This issue brief is part of a continuing series of policy papers published by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's State Coverage Initiatives program, housed at AcademyHealth, and the National Academy for State Health Policy on the state health policy implications of ERISA's preemption clause.1 The purpose of the brief is to explore the U.S. Supreme Court's June 2004 decision that ERISA preempt...

OBJECTIVE To determine work and health conditions of women working in informal economy in Bogotá, as well as to recommend priority action plans for preventing illnesses and accidents related to work and their consequences. METHODOLOGY Descriptive observational study. This study analyzed information collected by local groups in work-related contexts during 2007 as part of a set of forms of int...

The concept of a negative income tax has been actively discussed and promoted, at least by economists, for over two decades. High on the list of motivations for this are the inefficiencies and inequities of patchwork welfare programs that make arbitrary distinctions among potential recipients and concentrate on specific consumption items. The possibility of extremely high marginal tax rates on ...

BACKGROUND Cardiac rehabilitation (CR) is a recommended model of care for cardiovascular diseases; however, is not widely available and is underutilized, especially in low- and middle-income countries. OBJECTIVES To identify the CR programs available in one Brazilian state (Minas Gerais; MG) and describe their characteristics by funding type. METHODS In this multi-center descriptive study, ...

After writing programs for a production robot, an operator must manually teach hundreds or thousands of poses. Teaching poses is extremely time consuming and, unfortunately, periodic reteaching is necessary. The need to reteach is commonly due to: wear, repair, slight movements of workpieces, or replacement of the robot and its tools. Our experience has shown that conventional methods of adjust...

A set of technical, administrative and management activities are done in the life cycle of equipment, to be located in good condition and have proper and expected functioning. This is refers to be, maintenance management system (MMS). The framework and models of assessment in order to enhance effectiveness of a MMS could be proposed in two categories: qualitative and quantitative. In this resea...