Perceptions of institutional support of community -based participatory research within prevention research centers

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) report on the future of health care states that the focus on health needs to shift to the management and prevention of chronic illnesses and that academic health centers (AHCs) should play an active role in this process through community partnerships (IOM, 2002). Grant funding from the National Institutes of Health and the creation of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Prevention Research Centers (PRC) across the county represent a transition toward more proactively seeking out community partnerships to better design and disseminate health promotion programs (Green, 2001). ^ The focus of the PRCs is to conduct rigorous, community-based, prevention research, to seek outcomes applicable to public health programs and policies. The PRCs work is to create and foster partnerships among public health and community organizations, to address health promotion and disease prevention issues (CDC, 2003). ^ The W.K. Kellogg Foundation defines CBPR as "a collaborative approach to research that equitably involves all partners in the research process and recognizes the unique strengths that each brings. CBPR begins with a research topic of importance to the community with the aim of combining knowledge and action for social change to improve community health." ^ In 1995, CDC asked the IOM to review the PRC program to examine the extent to which the program is providing the public health community with strategies to address public health problems in disease prevention and health promotion (IOM, 1997). No comprehensive evaluation n of the individual PRCs had ever been done (IOM, 1997). ^ The CDC was interested in understanding how it could better support the PRC program through improved management and oversight to influence the program's success. The CDC only represents one of the entities that influence the success of a PRC. Another key entity to consider is the support of and influence of the Schools of Public Health in which the PRCs reside. Using evaluation criteria similar to those that were developed by the IOM, this study examined how aspects of structural capacity of the Schools of Public Health in which the PRCs reside are perceived to influence PRC community-based research activities. ^

Transformación posmoderna y nuevas modalidades de gestión en la sociedad globalizada : reflexiones en torno a la crisis de institucionalidad

Las transformaciones operadas por la globalización tienen un carácter multidimensional que trasciende la mera internacionalización de la economía y se traduce en la difusión de ideas, valores, modos de producción y gestión, fórmulas organizativas públicas y privadas y aun estilos de vida que se difunden a través de las fronteras nacionales. Aparece, entonces, un nuevo escenario para el conocimiento administrativo, que precisa ser definido en sus alcances dado que afecta tanto a prácticas y actores como a los valores subyacentes. Este trabajo se interroga sobre la influencia de las transformaciones posmodernas (analizadas aquí como quiebras o rupturas de la modernidad), en la crisis de las instituciones, entendidas como las prácticas extensivas que condensan los valores sociales -y los hacen operativos- a la vez que permiten reducir la incertidumbre. A partir de este concepto de crisis institucional y su tipificación, se analizan algunas modalidades de gestión que aparecen, bien como alterativas a la situación de crisis planteada, bien como respuesta de adaptación a la realidad de una sociedad globalizada.

An Institutional Analysis of Environmental Pollution Disputes in Taiwan: Cases of 'Self-Relief'

During the late 1980s and early 1990s in Taiwan, people's protests against environmental pollution often took the form of "self-relief," meaning that they attempted to fight polluters using their own resources, without relying on legal or administrative procedures. Why did such an extreme form of disputes become so widespread? What institutional changes did these movements bring about? These questions are analyzed using the analytical framework of "law and economics." Our research shows that "self-relief" functioned to a certain extent as a means of realizing quick compensation for victims, and for reflecting the opinions of local people concerning development projects; in addition, it served to promote the formulation of law and administrative systems. However, as it was based on direct negotiations between the parties concerned, the outcome of each dispute only reflected the transient balance of forces, and the experience gained in negotiations was not accumulated as a social norm.