Clinicians as advocates amid refugee resettlement agency closures

As ongoing war and violence forcibly displace people worldwide, resettlement remains a critical response to the unprecedented global refugee crisis. In recent years, however, the USA (US) has diminished admissions, forcing agencies to shutter offices and resettlement programs across the nation—posing a silent threat to the refugee resettlement system. We provide historical context of refugee resettlement, discuss challenges, and offer recommendations for healthcare providers to become more effective advocates for refugee health in the USA. The need is urgent for healthcare providers and institutions—particularly in regions of high resettlement—to advocate for expanding and assuring sustainable capacity to care for refugees. Key elements include promotion of trauma-informed care, integration of social services in primary care settings, partnership with community-based organizations to promote continuation of care, advocacy for resources and services, and opposition to policies detrimental to the health of refugees and immigrants.

Indigenous Knowledge Management and Humanitarian Supply Chain for Disaster Mitigation and Sustainable Development in the Eco Communities of India

The shift in focus from hazards to underlying vulnerabilities has provided disaster managers with a richer understanding of the factors that erode the coping capacities of communities and social systems. This chapter presents ideas such as a globally shared digital platform developed as a functional web-portal branded—A.A.D.I.GYAN—augmenting action for disaster management through indigenous knowledge-gyan. Humanitarian supply chain (HSC), on the other hand, plays a central role to any developmental program meant for sustainable capacity building in the eco-communities. The chapter also highlights that HSC and community-based IK resource management can collectively promote more resilient communities promoting social, economic, and environmental equity and ethical imperatives. Towards this end, system dynamics modeling and simulation can be invoked to capture and simulate the causal dynamics of the inter linkages prevailing within the system and suggest some critical intervention strategies for policymakers.

On the price volatility of steel futures and its influencing factors in China

Steel futures have the function of price discovery and hedging. Steel related enterprises can judge the hedging strategy through the direction of steel futures price volatility, and reasonably avoid the risk brought by price volatility. Therefore, it is particularly important to study steel futures price volatility and its influencing factors. Because steel futures in China have characteristics of peak and rear tail aggregation, the paper constructs Model of GARCH (1,1) to make positive analysis of futures price volatility and its influencing factors of deformed steel bars and hot rolled coils, and the following conclusions have been drawn: (1) The volume and open interest of deformed steel bars have very significant explanatory ability to futures price volatility of deformed steel bars; (2) The volume and open interest of hot rolled coils also have very significant explanatory ability to futures price volatility of hot rolled coils; (3) The sustainable capacity of the price volatility of deformed steel bars and hot rolled coils is relatively small; (4) Iron ore price have no obvious explanatory ability to futures price volatility. Finally, some managerial implications and suggestions are derived from the analysis of the proposed model.

The Role of Private Sectors for Trade Liberalizatio in Connection with Export Promotion

In contemporary world the neoliberal economists have pursued to establish the thought that economic liberalization consistently promotes growth and decreases poverty in less developed countries. Liberalization of markets in the developing countries, according to them, promotes exports and it will create economic perfection by intensifying competition between domestic and external economic actors and exposing management and workers to improved practices Did the market liberalization policies of Ethiopia is helpful? This paper surveys the literature and provides its own assessment of the nexus between private sector and trade liberalization in connection with export promotion. The country's step wise liberalization process has shown some favourable prospects for investment and growth. However, the next steps, liberalizing the capital account and leaving the exchange rate to be determined in the market, among other things, require a skillful design. The capital account which is still left unliberalized has to wait for some time till the economy ensures a sustainable capacity of generating foreign currencies. Otherwise economic instability would follow and consequently, the reform process would be as stake.

Soil Contamination: A Menace to Life

The dire concern for soil contamination includes the safety of food, ecological environment, public’s health and capacity of social sustainable development. Soil is polluted by heavy metals and pesticides which are far beyond pollution standards. The soil biodiversity and agricultural sustainability are adversely affected in long-term harmful effects by the prolonged intensive and indiscriminate use of agrochemicals. It needs immediate attention for the whole world to curb continual deterioration of soil pollution and remediate contaminated soil as soon as possible to decrease harm on people’s health and ecological environment. In fact, acceleration of related legislation, increased capital investment and technical development to remediate soil contamination and must achieve some progress. However, due to all sorts of the constraints, whether soil management system or technical capacity for decontamination is relatively outdated, so there remains a lot of work need to be done. Developing countries, including Brazil, India and so on, are also facing similar problems. Approaches to solve soil problems could benefit developing countries in process of industrialization and urbanization, so it’s a very meaningful job to deep analyze and study the current situation and countermeasures soil pollution. In this Chapter, the overall situation of soil pollution is introduced, the concrete causes and hazards of soil contamination are discussed, and technologies and processes of soil remediation are suggested for improvement of the status of soil contamination and social sustainable capacity.

Airport Landside Sustainable Capacity and Level of Service of Terminal Functional Subsystems

The airport terminal is a complex building composed of many functional subsystems dimensioned to host passenger traffic, considering an appropriate level of service (LoS). The most widely known method to assess the LoS and design the terminal areas is the Airport Development Reference Manual by the International Air Transport Association (IATA). Based on this, a calculation tool in Microsoft Excel® was implemented to assess the capacity and dimension of the facilities for each functional subsystem of the terminal. The tool, composed of nine correlated spreadsheets, is a useful model to design new structures, evaluate the LoS currently offered, plan interventions, and face the new rules of passenger distancing due to the COVID-19 emergency. An international airport terminal with 20 million/year including Schengen and extra-Schengen passengers was studied. The LoS of the terminal subsystems was assessed and the areas needed for each subsystem were calculated. In the analyzed case study, most subsystems (departure hall, check-in, boarding gates, baggage claim, and arrival halls) were over-designed, according to the definition of the IATA LoS. This means that available spaces for queues and holding are sufficiently large to easily face the new rules of social distancing for passengers due to the recent COVID-19 emergency.

Empowered Community Leadership for Chronic Disease Prevention: Context Matters

Meaningful actions to reduce the disproportionate chronic disease burden in health-disparate, often segregated, and healthcare-vulnerable communities are challenging as there are many known and unknown multilevel factors that influence chronic disease prevention behavior. Despite the many challenges, community capacity can be built to facilitate prevention behavioral change. Community leadership among residents becomes that catalyst in building a sustainable capacity for chronic disease prevention (i.e., preventing diabetes, youth violence, or a novel disease) within the context of socioeconomic and other vulnerabilities. This article discusses the leadership role of community health workers (CHWs) as informed and empowered residents to catalyze multilevel prevention behavior change.

Rapid urban health security assessment tool: a new resource for evaluating local-level public health preparedness

Urbanisation will be one of the defining demographic trends of the 21st century—creating unique opportunities for sustainable capacity development, as well as substantial risks and challenges for managing public health and health emergencies. Plans and policies for responding to public health emergencies are generally framed at higher levels of governance, but developing, improving and sustaining the capacities necessary for implementing these policies is a direct function of local-level authorities. Evaluating local-level public health capacities is an important process for identifying strengths and weaknesses that can impact the preparedness for, detection of and response to health security threats. However, while various evaluations and assessments exist for evaluating capacities at other levels, currently, there are no readily available health security assessments for the local-level. In this paper, we describe a tool—the Rapid Urban Health Security Assessment (RUHSA) Tool—that is based on a variety of other relevant assessments and guidance documents. Assessing capacities allow for local-level authorities to identify the strengths and weaknesses of their local health security systems, create multiyear action plans and prioritise opportunities for improving capacities, effectively engage with development partners to target resources effectively and develop compelling narratives and a legacy of leadership. While the RUHSA Tool was not designed to be used in the midst of a public health emergency, such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, it may also be adapted to inform a checklist for prioritising what capacities and activities a city needs to rapidly develop or to help focus requests for assistance.