Explicit Targeting Research Articles

Progress towards universal health coverage and inequalities in infant mortality: an analysis of 4·1 million births from 60 low-income and middle-income countries between 2000 and 2019

Expanding universal health coverage (UHC) might not be inherently beneficial to poorer populations without the explicit targeting and prioritising of low-income populations. This study examines whether the expansion of UHC between 2000 and 2019 is associated with reduced socioeconomic inequalities in infant mortality in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). We did a retrospective analysis of birth data compiled from Demographic and Health Surveys (DHSs). We analysed all births between 2000 and 2019 from all DHSs available for this period. The primary outcome was infant mortality, defined as death within 1 year of birth. Logistic regression models with country and year fixed effects assessed associations between country-level progress to UHC (using WHO's UHC service coverage index) and infant mortality (overall and by wealth quintile), adjusting for infant-level, mother-level, and country-level variables. A total of 4 065 868 births to 1 833 011 mothers were analysed from 177 DHSs covering 60 LMICs between 2000 and 2019. A one unit increase in the UHC index was associated with a 1·2% reduction in the risk of infant death (AOR 0·988, 95% CI 0·981-0·995; absolute measure of association, 0·57 deaths per 1000 livebirths). An estimated 15·5 million infant deaths were averted between 2000 and 2019 because of increases in UHC. However, richer wealth quintiles had larger associated reductions in infant mortality from UHC (quintile 5 AOR 0·983, 95% CI 0·973-0·993) than poorer quintiles (quintile 1 0·991, 0·985-0·998). In the early stages of UHC, UHC expansion was generally beneficial to poorer populations (ie, larger reductions in infant mortality for poorer households [infant deaths per 1000 per one unit increase in UHC coverage: quintile 1 0·84 vs quintile 5 0·59]), but became less so as overall coverage increased (quintile 1 0·64 vs quintile 5 0·57). Since UHC expansion in LMICs appears to become less beneficial to poorer populations as coverage increases, UHC policies should be explicitly designed to ensure lower income groups continue to benefit as coverage expands. UK National Institute for Health and Care Research.

Alternative targeting methods for social assistance programs: Evidence from Tunisia

AbstractSocial assistance programmes are crucial in alleviating poverty, reducing inequality, and addressing social exclusion. The efficacy of these programmes hinges on the precision and efficiency of their targeting methods. Governments, especially in developing countries, can enhance the impact of social assistance programmes and ensure equitable resource distribution by accurately identifying the right individuals or households. This paper proposes two approaches to targeting beneficiaries of social benefits in Tunisia, including cash transfers and healthcare programmes. The first approach, a Mixed Means Test, extends the Proxy Means Test model by integrating individual/household assessments with explicit geographical targeting methods. The second is a multidimensional targeting strategy that explicitly considers the various deprivations faced by the households. Utilising data from the 2015 National Survey on Household Budget, Consumption, and Standard of Living, our results indicate that the targeting performance of the Mixed Means Test surpasses existing programmes both nationally and regionally, notably minimising inclusion and exclusion errors in the poorest regions of Tunisia. However, the multidimensional targeting approach identifies a higher number of potential beneficiaries compared to the current selection process in Tunisia. Including these households in social programmes may be hindered by limited monetary resources and the country's financial constraints. To address this, the multidimensional targeting approach enables the categorisation of potential beneficiaries into three mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive groups based on their degree of deprivation.

Don’t Take It Personally: An Empirical Investigation of Consumer Responses to Explicit Targeting

Firms increasingly use consumer information to target and personalize communication with consumers. This paper focuses on explicit targeting, a practice where firms saliently (yet subtly) reveal the information used to target consumers in their advertisement text. How to craft ad messages to convey product benefits without triggering privacy concerns is a nontrivial task. Results from a field experiment reveal that consumers respond negatively to explicit targeting, yet such a negative effect can be partially alleviated by using hedonic instead of utilitarian information framing. In a controlled online experiment, we show that explicit targeting increases consumers’ privacy concerns relative to the perceived benefits of personalization, leading to less positive consumer responses. Interestingly, an extension of the online experiment suggests that providing consumers with a clear description of why they are targeted seems to offset the negative effects of explicit targeting. This study offers important academic implications for the personalization literature and valuable practical insights for firms and policymakers.

Targeted Therapies in Chronic Kidney Disease

About a millions of glomeruli, or filtration units, found in the kidney linked to the tubules where water and solutes from the primary urine are selectively reabsorbed. Both the glomerular and tubular compartments are eventually affected by acute and chronic kidney diseases, but circulating substances like antibodies or cytokines frequently target the glomeruli first. A minimum of three months must pass before there are any abnormalities in renal function in order for the patient to be diagnosed with chronic kidney disease (CKD). Twenty million people in the US have CKD. Despite being a major global health burden, chronic and acute kidney illness still lack effective treatments. Current treatments, like anti-inflammatory steroids, have systemic side effects and cannot halt the disease's development. Although efforts have been made to create renally pursued treatments, no such strategy exhibits yet entered the clinic. At this time, we provide a critical overview of the state of drugs and delivery methods that specifically target the kidneys [1].
 Functional results fall into two categories: (i) Targeting the kidney causes the renal-to-liver ratio to rise. This is referred to as explicit targeting; (ii) the medication accumulates more in the kidneys while the kidney verses liver proportion stays the same, which allows the carrier to boost uptake generally. Overall, targeting that was focused on receptors and transporters was the most successful. The biggest task for nanoparticulate formulations is to reach glomerular cells and prevent liver accumulation [2].
 Long-term contact with a carrier may be necessary to treat chronic kidney illnesses. Evidence on frequency, quantity, and application as well as the kinetics of degradation must be converted crazy about kinetic models of degradation and uptake in order to determine whether possibly lethal accumulation is to be predictable for decomposable polymers.

The Clinical Relevance of Impulsivity in Substance Use Disorder Treatment: Examining Within-treatment Changes and Relationship to Psychiatric Symptoms and Cravings in a Large Inpatient Sample.

Impulsivity is a multidimensional construct that is consistently associated with problematic substance use, but less is known about its relevance to clinical outcomes. The current study examined whether impulsivity changed over the course of addiction treatment and whether the changes were associated with changes in other clinical outcomes. Participants were patients in a large inpatient addiction medicine program (N = 817; 71.40% male). Impulsivity was assessed using a self-report measure of delay discounting (DD; i.e., overvaluation of smaller immediate rewards) and the UPPS-P, a self-report measure of impulsive personality traits. Outcomes were psychiatric symptoms including depression, anxiety, PTSD, and drug cravings. Within-subjects ANOVAs revealed significant within-treatment changes in all UPPS-P subscales, all psychiatric indicators, and craving (ps < .005), but not DD. Changes in all UPPS-P traits, except for Sensation Seeking, were significantly positively associated with changes in psychiatric symptoms and cravings over the course of treatment (all ps <.01). These findings reveal that facets of impulsive personality change across treatment and are generally related to positive changes in other clinically relevant outcomes. Evidence of change despite no explicit intervention targeting suggests that impulsive personality traits may be viable treatment targets in substance use disorder treatment.

Inflation targeting and inflation communication of the Federal Reserve: Words and deeds

This paper utilizes recent advances in automated text analysis to investigate whether and how the shifting inflation focus in the monetary policy strategy of the Federal Reserve (Fed) is reflected in the transcripts of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meetings over the course of the last quarter century. We ascertain that inflation references have surged in the FOMC’s communication long before the implementation of the Fed’s explicit inflation targeting framework in 2012. We go on to assess whether the FOMC’s inflation communication had a direct impact on the monetary policy decisions of the Fed by estimating Taylor-type rules augmented by the FOMC’s tone-measured inflation references. We find these to induce quantitatively small but positive effects on the policy rate and the inflation reaction coefficient. In this sense, the FOMC communication on inflation reflects the Fed’s monetary policy stance quite closely. However, all these effects already occur prior to 2012, whereas the actual implementation of the inflation targeting framework itself elicits no further monetary tightening. Our evidence is in line with the FOMC’s communication at the time framing the implementation of inflation targeting as a continuation of the pursuit of the price stability objective rather than as a genuine change in the Fed’s monetary policy regime.

Uluslararası Rezervler Döviz Piyasalarındaki Dalgalanmaları Önlemede Yeterli midir?

Finansal piyasalarda oluşabilecek ani ve beklenmedik durumların yaratacağı olumsuz etkilerin giderilmesinde önemli bir araç olarak görülen uluslararası rezervlere olan talep küreselleşme olgusu ile birlikte artış göstermiştir. Rezerv biriktirmenin fırsat maliyetinin belirlenmesi ve tutulan rezervlerin doğru yönetilmesi ise özellikle gelişmekte olan ülkeler için önem arz etmektedir. Bu çalışmada, Türkiye ekonomisinde açık enflasyon hedeflemesine geçiş ile birlikte Ocak 2005-Ocak 2022 dönemine ait veriler kullanılarak uluslararası rezervlerin nominal döviz kuru üzerindeki ilişkisi incelenmektedir. Elde edilen sonuçlara göre, geleneksel nedensellik testlerinde uluslararası rezervlerden nominal döviz kuruna doğru nedensellik bulunmamıştır. Öte yandan asimetrik nedensellik testinde ise uluslararası brüt rezervlerin pozitif bileşeninden nominal döviz kurunun negatif bileşenine doğru, uluslararası brüt rezervlerin negatif bileşeninden nominal döviz kurunun pozitif bileşenine doğru nedensellik bulunmaktadır. Zamansal olarak 2009 yılından sonra her yılın Haziran-Temmuz-Ağustos-Eylül aylarında uluslararası rezervlerden nominal döviz kuruna doğru nedensellik olduğu tespit edilmiştir.

Interventions for pre-school children with co-occurring phonological speech sound disorder and expressive language difficulties: A scoping review.

Recent evidence suggests that pre-school children with co-occurring phonological speech sound disorder (SSD) and expressive language difficulties are at a higher risk of ongoing communication and literacy needs in comparison with children with these difficulties in isolation. However, to date there has been no systematic or scoping review of the literature specific to interventions for children with this dual profile. To explore the evidence regarding interventions for pre-school children with co-occurring phonological SSD and expressive language difficulties, including the content/delivery of such interventions, areas of speech and language targeted, and a broad overview of study quality. A scoping review methodology was used in accordance with the guidance from the Joanna Briggs Institute. Following a systematic search of Ovid Medline, Ovid Emcare, OVID Embase, CINAHL, Psychinfo and ERIC, 11 studies were included in the review. A researcher-developed data extraction form was used to extract specific information about each intervention, with the JBI appraisal tools used to provide a broad overview of the quality of each study. Included papers consisted of six randomized controlled trials (RCTs), two cohort studies, two case studies and one case series. Interventions fell into two main categories: (1) integrated interventions that combined content for both speech and language targets and/or explicitly used the same type of technique to improve both domains; and (2) single-domain interventions that explicitly included content to target speech or language only, but also aimed to improve the other domain indirectly. Study quality varied, with detail on the content, context and delivery of interventions often underspecified, hampering the replication and clinical applicability of findings. Early emerging evidence was identified to support both integrated speech and language interventions as well as single-domain interventions. However, caution should be exercised due to the variation in the quality and level of detail reported for the interventions. Future intervention studies may seek to address this by reporting in accordance with Template for Intervention Description and Replication (TIDieR) reporting guidelines. This approach would enable clinicians to consider the applicability of the intervention to individual children within differing settings. What is already known on the subject Pre-school children with co-occurring phonological SSD and expressive language difficulties frequently present within speech and language therapy services. These children are at a higher risk of long-term communication and literacy difficulties compared with children with these needs in isolation. Some emerging evidence suggests that interventions for children with this co-occurring profile may exist within the literature; however, this evidence may not be known to clinicians in everyday practice. What this paper adds to existing knowledge This review is the first to systematically examine evidence of interventions for pre-school children with co-occurring phonological SSD and expressive language difficulties. The review identified a small number of intervention studies that varied in research quality and level of detail provided regarding the content and delivery of interventions. What are the potential or actual clinical implications of this work? The findings of this study highlight published evidence for interventions for pre-school children with co-occurring phonological SSD and expressive language difficulties. These may take the form of integrating techniques for speech/language into a single intervention, or the explicit targeting of one domain with the aim of also influencing the other. However, there is a need for further high-quality research in this area. Such studies should provide sufficient detail to enable replication. This would enable clinicians to understand the relevance and applicability of such intervention findings to the individual children they see within their clinical practice.

Wingman-Connect Program increases social integration for Air Force personnel at elevated suicide risk: Social network analysis of a cluster RCT

U.S. military suicides are increasing and disrupted relationships frequently precede them. Group-level interventions are needed that reduce future suicide vulnerability among healthy members and also ameliorate risk among those already suicidal. We examined whether our Wingman-Connect Program (W-CP) strengthened Air Force relationship networks and socially integrated at-risk members. Air Force personnel classes in training were randomized to W-CP or active control (cluster RCT), followed up at 1 and 6 months (94% and 84% retention). Data were collected in 2017–2019 and analyzed in 2020–2021. Participants were 1485 male and female Airmen in 215 technical training classes. W-CP training involved strengthening group bonds, skills for managing career and personal stressors, and diffusion of healthy norms. Active control was stress management training. Primary outcomes were social network metrics based on Airmen nominations of valued classmates after 1 month. Baseline CAT-SS >34 defined elevated suicide risk. W-CP increased social network integration, with largest impact for Airmen already at elevated suicide risk (n = 114, 7.7%). For elevated risk Airmen, W-CP improved all network integration metrics, including 53% average gain in valued connection nominations received from other Airmen (RR = 1.53, 95% CI = 1.12, 2.08) and eliminated isolation. No elevated risk Airmen in W-CP were isolates with no valued connections after 1-month vs. 10% among controls (P < .035). In contrast to at-risk controls, at-risk W-CP Airmen increased connections after intervention. W-CP's effect on a key indicator, ≥2 connections, was still greater 2–4 months after classes disbanded (6-months). Wingman-Connect Program built enhanced suicide protection into unit relationship networks and counteracted standard drift towards disconnection for at-risk Airmen, despite no explicit content targeting connections specifically to at-risk Airmen. Findings support a growing case for the unique contribution of group-level interventions to improve social health of broader military populations while also ameliorating risk among individuals already at elevated suicide risk.

On critical thinking and content knowledge: A critique of the assumptions of cognitive load theory

How critical thinking is understood has a logical impact on pedagogy and curriculum design in a critical thinking education. If critical thinking is seen as a complex mix of knowledge, skills and dispositions that can be articulated and made an object of study in themselves, then there is scope for intentional and explicit targeting of such things. If, however, critical thinking is seen as a general skill more or less impermeable to pedagogical influence and best realised through the development of content knowledge, then an explicit focus on developing thinking skills is misplaced and potentially distracting. The latter view is that of cognitive load theory (CLT), a theoretical framing of thinking and learning that has gained traction in education including with practitioners. This paper will explore some of the assumptions of CLT and show that they are either (1) in error, (2) vaguely or confusingly expressed and/or (3) the conclusions drawn within the theory are often errors of inference. Moreover, I point out that important educational research that weakens the claims of CLT is often not engaged with or addressed.

Explicit instruction targeting oral narrative structure is feasible and may improve pragmatic and narrative language during story retelling by children with Williams syndrome1

Explicit instruction targeting oral narrative structure is feasible and may improve pragmatic and narrative language during story retelling by children with Williams syndrome1

Migrating beyond networks: the mechanisms of sending state intervention

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the mechanisms through which sending state policies intervene in labor migration flows. Relying primarily on data from the Philippine state’s system of overseas contract migration, this article compares the main modalities of sending state intervention with those identified by the dominant theories of migration causation – social capital/migrant networks theory, which posits that the linkages between sending and receiving countries facilitate migration flows. Sending state policiesmimic or complement the two main mechanisms of migration facilitation: risk/cost mitigation and the initiation of contacts. They offer more formalized variations of the information distribution and material support that occurs through migrant networks, and serve as a useful, and sometimes necessary, counterpart to receiving states that are seeking to solve labor market challenges or to exert more control over existing migration flows. Finally, sending state can go beyond existing linkages through the explicit targeting of particular markets and the development of domestic human capital.

Explicit Training to Improve Affective Prosody Recognition in Adults with Acute Right Hemisphere Stroke.

Difficulty recognizing affective prosody (receptive aprosodia) can occur following right hemisphere damage (RHD). Not all individuals spontaneously recover their ability to recognize affective prosody, warranting behavioral intervention. However, there is a dearth of evidence-based receptive aprosodia treatment research in this clinical population. The purpose of the current study was to investigate an explicit training protocol targeting affective prosody recognition in adults with RHD and receptive aprosodia. Eighteen adults with receptive aprosodia due to acute RHD completed affective prosody recognition before and after a short training session that targeted proposed underlying perceptual and conceptual processes. Behavioral impairment and lesion characteristics were investigated as possible influences on training effectiveness. Affective prosody recognition improved following training, and recognition accuracy was higher for pseudo- vs. real-word sentences. Perceptual deficits were associated with the most posterior infarcts, conceptual deficits were associated with frontal infarcts, and a combination of perceptual-conceptual deficits were related to temporoparietal and subcortical infarcts. Several right hemisphere ventral stream regions and pathways along with frontal and parietal hypoperfusion predicted training effectiveness. Explicit acoustic-prosodic-emotion training improves affective prosody recognition, but it may not be appropriate for everyone. Factors such as linguistic context and lesion location should be considered when planning prosody training.

A Systematic Review of Social Maintenance Behavior Outcomes of Interactive Social Interventions for Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders

A large and varied evidence base supporting the efficacy of social therapies to improve the social behaviors of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) does not permit a clear understanding of which specific types of social behavior are improved by specific social therapies. Social maintenance behaviors function to form and sustain relationships, which has been associated with a reduction in negative social experiences in children with ASD. The present systematic review investigates the effectiveness of interactive social therapy in increasing these specific behaviors in this population. A systematic search of PsycArticles, Medline, Education Resources Information Centre, Child Development and Adolescent Studies, and Scopus databases identified 18 articles as relevant for inclusion. The extant evidence suggests that interactive social therapies are effective in increasing social maintenance behaviors in children with ASD. Explicit targeting of these behaviors and inclusion of reinforcement are highlighted as potentially active components in this regard.

Health, illness and healthcare-seeking behaviour of the street dwellers of Dhaka City, Bangladesh: qualitative exploratory study

ObjectiveThis study explored the illness experiences and healthcare-seeking behaviour of a cross-section of street dwellers of Dhaka City for designing a customised intervention.DesignA qualitative exploratory study of a sample of...

Fertilizer profitability for smallholder maize farmers in Tanzania: A spatially-explicit ex ante analysis.

We present an easily calibrated spatial modeling framework for estimating location-specific fertilizer responses, using smallholder maize farming in Tanzania as a case study. By incorporating spatially varying input and output prices, we predict the expected profitability for a location-specific smallholder farmer. A stochastic rainfall component of the model allows us to quantify the uncertainty around expected economic returns. The resulting mapped estimates of expected profitability and uncertainty are good predictors of actual smallholder fertilizer usage in nationally representative household survey data. The integration of agronomic and economic information in our framework makes it a powerful tool for spatially explicit targeting of agricultural technologies and complementary investments, as well as estimating returns to investments at multiple scales.

Inflation targeting & implications of oil shocks for inflation expectations in oil-importing and exporting economies: Evidence from three Nordic Kingdoms

In the context of the debate on inflation targeting, this paper analyses the impact of the oil shocks on inflation expectations in three Nordic Kingdoms. A NARDL framework is applied to data from Jan 1994 to June 2018 on the Kingdoms of Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Our key findings suggest that there are considerable nonlinearities and asymmetries in the relationship between inflation expectations, oil shocks and economic determinants of inflation expectations. The expectations formulated in the past have a very significant negative impact on future inflation expectations (adaptive expectations) and there is heterogeneity in the adaptiveness pace. A country's net oil trade position seems to reflect on the impact of oil price shocks on the inflation expectations and there is asymmetry and downwards inflation expectations rigidity. There is strong evidence of exchange rate pass-through to inflation expectations. Prevailing regimes of price stability can support to anchor future inflation expectations. Reduction in fiscal deficit and increases in money supply has a positive impact while unemployment has a negative impact on inflation expectations. The cumulative multiplier analysis showed that the impact of oil shock was symmetric in Sweden and Denmark but asymmetric in Norway which is a large net oil exporter. Besides the adoption of explicit inflation targeting regime by Sweden and Norway, the inflation expectations in the underlying economies are prone to the oil price shocks and macroeconomic determinants. These shocks pose a whole set of challenges to monetary authorities in these economies and the findings in the subject treatise provide some guidance on how each shock may transmit.

Monetary Polıcy Interest Rate Channel in Turkey: Toda-Yamamoto Method (2011-2018)

This study analyzes the channel through which monetary policy has affected real economic activity in Turkey during 2011Q1-2018Q2. There is a novel monetary policy stance of the Turkish Central Bank (TCMB) from 2011 on, after initiation of explicit inflation targeting from 2006 on. Within the framework financial stability is added to previous target of price stability and diversified interest rates and liquidity measures have been introduced as new monetary policy tools along with classical short-term interest rate. Existence of interest channel has been tested by two causality methods, namely: Granger and Toda-Yamamoto. Results imply that interest channel is not operative in Turkey in the traditional Keynesian sense, bu rather higher demand leads to higher prices (and vice versa) affecting interest rates in return. Findings do not comply with findings of the previous studies that interest rate channel is effective in Turkey.

Preventing the White Death: Tuberculosis Dispensaries

Abstract Tuberculosis (TB) is a leading cause of death worldwide and while treatable by antibiotics since the 1940s, drug resistant strains have emerged. This article estimates the effects of the establishment of a pre-antibiotic public health institution, known as a TB dispensary, designed to prevent the spread of the disease. Our annual difference-in-differences estimation reveals that the rollout of the dispensaries across Danish cities led to a 19% decline in the TB mortality rate, but no significant impacts on other diseases when performing placebo regressions. We next take advantage of the dispensaries explicit targeting on TB to setup a triple-differences model which exploits other diseases as controls and obtain a similar magnitude of the effect. As for the mechanism, the evidence highlights the dispensaries’ preventive actions, such as information provision. At an estimated cost as low as 68 dollars per saved life-year, this particular public-health institution was extraordinarily cost effective. Overall, our evidence suggests a policy for developing countries to combat drug resistant TB.

Explicit vs. statistical targeting in affirmative action: Theory and evidence from Chicago's exam schools

Prohibitions on using race in affirmative action have spurred a number of admissions systems to adopt race-neutral alternatives that encourage diversity without appearing to explicitly advantage any particular group. The new affirmative action system for Chicago's exam schools reserves seats for students based on their neighborhood and leaves the rest to be assigned via merit. Neighborhoods are divided into four tiers based on an index of socioeconomic disadvantage. At each school, an equal fraction of seats are reserved for each tier. We show that the order in which seats are processed at schools provides an additional lever to explicitly target disadvantaged applicants. We then characterize tier-blind processing rules that do not explicitly discriminate between tiers. Even under these rules, it is possible to favor certain applicants by exploiting the score distribution across tiers, a phenomenon we call statistical targeting. When disadvantaged applicants systematically have lower scores than other applicants, the optimal tier-blind processing order first assigns merit seats and then the tier seats. Our analysis shows that Chicago has been providing an additional boost to applicants from disadvantaged tiers beyond their reserved slots, a benefit comparable to what they received from the 2012 increase in reserve size.