China is facing the great challenge of serving the world's largest rare disease population. It is necessary to develop a specific medical plan to increase the levels of optimal prevention, diagnosis and treatment of rare diseases under the existing clinical service structures in China. In 2013, China launched its first pilot project focused on 20 representative rare diseases. A national network...

Organizations that develop new products need to consider many factors related to the environmental impact of their products, including government regulations, consumer preferences, and corporate environmental objectives. To date, such organizations have struggled to find the best way to incorporate environmental issues into new product development decisionmaking. This paper compares environment...

1 Jyrki Kontio is also affiliated with Helsinki University of Technology. There he can be reached at Otakaari 1, 02150 Espoo, Finland, E-Mail: [email protected]. Abstract Process maturity models are currently used not only to assess the capability of software development organization but also as a tool to identify areas that needs improvement. These models, however, may not be applicable t...

This paper was prepared in follow up to the G. Gayle Stephens Keystone IV Conference by authors who attended the conference and are also members of the Family Medicine for America's Health board of directors (FMAHealth.org). It connects the aspirations of the current strategic and communications efforts of FMAHealth with the ideas developed at the conference. The FMAHealth project is sponsored ...

BACKGROUND Experiential approaches to skills development using secondment models are shown to benefit healthcare organizations more generally, but little is known about the potential of this approach to develop capacity for knowledge translation (KT). AIM To evaluate the success of KT capacity development secondments from the perspective of multiple stakeholders. METHODS A pluralistic evalu...

The development of policies on vaping in health care organizations (HCOs) needs to be based on a solid understanding of science and a recognition of individual rights. It should also be seen in the broader public health context of innovative alternative nicotine delivery systems playing a key role in ending the immense devastation of combustible cigarettes. Opposition to vaping based on inaccur...

Conservation policy often incentivizes managers of human-impacted areas to create landscape heterogeneity to maximize biodiversity. In rangeland, patchy disturbance regimes create landscape heterogeneity (patch contrast), but outcomes of heterogeneity-based management are rarely tested for a universal response. We analyzed four habitat variables – vegetation structure, plant functional group co...

This paper defines and describes a framework to classify program activities utilized by nonprofit organizations to achieve public benefit objectives. Drawing on theory and practice from strategy, nonprofit management, and program planning, the paper proposes five program activities differentiated by the value created. Several factors define and differentiate the approaches and serve as decision...