BACKGROUND Sub-Saharan Africa is home to approximately 55 million orphaned children. The growing orphan crisis has overwhelmed many communities and has weakened the ability of extended families to meet traditional care-taking expectations. Other models of care and support have emerged in sub-Saharan Africa to address the growing orphan crisis, yet there is a lack of information on these models ...

Occupational therapists who work with young children routinely evaluate self-care and consider it an important domain of practice. Little is known about what children perceive is important self-care or what they experience as self-care within a school context. Without knowledge about children's perspectives of self-care, occupational therapists cannot know whether or not they are targeting area...

Objectives. Patient experiences of structured heart failure rehabilitation and their views on the important components of heart failure services were examined. Methods. Focus groups were conducted with fifteen participants (men, n = 12) attending one of two heart failure rehabilitation programmes. Sessions were guided by a semistructured interview schedule covering participants' experiences of ...

This issue of Asia-Pacific Population and Policy examines the size of the elderly population in Asia and projections for the next 50 years. It discusses some of the characteristics of Asia's elderly population. Information is based on a study of population momentum and population aging at the East-West Center prepared by the UN for the 32 countries in East, Southeast, and South Asia with popu...

Two Medicaid programs offer personal care services: (1) the Title XIX Personal Care Services (PCS) optional State plan benefit; and (2) the 1915(c) home and community-based services (HCBS) waivers. By 1998-1999, 26 States offered the PCS optional State plan benefit; 45 offered personal care services via a waiver(s). Nationwide, the former program was larger. The latter was the more popular admi...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the expectations of patients when they phone the accident and emergency (A&E) department, how this relates to the advice they receive, the action they subsequently take, and their satisfaction with the service. SETTING The study was undertaken at an inner city hospital in south east London. METHODS 597 calls to the department were documented during the study period,...

Introduction The policy of free personal care for the elderly in Scotland was implemented in July 2002. Work on the costings of the exercise had been undertaken by the Care Development Group (CDG), a group established by the Minister for Health and Community Care, and chaired by Malcolm Chisholm. Research to assist in the costings was specially commissioned and the research papers were publishe...

OBJECTIVE To compare the effectiveness of a telephonic and a print intervention over 1 year to improve diabetes control in low-income urban adults. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS A randomized trial in Spanish and English comparing a telephonic intervention implemented by health educators with a print intervention. Participants (N = 526) had an A1C ≥7.5% and were prescribed one or more oral agent...

BACKGROUND older prisoners are a fast-growing group but there is limited evidence for how well their needs are being met. OBJECTIVES to quantify the social and custodial needs of older prisoners and suggest improvements for service provision. DESIGN cross-sectional study. SETTING twelve prisons holding adult males in North West England. SUBJECTS two hundred and sixty-two prisoners; 97 a...

PURPOSE Storybook reading provides a natural language learning context in which to support early symbolic communication. In this study, we explored the impact of (1) resting hand splints, (2) light tech augmentative communication systems such as voice-output devices and symbols, and (3) very basic parent training on the symbolic communication and labelling behaviours of six girls with Rett synd...