Priority Service Research Articles

NEEDS FOR SUPPORTING PEOPLE AGING WITH HIV: RESULTS FROM A CBPR COMMUNITY-NEEDS ASSESSMENT

Abstract Nearly half of people living with HIV in the U.S. are over age 50 and are navigating age-related changes while managing the complexities and challenges of HIV. People aging with HIV are an emerging community—it is imperative to understand the key issues faced by this community so to improve health outcomes and eliminate health disparities. This paper presents a CBPR approach by the SHARE board (a community advisory group comprised of older people living with HIV) and academic researchers. SHARE members conducted a mixed-methods needs assessment using a semi-structured interview guide they had developed, as well as a survey to determine community priorities for research, healthcare, and social services for people aging with HIV. SHARE members conducted 32 semi-structured interviews with individuals from across the country. From the 216 survey responses (mean age 55 years), 35% were Black, 30% were Hispanic, 50% were male, and 43% had been living with HIV for 11–15 years. 44% were fearful that long-term HIV medications will adversely affect them with aging. Triangulating interviews and surveys, financial strains and caregiving were primary age-related concerns. Affording medication and transportation were primary barriers to accessing healthcare. Most respondents had experienced stigma due to both age and HIV status. Respondents felt the most important areas for future research were optimizing management of multiple co-morbidities including HIV, and cognitive changes with HIV. Results from this community-led needs assessment identified key areas for interventions and research to address conditions disproportionately affecting the health of those aging with HIV.

Модель приоритетов обслуживания подач вагонов

Purpose: for the definition of optimal switch point of crane operation between platforms, to perform task simulation of priority choice in car delivery service, the task should feature penalty consideration for excessive idle delivery at freight front. Methods: Methods of probability theory, queuing and mathematical statistics as well as expert assessments are used to find distribution. Results: Priority model for car delivery service has been worked out. The dependences of average cost of idle time of two car delivery under freight operations - from the moment of switch between deliveries at distribution of Erlang of kth order of freight operation implementation time and the distribution special case — exponential one at mixed priority of car delivery service - are determined. Practical significance: Rational distribution of crane operation is proposed allowing to reduce terminal's costs for penalties for excessive idle delivery at freight front.

Priority‐aware intelligent device access management for carbon footprint monitoring in sustainable cites and society

Carbon footprint monitoring provides significant basis for computing facilities to improve the computing efficiency and reduce the energy cost, which can enable low/zero carbon computing and facilitate the construction of sustainable cites. Massive sensing devices access to 5G base station to transmit collected carbon emission data, which requires intelligent access management. Fast uplink grant possesses the advantages of reducing signalling overhead and access conflicts while facing the problems of incomplete information and difficulty in guaranteeing priority constraint. This paper examines, the maximum access queuing delay minimization problem is formulated under the long-term service priority constraint and the short-term access management constraint. First, Lyapunov optimization is leveraged to decouple the long-term service priority constraint and short-term access management optimization, and decompose the long-term stochastic optimization problem into a series of short-term deterministic problems. Then, a priority-aware deep Q-network (DQN)-based fast uplink grant access management (PDAC) algorithm is proposed to achieve intelligent access management with differentiated service priority requirements. PDAC utilizes DQN to handle non-convex high-dimensional optimization problem with service priority constraint to achieve intelligent access management and priority awareness. Simulation results demonstrate that PDAC outperforms the existing algorithms in access queuing delay, buffer queue backlog, and priority deficit fluctuation.

The Trans Accountability Project: Community Engagement to Address Structural Marginalization and Health Inequities.

Black and Latina Transgender women face systemic marginalization and harm, increasing vulnerability to social stress and poor health outcomes. These communities have limited access to resources to mobilize and create paths toward health equity. In this paper we report on the results of a community partnership to engage Black and Latina transgender communities on the South and West Sides of Chicago and establish service priorities for collective empowerment. The Trans Accountability Project (TAP), a steering committee of racially diverse transgender and nonbinary representatives from four partner organizations, was established and led the design, recruitment, implementation, and analysis of a community needs assessment. World café and human-centered design methods, guided two community conversations/listening sessions around four activities: the perfect provider, my dream job, safety planning, and a stake-holder reflection. Sixty-three participants completed three activities and envisioned innovations for 1) accessible and holistic gender-affirming health care, 2) autonomous, flexible, and community-focused jobs in the arts, nonprofit/business, and care professions, and 3) safer social interactions and spaces. Ten stakeholders attended to listen and inform their organizational and clinical practices to empower Black and Latina transgender women. TAP prioritized accountability, connectedness, and centering the voices of Black and Latina transgender women as a starting point to intervene upon structural marginalization. Five insights emerged and have directed TAP's focus toward employment and collective care. Although further structural change remains a priority, TAP represents a mechanism for sharing power, improving communication and collaboration, and increasing transparency across relevant Chicago community-based organizations.

A Bi-Objective Learn-and-Deploy Scheduling Method for Bursty and Stochastic Requests on Heterogeneous Cloud Servers

In this article, we consider the dynamic allocation of bursty requests stochastically arriving at heterogeneous servers with uncertain setup times. Lower expected response time and less power consumption are desirable objectives of users and service providers respectively. However, sudden increase and decrease of cloud servers caused by bursty requests are rather challenging to get an appropriate trade-off between the two conflicting objectives which are closely related to the launched servers. The heterogeneity of the cloud servers further makes it more difficult to decide how to switch on and off servers and effectively and efficiently allocate bursty requests with balanced objectives. Based on a Markov decision process, a real-time bilevel decision-making model is constructed for unallocated requests which includes: whether to launch a server and which type of server to launch. A learn-and-deploy algorithm framework is proposed which contains two complementary stages. In the first stage, an effective offline bi-objective optimization algorithm is proposed to learn a set of policies, which provides helpful trade-off information for a decision-maker to choose a preferred policy <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">a posteriori</i> . In terms of the system status, a policy decides whether to launch a server according to a state-action table and which server to launch using a server priority sequence. In the second stage, a computationally efficient policy deployment method is proposed to search the corresponding action in the selected policy based on the current system status and apply it to the real-time system. Experimental studies over a large number of random and real instances have been conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed bilevel model and algorithm. Compared to the most recent existing method, the performance of the proposed approach can at most achieve an 80% improvement on power consumption and 20% improvement on response time.

Revised service metrics partially explain variation in outcomes across facilities in a state-wide advanced practice public musculoskeletal service.

Revised service metrics partially explain variation in outcomes across facilities in a state-wide advanced practice public musculoskeletal service.

Order dispatch optimization with considering flexible one-to-three matching strategy under hybrid ride-hailing service modes

ABSTRACT In practice, the ride-hailing platform generally provides two products: express services and ridesplitting services, and driver resources are usually shared across these two products on the supply side, i.e., hybrid ride-hailing mode. This study tackles the order dispatch problem with considering flexible one-to-three matching strategy under hybrid modes. In this problem, if a driver serves express requests, only one order can be matched with; if a driver serves ridesplitting requests, this driver can be matched with at most three orders simultaneously or sequentially. Considering one-to-three matching, en-route matching, and multiple passengers per order, this problem is formulated as a multi-objective integer programming, a hierarchical approach is adopted to address it. Using the ride-hailing trip data, we examine characteristics of this problem, such as the impact of service priority and the benefits of one-to-three matching. Finally, some beneficial management implications are proposed to improve the operation of the ride-hailing service.

The challenge of service planning and development without adequate data: The case for orthotic services.

The UK National Health Service (NHS) employs a group of 14 separate allied health professions. Prosthetics and orthotics are the smallest of these professions. Although small, orthotics is integral to many clinical care pathways and has shown to provide an essential impact on a range of clinical conditions in the health service priority lists. Previous reports acknowledged the lack of data on the UK prosthetic and orthotic workforce, appointment outcomes and costand the service users accessing such services and thus the challenges that it poses for effective service delivery. There is still a paucity of relevant data or initiatives to support the service provision. The work within this paper has taken the first step to address this gap, presenting a summary of the information relating to appointments and costs, and provides a discussion on the implications of variations across the NHS orthotic services within England in terms of spend, staffingand skill mix for orthotic services and service users and the need for further data on service users and the UK prosthetic and orthotic workforce.

Analysis of Nurse Perception Factors on Compliance Implementing Patient Safety Standards in Emergency Installations and Intensive Care Unit

Background: Patient safety standards are a global issue and a top priority for hospital health services. Every health service needs to strive for patient safety Various previous studies on the application of patient safety standards have been carried out only explaining external factors such as education, training, infrastructure and leadership with apassion for compliance behavior in the application of patient safety standards, while internal factor sare still very few, in this study what will be studied is internal factors in nurses, one of the internal factors that cannot be explained is the perception factor. Objective: The purpose of this study is to Analysis of Nurse Perception Factors on Compliance Implementing Patient Safety Standards in Emergency Installations and Intensive Care Units Tgk Abdullah Syafi' Hospital. Method: The type of research used is quantitative correlative with a cross sectional design. This research was conducted at Tgk Abdullah Syafi'i Hospital. The subjects in this study were all nurses working in the emergency room (ER) and the intensive care unit (ICU) as many as 63 people. The instrument used in this study was a questionnaire consisting of independent variables and a dependent variable questionnaire. Result and Discussion: The most dominant factor influencing the application of patient application standards is the action cue with an OR value of 4,702. this means that the higher the actioncue, the better the implementation of patient safety standards by 4,702 times compared to the action cues that low. Value B = natural logarithm of 4.702 = 1.584 because the value of B is positive, the action cue has a positive relationship with the application of patient safety standards. Conclusions: There is an influence between perceptions of benefits, perceptions of obstacles and cues for action on the application of patient safety standards

Państwa Kaukazu Południowego w wypowiedziach rzeczniczki prasowej Ministerstwa Spraw Zagranicznych Federacji Rosyjskiej

STATES OF THE SOUTH CAUCASUS IN THE STATEMENTS OF THE PRESS SPOKESWOMAN OF THE MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION&#x0D; The Russian Federation currently plays a key role in the South Caucasus region. The aim of the article is to attempt to answer the question of how and to what extent Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia are present in the message presented by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The briefings of the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, which took place between July and December 2020, i.e. during events important for the region, were subject to quantitative and qualitative analysis. The South Caucasus, in the light of the spokesperson’s statements, is not a priority for the Russian diplomatic service, but as a result of the foreign policy it is creating, it appears relatively regularly. The key topics in the analyzed period include the COVID-19 pandemic and the new phase of the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. The thought-out narrative of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which served to shape the perception of the region and strengthen the Russian position, should be emphasized.

Experiences of digital exclusion and the impact on health in people living with severe mental illness.

The covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the use of digital tools within health and social care services. However, for a range of different reasons, across the UK there continue to be people who are digitally excluded. People living with a disability have been identified as being more likely to be digitally excluded and many of these people, including people with severe mental illness (SMI) already experience health inequalities. Therefore, understanding the perceived impact digital exclusion has on health and potential facilitators of increased inclusion is an important area for research. This study had two aims: 1. To understand experiences of digital exclusion and the impact on health in people with SMI. 2. To explore the influences and mechanisms which would increase engagement with digital health tools. This was an observational qualitative study, conducting focus groups (with the option of a 1:1 interview for those uncomfortable in groups) with nine people with severe mental illness. Participant's responses were themed in to four key areas in relation to digital exclusion and impact on health: 1. Reduced social connectedness, 2. The impact on wider determinants of health 3. Negative perception of self, 4. Disempowerment. Key facilitators for increased engagement with digital tools included, local digital skills support with mental health lived experience involvement in the delivery, digitally engaged social referents, access to digital tools and data, personalised and straightforward digital tools. In addition, increasing health and social care staff's awareness of digital exclusion was also viewed as important in promoting inclusion. The research findings suggest that digital inclusion should be viewed as a wider determinant of health. Many of the identified consequences of exclusion are particularly important in relation to mental health and mental health recovery. This research suggests that identifying and addressing digital exclusion should be viewed as a priority for mental health services.

Multi-index evaluation learning-based computation offloading optimization for power internet of things

Cloud–edge-device collaborative computation offloading can provide flexible and real-time data processing services for massive resource-constrained devices in power internet of things (PIoT). However, the computation offloading optimization in PIoT still faces several challenges such as high computation offloading delay caused by uncertain information, coupling between task offloading and computation resource allocation, and degraded optimization performance due to the lack of multi-index consideration. To address the above challenges, we formulate a joint optimization problem of task offloading and computation resource allocation to minimize the average computation offloading delay. Specifically, a multi-index evaluation learning-based two-stage computation offloading (MINCO) algorithm is proposed to decouple the joint optimization problem into two-stage subproblems and solve them with evaluation and learning of multiple indexes including data flow characteristic, service priority, empirical average computation offloading delay, and empirical arm selection times. Simulation results show that compared with the baseline 1 and baseline 2 algorithms, MINCO improves the average computation offloading delay by 14.67% and 30.71%. Moreover, MINCO can evaluate different service priorities and data flow characteristics to meet different requirements of computation offloading delay.

The Paradox of Suicide Prevention.

The recognition that we cannot use risk stratification (high, medium, low) to predict suicide or to allocate resources has led to a paradigm shift in suicide prevention efforts. There are challenges in adapting to these new paradigms, including reluctance of clinicians and services to move away from traditional risk categorisations; and conversely, the risk of a pendulum swing in which the focus of care swings from one approach to determining service priority and focus (e.g., diagnosis, formulation, risk and clinical care) to a new focus (e.g., suicide specific and non-clinical care), potentially supplanting the previous approach. This paper argues that the Prevention Paradox provides a useful mental model to support a shift in paradigm, whilst maintaining a balanced approach that incorporates new paradigms within the effective aspects of existing ones. The Prevention Paradox highlights the seemingly paradoxical situation where the greatest burden of disease or death is caused by those at low to moderate risk due their larger numbers. Current planning frameworks and resources do not support successful or sustainable adoption of these new approaches, leading to missed opportunities to prevent suicidal behaviours in healthcare. Adopting systems approaches to suicide prevention, such as the Zero Suicide Framework, implemented in a large mental health service in Australia and presented in this paper as a case study, can support a balanced approach of population- and individual-based suicide prevention efforts. Results demonstrate significant reductions in re-presentations with suicide attempts for consumers receiving this model of care; however, the increasing numbers of placements compromise the capacity of clinical teams to complete all components of standardised pathway of care. This highlights the need for review of resource planning frameworks and ongoing evaluations of the critical aspects of the interventions.

Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the practice of pediatric dentistry in the United Arab Emirates: a cross-sectional survey

BackgroundThe aim of this study was to assess the impact of COVID-19 epidemic circumstances on the practice of pediatric dentistry in the United Arab Emirates.MethodsAn online questionnaire was distributed among members of Emirates Club of Pediatric Dentistry. The questionnaire was divided into three sections: (1) dentists’ demographic characteristics, (2) general knowledge and attitude toward COVID-19, (3) practice of pediatric dentistry during COVID-19 pandemic.ResultsFemale pediatric dentists were double the males and the age distribution tended towards the younger age group. Most of the participants had a satisfactory level of knowledge about COVID-19 and 100% of them obtained this knowledge from the health authorities. Around one third of the participants were not confident of their ability to work safely during the epidemic. There was a marked diversity between pediatric dentists regarding the priority services to be delivered to children during the COVID-19 peak.ConclusionA majority of pediatric dentists in the UAE are well informed regarding COVID-19 and its prevention. The economic impact of the epidemic has disrupted pediatric dentists’ willingness to prioritize certain dental services over others. This is related to safety concerns, financial urge, and patient needs.

SPECIALIZED EDUCATIONAL SERVICE (SES) AS A TOOL OF ACCESS IN THE INCLUSIVE PROCESS

The present study aims to discuss and understand the implementation and organization of Specialized Educational Assistance-SEA while tool for accessing the inclusive process in the Brazilian educational system. It examines the organization, the implementation process and the methodology of this new educational model, through the most recent theoretical and legal assumptions. A debate was developed around the characteristics and challenges that permeate special education as a priority service for the inclusive process of students with disabilities, autistic spectrum disorder and high abilities/giftedness in ordinary schools, with a view to meeting their needs, in a so that they can overcome the barriers imposed by the common school and participate in their class with autonomy. The present article favored the qualitative approach and the bibliographic research as a technique. The study was based on national and international legal texts and on the concepts of Mantoan (2010), Glat &amp; Ferreira (2005), Smith (2008), Dorziat (2015), Fávero (2005), Minayo (2001), among others.

Starvation mitigation and priority aware of CSMA/CA in WSN with implementing Markov chain model

In the domain of wireless networking, the Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) has a wide range of applications. Based on CSMA/CA, the IEEE 802.15.6 MAC protocol is used for the body network area. For reduction of the collision’s probability, the accessing the medium, the CSMA/CA uses a distributed coordination function. For a node to transmit the data in CSMA/CA, the channel is sensed and then the transmission is initiated if it happens to be idle. For a contention period, the node is deferred for transmission, if the channel happens to be busy. When the multiple nodes attempt to access a channel, their issue of contention will be solved by this mechanism. As a side effect, there is starvation of the decaying nodes, and the data latency is noticeably increased. For a delay-sensitive application, CSMA/CA protocol becomes inapplicable as the higher risk of fatality is associated with the delay critical applications, such as vehicle cohesion avoidance system and the health-care system.In the modeling process, the channel load is not taken into account at first. For high-priority services, channel detection is performed once. For low priority services, channel detection is performed twice. Markov chain model is used to analyze the influence of algorithm parameter setting on network performance, and it shows great efficiency. Accidents may become inevitable with the exponential latency in the receiving of an emergency notification. Hence, for backing up the loopholes of IEEE 802.15.6 MAC protocol and uprising the response rate of the emergency and warning cases, the author substitutes back off the procedure by proposing a solution that considers the level of emergency or the priority of the message with the help of associated contention window and level of emergency. This reduces the chances of starvation as well. The techniques for CSMA/CA that are priority aware, surely outperform the state of the art back off and this is proved by simulation that the model has enhanced the efficiency of the channel in regards to throughput, delays in transmission, utilization of the bandwidth.

Convergence in Perceptions of Ecosystem Services Supports Green Infrastructure Decision-making in a Semi-arid City.

Effective management of cities using ecosystem services from green infrastructure (GI) requires explicit consideration of the linkages between provision of services and ecosystem service demands (i.e., governance priorities). Identification of stakeholder knowledge and objectives in GI decision-making contexts with respect to ecosystem services may improve urban planning; yet this information is rarely explicit in local contexts and cases. We address this gap by surveying environmental stakeholders and practitioners to investigate how perceptions of ecosystem services influence GI practice in Tucson, AZ. Results indicate that the semi-arid environment and urban design led to prioritizations that focus on water sustainability and urban heat mitigation. We found strong agreement in environmental perceptions between different management sectors. We observed matches (as well as mismatches) between the ecosystem service priorities and important environmental issues. Ecosystem services prioritization revealed a unique classification of ecosystem services that reflects stakeholder priorities. Our findings suggest the study of ecosystem services supply and demand can inform local urban management. These findings from a semi-arid city further suggest that understanding stakeholder knowledge, perceptions, and priorities should be important for cities in other regions where GI is being implemented as an environmental solution to provide ecosystem services.

PSACCF: Prioritized Online Slice Admission Control Considering Fairness in 5G/B5G Networks

5G/B5G is intended to support various services with the assistance of network slices, and each slice requires adequate resources to provide the prenegotiated service quality. The Slice Admission Control (SAC) algorithm is a necessity for Slice Providers (SPs) to guarantee the Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) of each admitted request. In such circumstances, concerns regarding the priority of services and the fairness of resource allocation are meaningful topics. However, these two issues do not receive sufficient research attention simultaneously in the literature. Here, we study the SAC problem in 5G/B5G networks, aiming to enhance the fairness degree while satisfying the necessary priority requirements. We first reinterpret priority as a higher Cumulative Service Acceptance Ratio (CSAR) and adopt the uniformity of adjacent CSAR gaps to reflect fairness. The SAC problem is formulated as a nonlinear and nonconvex multiobjective optimization problem. Thus, we propose a heuristic algorithm called Prioritized Slice Admission Control Considering Fairness (PSACCF) to solve it. This approach introduces the resource efficiency of services to amend priority violations and then promotes fairness by setting the target CSARs for each service type and improving their actual CSARs. Numerous simulations are conducted to compare the performance of PSACCF with that of Moderate High Priority First (MHPF) and Aggressive High Priority First (AHPF). The results show that PSACCF can achieve at least a 33.6% improvement in fairness degree and a higher minimum average resource utilization while maintaining a nearly identical priority indicator to that of the compared methods.

DeResolver: A Decentralized Conflict Resolution Framework with Autonomous Negotiation for Smart City Services

As various smart services are increasingly deployed in modern cities, many unexpected conflicts arise due to various physical world couplings. Existing solutions for conflict resolution often rely on centralized control to enforce predetermined and fixed priorities of different services, which is challenging due to the inconsistent and private objectives of the services. Also, the centralized solutions miss opportunities to more effectively resolve conflicts according to their spatiotemporal locality of the conflicts. To address this issue, we design a decentralized negotiation and conflict resolution framework named DeResolver, which allows services to resolve conflicts by communicating and negotiating with each other to reach a Pareto-optimal agreement autonomously and efficiently. Our design features a two-step self-supervised learning-based algorithm to predict acceptable proposals and their rankings of each opponent through the negotiation. Our design is evaluated with a smart city case study of three services: intelligent traffic light control, pedestrian service, and environmental control. In this case study, a data-driven evaluation is conducted using a large dataset consisting of the GPS locations of 246 surveillance cameras and an automatic traffic monitoring system with more than 3 million records per day to extract real-world vehicle routes. The evaluation results show that our solution achieves much more balanced results, i.e., only increasing the average waiting time of vehicles, the measurement metric of intelligent traffic light control service, by 6.8% while reducing the weighted sum of air pollutant emission, measured for environment control service, by 12.1%, and the pedestrian waiting time, the measurement metric of pedestrian service, by 33.1%, compared to priority-based solution.

Distance-Based Service Priority: An Innovative Mechanism to Increase System Throughput and Social Welfare

Problem definition: The main goal of many nonprofit or nongovernmental organizations is to increase the number of customers who receive service (i.e., service coverage) and social welfare. However, the limited number of employees, volunteers, and service locations results in long service wait. In addition, getting customers living in remote areas to receive services by traveling long distances is difficult. We propose an innovative distance-based service priority policy that would reduce the service waiting time for customers who must travel farther for the service by giving them higher service priority, thereby providing them with a new incentive to seek service. Methodology/results: Using a game-theoretic queueing model, we show that the proposed policy can significantly attract more customers to a service. The increase can be up to 50% compared with the ordinary first-come-first-served service discipline. The policy can also achieve higher social welfare, however, that may come at the cost of reduced customer welfare. We therefore propose a possible remedy for a social planner to coordinate welfare under such circumstance. It ensures all stakeholders, including the service provider, customers, and society, can benefit from the policy at the same time. Finally, we compare our distance-based service priority policy with two existing strategies from the literature—namely, the price discrimination strategy and the probabilistic priority strategy. Managerial implications: Our proposed policy can play a pivotal role in a nonprofit service provider’s mission to increase service coverage and social welfare, especially when customers’ travel costs to obtain service are significant. Furthermore, our policy may create fewer implementation and fairness concerns compared with related strategies. Funding: Z. Wang acknowledges financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 72001118 and 72132007], and L. Fang acknowledges financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant 72271129]. Supplemental Material: The online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2022.1157 .