The Evolving Landscape of Legacy Preference Bans in Postsecondary Admissions: Evidence and Policy Implications from Case Studies

This paper discusses the persistent myths that cloud our understanding of two politically charged themes that have been featured in discussions of the educational outcomes of Blacks: “Acting White” and Race Neutral Alternatives to Affirmative Action in postsecondary admissions. We discuss research that shows that the “Acting White” hypothesis fails both theoretically and empirically to explain differences in educational outcomes between blacks and whites. We provide evidence that race neutral alternatives to admissions in higher education are both less effective and less efficient in producing racially diverse cohorts. Policy recommendations that heed the myths that rather than follow the facts are likely to be injurious to those that they seek to aid.

Issues in Medicaid Policy and System Transformation: Recommendations From the President's Commission

Purpose of ReviewRacial and socioeconomic inequities in respiratory pandemics have been consistently documented, but little official guidance exists on effective action to prevent these. We systematically reviewed quantitative evaluations of (real or simulated) interventions targeting racial and socioeconomic inequities in respiratory pandemic outcomes.Recent FindingsOur systematic search returned 10,208 records, of which 5 met inclusion criteria, including observational (n = 1), randomized trial (n = 1), and simulation (n = 3) studies. Interventions studied included vaccination parity, antiviral distribution, school closure, disinfection, personal protective equipment, and paid sick leave, with a focus on Black (n = 3) and/or Latinx (n = 4) or low-SES (n = 2) communities. Results are suggestive that these interventions might be effective at reducing racial and/or SES disparities in pandemics.SummaryThere is a dearth of research on strategies to reduce pandemic disparities. We provide theory-driven, concrete suggestions for incorporating equity into intervention research for pandemic preparedness, including a focus on social and economic policies.

More states address pharmacists’ provider status recognition

Chapter 5: Law and regulation

The increase rate of the world's Muslim population has affected the trend of the global halal industry. This situation leads to the increase demand for food, products and services with the Halal Certification (HC) status. HC is a process of examining and evaluating products or services that comply with halal requirement in accordance to Shariah law. Products and services with the HC status will help the consumer to make consumption decision easily. In Malaysia, HC system is governed by Halal Certification Body (HCB) at federal and state level. HC consists of several processes and one of the important processes is Halal Inspection (HI). This paper aims to identify the problem in HI and determine the differences in the implementation of HI practices by HCB between state and federal level. A qualitative approach has been employed which involves interviews with five halal experts. They are the auditors from HCB at federal and state level. This study adapts the Work System Framework (WSF) to gain understanding of the HI process. The results reveal that the limited number of halal auditors may contribute to HC inefficiency. Although both HCB follow the same HC guidelines and manual, the HI implementation is slightly different. On top of that, the HC scheme that is available at federal and state level are also different. In future, these findings will help to extent the research on the use of Information Technology (IT) such as virtual technology in the HI process.

BackgroundHospital admissions for cardiogenic shock have increased in the United States. Temporary mechanical circulatory support (tMCS) can be used to acutely stabilize patients. We sought to evaluate the presence of racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic inequities in access to MCS in the United States among patients with cardiogenic shock. MethodsMedicare data were used to identify patients with cardiogenic shock admitted to hospitals with advanced tMCS (microaxial left ventricular assist device [mLVAD] or extracorporeal membranous oxygenation [ECMO]) capabilities within the 25 largest core-based statistical areas, all major metropolitan areas. We modeled the association between patient race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status and use of mLVAD or ECMO. ResultsAfter adjusting for age and clinical comorbidities, dual eligibility for Medicaid was associated with a 19.9% (95% CI, 11.5%-27.4%) decrease in odds of receiving mLVAD in a patient with cardiogenic shock (P < .001). After adjusting for age, clinical comorbidities, and dual eligibility for Medicaid, Black race was associated with 36.7% (95% CI, 28.4%-44.2%) lower odds of receiving mLVAD in a patient with cardiogenic shock. Dual eligibility for Medicaid was associated with a 62.0% (95% CI, 60.8%-63.1%) decrease in odds of receiving ECMO in a patient with cardiogenic shock (P < .001). Black race was associated with 36.0% (95% CI, 16.6%-50.9%) lower odds of receiving ECMO in a patient with cardiogenic shock, after adjusting for Medicaid eligibility. ConclusionsWe identified large and significant racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic inequities in access to mLVAD and ECMO among patients presenting with cardiogenic shock to metropolitan hospitals with active advanced tMCS programs. These findings highlight systematic inequities in access to potentially lifesaving therapies.

Reconsidering upstream approaches to improving population health

Accomplishing provider status: Getting pharmacists paid for their patient care services

This research study presents a new model of immigration federalism which integrates existing theories into a framework that emphasizes agency at the local level. Unlike dominant models of federalism that observe the cascading effect of higher-level policy on lower levels of government, this research focuses on empirical evidence at the local level to understand its relation to policy at higher levels. Immigration federalism is receiving substantial interest in scholarly work and in practice, but it lacks a cohesive and comprehensive theory explaining variation at the community level. There is little reason to expect sweeping changes in immigration policy at the federal level anytime soon, but immigration policy continues to change in practice. Understanding changes in immigration policy, particularly at the state and local levels of government, is valuable, and a comprehensive theory of immigration federalism focusing on lower levels of government expands perspectives of federalism. The research for this study follows a nested case study design that involves collecting and analyzing secondary and primary data at the federal, state, and local levels. Secondary data were collected at three levels of government--federal, state, and local--for each case study. Semi-structured interviews of public administrators and community leaders were conducted at the local level. This primary data were analyzed using grounded theory and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). The five case studies that result from data collection and analysis frame immigration policy at the federal level, across 50 U.S. states and in Oregon particularly, and in the Oregon cities of Sandy, Nyssa, and Madras. These case studies are compared within and across levels of government to construct a new model of immigration federalism. Following this nested approach, I created and refined a theory of immigration federalism by constructing an overarching framework reflecting the institutional context of immigration policy at the federal, state, and local levels of government. Each level yielded understanding which informed, modified, and optimized information gathering at the next level, so construction of the framework was recursive throughout the research project. The resulting model emphasizes a policy's connection to the public at the local level and highlights the role of governance in balancing rather than resolving tensions. This immigration federalism model helps describe the dynamic nature of the intergovernmental influence and the reality of independent local authority in the United States that results in different policy outcomes locally depending on polity perspectives and civic capacity of the community. Therefore, this model offers a new perspective that encourages scholars and practitioners to value local diversity and the knowledge and expertise--even of complex and controversial policy issues like immigration--inherent in the local community context. The findings of this study reveal that there are more differences than similarities in the capacity of local-level jurisdictions, which ensures that the experience in each jurisdiction will be unique. With this known, the response to federal and state-level immigration policy changes can differ in different localities. The findings of this study also highlight the significance of factors relevant to civic capacity, which can impact immigrants and immigration at the local level. Finally, the study finds that, where local-level public administrators and civic leaders take the initiative to understand their city's historical, racial, ethnic, and immigrant dynamics, informants in the community expressed greater awareness of cross-cultural challenges. The study offers recommendations for public administrators for improving social equity across cultural groups, building civic capacity, and building leadership capacity. The theoretical framework for immigration federalism explains observed relationships between and among levels of government while taking history and the realities of local-level diversity into account. The immigration federalism framework is born of empirical observation and drives theory that is empirically testable, so the framework as it exists now can be built upon by constructing additional state and local-level cases and making comparisons. The functionality of this model has implications for understanding civic capacity and social equity in local jurisdictions and is transferable to policy domains beyond immigration. Environmental policy, including climate change policy, health policies such as maternal health policy, and Indian child welfare policy, are a handful of examples of policy domains for which this model of federalism would be helpful.

The impact of population composition on phenomena of racial relations has intrigued scholars for generations, yet in the U.S. context, such research has focused disproportionately on the issue of black-white relations. As U.S. racial diversity increases, bilateral models of race relations are being replaced by multilateral approaches. This study applies one such multilateral model, Blau's |1~ theory of heterogeneity, to the issue of student admissions in higher education -- a situation in which racial groups vie for limited resources (that is, school admissions) in a relatively visible and publicized forum. An example of this is the controversy over admissions to state-related universities in California, which is one of the most racially diverse states. Here, the controversy has changed from one of bilateral (white-black) competition to one of multilateral competition, in which minority groups perceive other minority groups (not whites) to be their main competitor. Two universities that have been frequently mentioned in this regard are UCLA and UC-Berkeley, in which interests have been perceived to conflict with those of Asian Americans |5, 8, 9~. In those situations, an approach to admissions based solely on test scores and high-school grades would cause blacks to lose admissions spots to Asian Americans. Conversely, an approach of allocating admissions by race leads to Asian Americans being denied admission merely because they are in a racial group that is already well represented in those universities. Admissions officials are thus in a no-win position, because any admissions policy will be considered prima-facie discrimination by one group or the other. In other words, one minority group's notion of political justice conflicts with another minority group's notion of merit, yet both groups enjoy special protection under the law. Some members of Congress have even charged that unofficial quotas exist against Asian Americans at certain universities |9~. This sort of multi-racial conflict which pits minority groups against one another can occur anywhere in the United States where there are more than two racial groups; California's dilemma may be a precursor of what other states will face in the near future as their populations become more racially diverse. The notion that racial composition of a population affects the degree of discrimination is a proposition with a long pedigree. For example, in 1908 Stone |13~ noted that whites can afford to behave benignly toward a minority when it forms a very small and decreasing proportion of the population. Stone concluded that white hostility toward blacks was greater than toward other U.S. minorities because as blacks increase in number, they pose a greater threat to white dominance with increased anti-black discrimination as the result. According to Stone, minorities that are small and/or decreasing in number experience less discrimination from whites; his examples in 1908 were Chinese-Americans and native Hawaiians. Numerous studies have pursued the hypothesis that percent black determines the degree of discrimination. Wilcox and Roof |17~ in a review of the literature concluded that there is such a relationship within the South of the United States but not in its other regions. The impact upon whites of a high proportion of blacks is complex. If blacks are in the lower socioeconomic levels, opportunities for high-status whites are improved. Low-status whites, however, are hurt by a large presence because segregationist norms make it difficult for low-status whites and blacks to join forces through labor unions or political movements |17~. Thus, a large presence will lead to the widest income gap between high- and low-status whites; in other words, a large minority population leads to a large standard deviation in income among whites |14~. The United States, of course, includes racial minorities other than blacks. …

This paper draws upon “sociotechnical theory” as an effective approach to examine e‐governance implementation challenges in higher education institutions where multiple stakeholders exist. The use of sociotechnical theoretical approach provides a valuable contribution to the research domain of sociological studies of e‐governance in the public sectors, particularly in higher education quality assurance. A sociological interpretive analysis of the Central Admission System in Tanzania (as a case study) is presently under concern for this end. In African context, Tanzania in particular, ICT penetration is concentrated in urban areas hence the issue of “digital divide” is an on‐going debate which calls upon the need to understand the implementation of e‐governance projects and their challenges. The paper concentrates, through in‐depth interviews with key users of the Central Admission System (applicants, admission officers and IT staff), on how the implementation of the system poses various socio‐technical challenges in attempt to improving quality assurance in higher education admissions. Our research reveals that introduction of new technology in higher education admissions have created multiple challenges for users and implementers of the system. The paper shows that “digital divide” and low IT skills – are leading challenges in the implementation of e‐governance in the country. Given the prevailing admission malpractices, Tanzania's initiative to implement the Central Admission System will most likely eliminate such practices within higher education institutions. The paper highlights the milieus in which the implementation of the system takes place; specifically, the existing multiple stakeholders of the system and autonomous nature of the higher education institutions. This research advances the theoretical understanding of “sociotechnical systems” to a new “multilevel” ICT implementation and offers policy makers propositions for confronting such circumstances. This paper also appeals practical recommendations to assist e‐governance adopters in the public sectors especially regulatory agencies in Tanzania as well as other developing countries.

This article considers whether the socioeconomic diversity of the undergraduate student body and experiences with cross-class interaction (CCI) are significantly related to cross-racial interaction (CRI) and engagement with curricular/co-curricular diversity (CCD) activities. Individual students who reported higher levels of CCI had significantly higher levels of CRI and CCD. While the socioeconomic diversity of the student body had no direct effect on student involvement in CCD activities or CRI, it had an indirect effect on these activities via CCI. In other words, a socioeconomically diverse institution is associated with more frequent interactions across class lines, which is associated both with more frequent interactions across race and greater involvement in CCD activities. Findings indicate that both socioeconomic and racial diversity are essential to promoting a positive campus racial climate and that racial and socioeconomic diversity, while interrelated, are not interchangeable. Implications for the campus climate for diversity are discussed.

State-Level Socioeconomic Racial Inequity and Food Insecurity in the U.S.

Using social network and standard statistical analysis as well as state lobbying data from North Carolina and federal lobbying data, this project studies the structure of lobbying at the state level. Little research has explored the connections between special interests represented at both the national and state levels and possible associations with lobbying influence. A significant number of lobbying organizations, including law firms, engage in lobbying at the federal level as well as the state level. Moreover, the structure of relations among lobbying organizations appear to exhibit a truncated scale-free distribution of ties in which a small number of organizations garner the majority of ties. Law firms and other lobbying firms that operate at the federal and state levels seem to be the critical nodes in terms of the structure of the overall network. The results suggest that law firms that are more central in the network of lobbying organizations, that are rated as influential by their peers in state politics, and that operate at both the state and federal levels are more likely to garner client ties.