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ObjectivesThe need for palliative care (PC) will continue to increase in Canada with population aging. Many older adults prefer to “age in place” and receive care in their own homes. Currently, there is a lack of standardized quality indicators (QIs) for PC delivered in the community in Canada.MethodsA one-day workshop collected expert opinions on what should be measured to capture quality PC. Three brainstorming sessions were focused on addressing the following questions: (1) what is important to measure to support quality PC, regardless of setting? (2) Of the identified measures, are any of special importance to care provided in the home? (3) What are the challenges, barriers, and opportunities for creating these measures? The National Consensus Project (NCP) for Quality Palliative Care framework was used as a guide to group together important comments into key themes.ResultsThe experts identified four themes that are important for measuring quality, regardless of care setting, including access to care in the community by a multidisciplinary team, care for the individual with PC needs, support for the informal caregiver (e.g., family, friends), and symptom management for individuals with PC needs. Two additional themes were of special importance to measuring quality PC in the home, including spiritual care for individuals with PC needs and home as the preferred place of death. The challenges, barriers, and potential opportunities to these quality issues were also discussed.Significance of resultsPC experts, through this collaborative process, made a substantial contribution to the creation of a standardized set of QIs for community-based PC. Having a standardized set of QIs will enable health care professionals and decision makers to target areas for improvement, implement interventions to improve the quality of care, and ultimately, optimize the health and well-being of individuals with a serious illness.

Knapp and White provide a timely review of innovations in U.S. domestic migration research and its consequences for the spatial distribution of population. The authors discuss the crucial shift toward migration modeling which includes site attributes such as natural amenities in addition to factors associated with improvement in earnings in the household location decision. Knapp and White address the following contemporary topics in the study of U.S. domestic migration: migrant selectivity, the use of panel data, and life course migration. They illuminate the development of inter-disciplinary U.S. domestic migration research from economics, demography, sociology, and geography. In “Opportunity Seeking Migration in the United States,” Knapp and White conclude that the results of migration research should inform the “people vs. places” policy debate because a better understanding of the determinants of migration will lead to more efficacious public policy. The authors finally assert that changing demographics will have an increasingly important role in migration patterns and regional population dynamics, providing fruitful opportunities for future migration research regarding age group specific locational preferences.

We created a migration and earnings history from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to analyze the effects of youth county poverty rates on the adult earnings of white male migrants. We estimate a log wage equation that includes human capital measures, migration types, county poverty rates, and a rural–poverty rate interaction variable. Growing up in a rural county has a negative impact on adult wages independent of youth county poverty rates, but the rural effect is significantly greater for those who grew up in high poverty counties. Youth county poverty rates indirectly affect wages through the returns to migration.

Researchers have been captivated for more than a hundred years by the therapeutic potential that lay in electrically stimulating the brain. As each new method came about, earlier in Europe and later in the US, numerous stimulation waveforms blossomed and faded, each leaving electrical breadcrumbs for the next generation of researchers to follow. This review follows waveforms from their more rudimentary nature to today’s more advanced electrical formulations and focuses on one electrical formulation in particular that opens two exciting new areas of exploration. One of these is the therapeutic potential presented by subcortical stimulation. The second area follows on the heels of research that is systematically unravelling the brain’s complex electrical operating language. This review indicates how today’s advanced waveforms open up the potential for subcortical stimulation to join the brain’s electrical conversations, gently guiding it toward higher functioning.

The remarkable outcomes of two studies published by Eugene Peniston (with Paul Kulkosky; 1989, 1991) using his alpha-theta protocol on chronic alcoholics and Vietnam veterans exhibiting posttraumatic stress disorder, respectively, opened up the possibility of resolving deep unconscious trauma in a relatively short period. A white paper recently published in 2008 in the Journal of Neurotherapy (see Sokhadze, Cannon, & Trudeau) assesses with considerable thoroughness the efficacy of the Peniston Protocol and the Scott-Kaiser Modification in substance use disorder based on research standards adopted by the Biofeedback Certification Institute of America and the International Society for Neuronal Regulation. Strict adherence to these standards seems to limit the authors to citing empirical research findings, virtually ignoring the understanding of addiction as a neurobehavioral condition and the Peniston protocol's value as a medium through which neurobehavioral healing can occur. The effectiveness of...

We demonstrated racial differences in the relationship between migration, location, and predicted wages for young male workers who have changed employers. An Oaxaca decomposition allowed a measuring of the contributions of migration, occupation change, site features, and human capital to the racial wage gap. Migration decreases black–white wage differences, and wage compensation for site attributes favors white householders. Constraints on occupation choice and migration dampen the ability of blacks to improve wages. Because most job changes occur in the first ten years of a career, these results on young workers give important general insights into the origins and persistence of racial wage gaps.

The linkage between migration and sector characteristics is the subject of the paper. We analyze the impact of a tax rate change on a location's population and the accompanying, dynamic that occurs in the local labor market and public sector. Local labor market characteristics, tax price effects, and scale economics in consumption of a public good are found to influence the local population equilibrium.

We first develop an empirical approach for generating measures of wage over or under compensation (incomplete compensation) for location attributes. We then devise a method to test whether migration is influenced by incomplete compensation in wages for location characteristics. An intercity wage regression is estimated where fixed effects capture the impact of site characteristics on wages. We then regress the fixed effects on a comprehensive vector of site attributes, where the residuals from this stage capture incomplete compensation in wages. The derived measures of incomplete compensation are included in a standard microdata-based discrete choice model of migration. The results suggest that incomplete wage compensation for site characteristics matters in migration decisions, and the findings are consistent with tendencies toward spatial equilibrium in the distribution of population. Copyright 2003, Oxford University Press.

This study analyzes personal and site characteristics in a model of intraMSA and interMSA mobility. Households are assumed to choose a single type of move, intraMSA or interMSA, while simultaneously choosing a central city or suburban destination. We demonstrate that a nested logit model is appropriate on both theoretical and empirical grounds. The sample consists of intrametropolitan and intermetropolitan movers drawn from the 1990 U.S. Census PUMS. Personal characteristics drawn from the PUMS are matched to numerous site characteristics (climatic measures, other amenities, state and local fiscal characteristics, and other urban quality measures) drawn from a variety of sources. Nested logit direct and cross elasticities are presented for a number of site attributes.

This paper offers insights into the role for regional science and regional scientists in analyzing shale-energy development. The stories described are drawn from popular press accounts of the Bakken Basin in North Dakota and the dry-gas-producing counties of the Marcellus Shale in Northern and Central Pennsylvania. The comparison of the two shale plays highlights housing, labor market, and fiscal issues for these two locations.

The most recent boom in fossil fuel extraction is noteworthy through its extensive use of advanced technologies called hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling. The papers in this issue demonstrate the role that regional science can and should play in guiding policy, usefully complementing research from physical science and engineering disciplines that focuses on the important geological and environmental consequences of shale energy production. Furthermore, we underscore the need for expanding the traditional regional science focus in policy discussions pertaining to shale energy.

Menopause is an event experienced universally by all women including women with chronic medical conditions such as diabetes mellitus. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of the menopausal stage on the health and psychological adjustment to illness among women who have diabetes mellitus. The results of this study represent a beginning in the understanding of the impact of the menopausal event on chronically ill adult women.

The title of my talk today is “Personal Perspectives on Amenities and Migration.” I will begin with an introduction to my personal interest on this subject, and then link the personal to the professional.

We examine the relationship between occupational and geographical mobility using National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data. We develop a theoretical model that is a variation on the Jovanovic experience good model, which allows us to formalize the occupation choice decision. As individuals gain information on their own productivity, they may change occupations and locations. Occupation choice is introduced as an endogenous determinant of migration in recursive bivariate probit models for individuals who make good and bad matches in an occupation. We extend our analysis to feature an additional discussion of the migration-occupation choice relationship by race for both match types.

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the theories of the effectiveness of alpha-theta training for multiple disorders. Alpha-theta neurotherapy has demonstrated that causing the brain to generate theta activity daily over a period of time seems to have enormous benefits, including boosting the immune system, enhancing creativity, and triggering or facilitating “integrative experiences leading to feelings of psychological well-being.” The protocol seems to transcend the patient's lack of motivation to change, initial incapacity to create internal visual imagery, and disbelief in the effectiveness of the treatment. Frequently, a patient's experience and results far exceed the goals targeted. Alpha-theta EEG state of arousal seems to create a link to a subconscious realm where a wider vision of the self without its ego adaptations is contacted. This link may be associated with concepts of context and state-dependent learning and memory. Besides overcoming the problem presented, the treatment appears to evoke in the patient more general, adaptive shifts in behaviors, attitudes, relationships, health, mental processing, job performance, and creativity. A large number of psychiatric diagnoses appear to respond to this treatment. Furthermore, it is speculated that when the conscious mind enters the EEG range of theta and “surrenders” to what some call the “mind field,” the brain system is enabled to go through a dramatic and profound reordering process. In addition to the theories of the effectiveness of alpha-theta training discussed in this chapter, it is the experience of such a spiritual connection that is a major healing force behind the extraordinary healing so often seen with this training.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of locational and individual characteristics upon interstate retiree migration particularly in state-level public policy variables. Data regarding the characteristics of individual movers are drawn from the 1990 U.S. Census of Population and Housing 5% Public Use Microdata Sample. The household data are merged with location-specific attributes including both natural amenities and local fiscal variables. Three alternative models are developed involving push factors pull factors and differences in site characteristics experienced by migrants. "The results indicate that both personal and locational characteristics are important factors determining the decision of elderly migrants to change their state of residence. While there is some limited support for the push and pull specifications the difference model is found to provide the best overall fit." (EXCERPT)

This paper demonstrates a relationship between migration and public policy and suggests a role for migration in regional development. Numerous studies have analyzed the relationship between migration and specific aspects of public policy, and simultaneous equations models have included public policy variables that are found to influence both firm location and migration. Yet, none of these studies has generated a comprehensive migration-oriented study of regional development that can be evaluated along with the firm location literature. Increasing evidence of the importance of public sector variables in the household location decision suggests further study of migration and regional development. Our empirical results contribute to the literature linking migration and public sector characteristics. We link migration to public policy by treating tax and expenditure variables as site attributes in a utility maximization model. We fmd that public sector attributes, through their effect on migration, are among the determinants of regional development.

have, we developed a questionnaire and administered it to 35 nonhospitalized diabetic persons. Questions encompassed family history, health practices concerning hypoglycemic agents, diet, and self-care management practices. What we found was a need for assessment and follow-up of the health practices of diabetic patients and a need for reinforcemgnt of previous learning and exposure to new information. The nurses and nursing students who used the questionnaire found it a useful assessment tool, The respondents expressed gratitude for the comprehensive questioning of their health practices. This feedback led us to consider using such a questionnaire as a guide for assessing the knowledge and practices of diabetic persons. In each of the areas on the