BACKGROUND Interventions to reduce malaria burden are effective if communities use them appropriately and consistently. Several tools have been suggested to promote uptake and use of malaria control interventions. Community workshops on malaria, using the 'Health Animator' approach, are a potential behaviour change strategy for malaria control. The strategy aims to influence a change in mind-se...

Patients frequently do not take medicines as prescribed and often do not communicate with their physicians about their medication-taking behavior. The movement for "patient-centered" care has led to relabeling of this problem from "noncompliance" to "nonadherence" and later to a rhetoric of "concordance" and "shared decision making" in which physicians and patients are viewed as partners who id...

Developing countries often have rich natural resources but poor infrastructure to capitalize on them, which leads to significant challenges in terms of balancing poverty alleviation with conservation. The underlying premise in development strategies is to increase the socio-economic welfare of the people while simultaneously ensuring environmental sustainability, however these objectives are of...

BACKGROUND Despite recent developments in post-graduate family medicine training in Japan, the numbers of junior doctors entering family medicine residencies are still limited. The objective of this qualitative study was to investigate the possible factors associated to the career choice of family medicine, especially in the context of the newly established family medicine programs in Japan. ...

Backyard poultry ownership provides a great opportunity for improved self-reliance and small-scale agricultural sustainability through home egg and meat production. One issue with backyard poultry ownership is managing the waste products of your birds, particularly the manure and bedding mixture (termed “litter”) that builds up in the coop. If not managed properly, this waste material can creat...

In this paper, I explore when and why workplace training facilitates the retention of firsttime workers from historically underrepresented groups in formal employment. I argue that training conducted by experienced socialization agents is effective at preventing such workers from dropping out soon after they are hired. I also argue that experienced socialization agents promote retention of this...

The majority of suicidal adolescents have no contact with mental health services, and reduced help-seeking in this population further lessens the likelihood of accessing treatment. A commonly-reported reason for not seeking help is youths' perception that they should solve problems on their own. In this study, we explore associations between extreme self-reliance behavior (i.e., solving problem...

The trend in national policy over the past two decades has emphasized self reliance and a smaller role for government in society. Given this ideological shift, the Official poverty measure, which is based on the premise that all families should have sufficient income from either their own efforts or government support to boost them above a family-size-specific threshold, appears to have less po...