China: Facing a long-term care challenge on an unprecedented scale

National Leadership Summit Promotes Consumer-Driven Options in LTC

Background: The demand for long-term residential care for people with dementia is, especially for those in the moderate to severe stages, increasing. However, dementia care services within long-term care (LTC) settings remain underdeveloped in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Objectives: This qualitative evidence synthesis aimed to explore LTC staff's experiences of taking care of people with dementia in LTC facilities in LMICs. Methods: A comprehensive literature search was conducted of six databases in January 2023 and updated in August 2024 for qualitative studies of LTC staff's experience of caring for people with dementia. Thematic synthesis was utilised for data synthesis, and NVivo facilitated this process. Results: 8,565 studies were screened, and 11 articles were included in this review. The studies included were conducted in Brazil (n = 2), China (n = 5), India (n = 1), Iran (n = 1), Malaysia (n = 1) and South Africa (n = 1) between 2012 and 2024. An overarching theme was identified: We are an island: underdeveloped dementia care within the LTC settings in LMICs, and the following categories identified as (1) the development of care provided for people living with dementia within care home settings is in its infancy; (2) the positive and effective coping strategies that may help embrace a brighter future of dementia care; (3) the deficiencies in caregiving approaches that contributed to poor-quality care for people living with dementia. Conclusions: The development of dementia care services within LTC in LMICs is still in its early stages. The main concern is the lack of available support and training for care staff and their insufficient dementia knowledge and care competencies. We hope that this review will help to increase attention to this significant issue of long-term institutional care for people with dementia in LMICs and that further research could investigate and enhance potential improvements in the practical implementation of long-term residential dementia care.

Pragmatic Trials and Improving Long-Term Care: Recommendations From a National Institutes of Health Conference.

The Uncertain Future of Nursing Home Post-Acute Care.

Large increases in the need for long-term care (LTC) services are expected as baby boomers age. Little has been published about patient and caregiver preferences for information about LTC. However, our qualitative research findings suggest that potential consumers may find it difficult to obtain accurate and timely information about LTC programs and services. In-person, semistructured interviews were conducted with 47 subjects, including patients (n = 25) within 90 days of their referral to a LTC placement (including NH, assisted living, home care, and community) and their caregivers (n = 22). Interview questions addressed the events that seemed to trigger their need for a LTC referral, the resources they used to become more informed about LTC options and the issues they confronted with the LTC referral process. Qualitative analyses identified a number of patient and informal caregiver-reported barriers to making decisions about LTC services, including insufficient information about LTC programs and community resources, unclear funding requirements and inadequate funding, and difficulty knowing how to plan for LTC or make LTC decisions. A potential solution may be an online LTC Guide designed to provide accurate information about the range of LTC services, with an emphasis on home and community-based services. This Guide was developed to address the gap in comprehensive LTC information identified in the findings of this study.

During the past two centuries, universities have evolved from being “accumulators” of knowledge, largely separated from society, to “knowledge hubs,” which are deeply embedded in systems of innovation and take on the role of instigating economic and social development. Despite economic, social, and institutional disparities, university authorities, policymakers, and academics are focusing their attention on the potential of universities to create innovative environments and contribute to the knowledge-based economic development of countries and regions. Due to the lack of data, almost all extant empirical studies have analyzed the contribution of university research mission on developed regions (e.g., USA, UK, and the Netherlands). The aim of this paper is to provide evidence of the impact of three university missions on the economic development of countries at different stages, namely the factor-, efficiency-, and innovation-driven stages. Adopting the endogenous growth theory, our proposed model was tested using data from 77 countries with a linear regression model. Our main results show that: (i) the human capital generated by universities is the most important predictor of economic development at all stages; (ii) the university research activity is only evidenced at the efficiency-driven and innovation-driven stages; and (ii) the outcome of the entrepreneurial mission of universities is only positively related to gross domestic product (GDP) in innovation-driven economies. Some relevant implications for policymakers, university managers, and society, as well as best practices emerge from this research.

Commentaries on health services research

In recent decades, a large number of authors investigated whether income inequality level and climate change were compatible. However, the relationship between inequality level impact and consumption-based greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions was scarcely analysed. Thus, the objective of the present paper was to analyse the relationship between income inequality level and consumption-based GHG emissions from 1990 to 2014 under different stages of economic development. The results revealed a large gap between consumption-based GHG emissions at different economic development stages. Economic growth contributed to the growth of consumption-based GHG emissions in all income groups, and the largest effect was observed in middle-low- and low-income countries. Higher income inequality level was associated with lower negatively influenced consumption-based emissions in high- and middle-high-income countries, confirming the marginal propensity to emit and 'Veblen effect' theories. Meanwhile, regarding the middle-low- and low-income groups, the relationships between inequality level and GHG emissions were insignificant. Urbanisation level contributed to the growth of consumption-based GHG emissions in middle- and low-income countries. Education level contributed to the reduction of consumption-based GHG emissions in high-, middle-high-, and middle-low-income countries, and growth of emissions in low-income countries. Therefore, our analysis revealed that income inequality and climate change are still incompatible in all income groups, and we suggested how to achieve the reduction of income inequality and climate change simultaneously.

Relationship between economic development and suicide mortality: a global cross-sectional analysis in an epidemiological transition perspective by Moniruzzaman and Andersson (Public Health 118 (5), 346–348)

Earlier studies by Panagaria (2008) and Bhat (2013) have categorized the economic development of India into four phases based on the social, political, and economic parameters from 1951 to 2006. Considering the economic performance and global financial crisis of 2007-08, this paper analyses the fifth stage of economic development. Apart from the earlier studies, it analyzed global economic outlooks to trace the shrinking growth rate in GDP, industry, and the manufacturing sector. The first phase of economicdevelopment in India since independence followed a liberal regime and accounted for a GDP growth rate of 4.1 percent. The second phase experienced restrictive policies and adopted an ‘indigenous non-availability import system’, and the end result was a drop in the growth rate. Hence, it adopted relatively liberal policies in the third phase and systematic liberalization was enacted in the fourth phase. The liberalization policies resulted in an accelerated growth rate in all sectors and continued until the economic crisis of 2007-08. In addition to the earlier studies, this paper considers the post-crisis period as the fifth phase of economic development, where the economy experienced a remarkable increase in the GDP growth rate resulting from the surge in the service sector and a significant drop in the industrial sector. It appears that industrial growth rates were revoked due to the continued fall in export demand and foreign capital outflows in the post-crisis period.

Comparative studies of the relationship between economic development and variables of a political nature have attracted considerable interest in the last decade. Advances in the measurement, or codification, of heretofore completely unquantified variables and the introduction into the field of more sophisticated empirical methods, such as factor analysis and dummy variable regression analysis, have facilitated a rigorous statistical approach to the study of the interactions of political factors-with economic development in cross polity samples. The purpose of this article is to amplify the limited empirical evidence on the relationship between economic development and political factors. Determinants of economic development have been variously classified and studied. With regard to the role of political factors in the process of development, the interest has greatly increased since the emergence of the many new nations. Various questions have been asked as to which political factors explain better the variations in the economic performance of countries at different stages of economic development. This article will examine a large sample of nations and identify the political factors that play a significant role in explaining the variations in the level of economic development among them. One can look at economic development both in terms of growth rates and in terms of levels of development. This study uses the variable economic development in the latter context by employing, as an indicator of development, the Gross Domestic Product per Capita.1

Russian economy has encountered the whole range of challenges that weigh on its growth in the long-run: the loss of global competitiveness, unfavorable investment climate, shrinking labor force, limited capacity of fuel export growth, underinvestment in human capital, not growing oil prices, etc. The escalation of the geo-political crisis in 2014 has exacerbated the negative trends, and in essence nudges the country to make its choice. In this research, two main scenarios were considered. Under the first one, which appears to be the more probable, the state role in the economy increases, political power becomes more centralized, expenses on siloviki increase, civil freedoms become curbed, and economic activity (including foreign trade and capital flows) is constrained. Under this scenario, with either tight fiscal and monetary policy or accommodative policy average growth rates in the long-run will remain low. The second scenario envisages economic growth in private sector as trust, law enforcement, and competition strengthen, control becomes more de-centralized, and foreign operations do not fall under regulatory constraints. Only in this case economic growth could accelerate.

This paper studies the relation between inflation and economic development. The literature is largely silent regarding both the theoretical and empirical perspectives that undeveloped countries endure higher average inflation than developed economies. We present a simple theoretical model linking the inflation phenomenon to the tradition of development economics. Empirical evidence is garnered to test the hypothesis that economic development engenders a downward bias to inflation rates. Through the feasible-GLS estimator in a panel of 65 countries from 2001 to 2011, we aim at listing a number of variables most commonly used to explain differences in the stage of economic development across countries and identifying the most statistically relevant ones to account for differences in inflationary patterns. While our results show that inflation is inversely correlated with the level of the technological content of the economy (measured by share of high-tech exports), human capital and cyclical unemployment, it is directly related to the degree of inflation persistence and terms of trade growth. However, our findings still present an inverse and low correlation between inflation persistence and economic development, implying that development-sensitive variables allowed into the model can only partially account for the differences in inflation at different levels of economic development.

Long-Term Care Reforms Live On With Court Ruling

[straipsnis ir santrauka lietuvių kalba; santrauka anglų kalba] Straipsnyje, remiantis gerovės kultūros prieiga ir viešųjų vertybių vadybos idėjomis, analizuojama ir įvertinama ilgalaikės senyvo amžiaus asmenų globos ir slaugos (IGS) problematika Lietuvoje. Pradžioje apžvelgiami Lietuvos mokslininkų darbai, susiję su socialine politika ir IGS, bei apibūdinama šios srities būklė šalyje. Visuomenės nuostatos ir paslaugų teikėjų požiūriai į atsakomybę už rūpinimąsi senyvo amžiaus asmenimis bei į socialinių paslaugų plėtros poreikį IGS srityje interpretuojami kaip kompleksinė reakcija į nepatenkinamą IGS situaciją. Straipsnis baigiamas rekomendacijomis stiprinti viešųjų vertybių vadybos propaguojamus demokratinius svarstymus ir kitus instrumentus, kuriais būtų geriau atliepiama į visų suinteresuotų šalių vertybines nuostatas ir lūkesčius ir būtų geriau derinami jų interesai IGS srityje.