Information,education and communication on family planning and maternal and child health care: an evaluation of a special action programme in northern Karnataka

This paper presents the results of an evaluation undertaken by the Population Research Centre of the India Population Project-III in two districts of Karnataka state in late 1990. "The evaluation study revealed that mass media type...programmes such as...films...were carried out satisfactorily. But inter-[personal] communication type...programmes such as group meetings...were rarely conducted and people's participation was not sufficiently ensured." Recommendations for improvements are included.     

No new state tax: universal health care coverage for children in Florida

Florida, which this year passed a sweeping health reform measure, is considering use of a Medicaid expansion option to revamp health care delivery for its children.     

One man's tough choices on prostate cancer

It's the No. 2 cancer killer in men--and it will strike almost every male who lives long enough to get it. But when a seasoned science journalist was diagnosed with it, doctors gave him confusing and contradictory advice. In his painful journey through the maze, he learned that where doctors disagree--as they do over how to treat many life-threatening diseases--an educated patient can help educate them.     

Marketing malpractice: the cause and the cure

Ted Levitt used to tell his Harvard Business School students, "People don't want a quarter-inch drill--they want a quarter-inch hole." But 35 years later, marketers are still thinking in terms of products and ever-finer demographic segments. The structure of a market, as seen from customers' point of view, is very simple. When people need to get a job done, they hire a product or service to do it for them. The marketer's task is to understand what jobs periodically arise in customers' lives for which they might hire products the company could make. One job, the "I-need-to-send-this-from-here-to-there-with-perfect-certainty-as-fast-as-possible"job, has existed practically forever. Federal Express designed a service to do precisely that--and do it wonderfully again and again. The FedEx brand began popping into people's minds whenever they needed to get that job done. Most of today's great brands--Crest, Starbucks, Kleenex, eBay, and Kodak, to name a few-started out as just this kind of purpose brand. When a purpose brand is extended to products that target different jobs, it becomes an endorser brand. But, over time, the power of an endorser brand will surely erode unless the company creates a new purpose brand for each new job, even as it leverages the endorser brand as an overall marker of quality. Different jobs demand different purpose brands. New growth markets are created when an innovating company designs a product and then positions its brand on a job for which no optimal product yet exists. In fact, companies that historically have segmented and measured markets by product categories generally find that when they instead segment by job, their market is much larger (and their current share much smaller) than they had thought. This is great news for smart companies hungry for growth.     

我的九条命后记——对9．11恐怖事件的感受

２００１年９月初本书业已脱稿 ,为了配合该册的出版 ,我安排了在京、津、沪、滇等地一系列的学术交流和访问。行前在纽约也有频繁的约会。９月１２日要和甘子玉率领的访美代表团座谈 ,同日紧接着预备和中国法学会商讨合作培训项目 ;９月１３日后和纽约大学约谈另一培训计划。忽然 ,一如晴天霹雳 ,惊悉纽约两座世贸中心大厦全被恐怖分子劫持民航飞机 ,权作燃烧弹全部炸为灰烬。华盛顿美国军部的五角大楼 ,也遭同样手段摧毁。死伤者数以千计。尽管恐怖事件、劫机伤人不是首创 ,但在美国 ,即使是在第一次和第二次世界大战 ,以及韩战、越战时期…     

Internal migration in Russia during the economic transition

"A World Bank demographer analyzes patterns of migration among Russia's regions from shortly before the break-up of the Soviet Union and the onset of economic reforms through the first five years of independence. The analysis focuses on two large migration streams currently occurring in Russia--the return migration of Russians, as well as Russian speakers, to Russia from the other republics of the former Soviet Union and massive out-migration from the Russian North to the western and southern portions of the country. These migration streams are assessed in terms of both their impacts on current population numbers in Russia's regions and as a basis for projections of population change into the early 21st century."