State Social Safety Net Programs and the Great Recession: The First Line of Defense and the Last Resort for the Economically Disadvantaged

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-06

Appropriate wage rate and estimate of labour availability for a public works based safety net in Cambodia

Employment generating public works (EGPW) are an important part of Royal Government of Cambodia’s (RGC’s) strategy being developed through Council for Agriculture and Rural Development (CARD) to develop a comprehensive social safety net (SSN) to provide a measure of protection from shocks for the poor and vulnerable and to contribute to poverty alleviation through short-term unskilled employment.

Building Nature’s Safety Net 2014 : A decade of protected area achievements in Australia

The single most important asset for the conservation of Australia’s unique and globally significant biodiversity is the National Reserve System, a mosaic of over 10,000 discrete protected areas on land on all tenures: government, Indigenous and private,including on-farm covenants, as well as state, territory and Commonwealth marine parks and reserves.THE NATIONAL RESERVE SYSTEMIn this report, we cover major National Reserve System initiatives that have occurred in the period 2002 to the present and highlight issues affecting progress toward agreed national objectives. We define a minimum standard for the National Reserve System to comprehensively, adequately and representatively protect Australia’s ecosystem and species diversity on sea and land. Using government protected area, species and other relevant spatial data, we quantify gaps: those areas needing to move from the current National Reserve System to one which meets this standard. We also provide new estimates of financial investments in protected areas and of the benefits that protected areas secure for society. Protected areas primarily serve to secure Australia’s native plants and animals against extinction, and to promote their recovery.BENEFITSProtected areas also secure ecosystem services that provide economic benefits forhuman communities including water, soil and beneficial species conservation, climatemoderation, social, cultural and health benefits. On land, we estimate these benefitsare worth over $38 billion a year, by applying data collated by the Ecosystem ServicesPartnership. A much larger figure is estimated to have been secured by marineprotected areas in the form of moderation of climate and impact of extreme eventsby reef and mangrove ecosystems. While these estimates have not been verified bystudies specific to Australia, they are indicative of a very large economic contributionof protected areas. Visitors to national parks and nature reserves spend over $23.6 billion a year in Australia, generating tax revenue for state and territory governments of $2.36 billion a year. All these economic benefits taken together greatly exceed the aggregate annual protected area expansion and management spending by all Australian governments, estimated to be ~$1.28 billion a year. It is clear that Australian society is benefiting far greater than its governments’ investment into strategic growth and maintenance of the National Reserve System.Government investment and policy settings play a leading role in strategic growth of the National Reserve System in Australia, and provide a critical stimulus fornon-government investment. Unprecedented expansion of the National Reserve System followed an historic boost in Australian Government funding under Caring for Our Country 2008–2013. This expansion was highly economical for the Australian Government, costing an average of only $44.40 per hectare to buy and protect land forever. State governments have contributed about six times this amount toward the expansion of the National Reserve System, after including in-perpetuity protected area management costs. The growth of Indigenous Protected Areas by the Australian Government has cost ~$26 per hectare on average, including management costs capitalised in-perpetuity, while also delivering Indigenous social and economic outcomes. The aggregate annual investment by all Australian governments has been ~$72.6 million per year on protected area growth and ~$1.21 billion per year on recurrent management costs. For the first time in almost two decades, however, the Australian Government’s National Reserve System Program, comprising a specialist administrative unit and funding allocation, was terminated in late 2012. This program was fundamental in driving significant strategic growth in Australia’s protected area estate. It is highly unlikely that Australia can achieve its long-standing commitments to an ecologically representative National Reserve System, and prevent major biodiversity loss, without this dedicated funding pool. The Australian Government has budgeted ~$400 million per year over the next five years (2013-2018) under the National Landcare and related programs. This funding program should give high priority to delivery of national protected area commitments by providing a distinct National Reserve System funding allocation. Under the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), Australia has committed to bringing at least 17 percent of terrestrial and at least 10 per cent of marine areas into ecologically representative, well-connected systems of protected areas by 2020 (Aichi Target 11).BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATIONAustralia also has an agreed intergovernmental Strategy for developing a comprehensive, adequate and representative National Reserve System on land andsea that, if implemented, would deliver on this CBD target. Due to dramatic recent growth, the National Reserve System covers 16.5 per cent of Australia’s land area, with highly protected areas, such as national parks, covering 8.3 per cent. The marine National Reserve System extends over one-third of Australian waters with highly protected areas such as marine national parks, no-take or green zones covering 13.5 per cent. Growth has been uneven however, and the National Reserve System is still far from meeting Aichi Target 11, which requires that it also be ecologically representative and well-connected. On land, 1,655 of 5,815 ecosystems and habitats for 138 of 1,613 threatened species remain unprotected. Nonetheless, 436 terrestrial ecosystems and 176 threatened terrestrial species attained minimum standards of protection due to growth of the National Reserve System on land between 2002 and 2012. The gap for ecosystem protection on land – the area needed to bring all ecosystems to the minimum standard of protection – closed by a very substantial 20 million hectares (from 77 down to 57 million hectares) between 2002 and 2012, not including threatened species protection gaps. Threatened species attaining a minimum standard for habitat protection increased from 27 per cent to 38 per cent over the decade 2002–2012. A low proportion of critically endangered species meeting the standard (29 per cent) and the high proportion with no protection at all (20 per cent) are cause for concern, but one which should be relatively easy to amend, as the distributions of these species tend to be small and localised. Protected area connectivity has increased modestly for terrestrial protected areas in terms of the median distance between neighbouring protected areas, but this progress has been undermined by increasing land use intensity in landscapes between protected areas.A comprehensive, adequate and representative marine reserve system, which meetsa standard of 15 per cent of each of 2,420 marine ecosystems and 30 per cent of thehabitats of each of 177 marine species of national environmental significance, wouldrequire expansion of marine national parks, no-take or green zones up to nearly 30per cent of state and Australian waters, not substantially different in overall extentfrom that of the current marine reserve system, but different in configuration.Protection of climate change refugia, connectivity and special places for biodiversityis still low and requires high priority attention. FINANCING TO FILL GAPS AND MEET COMMITMENTSIf the ‘comprehensiveness’ and ‘representativeness’ targets in the agreed terrestrial National Reserve System Strategy were met by 2020, Australia would be likely to have met the ‘ecologically representative’ requirement of Aichi Target 11. This would requireexpanding the terrestrial reserve system by at least 25 million hectares. Considering that the terrestrial ecosystem protection gap has closed by 20 million hectares over the past decade, this required expansion would be feasible with a major boost in investment and focus on long-standing priorities. A realistic mix of purchases, Indigenous Protected Areas and private land covenants would require an Australian Government National Reserve System investment of ~$170 million per year over the five years to 2020, representing ~42 per cent of the $400 million per year which the Australian Government has budgeted for landcare and conservation over the next five years. State, territory and local governments, private and Indigenous partners wouldlikewise need to boost financial commitments to both expand and maintain newprotected areas to meet the agreed National Reserve System strategic objectives.The total cost of Australia achieving a comprehensive, adequate and representativemarine reserve system that would satisfy Aichi Target 11 is an estimated $247 million.

Assessing the effectiveness of the child safety net : linkage of hospital and child protection services data on ‘maltreated’ and ‘unintentionally injured' children

-International recognition of need for public health response to child maltreatment -Need for early intervention at health system level -Important role of health professionals in identifying, reporting, documenting suspician of maltreatment -Up to 10% of all children presenting at ED’s are victims and without identification, 35% reinjured and 5% die -In Qld, mandatory reporting requirement for doctors and nurses for suspected abuse or neglect

Safety net or debt net?: ties between marketing and credit in coastal Bangladesh

Three fishing communities in coastal Bangladesh namely: 1) Hindu community near Chittagong; 2) Muslim community in Rehania; and 3) Bhuddist community of Rakhaipara were studied, and each shared the same credit marketing system.

Building nature’s safety net 2011 : the state of protected areas for Australia’s ecosystems and wildlife.

This report is the third in a series with the two previous reports published in 2006 and 2008. This report details major conservation initiatives that have occurred in Australia since the last report, in which data was current to 2006, and highlights emerging issues. A major enhancement on previous reports is the inclusion of ecosystem and threatened species gap analyses, and the reporting on Australia's protected area systems on both land and sea. We define a minimum standard for an adequate, representative, and comprehensive reserve system by sampling ecosystem and species level diversity. Using the latest protected area and national species and ecosystem spatial data, we quantify the gaps: those areas needing to move from the current reserve system to one which meets the minimum standard. We also use data provided by various parks agencies, from responses to a questionnaire or as published by the agencies, to detail financial investments in protected areas, and estimate the investment levels needed to fill the documented gaps. We also identify critical policy changes needed to more effectively fill the identified gaps.

UHC Patient Safety Net® Progress To Date : An “A+” Report Card for JDH Staff!

Safety in Numbers It’s been eight months since we implemented UHC Patient Safety Net® (“PSN”) at John Dempsey Hospital, and we are delighted with its success. As you know, PSN is a web-based reporting tool for reporting patient safety-related events. Frontline staff are doing a great job entering data on patient care events. Here’s how PSN works:

Patient Safety Net Update

It’s been three months since we’ve gone live with Patient Safety Net, and it has been a great success! Managers and front line staff have been trained on how to input, review, and submit event reports that formerly were detailed on the hard copy “RIR” forms. Utilization of the webbased PSN system has been better than expected. PSN has enabled us to greatly improve the way we document and react to patient safety related events.

Bexar County's dental safety net for children: An estimate of our current capacity and need

Introduction. It has been well established that poor uninsured children lack access to dental care and have greater dental needs than their insured counterparts. ^ Objective. To assess the capacity of Bexar County's dental safety net to treat children. To assess the dental needs of Bexar County children ages 0-18 who are uninsured or are Medicaid or SCHIP recipients. ^ Methods. Information was requested from dental safety net clinics that treat children ages 0-18. Data from the census, NHANES and other sources was used to estimate the dental needs. ^ Results. The capacity of the current safety net to treat children is 33,537 patient encounters per year. The dental needs of the community are 227,124 patient encounters per year. ^ Conclusion. The results of the study indicate that Bexar County is not prepared to treat the dental needs of the underserved children in San Antonio.^

The local safety net, health insurance, preventable hospitalizations and costs: Harris County (Houston), Texas

The aim of this study was to examine the association between determinants of access to healthcare and preventable hospitalizations, based on Davidson et al.'s framework for evaluating the effects of individual and community determinants on access to healthcare. The study population consisted of the low income, non-elderly, hospitalized adults residing in Harris County, Texas in 2004. The objectives of this study were to examine the proportion of the variance in preventable hospitalizations at the ZIP-code level, to analyze the association between the proximity to the nearest safety net clinic and preventable hospitalizations, to examine how the safety net capacity relates to preventable hospitalizations, to compare the relative strength of the associations of health insurance and the proximity to the nearest safety net clinic with preventable hospitalizations, and to estimate and compare the costs of preventable hospitalizations in Harris County with the average cost in the literature. The data were collected from Texas Health Care Information Collection (2004), Census 2000, and Project Safety Net (2004). A total of 61,841 eligible individuals were included in the final data analysis. A random-intercept multi-level model was constructed with two different levels of data: the individual level and the ZIP-code level. The results of this study suggest that ZIP-code characteristics explain about two percent of the variance in preventable hospitalizations and safety net capacity was marginally significantly associated with preventable hospitalizations (p= 0.062). Proximity to the nearest safety net clinic was not related to preventable hospitalizations; however, health insurance was significantly associated with a decreased risk of preventable hospitalization. The average direct cost was $6,466 per preventable hospitalization, which is significantly different from reports in the literature. ^