, so that state programs can learn from one another and work with their communities to design the most appropriate care for the populations covered.
The Role of the Family Physician in Pregnancy Care: Striving for Birth Equity and Reducing Maternal Morbidity and Mortality
Authors: Wood Julie K.
Published: February 2024

If society and the healthcare system are to address the inequities in health outcomes, particularly for rural and BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and People of Color] women, they must embrace the challenge and train the next generations of family physicians to provide maternal healthcare. To understand family physicians’ potential role to improve pregnancy-related health outcomes, the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) convened a Task Force on Maternal Morbidity and Mortality based on action taken by the AAFP’s policymaking body, the AAFP Congress of Delegates. The AAFP supports dissemination, participation, and use of evidence-based tools, such as the Alliance for Innovation on Maternal Health (AIM) maternity safety bundles, and regularly collaborates with ACOG and other key stakeholders to further this program. AAFP is a partner of the AIM Community Care Initiative (AIM CCI), which focuses on opportunities to prevent maternal morbidity and mortality by making available to community partners, women, and families education and safety bundles for the nonhospital setting.
Employing Policy and Advocacy for Sustainable Reduction of Maternal Mortality and Maternal Health Inequities
Authors: Kheyfets Anna , Ruiz Maria Gabriela , Carvalho Keri , Stewart Candace , Amutah-Onukagha Ndidiamaka
Published: February 2024

Black people in the United States are more than twice as likely as their white counterparts to experience maternal mortality and severe maternal morbidity. While the exact causes of the disparities are complex, it is evident that systemic racism plays a major role in driving the Black maternal health crisis. Systemic racism requires systemic change through policy implementation that combats the effects of unjust systems. This chapter describes six areas of focus for policy implementation to sustainably improve maternal outcomes and to reduce Black–white disparities: increasing access to doula care, improving data collection, expanding Medicaid coverage to one year postpartum, improving telehealth services, mandating cultural competency training, and increasing diversity in the medical profession. The chapter includes examples of successfully implemented policies and programs throughout the United States, with data on their efficacy, as well as practical approaches to advocacy among healthcare professionals to enact these policies.
How State-Based Foundations Can Leverage Collaboration to Improve Maternal Health: A Case Study from California
Authors: Smith Dana G. , Teleki Stephanie S.
Published: February 2024

Lowering maternal morbidity and mortality is a problem too large for any one organization to solve on its own, and it is too complex to have a single solution. The work requires strategic thinking and collaboration among public and private stakeholders, including philanthropies. This chapter describes how the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF) has contributed to statewide improvements in maternal morbidity and mortality, including lowering the rate of low-risk cesarean deliveries, increasing accountability for perinatal mental health, and addressing racial birth inequities. CHCF’s strategy is to “pull,” or fund, multiple “levers” to bring about change. Collaboration around the levers that brings together the right organizations and draws on the strengths of each is what leads to progress. Therefore, CHCF views its role not just as a funder but as a convener, thought leader, and partner to grantees and other stakeholders in the state.
The Role of the Area Health Education Center in Improving Maternal Health
Authors: Zolotor Adam J. , Forcina Jill M. , Shuler Tara Owens , Tilson Hugh H.
Published: February 2024

This chapter highlights the work of the NC Area Health Education Centers (NC AHEC) program to recruit, train, and retain an available, accessible, appropriate, acceptable, and quality maternal health workforce that reflects the communities it serves. To achieve this goal NC AHEC is focused on building a more diverse workforce, providing practice support to a variety of health care practices and systems, offering continuing professional development for maternal health professionals, and expanding graduate medical education training programs. Each of these focus areas is examined for the way that it contributes to healthier mothers and babies, with special attention to diverse populations, underresourced communities, and rural access.
Origin Uncertain
Authors: Liberman Anatoly
Published: February 2024

The book, divided into fourteen chapters, is devoted to the origin and history of English words and idioms. Although only a hundred of them are featured in the table of contents, several thousand words—common, rare, slangy, and exotic—in English and other languages, especially German, Dutch, the Scandinavian group, French, and Latin, are mentioned or discussed in some detail in the text. A broad net is cast over language change, history, material culture, geography, and ethnography. The book will attract those who are interested in the ways words arise and develop and in how the history of the vocabulary reflects the history of civilization. Free of jargon, it does not presuppose the reader’s familiarity with the apparatus of historical linguistics and combines entertainment and instruction. It can serve as an introduction to etymology and be used in various college and high school courses.
Anatomy and the Art of Consumption
Authors: Liberman Anatoly
Published: February 2024

This chapter features the etymology of the names of four body parts (brain, marrow, finger, and brisket; the origin of such words is obscure in most languages), of the odd-looking adverb akimbo, the word ache (naturally aligning itself with the body), and the names of a few things we eat and drink: cake, rum, booze, and cocktail. Marrow has ties outside Germanic and an ascertainable etymology. Brisket, though partly obscure, is, it appears, not related to breast. Finger may or may not be akin to the numeral five. Booze is at least partly sound-imitative, while cake is probably sound-symbolic. Rum, a borrowing, has a secure origin, and so does cocktail, a native English compound. The story of cocktail is the most entertaining of them all: the word’s etymology has been known for a long time but not to the researchers who failed to read their colleagues’ works.
Philosophical Perspective: Accountability, Reactive Attitudes, and the Meaning of Actions
Authors: Wendel W. Bradley
Published: February 2024

Accountability follows from the relational nature of morality. Morality is not something mysterious or inaccessible. It is part of the way we relate to one another. These relationships sometimes involve reactive attitudes, including anger, resentment, and blame. The philosopher Peter Strawson argued that reactive attitudes are fundamental to morality and comprise the social practice of holding each other accountable. The practices of criticizing, calling out, and blaming lawyers express the reactive attitudes of members of the political community. Reactive attitudes add nuance and texture to moral life, beyond merely assessing actions as permissible or impermissible. It can also ask about the meaning of actions, which involve an assessment of the attitudes and motivating reasons of the actor. The additional texture provided by reactive attitudes also makes it possible to evaluate an action as one involving inevitable loss and an occasion for reluctance or regret.
Philosophical Perspectives: Blame, the Meaning of Actions, and the Ethics of Blame
Authors: Wendel W. Bradley
Published: February 2024

Blame is a response to someone who reveals attitudes that impair their relationships with others. In T.M. Scanlon’s understanding of blame, it leads to a modification of the relationship that one has with a blameworthy individual. This model of blame helps explain many of the episodes of criticizing, shaming, or canceling lawyers. Whether someone is blameworthy is a question on which reasonable people may differ, which helps explain the intractability of controversies over criticizing lawyers. There is, in addition, ethics of blaming. Those who engage in practices exhibiting blame should take time to understand the issues involved and seek a response that is proportionate to the impairment of the relationship. This is particularly important given the importance in a liberal society of tolerating diverse points of view.
The Virtue Ethics of Islamic Philosophers
Authors: Saemi Amir
Published: February 2024

Although Islamic philosophers, including al-Fārābī, Avicenna, and Averroës are famous for siding with reason over religion, the chapter argues that they place religion prior to reason when it comes to morality. The project of Islamic philosopher to reconcile philosophy with religion involves adopting a highly intellectual epistemology as well as developing theological virtue ethics. On this highly intellectual epistemology, it is only permissible to depart from literal interpretation of Scripture if we have a demonstrative proof that the apparent meaning is not true, which we lack in moral matters. Additionally, the chapter discusses al-Fārābī’s theological virtue ethics as compared with Aristotle’s. Contrary to Aristotle’s view, al-Fārābī offers an otherworldly conception of happiness to which practical reason has no epistemic access. Therefore, in his view, we should rely on the views of the theoretically wise person (i.e., the prophet) to know what we should do.
How Uncertain Treatment Outcomes Affect Value
Authors: Phelps Charles E , Lakdawalla Darius N.
Published: February 2024

Diminishing returns in value create a parallel economic phenomenon, an aversion to risky outcomes. This well-known phenomenon leads to widespread purchases of insurance against various financial risks. Uncertainty in treatment outcomes creates the same problem, but no insurance exists to “pay off” when treatment outcomes are low. Instead, this chapter assesses how reductions in treatment uncertainty, measured by changes in the variance of treatment outcomes, add value, thereby measuring “risk-adjusted” improvements in average gains in quality of life. Similarly, increasing the chances of highly beneficial outcomes, the “value of hope,” is measured by changes in the positive skewness of outcome distributions. These are all combined in a Taylor series expansion showing how to estimate the “certainty equivalent” amount of health gain that various treatments provide, adjusting average gains (as normally measured in cost-effectiveness analysis) by changes in variance, skewness, and, potentially, higher order measures of risk.
The Total Value of Medical Interventions and the Trade-Off Between Quality of Life and Life Expectancy
Authors: Phelps Charles E , Lakdawalla Darius N.
Published: February 2024

Diminishing returns not only change ways to value health-related quality of life (QoL) gains but also change the proper way to combine QoL and life expectancy (LE) gains. With diminishing returns, people with lower QoL are more willing to trade gains in LE for gains in QoL than those with higher baseline QoL. This chapter introduces the total value of a medical intervention (TVMI), showing proper ways to combine QoL and LE gains using the marginal rate of substitution (MRS) between them and showing how the MRS changes with baseline QoL. Because the generalized risk-adjusted cost-effectiveness model, like standard cost-effectiveness analysis, assumes constant returns to gains in LE, this chapter demonstrates that the effects of diminishing returns to health apply only to QoL gains in the TVMI. It also provides intuitive understanding of how QoL versus LE trade-offs work and a number of actual medical and lifestyle decisions that make this QoL versus LE trade-off.
Consequences for Health Plans
Authors: Phelps Charles E , Lakdawalla Darius N.
Published: February 2024

The generalized risk-adjusted cost-effectiveness (GRACE) model measures the value of medical interventions, not “prices” that health plans pay to providers. The question arises as to the effects of a health plan switching from cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA)-based to GRACE-based valuation as they implement “value-based pricing” plans. This chapter first explores some complications arising in the shift from “value” to “price.” It then proceeds with a series of sensitivity analyses showing the effect on a health plan’s aggregate budget (with the health plan’s own mix of treatments) using a variety of combinations of risk-preference parameters. These simulations show that health plans’ total estimated value (and hence budget, if using value-based pricing) can either rise or fall, depending on which combination of risk parameters are used. Because no estimates of these parameters currently exist, these simulations provide specific methods for estimating effects on total value of health care if shifting from CEA- to GRACE-based valuation systems.
Welfare and Equity Implications of GRACE
Authors: Phelps Charles E , Lakdawalla Darius N.
Published: February 2024

The generalized risk-adjusted cost-effectiveness (GRACE) model and cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) both flow from the decisions of utility-maximizing “representative consumers.” As such, they cannot inform discussions about such “externalities” as scientific spillover and improvement in equity along various dimensions. Nevertheless, some distinct differences between standard CEA and GRACE emerge when using formal models to estimate societal “social welfare functions.” Using Harsanyi’s 1955 proof, this chapter shows that standard CEA implies equal weighting of value of all consumers, no matter what their degree of illness severity or preexisting permanent disability. In sharp contrast, GRACE shows that there should be higher societal weights on those with disabilities and that the value of treating severely ill patients exceeds that of treating low-severity patients for the same magnitude of health gain. The chapter concludes with an analysis of non-neoclassical ways to quantify equity of health outcomes using Gini measures of inequality and shows when introducing a new technology improves Gini coefficient measures of equity.
‘The Quran Is Our Constitution’
Authors: Frampton Martyn
Published: February 2024

In Chapter 1, Martyn Frampton looks at the Muslim Brotherhood and their ideas of governance. Starting from the election of Mohammed Morsi in 2012, this chapter analyzes the Brotherhood’s transition to government, considering what the Morsi administration did; how the Brotherhood approached the question of governance; and what policies it sought to enact. It considers these questions through a historical examination of the group, beginning with an analysis of how the Brotherhood’s founder, Hasan al-Banna, conceived of politics and the state and the extent to which the Brotherhood evolved in the decades that followed, with a particular focus on the 1990s and early 2000s--a period identified by many scholars as an era of internal intellectual ferment, ending with a look at the Arab Spring.
Current Issues and Common Challenges for the Protection of Human Rights in Europe, the Americas, and Africa
Authors: Grote Rainer
Published: February 2024

Until a decade ago, the trend toward an ever more expansive protection of human rights at the regional level seemed unstoppable in Europe, the Americas, and Africa. However, over the last decade, these positive dynamics have changed fundamentally as regional human rights protection has entered a new phase marked by the twin challenges of neo-sovereigntism and nationalism. This raises the question of how the resilience of regional human rights institutions can be strengthened in an increasingly adverse international environment. Any such discussion must take into account the similarities as well as the variations of the regional systems. While they have been shaped by shared ideas and practices that constituted a key aspect of the global liberal order which came into being in the 1990s, they present on the other hand important variations with regard to the speed and depth of institutionalization and legalization as well as to the geopolitical context in which they are operating and which are likely to influence the way in which they confront the new challenges.
Effectiveness of International Courts
Authors: Navarro Gabriela C.B.
Published: February 2024

The impact of international litigation in domestic politics increases and diversifies each day. Such alteration brings the question of how the effectiveness of international courts should be defined and assessed. The question is even more singular in the Latin American context, considering the persistent marginalization of vulnerable groups, the transformative constitutionalism, and the rising influence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. This chapter enumerates and compares different theoretical approaches on effectiveness of international courts. Focusing on the Inter-American Court, it analyzes how the studies on effectiveness moved from a focus on compliance to include very distinct functions, for example, lawmaking, promoting democracy, and empowering domestic social movements. In order to exemplify the different approaches, the chapter describes the impacts of the inter-American jurisprudence on the territorial rights of Indigenous and ethnic peoples. Even though compliance remains an indisputable proxy for analysis of international litigation, particular attention should be paid to implementation processes and to the lapse of time until final compliance. Furthermore, effectiveness cannot be restricted to compliance assessment since new-style courts have exercised unprecedented impact in domestic politics. The impact reaches distinct fields of rights and involves multiple actors, both domestic and international.
Transformative Impact
Authors: Ortiz Ocaña Mayra , Pérez-Liñán Aníbal
Published: February 2024

The contributions to this book show that the Inter-American Human Rights System (IAHRS) has a powerful, transformative impact despite its compliance problems. However, a clear definition of impact seems to be missing in the specialized literature. This void creates an important challenge when researchers seek to assess the system’s transformative impact in a systematic way. This chapter advances a framework to conceptualize and measure the effects of the IAHRS. The chapter identifies a “transformative sequence” with three causal stages. The organs of the System activate the sequence when they employ their instruments to (re)frame human rights issues. Actors in the IAHRS’s community of practice constitute the first stage, as they appropriate the new frames and employ them to gain leverage in legal and political disputes. As domestic institutions respond to the community of practice, the second stage in the sequence produces legal reforms or changes in jurisprudence. In the most successful cases, institutional changes produce substantive transformations in human rights on the ground during a third stage. The analytical periodization allows us to identify the relevant actors and outcomes to evaluate the effects of the IAHRS at each stage. The final section illustrates some strategies to document impact and shows how empirical research can analyze the transformations fostered by the IAHRS.
The Transformative Impact of the Artavia Murillo Case on In Vitro Fertilization
Authors: Guzmán Silvia Serrano
Published: February 2024

The Artavia Murillo judgment of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights is paradigmatic for several reasons. This chapter examines those reasons and analyzes the transformative impact of the case at three levels. First, considering the judgment itself, it was the first opportunity to develop the case law of the Inter-American System in various directions, including the recognition of a right to reproductive autonomy and the proper interpretation of the scope of the protection of the right to life in the American Convention on Human Rights. The interpretation of the Court has been used by a number of domestic tribunals of other States as the basis for the recognition of reproductive rights, including the progressive decriminalization of abortion. Second, although the case was presented by eighteen individualized victims, it had a nationwide impact in Costa Rica in favor of all infertile couples whose only option to have biological children was in vitro fertilization (IVF). Moreover, the case allowed for IVF to make its way into the public health system of Costa Rica. Third, during the process of supervision of compliance, the Court had an unprecedented role in safeguarding the effectiveness of its decision. This chapter describes and comments each component of the widespread and multilevel impact of the case.
The Riffo-Salinas Case
Authors: Díaz-Tendero Aída
Published: February 2024

Social and legal constructions about older persons are changing, as the absolute and relative number of older persons increases, not only in the regions most advanced in the demographic transition but also in Latin America and the Caribbean. This chapter assesses whether the Riffo-Salinas case of the Plurinational Constitutional Court of Bolivia constitutes a good practice for the Inter-American System based on: the kind of legal constructions on older persons; the integration of the ad hoc instrument available to the Inter-American System for the protection of the human rights of older persons, namely, the Inter-American Convention on the Protection of the Human Rights of Older Persons; the inclusion or exclusion of the inter-American standards established by the Court and the Commission; and the degree to which it manages to be a multilegal system, converging national and inter-American norms.
Transformative Impact of the Inter-American Human Rights System
Authors: Krsticevic Viviana , Urueña René
Published: February 2024

This chapter presents a methodology to analyze the transformative impact of the Inter-American Human Rights System (IAHRS) on the protection of victims’ rights, accountability, and the rule of law in Latin America. Against the view that compliance is a monolithically defined analytical category, this chapter argues that compliance with international norms can be fostered with an institutional design and practice that considers their wider impact. There is, ultimately, an intimate link between the wider impact of an international order, and compliance with it: compliance with international orders is in fact facilitated by the wider impact of such decision, which feeds into its compliance processes. Thus, this chapter makes a distinct contribution to the existing analysis between the studies of compliance and impact complementing other qualitative and quantitative approaches. Building on novel research, it proposes a methodology to analyze the impact of the IAHRS in the search for accountability. In doing so, it provides a better understanding of the relation between the different factors that can influence progress, stagnation, and setbacks at the national level.
Encore
Authors: Egeler Matthias
Published: February 2024

Starting from the lighthouse at Gjögur, the Encore looks back over the discussions presented in the preceding chapters and draws their results together into a more general conclusion. In its first part, it summarizes some of the main arguments and highlights the most prominent themes of the book, covering both themes whose importance for the construction of a supernatural landscape was an object of dedicated sections and aspects that were pervasive but never formed the focus of a chapter of their own. Its second part then concludes the book by moving toward a more abstract synthesis. It presents an analysis of the different forms and elements of the supernatural landscape in order to propose a heuristic pair of ideal types: “being-in-a-place” versus “looking-at-a-place.” This complementary pair of concepts serves to highlight some crucial differences between respectively the countryside view of the landscape and its urban perception.
Protests, Participation and Representation in an Improvisational Polity1
Authors: Keshavarzian Arang
Published: February 2024

Protests in Iran are not a sign of a decline of the state or a break with the past, but of dynamic change emanating from a foundational duality woven into the postrevolutionary polity, or the structured relationships between rulers and the ruled that render state and society as interdependent and interpenetrating. These negotiated relationships constitute Iran as a single contested polity, rather than a binary of the people versus the regime or a state detached from its society. Since 1979, Iran’s polity has been anchored by mass participation and elite factionalism. These twin features situate the multi-sided struggles unfolding in Iran in recent years within historical processes shaping both rulers and the ruled. Participation and factionalism along with the strategies to constrain them are the immediate ingredients for the improvisational nature of Iran’s polity.
The Islamic Republic’s Judiciary in Transition
Authors: Dorzadeh Hamideh
Published: February 2024

Under the Islamic Republic, the judiciary has undergone an Islamization process, which primarily centered on institutionalizing the shari’ah and amending many of the laws, particularly criminal and family laws. While the judiciary is described as an independent institution in the constitution, the current structure of the judiciary suggests that Iran’s legal institution is not independent of the Supreme Leader. In fact, it is the Supreme Leader who appoints the Judiciary Head for a period of five years. The clerics chosen to head the judiciary do not advocate for limiting the Supreme Leader’s influence on the judiciary. Instead, in addition to ensuring the overall Islamization of the law, the judiciary head seeks to ensure the independence of the judiciary from the elected institutions, namely the presidency and the Majles. Moreover, all heads of the judiciary have been insider clerics, and sometimes they have had no formal judicial training, as was the case with Larijani. The judiciary has been used as a political tool to repress dissent, whether institutional or individual, and the judiciary has consistently worked to strengthen the position of the Supreme Leader instead of safeguarding the rights of the Iranian public.