In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

Drug overdose, driven largely by overdose related to the use of opioids, is now the leading cause of unintentional injury death in the United States. The ongoing opioid crisis lies at the intersection of two public health challenges: reducing the burden of suffering from pain and containing the rising toll of the harms that can arise from the use of opioid medications. Chronic pain and opioid use disorder both represent complex human conditions affecting millions of Americans and causing untold disability and loss of function. In the context of the growing opioid problem, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) launched an Opioids Action Plan in early 2016. As part of this plan, the FDA asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to convene a committee to update the state of the science on pain research, care, and education and to identify actions the FDA and others can take to respond to the opioid epidemic, with a particular focus on informing FDA's development of a formal method for incorporating individual and societal considerations into its risk-benefit framework for opioid approval and monitoring.

Handbook of International Economics, Fifth Edition provides a definitive reference and teaching supplement for researchers and advanced graduate students. It includes self-contained surveys of the current state of a branch of economics in the form of chapters prepared by leading specialists. These surveys summarize not only received results but also newer developments from journal articles and discussion papers. Some original material is included, but the handbook's main goal is to provide comprehensive and accessible surveys. While this is a useful reference for professional collections, it's also a great resource for supplementary readings for advanced courses for graduate students in economics. Provides the authority and expertise of leading contributors from an international board of authors Presents the latest release in the Handbook of International Economics series Includes self-contained surveys of the current state of a branch of economics in the form of chapters prepared by leading specialists

This book presents the latest research on software engineering application in informatics. The fields of software engineering, informatics, computer science, and artificial intelligence are critical for study in the intelligent systems issue space. This is the first part of the refereed proceedings of the 6th Computational Methods in Systems and Software 2022 (CoMeSySo 2022). The CoMeSySo 2022 conference, which is being hosted online, is breaking down barriers. CoMeSySo 2021 aims to provide a worldwide venue for debate of the most recent high-quality research findings.

This book seeks to understand the simultaneous economic and political contributors to China's changing agricultural protection levels and the central government's choice of policy instruments to tax or assist farmers. It theoretically explores the motivation behind agricultural trade-related support policies through extending the two-sector specific factors production model to three sectors, so as to make it more relevant for a one-party state such as China. Chapter three tests that theory empirically, using panel data on agricultural distortions for the period 1981 to 2010 from Anderson and Nelgen (2013). The long-running trend in the level of assistance to the farm sector sees considerable fluctuations in support each year, which has been attributed to fluctuations in international prices of agricultural products. Chapter four seeks to explain the Chinese government's responses to world market price fluctuations. In practice, the government does have other instruments besides trade restrictions to alter domestic producer and consumer prices in the face of fluctuating international prices. Chapter five explores the role that public storage policy can play in contributing to the government's objective of stabilizing the domestic market price of farm products. The final chapter of the book draws out implications for policymakers in China and elsewhere.

Chronic pain costs the nation up to $635 billion each year in medical treatment and lost productivity. The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act required the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to enlist the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in examining pain as a public health problem. In this report, the IOM offers a blueprint for action in transforming prevention, care, education, and research, with the goal of providing relief for people with pain in America. To reach the vast multitude of people with various types of pain, the nation must adopt a population-level prevention and management strategy. The IOM recommends that HHS develop a comprehensive plan with specific goals, actions, and timeframes. Better data are needed to help shape efforts, especially on the groups of people currently underdiagnosed and undertreated, and the IOM encourages federal and state agencies and private organizations to accelerate the collection of data on pain incidence, prevalence, and treatments. Because pain varies from patient to patient, healthcare providers should increasingly aim at tailoring pain care to each person's experience, and self-management of pain should be promoted. In addition, because there are major gaps in knowledge about pain across health care and society alike, the IOM recommends that federal agencies and other stakeholders redesign education programs to bridge these gaps. Pain is a major driver for visits to physicians, a major reason for taking medications, a major cause of disability, and a key factor in quality of life and productivity. Given the burden of pain in human lives, dollars, and social consequences, relieving pain should be a national priority.