Futures contracts for milk: how will they work?

Oral rotavirus vaccines: how well will they work where they are needed most?

Rotavirus vaccines hold promise to decrease the burden of severe diarrhea in the poorest countries, where 85% of deaths due to rotavirus occur. However, the potency of live oral vaccines is lower in these challenging settings than in middle- and upper-income countries. Many hypotheses have been suggested to explain these differences that could provide clues to improve the ultimate success of th...

Pulmonary embolism guidelines: will they work?

wo years ago several members of the British Thoracic Society independently suggested that, in the light of recent publications, the Standards of Care Committee should update their 1997 advice on suspected acute pulmonary embolism (PE). This issue of Thorax contains the results of this endeavour, with evidence sufficiently robust now to allow these to be called guidelines (see pp 470–83). Those ...

How will outcomes management work?

A consortium of employers and managed health care organizations has come together to test the feasibility and usefulness of an outcomes management system, a new strategy for providing information on what types of medical care are effective, for whom, and under what circumstances. Systematic measurement of health outcomes can provide the information that patients, providers, and insurers/employe...

Will they come and will they stay?

Can Work Alter Welfare Recipients’ Beliefs about How They Will Fare in the Labor Market?

Some public policies aimed at integrating welfare recipients into the world of work are predicated on the premise that getting welfare recipients to work will change their beliefs about how they will be treated in the labor market. This paper explores the rationale for these policies and concludes that a plausible argument can be made on the basis of concepts developed by social psychologists a...