The Directorate of Economics of the Ministry of Agriculture maintains two publication series for research on food security issues. Publications under the Flash series are short (3-4 pages), carefully focused reports designated to provide timely research results on issues of great interest. Publications under the Research Paper series are designed to provide longer, more in-depth treatment of fo...

While a dairy cooperative provided the bylaws, managing a cooperative of rural hospitals has been a learn-as-you-go experience. This article presents the management principles that have been learned over the last 13 years. Its experience suggests that developing and managing partnerships requires behaviors different from those typically associated with the management of individual organizations.

INTRODUCTION 'Belonging' is a universal characteristic of human beings and is a basic human need. Rural nurses describe the nature of their practice as being embedded in working as a team where belonging is central to the success of the team and the individual nurse. As a result they form close professional and personal ties. The challenge for nursing students is to develop a sense of belonging...

The purpose of this study is to identify barriers to the adoption of new technology in rural settings. Specifically, this paper focuses on identifying and overcoming barriers to the adoption of a medication error reporting system in eight rural hospitals. Prior research has generally focused on barriers to the adoption of new technology in urban areas, medical centers, or large hospitals. The l...

The paper discusses the institutional reforms for rural electrification (RE) in Thailand and Bangladesh and analyses the impacts of private sector participation in electricity generation and tariff reforms on the poor in Thailand. RE program in Thailand, initiated in 1977, increased electricity access by rural households from 7% in early 70s to 97% by 2000. In Bangladesh the RE program, initiat...

Socioeconomic trends and developments within the U.S. healthcare system have challenged rural hospitals' ability to maintain adequate operating margins and offer needed services. However, some hospitals have fared better in this negative environment than have others. To clarify factors that distinguish the most viable rural Catholic hospitals from the least viable, our study identified a group ...

The New South Wales Department of Health (NSW Health) wishes to make appropriate use of casemix data as inputs to the determination of funding levels for small rural hospitals. However, other factors such as hospital size and degree of isolation might need to be taken into account. The study reported here involved correlation of actual expenditures with those predicted by use of a casemix model...

Assessing the Impacts of Local Hospital Food Procurement: Results from Vermont Florence Becot, MS; David Conner, PhD; Diane Imrie, MBA, RD; Ka e E man Research Specialist, Center for Rural Studies, University of Vermont, Burlington VT, USA Associate Professor, Department of Community Development and Applied Economics, University of Vermont, Burlington VT, USA Director Nutri on Services, Univers...