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Worldwide efforts to identify individuals infected with the hepatitis C virus (HCV) focus almost exclusively on community healthcare systems, thereby failing to reach high-risk populations and those with poor access to primary care. In the USA, community-based HCV testing policies and guidelines overlook correctional facilities, where HCV rates are believed to be as high as 40 percent. This is a missed opportunity: more than ten million Americans move through correctional facilities each year. Herein, the purpose of this paper is to examine HCV testing practices in the US correctional system, California and describe how universal opt-out HCV testing could expand early HCV detection, improve public health in correctional facilities and communities, and prove cost-effective over time.

A commentary on the value of standardizing screening programs across facilities by mandating all facilities (universal) to implement opt-out testing policies for all prisoners upon entry to the correctional facilities.

Current variability in facility-level testing programs results in inconsistent testing levels across correctional facilities, and therefore makes estimating the actual number of HCV-infected adults in the USA difficult. The authors argue that universal opt-out testing policies ensure earlier diagnosis of HCV among a population most affected by the disease and is more cost-effective than selective testing policies.

The commentary explores the current limitations of selective testing policies in correctional systems and provides recommendations and implications for public health and correctional organizations.

Transplantation extends and improves lives, but the shortage of organs is one of the main factors limiting the number of transplants in Italy, as well as in other countries. This study investigated the awareness about organ donation and the socio-demographic factors associated with donation will in a general population.

In 2019, a survey was carried out by computer-assisted web interviewing. A questionnaire was sent via e-mail to 39,360 individuals (i.e. students, administrative and teaching staff of the University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy). The response rate was 10.6% and 4,191 weighted cases were used in the analysis.

This study showed a strong, positive attitude towards donation: over 96% of respondents stated to be keen on organ donation. Of the respondents, 40.8% considered themselves informed on medical procedures involving organ donation, and only 15.8% thought to have sufficient legal information. Overall, only 17.7% of respondents thought that the information available was sufficient to make informed decisions. According to the respondents, ethical and religious implications were the main reasons (30% of answers) that limited the level of information. Just 57.9% of respondents had already recorded their willingness to donate. Among them, renewal of the identity card was the most common motivation (55.8%) and the main motivation reported for lack of expression of donation will was the lack of opportunity or time (61.5%).

A positive attitude towards donation demands a wide public education programme and opportunities to declare one's will to donate to increase the population of potential organ donors.

The purpose of this study is to identify arrangements of fully funded defined contribution (FF-DC) pension plans associated with the continuity of retirement savings.

The authors adopted an experimental design composed of a control group and two treatment groups. In all groups, individuals made decisions throughout nine periods: five during the working period and four at the postretirement stage. The authors asked participants if they wanted to join a pension plan, and which plan. The authors offered three plans with different risk profiles: plan 1 (high risk), plan 2 (moderate) and plan 3 (low risk) and one risk-free plan, plan 4. In treatment groups 1 and 2, there was an automatic enrollment of the participants in the default plan (moderate risk), and in the following periods they had to decide whether to continue contributing, and in this case, to which plan, with a defined percentage.

In treatment scenarios, participants chose the riskiest plan in all periods of the experiment, and most of them chose the risk-free plan in period 5. These findings suggest that pension plans with automatic enrollment, employer matching and low risk foster the continuation of retirement savings.

The research has as limitation the fact that the sample is not representative of the population and therefore does not allow generalizations. This is because the authors use social media ads to prospect respondents.

The research's findings can be relevant for the design of public policies for private pension plans, suggesting that compulsory automatic enrollment can be used as default in plans offered by the employers. The results encourage the inclusion of behavioral elements in the design of the pension system, paying attention to the nudges. In this sense, it is possible to increase participation in the pension plan and develop low cost programs to increase the amount accumulated by people before retirement.

Decision-making architecture, such as automatic enrollment, can improve individuals' retirement decisions, affecting savings and welfare in the long run.

Although the effect of pension plan designs is widely studied in other countries, such as the United States and United Kingdom, the authors are unaware of a national empirical research that seeks to understand how different arrangements affect an individual choice through an experiment.

Research on workplace stress measurements varied without much accuracy and effectiveness. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new quantitative assessment tool emWave Pro Plus (Institute of HeartMath) and compare heart rate variability (HRV) results with the Personal and Organizational Quality Assessment (POQA) and the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS).

This research opted for a correlational study which involves 85 full-time employees who were working at least 40 h per week in a large corporation participated in this study. The POQA and PSS were used to correlate with HRV.

Astonishing findings emerged in this study. Significant positive correlations were found between emotional stress and HRV, and between intention to quit and HRV. In other words, the researchers have to make sense the following surprising findings: the higher the emotional stress an employee faces, the healthier they are. Healthier employees may have higher intentions of quitting their jobs. The surprising results may be attributed to personality, culture, emotional regulation and age among others.

This research fulfills an identified need to validate quantifiable stress measurements especially in a corporate environment. The research also shows promising results, and future studies should continue to tap into HRV as an objective measure of mental health and workplace stress.

Despite the continuation of hospital mergers in many western countries, it is uncertain if and how hospital mergers impact the quality of care. This poses challenges for the regulation of mergers. The purpose of this paper is to understand: how regulators and hospitals frame the impact of merging on the quality and safety of care and how hospital mergers might be regulated, given their uncertain impact on quality and safety of care.

This paper studies the regulation of hospital mergers in The Netherlands. In a qualitative study design, it draws on 30 semi-structured interviews with inspectors from the Dutch Health and Youth Care Inspectorate (Inspectorate) and respondents from three hospitals that merged between 2013 and 2015. This paper draws from literature on process-based regulation to understand how regulators can monitor hospital mergers.

This paper finds that inspectors and hospital respondents frame the process of merging as potentially disruptive to daily care practices. While inspectors emphasise the dangers of merging, hospital respondents report how merging stimulated them to reflect on their care practices and how it afforded learning between hospitals. Although the Inspectorate considers mergers a risk to quality of care, their regulatory practices are hesitant.

This qualitative study sheds light on how merging might affect key hospital processes and daily care practices. It offers opportunities for the regulation of hospital mergers that acknowledges rather than aims to dispel the uncertain and potentially ambiguous impact of mergers on quality and safety of care.

This chapter discusses female managers’ and entrepreneurs’ views on lifelong learning. The main empirical data were drawn from interviews with 67 women participating in training and coaching programmes in South Savo, Finland, in 2017–2021. Many of the women belonged to the working sandwich generation (WSG). The particular focus was on how lifelong learning relates to these women’s careers, wellbeing at work, work–life balance and search for meaningful lives. A model integrating women’s earning, learning and meaning aspects of work and life was developed. The findings of the study show that considering women’s fragmented work careers, lifelong learning is often crucial for them. For an individual, opportunities for lifelong learning and meaningful work assure personal development, wellbeing at work and a sustainable career. For employing organisations, offering opportunities for learning and meaningful work for their employees constitutes a competitive advantage.

This study aims to develop a hierarchical model that uncovers the relationships between challenges confronting Africa's organ transplant supply chain systems.

Eleven challenges (variables) were identified after a comprehensive review of the existing literature. The contextual interactions among these variables were analysed from the perspectives of health-care stakeholders in two sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) countries (Nigeria and Uganda), using Delphi-interpretive structural modelling-cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification (MICMAC) techniques.

The findings reveal that weak regulatory frameworks, insufficient information systems and a lack of necessary skills make it challenging for critical actors to perform the tasks effectively. The interaction effects of these challenges weaken organ supply chains and make it less efficient, giving rise to negative externalities such as black markets for donated organs and organ tourism/trafficking.

This paper establishes a solid foundation for a critical topic that could significantly impact human health and life once the government or non-profit ecosystem matures. The MICMAC analysis in this paper provides a methodological approach for future studies wishing to further develop the organ supply chain structural models.

The study provides valuable insights for experts and policymakers on where to prioritise efforts in designing interventions to strengthen organ transplantation supply chains in developing countries.

This study is one of the first to empirically examine the challenges of organ transplant supply chains from an SSA perspective, including theoretically grounded explanations from data collected in two developing countries.

This study investigates when and for whom job crafting may turn into job quitting. The authors hypothesize that approach job crafting relates more positively to turnover intentions and subsequent voluntary job changes among employees with (a) high (vs low) need for career challenges and (b) those with high (vs low) self-esteem.

Data were collected from 575 employees of a large public organization in the Netherlands with two measurement moments three months apart. Hypotheses were tested using cross-lagged regression analyses and path modeling.

Supporting the hypotheses, approach crafting related positively to an increase in turnover intentions only among employees with high need for challenge or high self-esteem. Moreover, via turnover intentions at Time 1, approach crafting related positively to the voluntary job change at Time 2 for employees with (a) high need for challenge, as well as those with (b) high self-esteem. These findings held after controlling for avoidance crafting.

This study has been conducted in a relatively homogenous sample. Future research may test the predictions in a more heterogeneous sample, including participants from different cultural and economic contexts.

The authors advise human resource (HR) professionals to facilitate the job crafting efforts of employees with a high need for challenge and those with high self-esteem because these groups are particularly at risk of voluntarily quitting their jobs. Adopting insights from the wise proactivity model may help ensure that job crafting benefits both employees and employers.

This study brings clarity to the inconsistent relationships between job crafting and job quitting by using the wise proactivity model as an explanatory framework.

The purpose of this study is to understand how executives in technology companies relate to targets for gender equality, especially pertaining to top management.

The study draws on 19 interviews of CEOs, senior line managers and HR directors in ten technology companies operating in Finland. The method is (reflexive) thematic analysis.

Previous studies on the role of executives in promoting gender equality provide somewhat mixed results: while their role is vital, senior leaders may not be inclined to support gender equality targets and measures. Drawing on critical feminist theorizing, this study identifies three ways in which the executives in technology companies related to gender equality targets: endorsing, negotiating and resisting. However, all these responses were constrained by the executives’ assumption that their companies are meritocratic. The study illustrates how executives’ narrow understanding of gender equality and reliance on the presumably well-working systems, combined with underlying doubts about the competence of women, hinder the advancement of women to top management.

While previous studies have evaluated targets to increase the number/percentage of women, both in certain “ideal case” companies and in terms of their effectiveness more broadly, this study discusses how technology company executives navigate these targets in relation to women's assumed “competence”.

Despite the proliferation of work–family research, a thorough understanding of family role status changes (e.g. the gaining of elder or child caregiving responsibilities) remain under-theorized and under-examined. The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize various forms of family role status changes and examine the ways in which these changes influence various employee outcomes.

Data were collected as part of the work–family health study. Using a longitudinal, three-wave study with two-time lags of 6 months (n = 151 family role status changes; n = 392 individuals with family role stability), this study uses one-way analysis of variance to compare mean differences across groups and multilevel modeling to examine the predictive effects of family role status changes.

Overall, experiences of employees undergoing a family role status change did not differ significantly from employees whose family role status remained stable over the same 12-month period. Separation/divorce predicted higher levels of family-to-work conflict.

The work raises important considerations for organizational science and human resource policy research to better understand the substantive effects of family role status changes on employee well-being.