Certificate of need, state health planning, and the state bonding authority for health facilities construction and development : Task Force report to the Council.

Cover title.

Comprehensive planning for children's services in Illinois : report of the Illinois Commission on Children's Community-Based Children's Services Task Force.

"January, 1985."

Human health and the environment : some research needs : report of the Second Task Force for Research Planning in Environmental Health Science

Includes bibliographies and index

Shifting EU Institutional Reform into High Gear. Report of the CEPS High-Level Group. CEPS Task Force Reports

To contribute to the important debate on EU institutional reform in the run-up to the European Parliament elections and the start of a new Commission, CEPS formed a High-Level Group on EU Institutional Reform under the leadership of Danuta Hübner MEP and member of the CEPS Board of Directors. The report of this distinguished group of MEPs, former and current EU institutional members and leading scholars on EU law and institutional affairs focuses on reforms that could be taken within the framework of the current treaties to build a more responsive and accountable Union. The report analyses the main inter- and intra-institutional weaknesses in terms of efficiency, democracy and differentiation and puts forward a number of recommendations addressing issues such as the reorganisation of the College of Commissioners, the promotion of strategic legislative planning, the enhancement of the role of the EP and the rotating Presidency of the Council, the improvement of the democratic accountability of the European Council and the adequate engagement of the national parliaments.

Health care in rural Illinois : recommendations of the Rural Health Task Force.

"April, 1990."

Report of the Governor's Task Force on the Future of Mental Health in Illinois.

"January 15, 1987."

Marine Fisheries Stock Assessment Improvement Plan: report of the National Marine Fisheries Service National Task Force for Improving Fish Stock Assessments

This report argues for greatly increased resources in terms of data collection facilities and staff to collect, process, and analyze the data, and to communicate the results, in order for NMFS to fulfill its mandate to conserve and manage marine resources. In fact, the authors of this report had great difficulty defining the "ideal" situation to which fisheries stock assessments and management should aspire. One of the primary objectives of fisheries management is to develop sustainable harvest policies that minimize the risks of overfishing both target species and associated species. This can be achieved in a wide spectrum of ways, ranging between the following two extremes. The first is to implement only simple management measures with correspondingly simple assessment demands, which will usually mean setting fishing mortality targets at relatively low levels in order to reduce the risk of unknowingly overfishing or driving ecosystems towards undesirable system states. The second is to expand existing data collection and analysis programs to provide an adequate knowledge base that can support higher fishing mortality targets while still ensuring low risk to target and associated species and ecosystems. However, defining "adequate" is difficult, especially when scientists have not even identified all marine species, and information on catches, abundances, and life histories of many target species, and most associated species, is sparse. Increasing calls from the public, stakeholders, and the scientific community to implement ecosystem-based stock assessment and management make it even more difficult to define "adequate," especially when "ecosystem-based management" is itself not well-defined. In attempting to describe the data collection and assessment needs for the latter, the authors took a pragmatic approach, rather than trying to estimate the resources required to develop a knowledge base about the fine-scale detailed distributions, abundances, and associations of all marine species. Thus, the specified resource requirements will not meet the expectations of some stakeholders. In addition, the Stock Assessment Improvement Plan is designed to be complementary to other related plans, and therefore does not duplicate the resource requirements detailed in those plans, except as otherwise noted.

Screening for adolescent idiopathic scoliosis: an information statement by the scoliosis research society international task force

Background: Routine screening of scoliosis is a controversial subject and screening efforts vary greatly around the world. METHODS: Consensus was sought among an international group of experts (seven spine surgeons and one clinical epidemiologist) using a modified Delphi approach. The consensus achieved was based on careful analysis of a recent critical review of the literature on scoliosis screening, performed using a conceptual framework of analysis focusing on five main dimensions: technical, clinical, program, cost and treatment effectiveness. FINDINGS: A consensus was obtained in all five dimensions of analysis, resulting in 10 statements and recommendations. In summary, there is scientific evidence to support the value of scoliosis screening with respect to technical efficacy, clinical, program and treatment effectiveness, but there insufficient evidence to make a statement with respect to cost effectiveness. Scoliosis screening should be aimed at identifying suspected cases of scoliosis that will be referred for diagnostic evaluation and confirmed, or ruled out, with a clinically significant scoliosis. The scoliometer is currently the best tool available for scoliosis screening and there is moderate evidence to recommend referral with values between 5 degrees and 7 degrees. There is moderate evidence that scoliosis screening allows for detection and referral of patients at an earlier stage of the clinical course, and there is low evidence suggesting that scoliosis patients detected by screening are less likely to need surgery than those who did not have screening. There is strong evidence to support treatment by bracing. INTERPRETATION: This information statement by an expert panel supports scoliosis screening in 4 of the 5 domains studied, using a framework of analysis which includes all of the World Health Organisation criteria for a valid screening procedure.

Which economic model for a water-efficient Europe? Report of a CEPS Task Force. CEPS Task Force Report, 27 November 2012

This CEPS Task Force Report focuses on how to improve water efficiency in Europe, notably in public supply, households, agriculture, energy and manufacturing as well as across sectors. It presents a number of recommendations on how to make better use of economic policy instruments to sustainably manage the EU’s water resources. Published in the run-up to the European Commission’s “Blueprint to Safeguard Europe’s Waters”, the report contributes to the policy deliberations in two ways. First, by assessing the viability of economic policy instruments, it addresses a major shortcoming that has so far prevented the 2000 EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) from becoming fully effective in practice: the lack of appropriate, coherent and effective instruments in (some) member states. Second, as the Task Force report is the result of an interactive process involving a variety of stakeholders, it is able to point to the key differences in interpreting and applying WFD principles that have led to a lack of policy coherence across the EU and to offer some pragmatic advice on moving forward.