The scope and meaning of ‘accountability’ has been extended in a number of directions well beyond its core sense of being called to account for one’s actions. It has been applied to internal aspects of official behaviour, beyond the external focus implied by being called to account; to institutions that control official behaviour other than through calling officials to account; to means of maki...

PB Core is the result of the public broadcasting metadata initiative (PBMI). It is an effort of the public radio and television broadcasters to develop a schema for the description of their assets. PBMI is under the auspices of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The paper discusses the user-centered development of the schema, the elements of the PB Core, the application profile, and the f...

The concept of capacity building for public health has gained much attention during the last decade. National as well as international organizations increasingly focus their efforts on capacity building to improve performance in the health sector. During the past two decades, a variety of conceptual frameworks have been developed which describe relevant dimensions for public health capacity. No...

This study uses multivariate regression analysis to examine the effects of asset specificity on the financial performance of both external and internal governance structures for medical device maintenance, and investigates how the financial performance of external governance structures differs depending on whether a hospital is private or public. The hypotheses were tested using information on ...

Objective 8.14 of the Year 2000 National Health Objectives calls for 90 percent of the population to be served by a local health department effectively carrying out the three core functions of public health--assessment, policy development, and assurance. To provide a benchmark of local health department effectiveness in addressing the core functions and to assess implications for achieving the ...