China's education response to COVID-19: A perspective of policy analysis

This study explores how China's education responses to COVID-19 from a perspective of policy analysis. Specifically, it involves building an educational policy system for COVID-19 to examine educational governance framework, school management and teaching, policies for teachers during the epidemic. The education policy during the epidemic has achieved positive results. Those results aim to ensure the physical and mental health of teachers and students, ensure the supply of epidemic prevention materials and educational resources, ensure the quality of students' learning, and enhance the application ability of teachers' teaching technology. The process of policy changes and effects of policy implementation have been examined to analyze how China's education responses to COVID-19. The characteristics and experience of China's education policy in response to the epidemic concentrate on forming a governance system under the centralized and unified leadership of the Communist Party of China, building a pattern in which families and schools cooperate closely to promote the smooth development of education and teaching, transforming from an emergency substitute during the crisis into an important motivation to promote the transformation of education paradigm, and paying great attention to remote and poor areas and disadvantaged student groups.

Governing Rural Poverty on Urban Streets: Guangzhou's Management of Beggars in the Reform Era

This study investigates how discourses on panhandling intertwine with the governance of beggars on China's urban streets. It focuses on local policy implementation in Guangzhou city, led by the bureau of civil affairs along with its centres for "custody and repatriation” and "assistance stations.” The study aims to understand how the state regulates panhandling and engages with beggars in public spaces. Exploring the internal logic of the state's approach and how it has changed during the 40 years of reform, it also considers the junctures at which contradictions and conflicts arise. Based on fieldwork data (2011 to 2014) and the analysis of government documents, yearbooks, academic and mass media discourses, I argue that the state's treatment of panhandlers poses a conundrum as welfare measures conflict with control. While several layers of state regulation and actors contradict each other and create grey areas of state-induced informality, people who beg for alms are continuously criminalized and excluded from public space.

Evaluation of the Canadian government policies on controlling the COVID-19 outbreaks

In this paper, we investigate the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada and evaluate the Canadian government policies on controlling COVID-19 outbreaks. The first case of COVID-19 was reported in Ontario on 25 January 2020. Since then, there have been over million cases by now. During this time period, the federal, provincial and local governments have implemented regulations and policies in order to control the pandemic. To evaluate these government policies, which may be done by analysing the infection rate, infection period and reproductive number of COVID-19, we approach the problem by introducing an extended susceptible-exposed-infectious-removed (SEIR) model and conducting the model inference by using the iterated filter ensemble adjustment Kalman filter (IF-EAKF) algorithm. We first divide the time period into phases according to the policy intensities in each province by segmenting the time period from 4 March 2020 to 31 October 2020 into three time phases: the exploding phase, the strict policy implementation phase, and the provincial reopening phase. We then use IF-EAKF algorithm to obtain the estimates of the model parameters. We show that the infection rate in the second phase is lower than that in both first and third phases. We also discuss the number of new COVID-19 cases under different policy intensities and different policy durations in the third wave of the pandemic. © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Balancing the Drinking Act: A Grounded Theory of Youth Drinking, Policy and COVID-19 in Botswana

Stakeholder and consumer participation is generally seen as a critical part of effective alcohol policy making as it has a direct impact on policy implementation. In the advent of COVID-19, the views and experiences of stakeholders and consumers were integral to how countries responded to the virus. The involvement of alcohol stakeholders and consumers raises critical questions about policy making practices. Using Grounded Theory (GT) methods amongst 20 drinkers and six alcohol stakeholders, I examined the views and experiences of stakeholders and alcohol consumers in Botswana during COVID-19. I identified two interrelated core categories of Balancing the Drinking Act and Problematic Youth Drinking that were prominent as the country dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic. First, I argue that balancing the drinking act suggests the need for government to balance alcohol regulation with the needs of drinkers. Second, I highlight that problematic youth drinking relates to an emerging yet consistent belief that young people in Botswana are collectively responsible for alcohol "problems." These key themes center consumer and stakeholder participation in alcohol policy development. Moreover, the current analysis demonstrates the interplay between alcohol use and prohibition during COVID-19, and how it might be mediated by cultural scripts used by consumers and stakeholders in Botswana.

Elections and COVID-19 benefit payments.

This study examines the political factors associated with the implementation of a benefit payment policy in Japan during the COVID-19 crisis. The Japanese government announced a universal cash payment program in April 2020, but the payment date differed across localities. This study estimates the correlation between this timing and local politicians' characteristics, finding that local governments with mayors elected unopposed tended to start making payments comparatively early. As such, mayors elected uncontested may be able to mobilize resources within government offices to execute programs such as the Special Fixed Benefit program in Japan, which attracted public attention.

Research on Diversification Strategies of Terminal Operators—Evidence from Polish Seaports

In response to changes taking place in the global environment, seaport terminal operators constantly search for lines of development in their operations, choosing i.a. a strategy of diversification or specialisation. So far, the issue of applying a diversification strategy in business models used by operators of multipurpose terminals has not been sufficiently addressed in the literature on the subject. In view of the above, the purpose of this paper is to identify and hierarchize the motivations for diversification and to specify the areas of diversification strategies and corresponding measures taken by operators of multipurpose terminals. The multi-case-study method was applied to conduct the research, along with the research technique of semi-structured in-depth interviews held with representatives of five terminal operators that had been running their business activity in Polish seaports and applying a diversification strategy. As a result of the completed research study, it was possible to specify the motivations for implementing a diversification strategy, and to hierarchize them. The main motives in selecting a diversification strategy as the main business strategy among the interviewed terminal operators were safeguarding against seasonal or sporadic business cycle fluctuations, and changes taking place in maritime trade and transport. Moreover, four areas of diversification strategies pursued by the terminal operators were identified: cargo diversification, contract diversification, services diversification, and cargo flow direction diversification. The diversification measures taken by the terminal operators in the specified areas were analysed in detail. The most important areas of the diversification measures in the studied entities were cargo diversification and services diversification. A heat map was developed to present the dependencies between the motivations for diversification and the areas of diversification strategies implemented by the terminal operators. The identified specific measures taken by the terminal operators as part of the indicated diversification areas included technical and organisational measures. The diversification strategy developed by terminal operators proved to be an effective strategy in coping with the effects of economic slowdown and disruptions ensuing from the COVID-19 pandemic and war in Ukraine. The results of the considerations may be of interest to seaports, transshipment terminals or other entities interested in implementation of a business activity diversification strategy. © 2023 by the authors.

The tension between centralized politics and citizen participation: The case of the pandemic crisis management in Turkey

More than two years have passed in which worldwide efforts have been made to bring the COVID-19 pandemic under control. In addition to the purely "technical" measures taken, the manner in which these measures are implemented has been and continues to be the focus of considerations in the global public debate, with country-specific political structures playing a decisive role. The latter are characterized in Turkey by highly centralized framework conditions, which have manifested themselves even more clearly under pandemic conditions. The criticism of these conditions, which has always existed and focuses primarily on insufficient citizen participation in decision-making processes, is currently being carried out even more deeply than usual. In this chapter, an attempt will be made to show the substantive points of this criticism that run in the field of tension between centralized politics and citizen participation within the framework of the pandemic management, in connection with its impact on human rights. © 2023 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

Media policy analysis and diplomatic interactions during COVID-19 between China and the United States in a comparative perspective

This is a comparative study of official diplomatic speeches regarding COVID-19, released by spokespersons for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and documents from the United States Department of State China Archive. It explores how these speeches and documents reflect the US–China relations and the conduct of policies surrounding digital media in the two countries. We focus on the period from the start of the Wuhan lockdown, 20 January 2020, to the city's reopening on 8 April, and use several forms of content analysis to analyse the documents: Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modelling, sentiment network analysis and word clouds. We argue that the diplomatic relationship and political ideologies adopted by different political and media systems can have a major impact upon media policy implementation and guidance.

Urban Regeneration and Touristification in the Sardinian Capital City of Cagliari, Italy

Regeneration agendas and inbound tourism flows have long been considered a remedy for economic crisis. In port cities, a prominent role in urban regeneration is played by the waterfronts, which have been undergoing radical makeovers worldwide since the 1960s. The city of Cagliari stuck to the same recipe, promoting a series of regeneration initiatives and implementing a series of policies to boost the tourism sector. This study combines the use of primary and secondary sources and the analysis of qualitative and quantitative data to create a useful picture of both current reality and historical development of the city. It demonstrated that development strategies promoted in Cagliari, rather than balancing tourism promotion and local community needs, contributed to the amplification and acceleration of the touristification process. Therefore, many of the challenges posed by overtourism, dread in the literature, are today faced by Cagliari and its inhabitants. In addition, the study also identifies in the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic a unique opportunity to reverse the touristification process and to achieve a sustainable manner of tourism development. Therefore, it offers some policy recommendations to define principled urban regeneration models, alternatives which are able to achieve urban revitalization while avoiding touristification. © 2023 by the author.

Policymaking during COVID-19: Preemptive State Interventions and the Factors Influencing Policy Implementation Success

COVID-19 sparked a public health crisis and created a series of public policy challenges. This article examines how COVID-19 interventions played out at the state level given the absence of guidance and coordinated national response. We focus on how the level of policy rigidness and enforcement of behavioral interventions helps us understand the success and failures of reducing the number of positive test rates over a 20-week period (March–July 2020). Specifically, we examine how four specific interventions (masking, school closures, restaurant closures, and travel restrictions) moved through the policy creation and implementation process as outlined by a modified version of Kingdon's multiple streams approach. We leverage a pooled-OLS approach to identify the agenda-setting and decision-making windows to verify the narrative derived from applying a modified multiple streams approach to the initial wave of policy making around COVID-19 interventions. Using this technique, we find evidence of two distinct agenda-setting windows and a decision-making window. Using these windows, we ascertain that highly restrictive policies are effective in controlling the spread of COVID-19. We find that governors acting as political entrepreneurs may not play as large of a role in the policy-making process, but they are responsive to constituent policy preferences.

How can we define social care and what are the levels of true integration in integrated care? A narrative review

Purpose: Integrated health and social care initiatives are increasing and health and social care systems are aiming to improve health and social outcomes in disadvantaged groups. There is a global dialogue surrounding improving services by shifting to an integrated health and social care approach. There is consensus of what is "health care”;however, the "social care” definition remains less explored. The authors describe the state of "social care” within the current integrated care literature and identify the depth of integration in current health and social care initiatives. Design/methodology/approach: A narrative literature review, searching Medline, PsychINFO, CINAHL, PubMed, Scopus and Cochrane databases and grey literature (from 2016 to 2021), employing a search strategy, was conducted. Findings: In total. 276 studies were eligible for full-text review, and 33 studies were included and categorised in types: "social care as community outreach dialogues”, "social care as addressing an ageing population”, "social care as targeting multimorbidity and corresponding social risks factors” and "social care as initiatives addressing the fragmentation of services”. Most initiatives were implemented in the United Kingdom. In total, 21 studies reported expanding integrated governance and partnerships;27 studies reported having health and social care staff with clear integrated governance;17 had dedicated funding and 11 used data-sharing and the integration of systems' records. Originality/value: The authors' demonstrate that social care approaches are expanding beyond the elderly, and these models have been used to respond to multimorbidity [including coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)], targeting priority groups and individuals with complex presentations. © 2023, Gabriela Uribe, Ferdinand Mukumbang, Corey Moore, Tabitha Jones, Susan Woolfenden, Katarina Ostojic, Paul Haber, John Eastwood, James Gillespie and Carmen Huckel Schneider.

When policy meets reality: the new 18-hour on-call shift policy and the Israeli anesthesia workforce crisis.

BACKGROUND: The Israeli physician workforce faces multiple challenges. These include planned policies reducing physician on-call from 26 to 18 h and, from 2026, allowing only graduates of Ministry of Health approved foreign medical schools to take the Israeli licensing examination and an ongoing physician shortage (2019: Israel had 3.19 physicians/1000 persons vs. OECD average of 3.49 physicians/1000 persons). This study examines the potential impact of these planned policies on the Israeli anesthesiology workforce. METHODS: Surveys conducted among 34 public and private Israeli hospital anesthesiology department chairs collected data on their department's number of weekday on-call anesthesiologists and current shortage of anesthesiologists. A subsequent survey collected data on each anesthesiologist in the workforce, including the country where they studied medicine. RESULTS: Each weekday night there were 114 on-call anesthesiologists; 72 residents and 42 attendings. Using productive work coefficients, this translates to 104 resident and 51 attending anesthesiologists. Furthermore, 21 departments had existing anesthesia workforce shortages totaling 110 anesthesiologists. There were 873 anesthesiologists from non-OECD countries whose medical schools are not accredited by the World Federation for Medical Education, of whom 332 were residents (61.9% of residents). Only 20.1% of anesthesiology residents were Israeli medical school graduates. CONCLUSIONS: Descriptive survey data assessed the immediate and long-term consequences for the healthcare system and anesthesiology workforce of two new Health Ministry policies. Implementing the 18-h policy will immediately remove from the daytime workforce 155 anesthesiologists and who will be unavailable to staff elective surgery operating rooms. This will compound the current national shortage of 110 anesthesiologists. It is unclear how to replace this shortfall since there are no surplus Israeli physicians and very few Israeli graduates choose anesthesiology as a specialty. This situation will be exacerbated after 2026 when graduates of certain foreign medical schools will be unable to enter the medical workforce, further reducing the pool of potential anesthesiology residents. Both policies were promulgated without adequate operational and budgetary planning or fiscal or workforce resources; implementation of the 18-h on-call policy has already been postponed. Therefore, new or updated policies must be accompanied by specific operational plans, budgetary allocations and funds for additional workforce.

Engaging frontline workers in policy development to support the implementation of measurement-based care: Lessons learned from a field-based workgroup.

Measurement-Based Care (MBC) is the use of patient-reported outcome measures repeatedly over the course of treatment to track progress and empower both providers and patients to collaboratively set goals and plan treatment. The Measurement-Based Care in Mental Health Initiative within the Department of Veterans Affairs' Office of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention partnered with the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Mentoring Program to create an interdisciplinary field-based workgroup. The workgroup included psychologists, clinical social workers, and mental health counselors from PTSD Clinical Teams. The task of the workgroup was to create guidelines for best practice in delivery of MBC in PTSD Clinical Teams given anticipated policy requiring MBC to be used in PTSD Clinical Teams. Framed in the Strategic Action Field Framework for Policy Implementation Research, the current paper evaluates this hybrid top-down and bottom-up process of policy development. Major barriers included difficulty with the workgroup as an authentic bottom-up process, inability to reach the entire field (e.g., focus groups not widely attended by providers), and limited diversity in the workgroup. Facilitators included using consensus to make decisions, support provided to workgroup members by national operations partners, and collaboration and mutual respect among workgroup members. Workgroup members noted an equal, respectful partnership between operations partners and the workgroup; they reported feeling empowered and believed the viewpoints of the field were included in the guidelines. Further, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the workgroup included more guidelines specific to telehealth into the guidelines. This hybrid model provides a process through which frontline workers can inform policy development and implementation.

COVID-19 pandemic–related policy stringency and economic decline: was it really inevitable?

The coronavirus outbreak in 2020 shattered economies, public health and public well-being worldwide literally overnight. In response to the pandemic, most countries implemented a delicate balance of policy stringency and economic support to ensure public health, social security and a vibrant economy. With the pandemic slowly phasing out, our article explores the effectiveness of various governmental strategies for ensuring economic growth. The proposed econometric model is tested using panel quarterly data for 49 (37 OECD + 12 non-OECD) countries for all four quarters of 2020 and the first quarter of 2021. Our findings show that policy stringency and economic support are both negatively associated with economic growth. We also find that the stringency was largely responsive, oriented to preventing the collapse of health systems after infections had already become widespread, not towards saving human lives by preventing soaring levels of infection. While our findings appear to lend support for the view that a trade-off between human lives and the economy was inevitable, we also challenge this view by evidence that some countries were able to secure a double dividend of maintaining public health and a vibrant economy by a prudent far-sighted stringency policy of preventing the virus outbreak. © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

A global portrait of expressed mental health signals towards COVID-19 in social media space.

Globally, the COVID-19 pandemic has induced a mental health crisis. Social media data offer a unique opportunity to track the mental health signals of a given population and quantify their negativity towards COVID-19. To date, however, we know little about how negative sentiments differ across countries and how these relate to the shifting policy landscape experienced through the pandemic. Using 2.1 billion individual-level geotagged tweets posted between 1 February 2020 and 31 March 2021, we track, monitor and map the shifts in negativity across 217 countries and unpack its relationship with COVID-19 policies. Findings reveal that there are important geographic, demographic, and socioeconomic disparities of negativity across continents, different levels of a nation's income, population density, and the level of COVID-19 infection. Countries with more stringent policies were associated with lower levels of negativity, a relationship that weakened in later phases of the pandemic. This study provides the first global and multilingual evaluation of the public's real-time mental health signals to COVID-19 at a large spatial and temporal scale. We offer an empirical framework to monitor mental health signals globally, helping international authorizations, including the United Nations and World Health Organization, to design smart country-specific mental health initiatives in response to the ongoing pandemic and future public emergencies.

Early career mentoring in England: a case study of professional discretion and policy disconnection

Purpose: This paper aims to consider the practices and experiences of the new school-based mentors for Early Career Teachers (ECT's), emerging from the UK Government's new early career framework (ECF) policy (DfE, 2019a). The paper uses Lipsky's (2010) framing of professionals as "street level bureaucrats” to consider the extent to which the ECT mentors, as new policy actors, exercise professional discretion (Lipsky, 2010) in negotiating and aligning the new ECF policy with existing practice. Design/methodology/approach: To research the mentor's interpretation and enactment of the new ECF policy, semi structured interviews were undertaken with an initial sample of nine mentors and four induction tutors who were also mentors. Online semi structured interviews were held, lasting around 50 min. This method was largely pragmatic as the study started during a period when schools were still cautious of face-to-face visitors in terms of COVID-19. Although the benefits for the interviewer experiencing the culture and context in which the ECT mentor was situated were lost, offering online interviews was critical in securing mentors' time. Findings: Findings suggest a disconnect between the intentions of the policy and the reality of its enactment at a local level. The ECT mentors have limited professional discretion, but some are exercising this in relation to their own professional development and the training they are providing for their ECTs. Most of the mentors are adapting the ECT's professional development journey whilst mindful of the programme requirements. The degree to which the ECT mentors used professional discretion was linked and limited largely by their own levels of confidence and experience of mentoring, and to a lesser extent the culture of their schools. Research limitations/implications: The ECF policy represents an important step in acknowledging the need to professionally develop mentors for the work they undertake supporting beginning teachers. However, the time and the content of the mentor training have not been given sufficient attention and remains a hugely missed opportunity. It does not appear to be recognised by the government policy makers but more significantly and concerning in this research sample it is not being recognised sufficiently by those mentoring the ECTs themselves. Practical implications: There is an urgent need by the UK government and school leaders to understand the link between the quality of mentor preparation and the quality of the ECTs who will be entering the profession and influencing the quality of education in future years. More time and resourcing need to be focussed on the professional development of mentors enabling them to exercise professional discretion in increasingly sophisticated ways in relation to the implementation of the ECF policy. Originality/value: The ECF policy is the latest English government response to international concerns around the recruitment and retention of teachers. The policy mandates for a new policy actor: the ECT mentor, responsible for the support and professional development of beginning teachers. The nature of the mentor's role in relation to the policy is emerging and provides an interesting case study in the disconnect between the intentions of a policy and its initial enactment on the ground. The mentors may be viewed as street level bureaucrats exercising degrees of professional discretion as they interpret the policy in their own school context. © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Sustainable tourism policies: From crisis-related awareness to agendas towards measures

The relevance of sustainable tourism policies that aim to balance the positive and negative impacts of tourism has become particularly evident during the COVID-19 crisis, which has shown the need for more research on the impact of crises on tourism policy. The findings of this study are based on twenty-four in-depth interviews with tourism organisations responsible for tourism policy development across the globe, showing that policymakers are (1) aware of the relevance of the development of sustainable tourism during the crisis, (2) agendas such as strategies for sustainable tourism are being developed and policies do translate into (3) measures related to environmental, economic, socio-cultural and community instruments. This study carries value for the development of sustainable tourism research following the theory on the penetration of environmental awareness and also informs about the variation in sustainable tourism policies in different countries and across continents. © 2023 The Authors

Policy implementation challenges and the ritualization of public health emergency plans: An investigation of urban communities in Jiangsu Province, China.

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic has been a global public health emergency, and countries worldwide have responded to it through a vast array of pre-planned, adaptively devised and ad-hoc measures. In China, public health emergency plans - the plans expected to drive the response to epidemics or pandemics - demonstrated a concerning tendency towards "ritualization." "Ritualization" denotes the practice of public health emergency plans to be reliably developed so that a formal requirement is met, while being implemented selectively or not at all in the emergency response. Methods: This study explored the phenomenon of ritualization by analyzing data from 1485 questionnaires, 60 in-depth interviews and 85 actual public health emergency plans. It used the Smith Policy-Implementation-Processing pattern as its conceptual framework. Results: The study found that the infeasibility of plans, their ineffective implementation by emergency management agencies, the obstructive behaviors of community residents, and the lack of an appropriate policy environment all contributed to the practice of ritualization. Discussion: As China seeks to better respond to COVID-19 and accelerate the recovery of its health system, it is essential to ensure that its public health emergency plans are effectively developed and implemented.

Analysis Of Village Direct Cash Assistance Policy Implementation In East Bolaang District Bolaang Mongondow Regency

Since the end of 2019, all countries have been shocked by the spread of Covid-19. Indonesia is one of the countries affected by the ongoing global disease pandemic (COVID-19). The pandemic has spread to 34 provinces. Covid-19 has had an enormous impact on the economic sector, and the government has assisted, one of which is the Village Fund Direct Cash Assistance (BLT). The Direct Cash Assistance (BLT) policy is an alternative policy dealing with the impact of the spread of Covid-19. In various media, there is a lot of news about the implementation of the BLT program, which often deviates from the applicable provisions. Therefore, analyzing the implementation of the BLT program is very important. Village Fund Direct Cash Assistance (BLTDD) is the government's response in minimizing the impact of Covid-19 on the people in the village. In the early stages of its implementation, problems were found in the form of community protests against village officials who were deemed unable to implement the Village Fund BLT policy properly. Even in some villages, it led to the destruction of the village office. On this basis, this research aims to analyze the problems that arise in implementing the Village Fund BLT policy to identify issues and challenges so that they become materials for improvement. This research was conducted with a qualitative approach. Since the end of 2019, all countries have been shocked by the spread of Covid-19. Indonesia is one of the countries affected by the ongoing global disease pandemic (COVID-19). The pandemic has spread to 34 provinces. Covid-19 has significantly impacted the economic sector, and the government has assisted, one of which is the Village Fund Direct Cash Assistance (BLT). The Direct Cash Assistance (BLT) policy is an alternative policy dealing with the impact of the spread of Covid-19. In various media, there is a lot of news about the implementation of the BLT program which often deviates from the applicable provisions. Therefore, analyzing the implementation of the BLT program is very important. Village Fund Direct Cash Assistance (BLTDD) is the government's response in minimizing the impact of Covid-19 on the people in the village. In the early stages of its implementation, problems were found in the form of community protests against village officials who were deemed unable to implement the Village Fund BLT policy properly. Even in some villages, it led to the destruction of the village office. On this basis, this research aims to analyze the problems that arise in implementing the Village Fund BLT policy to identify issues and challenges so that they become materials for improvement. This research was conducted with a qualitative approach. [ FROM AUTHOR]