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The Second Strategic Objective of the Global Vaccine Action Plan, “individuals and communities understand the value of vaccines and demand immunization as both their right and responsibility”, differs from the other five in that it does not focus on supply-side aspects of immunization programs but rather on public demand for vaccines and immunization services. This commentary summarizes the work (literature review, consultations with experts, and with potential users) and findings of the UNICEF/World Health Organization Strategic Objective 2 informal Working Group on Vaccine Demand, which developed a definition for demand and indicators related to Strategic Objective 2. Demand for vaccines and vaccination is a complex concept that is not external to supply systems but rather encompasses the interaction between human behaviors and system structure and dynamics.

This article presents a broad conceptual framework that suggests ways in which community demands, resources, and strategies influence relationships between work demands, resources, and family well-being. Withindomain and boundary-spanning community demands and resources are proposed to combine with work demands and resources in relation to work-family conflict and facilitation. Boundary-spanning community strategies are expected to mediate and moderate relationships between work-family conflict and facilitation and family well-being. The paper closes with an agenda for future research and a strategy for policy and practice.

This paper examines the differential salience of family and community demands and resources in relation to family-to-work conflict and facilitation. The study used interviews with 1567 employed, married, parents from the 1995 National Survey of Midlife Development (MIDUS). Family demands show relatively strong positive relationships to family-to-work conflict, whereas family resources are relatively important for family-to-work facilitation. Two community demands are positively related to family-to-work conflict and one community resource is positively associated with facilitation. Community demands and resources generally do not moderate relationships between family demands and resources and family-to-work conflict and facilitation. The study suggests that processes associated with demands are relatively important for family-to-work conflict, whereas processes embedded in resources are relatively salient for family-to-work facilitation. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

Rural electrification can have many benefits-not only bringing lighting, but improving the quality of health care, spreading information and supporting productive enterprises. The extent of these benefits has been questioned, arguing that they may be insufficient to justify the investment costs. This book quantifies these benefits. It finds that the benefits can indeed be high, substantially outweighing the costs, and that consumer willingness to pay is generally sufficient to achieve financial sustainability. However, benefits could be increased further by providing smart subsidies to assist connections for poorer households, promote productive uses and further consumer education.

An aggregated energy interaction and marketing strategy is developed for demand side energy communities (DSECs) with hybrid energy storage units, considering the grid friendly issue. The whole mechanism is built as a hierarchical scheme. On the upper-layer, an aggregator is responsible for managing all demand responses through a game based energy scheduling and marketing strategy. On the lower-layer, each user-level energy prosumer (EP) pursues its optimal energy economical goal by participating in aggregated energy interactions within the DSEC through the energy router. Aiming for coordinated operation with the main grid, both energy self-equilibrium and grid friendliness criteria are incorporated with the hierarchical energy interaction and marketing model. The double-layered nonlinear system model is then converted into one single-layer mixed integer linear programming model and solved by the Tabu search-Particle swarm optimization algorithm. Case studies show that with the presented energy scheduling and marketing strategy, energy costs on the end user side are significantly reduced. In the case studies, the energy cost of the three EPs decreased by 3, 8 and 3% respectively. When grid friendliness was taken into account, the DSECA’ revenue was 28% higher than before and the load rate rise from 36.46 to 48.15%.

Most studies on work-life balance only examine work and family domains. While work is the only role in its domain, life consists of many aspects besides family. However, research on other roles is still very limited. This study examines the influence of community (neighbour, neighbourhood, relatives, friends), and participation in Non-Government Organisations (NGOs), demands, and resources on work-family conflict (WFC) and family-work conflict (FWC). Questionnaires were distributed to 506 employees from six public and private organisations in Kuching, Sarawak. Data were analysed using the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) using AMOS Version 20. The findings showed that WFC was negatively related with demands from neighbours, relatives, and friends; and positively related with demands from participating in NGOs and resources from neighbours. FWC was negatively related with demands from neighbours, relatives, and friends; and positively related with resources from neighbours and relatives. This study provided evidence that community domain influences the WFC and FWC. Thus, organisations should consider the community domain in formulating strategies to minimise WFC and FWC experienced by the employees.

This chapter recounts the recovery of the Cheonggye Creek through the removal of roads in the middle of Seoul. It highlights that this is an extraordinary story of community demands and a rare example of civil authorities being willing to admit—and reverse—past mistakes. The chapter follows the story of Ji-hoon Moon, and describes the beautiful garden glade overlooking Cheonggye Creek. Vibrant purple flowers cascade over the rock walls that edge the garden; further down the terraced slope, lush plantings of vivid green vegetation run parallel to the rapidly flowing stream passing below. The chapter also reflects at the center of one of Asia's largest and most densely populated cities with a complete absence of traffic noise and no cars to be heard or seen. It recalls the Three Ages of the creek and Moon's life with the Cheonggye.

To achieve universal health coverage, health systems will have to reach into every community, including the poorest and hardest to access. Since Alma-Ata, inconsistent support of community health workers (CHWs) and failure to integrate them into the health system have impeded full realization of their potential contribution in the context of primary health care. Scaling up and maintaining CHW programmes is fraught with a host of challenges: poor planning; multiple competing actors with little coordination; fragmented, disease-specific training; donor-driven management and funding; tenuous linkage with the health system; poor coordination, supervision and support, and under-recognition of CHWs' contribution. The current drive towards universal health coverage (UHC) presents an opportunity to enhance people's access to health services and their trust, demand and use of such services through CHWs. For their potential to be fully realized, however, CHWs will need to be better integrated into national health-care systems in terms of employment, supervision, support and career development. Partners at the global, national and district levels will have to harmonize and synchronize their engagement in CHW support while maintaining enough flexibility for programmes to innovate and respond to local needs. Strong leadership from the public sector will be needed to facilitate alignment with national policy frameworks and country-led coordination and to achieve synergies and accountability, universal coverage and sustainability. In moving towards UHC, much can be gained by investing in building CHWs' skills and supporting them as valued members of the health team. Stand-alone investments in CHWs are no shortcut to progress.

Background Community-based care services refers to the professional services provided at home to the elderly with formally assessed demands. The growth of the elderly population has increased the demand for these services, and this issue is even worse in the affordable housing community (AHC) of China. Understanding of elderly’s demands for different types of community-based care services and its determinations would enable the implementation of appropriate incentive schemes to promote utilization of community-based care services in the AHCs of China. Methods Guided by previous studies, a conceptual framework was developed. Then, a questionnaire was designed and a community based survey was conducted from May 10–20, 2018 in Daishan AHC of Nanjing City, China. Four hundred eight participants from 25,650 elderly people were selected by systematic random sampling technique. Binary logistic regression was applied to the data about the elderly’ primary demands for community-based care services in the AHC, to quantify the elderly’s demands and explore related individual-level factors. Results The finding indicates that more than 50% of respondents had the demand for an elderly care hotline, building health archives, on-call nursing and doctor visits, medical lectures, regular medical examinations and sporting fitness. The binary logistic regression models revealed that the primary demands of the elderly for community-based care services were influenced by distinct factors. Conclusions Our findings help clarify different types of community-based care services and provide fresh information about the demand for community-based care among the elderly in AHCs. Several policy implications are discussed to enhance the efficiency of community-based care service provision.

The Kyrgyz Republic has made major strides in the past decade in its transition to a market-based economy. Its trade and investment policies are arguably the most liberal among the member countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Despite the generally progressive stance on structural policies and a sound record of macroeconomic management in recent years, economic growth has been modest, living standards are low, a large burden of external debt has accumulated, and integration into global production and trade remains limited. The growth agenda must address more carefully the constraints to greater supply-side response to ongoing reforms—an agenda that can facilitate a broad-based growth of economic activity and exports. Risks to sustainability of current growth rates and continued poverty reduction will otherwise remain high as will the economy’s vulnerability to external shocks. This report is aimed at assisting authorities fashioning this agenda by focusing on three key challenges:Identifying strategic options to strengthen prospects for medium- and long-term growth and poverty reduction; Assessing ways of leveraging domestic trade policy reforms and existing regional and multilateral trade agreements for further regional and global integration; and Identifying key areas where greater efforts are necessary to facilitate improvements in enterprise capability and productivity.