Daily sensation-seeking and urgency in young adults: Examining associations with alcohol use and self-defined risky behaviors.

PURPOSE: To examine the dynamic expression of sensation-seeking and urgency in daily life and the implications for alcohol use and risk-taking during young adulthood. METHODS: Daily diary surveys were administered to young adults (n = 77) aged 18-25 years every evening for 21 days to assess day's sensation-seeking, urgency, risk-taking, and alcohol use. RESULTS: Days of higher than usual sensation-seeking are also days of higher than usual risk-taking and are more likely to be alcohol use days than days of lower than usual sensation-seeking. Day's urgency was not associated with day's alcohol use or risk-taking. We extracted 10 themes from self-reports of the day's riskiest behavior: transportation (29.9%), social (22.8%), recreation (17.4%), work (14.8%), school (13.5%), food (9.5%), sleep (9.2%), substance use (5.8%), other (5.2%), and jaywalking (1.5%), and 14.6% of self-reported risky behaviors were considered threatening to safety, health, or wellbeing. CONCLUSIONS: Risks taken during daily life have mostly positive outcomes and a minority represent threats to safety, health, and wellbeing. Risk-taking and alcohol use in young adult's daily lives is more likely to be driven by the desire to experience novel and exciting experiences than by rash action.

Gendered Citation Practices in the Field of Communication.

In disciplines outside of communication, papers with women as first and last (i.e., senior) authors attract fewer citations than papers with men in those positions. Using data from 14 communication journals from 1995 to 2018, we find that reference lists include more papers with men as first and last author, and fewer papers with women as first and last author, than would be expected if gender were unrelated to referencing. This imbalance is driven largely by the citation practices of men and is slowly decreasing over time. The structure of men's co-authorship networks partly accounts for the observed over-citation of men by other men. We discuss ways researchers might approach gendered citations in their work.

The role of wages in the migration of health care professionals from developing countries

Several countries are increasingly relying on immigration as a means of coping with domestic shortages of health care professionals. This trend has led to concerns that in many of the source countries - especially within Africa - the outflow of health care professionals is adversely affecting the health care system. This paper examines the role of wages in the migration decision and discusses the likely effect of wage increases in source countries in slowing migration flows. This paper uses data on wage differentials in the health care sector between source country and receiving country (adjusted for purchasing power parity) to test the hypothesis that larger wage differentials lead to a larger supply of health care migrants. Differences in other important factors affecting migration are discussed and; where available; data are presented. There is little correlation between the supply of health care migrants and the size of the wage differential between source and destination country. In cases where data are available on other factors affecting migration; controlling for these factors does not affect the result. At current levels; wage differentials between source and destination country are so large that small increases in health care wages in source countries are unlikely to affect significantly the supply of health care migrants. The results suggest that non-wage instruments might be more effective in altering migration flows

[The World Health Organization and the development of human resources of the health system]. / L'Organisation Mondiale de la Santé et le développement des ressources humaines du système de santé.

Health workforce is among the main components of the health care system. The performance of the latter depends on the knowledge, competence and motivations of the various categories of health workers. The task of the World Health Organization is to analyze the main problems related to health workforce and to help member-states overcome these problems. An other task is to facilitate intercountry comparisons. To attain these objectives, WHO has developed a conceptual framework, taking into account elements such as the labour market, the health care system, the policies and macro-factors (economic, socio-demographic). Among the main issues related today to health workforce, one can quote: the numbers and distribution of health workers, their migration, their involvement into the field of public health, the contents of their training, and, finally, the increased risk factors they are challenging.

[Economic evaluation of various hepatitis B vaccination Strategies in Switzerland]. / Okonomische Evaluation verschiedener Hepatitis-B-Impfstrategien in der Schweiz.

The aim of this study was to assess and compare the costs and epidemiological impact of different vaccination strategies against hepatitis B in Switzerland. A birth cohort of 85,000 individuals was followed over its lifetime using a decision tree analysis. Published data were used to simulate the risk of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection in the cohort, the consecutive clinical outcomes and the associated costs. Five vaccination scenarios were assessed and compared to the baseline, defined as the high-risk group strategy without prenatal screening. These were: 1. systematic prenatal screening and vaccination of newborns at risk; 2. universal vaccination of infants; 3. universal vaccination of schoolchildren; 4. universal vaccination of infants and schoolchildren; 5. universal vaccination of infants, schoolchildren and adolescents. Results are presented using a 3% annual discounting rate. Systematic prenatal screening reduced the number of chronic infections by 11% and prevented 6 deaths per year. The cost per year of life saved was estimated to be 23,350 CHF. The four universal vaccination scenarios had a much larger impact on the number of chronic infections and deaths prevented (reduction of 68-78%). Costs per year of life saved for universal vaccination ranged from 8820 CHF (infant strategy) to 12,380 CHF (schoolchildren strategy). However, the vaccination of schoolchildren would be as cost-effective as the vaccination of infants using alternative assumptions (a lower compliance for infants compared to schoolchildren or the need for a booster later in the life for infants). The benefit-cost ratio ranged from 1.2 (systematic prenatal screening and vaccination of newborns at risk) to 2.9 (vaccination of infants). Universal vaccination against hepatitis B is more cost-effective than the current selective vaccination strategy of newborns.