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In feminist criminology, there is a growing body of research exploring gendered pathways into prison. However, to date, this scholarship has not considered how age and gender may intersect to impact women’s criminalization experiences. In this chapter, the authors have consequently chosen to explore older women’s (aged 50+ years) narratives of their journeys to prison in Thailand using a feminist pathways approach. Results show several common threads in the stories of these women. Most were criminalized for the first time in later adulthood, had lived with various childhood and adulthood adversities, including, but not limited, to victimization and financial precarity, and had familial caretaking responsibilities. Many also recounted problems with substance misuse. Additionally, two relatively distinct pathways to prison emerged from the narratives: (1) economically motivated, (2) adversity, emotional distress, and addiction. A third pathway – intersectional, diffuse and unique – was also identified. It included themes from the first two pathways and the story of one woman that could not be categorized elsewhere. While the imprisonment pathways found mirrored those from previous pathways scholarship points of difference are noted.

Purpose – This chapter argues that health care is best conceptualized as a complex adaptive system. Sustainable health care depends on harnessing the complexity of the system by building aligned purpose, flexible pathways to connect people, knowledge and resources, and the capacity for self-organization.

Design/methodology/approach – The case study of the Southern California Region of Kaiser Permanente is based on three years of interviews and archival data collection examining the system's transformational change that began in 2004 and has been aimed at building a sustainable health care system with the guiding principles of value and prevention. The case focuses primarily on the medical care delivery system designed by the Southern California Permanente Medical Group, the capabilities that have been built into the system to continually improve the quality of care and the outcomes of the system, and the results that have been achieved.

Findings – During the period from 2004 to 2011, the region improved significantly in slowing cost acceleration by significantly improving medical care. The implementation of an electronic medical records system and its integration with other clinical information technology systems have enabled: (1) truly integrated, well defined, and easily navigated care delivery systems that are based on evidence; (2) upstream focus on prevention, disease control, patient education, and population health; and (3) management accountability and organizational improvement systems based on transparency of data and feedback. Physician leadership and partnering with the region's administrative and hospital leadership have been critical change enablers.

Originality/value – Embracing the complexity of the system has led to the crafting of pathways and linkages that enable patients to move through the system to flexibly and efficiently connect to the knowledge and resources required to optimize their health. This requires continual self-organization based on well-defined roles and connections. Previous health care improvement approaches have stressed initiatives and organizational changes that may further fragment the health care system.

This chapter traces the history of digital libraries (DLs) in the United States through the funding sources that have supported DL research and development over the past decade and a half. A set of related questions are addressed: How have the mission and goals of funding agencies affected the types of projects that have been funded? What have been the deliverables from funded projects and how have the goals of the funding agencies shaped those deliverables? Funding agencies have exerted strong influence over research and development in DLs, and different funding agencies have funded different types of projects, with varying sets of concerns for driving the various fields that feed into DLs. This chapter will address the impact that DL funding has had on the development of research in the field of Library and Information Science, as well as on the practice of librarianship.

This chapter proposes an optimized innovative information technology as a means for achieving operational functionalities of real-time portable electronic health records, system interoperability, longitudinal health-risks research cohort and surveillance of adverse events infrastructure, and clinical, genome regions – disease and interventional prevention infrastructure. In application to the Dod-VA (Department of Defense and Veteran's Administration) health information systems, the proposed modernization can be carried out as an “add-on” expansion (estimated at $288 million in constant dollars) or as a “stand-alone” innovative information technology system (estimated at $489.7 million), and either solution will prototype an infrastructure for nation-wide health information systems interoperability, portable real-time electronic health records (EHRs), adverse events surveillance, and interventional prevention based on targeted single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) discovery.

At the beginning of the 21st century, multiple and diverse social entities, including the public (consumers), private and nonprofit healthcare institutions, government (public health) and other industry sectors, began to recognize the limitations of the current fragmented healthcare system paradigm. Primary stakeholders, including employers, insurance companies, and healthcare professional organizations, also voiced dissatisfaction with unacceptable health outcomes and rising costs. Grand challenges and wicked problems threatened the viability of the health sector. American health systems responded with innovations and advances in healthcare delivery frameworks that encouraged shifts from intra- and inter-sector arrangements to multi-sector, lasting relationships that emphasized patient centrality along with long-term commitments to sustainability and accountability. This pathway, leading to a population health approach, also generated the need for transformative business models. The coproduction of health framework, with its emphasis on cross-sector alignments, nontraditional partner relationships, sustainable missions, and accountability capable of yielding return on investments, has emerged as a unique strategy for facing disruptive threats and challenges from nonhealth sector corporations. This chapter presents a coproduction of health framework, goals and criteria, examples of boundary spanning network alliance models, and operational (integrator, convener, aggregator) strategies. A comparison of important organizational science theories, including institutional theory, network/network analysis theory, and resource dependency theory, provides suggestions for future research directions necessary to validate the utility of the coproduction of health framework as a precursor for paradigm change.

This chapter reviews conceptualizations of parent involvement and family engagement as they aim to support children’s learning and development and introduces the reader to relational family engagement, a new approach to engaging families in their children’s early learning. Relational family engagement is discussed as central to effectively engaging culturally and linguistically diverse families as active contributors to their children’s lifelong success as learners. The authors delineate three principles fundamental to relational family engagement, supported by an interdisciplinary review of research. Reflective practice is explored as a pathway to relational family engagement. The authors assert that the integration of reflective practice holds promise as a way to facilitate and deepen relationships among staff in early childhood programs, between the early childhood education program staff and families, and between families and children, such that children’s early learning experiences are enhanced across both home and preschool contexts while drawing upon their families’ cultural and linguistic assets.

Over the last decade, there has been a significant increase of students with intellectual disabilities attending mainstream primary and secondary-level education in the Republic of Ireland (McConkey et al., 2017). Despite this increase, it appears that comparatively few of these students successfully transition to further/higher education and/or employment opportunities. This chapter examines typical transition support/guidance provided to students with intellectual disabilities as they prepare to complete their post-primary education in a mainstream setting. Using data from a study of school principals and school personnel responsible for career guidance and transition planning, the findings show guidance is limited for students with intellectual disabilities. Instead of being the responsibility of career guidance counsellors, guidance and transitions planning for students with intellectual disabilities are viewed as being the role of other personnel such as the school SENCO. By assigning this responsibility to special education roles in the school, students with intellectual disabilities may run the risk of having narrow and limited career options presented to them. This study raises serious questions about the effectiveness of mainstream schools in facilitating this critical transition stage for students who have intellectual disabilities.