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Abstract: Beginning in 2007, the Chinese state used liberalising policy and funding to encourage the expansion of large‐scale grain farming. Despite this support, many of the new farms have struggled financially and folded. Drawing on Foucauldian biopolitics and resource security literature, I argue that, with modernised agriculture, the state primarily sought to create not commercial farms, but the redundant farming infrastructure needed to buffer its growing reliance on food imports, abide by global trade regulations, and sustain its urban export manufacturing economy. These balancing efforts harmed commercial farmers: land commodification and policy funding incentivised urban government officials to intervene in rural land‐use planning, but low global market aligned grain prices disincentivised them from considering the place‐particular viability of their plans for producers. This article contributes to critical agrarian change literature by highlighting how modernist states become beholden to rational scientific techniques and sacrifice rural areas for increasingly vulnerable urban areas.

Although widely acknowledged as an important social determinant of health, until recently researchers and policymakers have primarily approached housing insecurity as an urban issue, obscuring the visibility of its impacts in rural contexts, including the ways in which housing insecurity intersects with other health and structural inequities facing rural populations. Working to address this gap in the existing literature, this paper explores the experiences of housing insecurity in a rural context by reporting on an analysis of 210 in-depth interviews with 153 adults between the ages of 18-35, living in California's rural North State, a relatively overlooked far northern region of the state comprised of 12 north central and north eastern counties. Using in-depth qualitative interview data, we conducted an exploratory pattern-level analysis of participants' narratives structured by four dimensions of housing insecurity defined in the literature (housing affordability, housing stability, housing conditions, and neighborhood context). Drawing attention to the pervasiveness of rural housing insecurity within our sample, this analysis highlights the unique ways in which rurality creates distinct experiences not currently captured in the existing literature. Further research is needed across different types of rural communities to better understand the various ways that housing insecurity affects the everyday lives and health of rural residents. By grounding research within the experiences of rural residents, we are better able to respond to the crisis of rural housing insecurity and develop solutions that are tailored to rural residents' unique needs.

Developing and adopting strategies that preserve soil health from degradation due to drastic changes in climate is critical for securing sustainable viticulture. For example, healthy soils promote water infiltration, nutrient cycling, and retention functions that support grape production. However, little research has evaluated drivers of growers' decision-making processes and actions towards soil management practices that impact soil health in vineyards. The objective of this study was to assess wine grape growers' perceptions and attitudes of soil health to identify grower's most important soil health functions and definition, and to understand how these might influence behavior related to soil management practices. Therefore, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 16 wine grape growers understand current barriers, motivations, and opportunities for adopting and/or maintaining practices for building soil health in vineyards. Most growers described healthy vineyard soils as balanced, biodiverse, self-sustaining, and resilient systems that provide nutrient, and water cycling functions and support high-quality wine grape production. Three categories of growers emerged based on soil health attitudes including Early Adopter (n = 3), Early Majority (n = 4) and Late Majority (n = 9) groups. The main barriers for adoption and maintenance of soil health practices were high costs, potential economic risks, and lack of information on how these practices influence grape production especially for the Late Majority group. Most growers were willing to adopt more soil heath practices if additional specific, practical information could be provided on outcomes of soil health practices for wine grape production systems—especially economic benefits. The outcomes of this study guide future soil health research and outreach activities to better support growers in building and protecting vineyard soil health while achieving viticultural goals.

Care is a practice and form of labour making human survival and flourishing possible. This Symposium explores the place and work of care within housing movements, asking how care operates as a politics, an ethics, and a set of practices through which tenants survive—and ultimately seek to transform—the structural violence of capitalist housing systems. Situated in US cities with abiding associations with Blackness and indigeneity, papers in the Symposium examine housing movements that take care as the starting point. As we discuss in this introduction to the Symposium, in such movements, care operates as connective tissue across households and modes of difference; challenges relations of racial capitalism and settler colonialism that underlie dominant understandings of who deserves and can demand care; and drives calls for public care and experiments with non-propertised forms of ownership. Housing systems are care infrastructures, making housing movements a vital place for care work.

BACKGROUND: In California, all four-year public colleges have adopted 100% smoke-/tobacco-free policies (TFP) whereas community colleges (CCs), particularly rural CCs, are less likely to have tobacco-free environments. This raises concerns about health equity, particularly because smoking prevalence is higher in rural areas compared to urban. We examined policy adoption barriers and facilitators for rural California CCs with the aim of providing lessons learned to support TFP adoption by rural CCs and improve conditions for student health and well-being. METHODS: A multiple case study of four CCs in California with (n = 2) and without (n = 2) TFPs was conducted. Semi-structured interviews with 12 campus and community stakeholders, school administrative data, and policy-relevant documents were analyzed at the case level with comparison across cases to identify key barriers, facilitators and campus-specific experiences. RESULTS: All four CCs shared similar barriers to policy adoption including concerns about wildfires, individual rights, and fear of marginalizing people who smoke on campus. These CCs have experienced serious wildfires in the last ten years, have high community smoking prevalence, and fewer school resources for student health. For the two tobacco-free CCs, long-term wildfire mitigation efforts along with leadership support, campus/community partnerships and a collective approach involving diverse campus sectors were essential facilitators in successful TFP adoption. CONCLUSION: Study results underscore contextual pressures and campus dynamics that impact tobacco control efforts at colleges in rural communities. Strategies to advance college TFP adoption and implementation should recognize rural cultural and community priorities.

We report on a laboratory experiment testing the predictions of the Diamond–Mortensen–Pissarides (DMP) search-and-matching model, which is a workhorse, decentralized model of unemployment and the labor market. We focus on the job vacancy posting problem that firms face in the DMP model. We explore the model's comparative statics predictions concerning variations in the separation rate, the vacancy posting cost, and the firm's surplus earned per employee. Across all treatments, we find strong evidence for an inverse relationship between vacancies and unemployment, consistent with the Beveridge curve. We also find that the results of our various comparative statics exercises are in-line with the predictions of the theory.

We study how human capital and economic conditions causally affect the choice of religious denomination. We utilize a longitudinal dataset monitoring the religious history of more than 5,000 Kenyans over twenty years, in tandem with a randomized experiment (deworming) that has exogenously boosted education and living standards. The main finding is that the program reduces the likelihood of membership in a Pentecostal denomination up to 20 years later when respondents are in their mid-thirties, while there is a comparable increase in membership in traditional Christian denominations. The effect is concentrated and statistically significant among a sub-group of participants who benefited most from the program in terms of increased education and income. The effects are unlikely due to increased secularization, because the program does not reduce measures of religiosity. The results help explain why the global growth of the Pentecostal movement, sometimes described a "New Reformation", is centered in low-income communities.

BackgroundDespite being disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 due to a lack of structural support, marginalized communities have been largely ignored in the politically polarized debate over school masking. In response to this, we sought to explore masking attitudes by centering the voices of parents and children at historically marginalized, predominantly Hispanic schools in southern California.MethodsWe conducted a mixed-methods study with parents and children attending 26 low-income predominantly Hispanic-serving elementary schools. A random sample of parents was asked to provide a freelist of words they associate with masking. A subset of parents with children aged 4-6 was recruited from these surveys to participate in parent-child interviews (PCI). We calculated Smith's salience index for all unique items, stratifying by language (English/Spanish). Item salience guided PCI thematic analysis for additional context and meaning.Results648 participants provided 1118 unique freelist items in English and Spanish. 19 parent-child pairs were interviewed, 11 in Spanish and 8 in English. The most salient words were "safety"(0.37), "protection"(0.12), "prevention"(0.05), "health"(0.04), "good"(0.03), "can't breathe"(0.03), "necessary"(0.02), "care"(0.02), "precaution"(0.02), and "unnecessary"(0.02). Spanish speakers had a more favorable view of masking than English speakers, particularly regarding "protection" (0.20 vs 0.08) and "prevention" (0.10 vs 0.02).DiscussionMasking is an affordable individual-level risk mitigation that protects the communities that have inequitably shouldered the burdens of the COVID-19 pandemic. We recommend that policymakers prioritize the views of those most impacted when deciding on risk mitigation policies like school masking.

Rates of homelessness among adults aged 50 and over are rising. Common strategies for exiting homelessness rely on social and family support. However, intergenerational trauma may disrupt these social support networks and contribute to homelessness. Understanding the impact of intergenerational trauma on living with family or friends may give insight into addressing homelessness among older adults. We purposefully sampled 46 adults who reported living with family or friends from the HOPE HOME study cohort (350 community-recruited adults, ≥ 50 years and experiencing homelessness in Oakland, California) and 19 family/friends who had hosted the participants in their living spaces. We conducted independent, semi-structured interviews and used grounded theory methodologies to analyze data. We identified four major themes from the interviews: (1) Intergenerational trauma was common and made it difficult to stay with family or friends; (2) Participants and hosts sought to protect future generations from intergenerational trauma; (3) Relationships endured despite intergenerational trauma; and (4) social structures exacerbated the impact of intergenerational trauma and played a significant role in perpetuating homelessness. Trauma-informed policies that confront the structures that propagate or exacerbate intergenerational trauma may mitigate their impact and facilitate housing for older adults.

Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) interventions significantly reduce health risks in low- and middle-income countries. Many rely on women, but the extent of womens engagement remains undocumented. Here we conducted a re-review of papers from two systematic reviews that assessed the effectiveness of water, sanitation and/or handwashing with soap interventions on diarrhoeal disease and acute respiratory infections to assess womens roles in WASH research and intervention activities. A total of 133 studies were included. Among studies that specified gender, women were the most sought-after group for engagement in research (n = 91/132; 68.9%) and intervention (n = 49/120; 40.8%) activities. Reporting time burden for research (n = 1; 1%) and intervention activities (n = 3; 2.5%) was rare. All interventions were classified as gender unequal (36.7%) or gender unaware (63.3%) according to the World Health Organization Gender Responsiveness Assessment Scale, indicating exploitative engagement. Women play a critical but instrumentalized role in WASH, and both research and interventions need to change to enable, and not hinder, gender equality.

Abstract: Accurate, inexpensive and granular human poverty assessments are critical for data-driven policy decision-making. This research proposes a novel approach to computing poverty scores utilizing multispectral satellite images and indices calculated from census reference values. We show how this approach can leverage standard and sparse survey-based multidimensional poverty assessments at the municipal level to develop a deep learning architecture to obtain poverty scores at the residential block level. This method has the distinctive feature that the obtained inference corresponds to Multidimensional Measurement of Poverty generated by CONEVAL, the Mexican agency responsible for measuring poverty. We provide a reliable alternative to survey-based approaches with an $$R^2$$ R 2 of $$0.802\pm 0.022$$ 0.802 ± 0.022 for the lack of housing quality and spaces dimension. A convolutional neural network trained on multispectral satellite images and the lack of housing quality and spaces dimension, which is regressed from census reference variables corresponding to lack of water, electricity, sewage, concrete floor, toilet and occupancy level obtains an $$R^2$$ R 2 of 0.753. These results represent a significant step forward in including machine learning techniques to provide reliable information at reduced costs and a higher spatiotemporal frequency than traditional person-to-person surveys.

The Arctic has been identified by scientists as a relatively promising venue for controversial ‘solar geoengineering’ – technical schemes to reflect more sunlight to counteract global warming. Yet contemporary regional security dynamics and the relative (in)significance of climate concerns among the key Arctic states suggest a different conclusion. By systematically juxtaposing recently published schemes for Arctic geoengineering with Arctic security strategies published by the littoral Arctic states and China, we reveal and detail two conflicting security imaginaries. Geoengineering schemes scientifically securitise (and seek to maintain) the Arctic’s ‘great white shield’ to protect ‘global’ humanity against climate tipping points and invoke a past era of Arctic ‘exceptionality’ to suggest greater political feasibility for research interventions here. Meanwhile, state security imaginaries understand the contemporary Arctic as an increasingly contested region of considerable geopolitical peril and economic opportunity as temperatures rise. Alongside the entangled history of science with geopolitics in the region, this suggests that geoengineering schemes in the Arctic are unlikely to follow scientific visions, and unless co-opted into competitive, extractivist state security imaginaries, may prove entirely infeasible. Moreover, if the Arctic is the ‘best-case’ for geoengineering politics, this places a huge question mark over the feasibility of other, more global prospects.

Recent quantitative studies on the relationship between gentrification and residential displacement have produced inconsistent findings. We examine whether these differences may be attributed to variation in the conceptualization and measurement of gentrification by testing a variety of different operational definitions of gentrification while holding data sources and other methodological decisions fixed. We treat gentrification as a family of related phenomena, estimate a family of operational measures of gentrification from Census data, and, for each measure in the family, test the association between gentrification and displacement in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. We find that several relationships between gentrification and residential displacement are robust to the choice of measure from the family of gentrification measures we consider. In particular, we find no evidence that gentrification increases the probability of displacement for renters or homeowners, regardless of how gentrification is defined and operationalized. However, consistent with recent studies of particular metro areas, we find evidence that homeowners who live in gentrifying neighborhoods are less likely to be displaced than homeowners in comparable neighborhoods that are not gentrifying.

Abstract: Do advisers affect foreign policy and, if so, how? Recent scholarship on elite decision making prioritizes leaders and the institutions that surround them, rather than the dispositions of advisers themselves. We argue that despite the hierarchical nature of foreign policy decision making, advisers’ predispositions regarding the use of force shape state behavior through the counsel advisers provide in deliberations. To test our argument, we introduce an original data set of 2,685 foreign policy deliberations between US presidents and their advisers from 1947 to 1988. Applying a novel machine learning approach to estimate the hawkishness of 1,134 Cold War–era foreign policy decision makers, we show that adviser-level hawkishness affects both the counsel that advisers provide in deliberations and the decisions leaders make: conflictual policy choices grow more likely as hawks increasingly dominate the debate, even when accounting for leader dispositions. The theory and findings enrich our understanding of international conflict by demonstrating how advisers’ dispositions, which aggregate through the counsel advisers provide, systematically shape foreign policy behavior.

This research explores barriers to the academic space in which development knowledge is codified, legitimised and taught. It also speaks to these questions more broadly. Focus group discussions with representatives of 32 civil society organisations in Sierra Leone, 2 follow‐up workshops in Sierra Leone and 24 semi‐structured interviews with senior academics in the UK and North America were conducted to explore: who determines what knowledge is deemed important for students and future development practitioners to know; and how to identify barriers that limit the contribution of a wider range of stakeholders. Racism is identified as a key factor in how knowledge is valued. Additional factors in terms of time, logistics and the structuring of academic space are also significant. Drawing on the work of power analysis scholars, we propose a three‐step framework for curriculum analysis, which identifies (1) key stakeholders in knowledge production and curriculum design; (2) spaces of power (open/invited/claimed/created/closed) within the academy and (3) the interplay of forms of power (visible/hidden/invisible) that facilitate or limit access to these spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Development Studies (DS) demonstrates maturity as a field of inquiry marked by the half-century anniversaries of journals, institutes, and scholarly associations of DS. There is vitality in terms of the volume of research and the buoyant numbers of students engaging with the subject, though DS continues to fragment. The central argument of this paper is that contemporary DS has four broad 'schools of thought' which differ significantly in terms of positions taken on the framing of, and universality of development. A typology of DS is proposed which illustrates this. The paper posits that DS would be healthier intellectually if the divides were the subject of greater dialogue. Potential avenues for initiating this discussion are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public Administration & Development is a journal that focuses on the intersections between public administration and development studies, particularly in non-Western contexts. As the second oldest British public administration journal, it has a rich history that reflects the nature of academic publishing and the discipline of public administration. The journal has evolved from its practitioner origins to become a leading academic journal, with a strong international focus. The 75th anniversary special issue includes articles that explore various topics, such as autocracies in Central Asia, gender equality, decolonizing knowledge, and disaster management. The journal aims to continue adapting to new challenges, embracing diverse perspectives, and remaining at the forefront of discussions on public administration and development. [Extracted from the article]

"Se acabó la guerra en Colombia". Era una tarde de agosto de 2016. Estaba pasando el rato con amigos en las afueras de Cali cuando el presidente Juan Manuel Santos anunció en la televisión, el final del conflicto armado de más de cincuenta años con las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC). Después de años de conversaciones, respaldadas por los gobiernos noruego y cubano, los diálogos del acuerdo de paz estaban llegando a su fin. Yo había planeado visitar a mi amiga en el otro lado de la ciudad para acompañar la locución televisiva del anuncio presidencial, y para "celebrar" el evento histórico con su familia. En un marcado contraste con mi ingenuo entusiasmo, doña Teresa, una caleña blanca-mestiza de unos cincuenta años, me dijo que......

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to assess differences in COVID-19 vaccine willingness and uptake between rural and nonrural adults, and within rural racial-ethnic groups.MethodsWe utilized data from the COVID-19's Unequal Racial Burden online survey, which included 1,500 Black/African American, Latino, and White rural adults (n = 500 each). Baseline (12/2020-2/2021) and 6-month follow-up (8/2021-9/2021) surveys were administered. A cohort of nonrural Black/African American, Latino, and White adults (n = 2,277) was created to compare differences between rural and nonrural communities. Multinomial logistic regression was used to assess associations between rurality, race-ethnicity, and vaccine willingness and uptake.FindingsAt baseline, only 24.9% of rural adults were extremely willing to be vaccinated and 28.4% were not at all willing. Rural White adults were least willing to be vaccinated, compared to nonrural White adults (extremely willing: aOR = 0.44, 95% CI = 0.30-0.64). At follow-up, 69.3% of rural adults were vaccinated; however, only 25.3% of rural adults who reported being unwilling to vaccinate were vaccinated at follow-up, compared to 95.6% of adults who were extremely willing to be vaccinated and 76.3% who were unsure. Among those unwilling to vaccinate at follow-up, almost half reported distrust in the government (52.3%) and drug companies (46.2%); 80% reported that nothing would change their minds regarding vaccination.ConclusionsBy August 2021, almost 70% of rural adults were vaccinated. However, distrust and misinformation were prevalent among those unwilling to vaccinate at follow-up. To continue to effectively combat COVID-19 in rural communities, we need to address misinformation to increase COVID-19 vaccination rates.

PurposeThe use of telemedicine (TM) has accelerated in recent years, yet research on the implementation and effectiveness of TM-delivered medication treatment for opioid use disorder (MOUD) has been limited. This study investigated the feasibility of implementing a care coordination model involving MOUD delivered via an external TM provider for the purpose of expanding access to MOUD for patients in rural settings.MethodsThe study tested a care coordination model in 6 rural primary care sites by establishing referral and coordination between the clinic and a TM company for MOUD. The intervention spanned approximately 6 months from July/August 2020 to January 2021, coinciding with the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Each clinic tracked patients with OUD in a registry during the intervention period. A pre-/post-intervention design (N = 6) was used to assess the clinic-level outcome as patient-days on MOUD based on patient electronic health records.FindingsAll clinics implemented critical components of the intervention, with an overall TM referral rate of 11.7% among patients in the registry. Five of the 6 sites showed an increase in patient-days on MOUD during the intervention period compared to the 6-month period before the intervention (mean increase per 1,000 patients: 132 days, P = .08, Cohen's d = 0.55). The largest increases occurred in clinics that lacked MOUD capacity or had a greater number of patients initiating MOUD during the intervention period.ConclusionsTo expand access to MOUD in rural settings, the care coordination model is most effective when implemented in clinics that have negligible or limited MOUD capacity.

The authors regret errors in transforming district and province locations from one coordinate system to another. The authors are indebted to Joan Barceló, Toan Luu Duc Huynh, and Edmund Malesky for bringing these errors to our attention. This note documents the errors and provides corrected text, tables, and figures, and we have also created replication statistical code reflecting these updates. Concretely, the coordinate transformation for data points presented in the published article mistakenly assumed an incorrect projection system rather than appropriately converting from UTM, Zone 48N (the original projection system of the data points for provinces and districts) to latitude and longitude coordinates on the WGS84 reference ellipsoid. This error resulted in location points being off by approximately 2° latitude north of their actual location. See Appendix A of this corrigendum for the location of districts (Panel A) and provinces (Panel B) in the original published paper versus the corrected version. This error also affected the classification of two provinces (namely, Hue and Quang Tri) and 17 districts as belonging to South Vietnam, which we have also corrected in what follows in the construction of the South Vietnam indicator variable. A regression of the corrected instrumental variable measure at the district level, [Formula presented], on the IV used in the original published paper [Formula presented], in a specification that also includes a constant term and the original indicator for former South Vietnam, yields a coefficient estimate of [Formula presented] = 0.901 (SE = 0.005), indicating that they are highly correlated. See Appendix B for a more detailed output of this regression. As a result, in the updated econometric analysis, the regression coefficient estimates and standard errors change only modestly. In all, the substantive findings of the original published article remain largely unchanged. Below we present the corrected tables and figures and all relevant instances in the main text that needed to be updated. The authors think it is important to promptly correct the scientific record and sincerely apologize for our error. The authors would like to apologize for any inconvenience caused.

Ongoing nuclear modernization programs in Russia, China, and the USA have reopened longstanding debates among scholars concerning whether tailored nuclear weapons are likely to have destabilizing consequences for international security. Without data to adjudicate this debate, however, these discussions have remained entirely theoretical. In this article, we introduce an experimental wargaming platform, SIGNAL, to quantify the effect of tailored nuclear capabilities on the nuclear threshold in a simulated environment. We then compare these results with a survey experiment using scenarios related to military basing, cyber operations, and nuclear threats from the wargame environment. While the survey experiments suggest that the presence of tailored nuclear capabilities increases the likelihood of conflict escalation, this trend diminishes in the wargaming context. Across both data-generating processes, we find support for the proposition that lower-yield nuclear weapons are used as a substitute for their higher-yield counterparts. These results have consequences for recent and ongoing policy debates concerning strategic posture and the future of arms control. This work also makes methodological contributions to the design and application of experimental wargaming for social science research, particularly for scenarios where data are limited or non-existent.

This paper explores the significant impact of transportation on the urbanization of Lokoja from 1854 to 1991. Lokoja, strategically positioned at the confluence of the Niger and Benue rivers, benefits from its prime location on the main road connecting northern and southern Nigeria. This advantageous positioning has made it a critical hub in the nation's communication network. The modern urban development of Lokoja accelerated in 1991 with the creation of Kogi State and the designation of Lokoja as its capital. This event triggered a substantial influx of people from various parts of Nigeria, leading to rapid urban expansion. As the population grew, the demand for a robust and strategic transportation infrastructure became increasingly pressing. The study draws on a diverse range of data sources, including primary sources like oral interviews and archival materials, as well as secondary sources such as journals, monographs, and books. The findings underscore the necessity of transforming Lokoja's transport systems to sustain its economic and human development. Specifically, enhancing both road and water transport systems is crucial to boosting economic activities in the town. Furthermore, the study advocates for the revitalization of Lokoja's pre-colonial and colonial water transport systems. This rejuvenation is seen as essential for the economic prosperity of the town and the well-being of its residents. By improving these transport networks, Lokoja can better support its expanding population and foster continued urban and economic growth.

The focus of this article is on the 'educational attainment' of social groups in India, defined as the proportion of 21–29-year-olds in the different social groups that are graduates. Within this context, the article makes three contributions. The first is in terms of decomposition methodology: It shows how decomposition analysis can be used to breakdown graduate educational attainment (GEA) by population subgroups and region to offer insight into the policy levers available for improving the GEA of certain groups. The second is to a methodology for computing probabilities (termed 'recycled predictions') for isolating the group-specific probabilities of GEA which can be totally attributed to group identity. The third is to use these probabilities to break down the differences in proportions between social classes into a 'social group effect' and an 'endowments effect'. The data for this article is from India's Periodic Labour Force Survey for the period 2017–2018. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through auto-ethnography, this paper explores the use of critical visual methodologies as a pedagogical approach in teaching and learning development studies based on the author's lived experiences and living encounters as a development educator for the last two decades of his academic career. Specifically, the study unpacks the adoption of this critical pedagogy in classroom instruction as well as in the degree's community-based practicum program. Conventional and non-conventional visual literacy strategies were also covered and analyzed in the specific context of researching vulnerable groups and communities. The visual data that were explored by this qualitative inquiry encompassed visually oriented course tasks which include the production of photographs, audio-visual presentations, posters, editorial cartoons, and sociological cartoons, among others. In ensuring coherence and complementarity in critical visual methodologies in development education, there is a need to synergize critical constructs with creative pedagogies. Meanwhile, in guaranteeing relevance and rootedness, the socio-instructional imperative is to align these alternative constructs and pedagogies to the situatedness and struggles of communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses the impact of the development studies (DS) programme at Zimbabwean higher education institutions on development work in Zimbabwe. It describes how development studies became one of the most popular subjects in the humanities, offered by more than 10 universities and colleges in Zimbabwe. More than two decades later, there is convincing evidence that the programme's influence on the development sector in Zimbabwe is diminishing. The article contends that the programme has been essential in sparking policy debates and incubating development theory among students and academics. However, the discipline has provided little in terms of actual practice and expertise in development work and community implementation. Therefore, development studies in Zimbabwe is an academic discipline with limited relevance to community development on the ground. This research is qualitative in nature. Qualitative data collected using purposive sampling is used to illustrate the rise of the discipline and its disparate effects on development activities in Zimbabwe. The article recommends a revision of the DS curriculum so that it fits the practical requirements for development work in Zimbabwe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Living with family and friends is a common strategy used to prevent or exit homelessness, but little is known about structural barriers that impede family and friends' ability to provide temporary or permanent housing for older homeless adults. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 46 homeless participants from the HOPE HOME study, a cohort of 350 community-recruited homeless adults age 50 or older in Oakland, CA, who reported having stayed with housed family/friends for 1 or more nights in the prior 6 months. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 19 hosts of homeless participants and 11 stakeholders in housing and homelessness. We found that homeless older adults and hosts perceived staying with family or friends as a form of temporary housing rather than as a permanent exit to homelessness. Structural barriers to family and friends providing housing for temporary stays or permanent exits from homelessness included housing regulations restricting visitors and changing rent obligations; decreased eligibility and priority for shelter and permanent housing; geographic and transportation challenges; and environments inconducive to older adults. We suggest four areas for policy reform: providing subsidies to hosts and homeless individuals, removing disincentives for homeless older adults to stay with family, changing lease regulations, and expanding the supply of affordable housing.

Transgender women living with HIV face significant barriers to healthcare that may be best addressed through community-centered interventions holistically focused on their HIV-related, gender-related, and other important needs. Community health ambassador (CHA) interventions (education and training programs designed to engage communities and community leaders in health promotion) may be an effective option, though information about the natural helping networks of this vulnerable population is too limited to inform the implementation of this approach. This study uses social network analysis to describe the natural helping networks of transgender women living with HIV, their help-seeking patterns for HIV-related, gender-related, and ancillary resources, and the characteristics of potential network ambassadors. From February to August 2019, transgender women living with HIV in the US (N = 231) participated a 30-min online survey asking them to describe their natural helping networks (N = 1054). On average, participants were embedded within natural helping networks consisting of 4-5 people. They were more likely to seek help from informal network members vs. formal service providers (p

PurposeAlthough telehealth access and utilization have increased during the pandemic, rural and low-income disparities persist. We sought to assess whether access or willingness to use telehealth differed between rural and non-rural and low-income and non-low-income adults and measure the prevalence of perceived barriers.MethodsWe conducted a cross-sectional study using COVID-19's Unequal Racial Burden (CURB) online survey (December 17, 2020-February 17, 2021), which included 2 nationally representative cohorts of rural and low-income Black/African American, Latino, and White adults. Non-rural and non-low-income participants from the main, nationally representative sample were matched for rural versus non-rural and low-income versus non-low-income comparisons. We measured perceived telehealth access, willingness to use telehealth, and perceived telehealth barriers.FindingsRural (38.6% vs 44.9%) and low-income adults (42.0% vs 47.4%) were less likely to report telehealth access, compared to non-rural and non-low-income counterparts. After adjustment, rural adults were still less likely to report telehealth access (adjusted prevalence ratio [aPR] = 0.89, 95% CI = 0.79-0.99); no differences were seen between low-income and non-low-income adults (aPR = 1.02, 95% CI = 0.88-1.17). The majority of adults reported willingness to use telehealth (rural = 78.4%; low-income = 79.0%), with no differences between rural and non-rural (aPR = 0.99, 95% CI = 0.92-1.08) or low-income versus non-low-income (aPR = 1.01, 95% CI = 0.91-1.13). No racial/ethnic differences were observed in willingness to use telehealth. The prevalence of perceived telehealth barriers was low, with the majority reporting no barriers (rural = 57.4%; low-income = 56.9%).ConclusionsLack of access (and awareness of access) is likely a primary driver of disparities in rural telehealth use. Race/ethnicity was not associated with telehealth willingness, suggesting that equal utilization is possible once granted access.

Success is the ultimate end that any organization is looking for, regardless of the nature of the organization. A variety of factors in occupational settings affect organizational success. Employees’ perception of fairness with regard to organizational practices can have an important implication on the success of the organization. The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of organizational justice on organizational success, monitoring the mediating role of organizational citizenship behavior. Primary data collected from a total of 328 Amhara Regional State Public Enterprises employees were used to test the proposed relationship between the constructs of the study. Correlation and multiple regression data analysis techniques were employed. Structural Equation Modeling was used to run a mediation analysis. Findings revealed that organizational justice has a significant positive effect on their success (β = 0.45, p

Little is known about how farms and markets are connected. Identifying critical gaps and central hubs in food systems is of importance in addressing a variety of concerns, such as navigating rapid shifts in marketing practices as seen during the COVID-19 pandemic and related food shortages. The constellation of growers and markets can also reinforce opportunities to shift growing and eating policies and practices with attention to addressing racial and income inequities in food system ownership and access. With this research, we compare network methods for measuring centrality and sociospatial orientations in food systems using two of America's most high-producing agricultural counties. Though the counties are adjacent, we demonstrate that their community food systems have little overlap in contributing farms and markets. Our findings show that the community food system for Yolo County is tightly interwoven with Bay Area restaurants and farmers' markets. The adjacent county, Sacramento, branded itself as America's Farm-to-Fork capital in 2012 and possesses network hubs focused more on grocery stores and restaurants. In both counties, the most central actors differ and have been involved with the community food system for decades. Such findings have implications beyond the case studies, and we conclude with considerations for how our methods could be standardized in the national agricultural census.

Homegarden avocado cultivation offers a viable option for smallholder farmers to diversify their sources of income and food. This study examined the contribution of avocado cultivars to household income diversification and food security in the Jewe and Upper Gana kebeles of Central Ethiopia. Data were collected from 164 households using a semi-structured questionnaire and supplemented with focus group discussions. The results of this study indicated that Nabal, Hass, and Ettinger were the most commonly cultivated avocado cultivars. On average, the households owned four improved avocado trees. This study revealed that households had highly diversified income sources, with an average SID value of 0.63. The average fruit yields for the Nabal, Hass, and Ettinger cultivars ranged from 45 to 60 kg per household. These cultivars contributed approximately 14% and 10% of the household income sources and food consumption scores, respectively. This study found that, on average, households consumed 40 kg of Hass and 25 kg of Ettinger fruits, and sold 55 kg of Nabal and 25 kg of Ettinger fruits per harvest season. Improved avocado cultivation was positively associated with household income and food consumption. Local governments should encourage cultivation of these cultivars to enhance income and food security for farmers.

The revitalization of traditional medicine has intensified interest in medicinal plants; however, reliance on wild sources poses sustainability challenges. Despite the economic potential of medicinal plants, small farmers face challenges such as limited access to resources, capital, markets, and institutional support. The study examines the profitability of cultivating high-value medicinal plants by smallholder farmers in the Amatole District Municipality, Eastern Cape, South Africa. The research, based on data from 150 smallholder farmers (mostly literate women averaging 46 years old), shows a net farm income of ZAR 19,091.72 and a return on investment of 0.77 per growing period, indicating profitability despite obstacles. Factors influencing profitability include age, household size, farm size, and farming experience. Based on the study results, the study recommends policymakers and government interventions, such as improving market access, providing financial support, offering training, and enhancing institutional frameworks. It also stresses the importance of integrating cultural considerations and addressing knowledge gaps to empower smallholder farmers and optimize the economic benefits of medicinal plant cultivation, supporting sustainable rural development and economic growth.