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Small scale producers in developing countries lack easy access to efficient logistics services. They are faced with long distances from both domestic and international markets. Unless they consolidate their trade volumes they face high costs which diminish their ability to trade. However, the process of consolidation is not without cost nor does it occur on its own accord. As a result, the consolidation is typically handled by intermediaries. Using case studies of sisal and soybean supply chains in Brazil and India respectively, this study explores the role and impact of intermediaries in facilitating trade in lagging regions. The study assesses the horizontal relationships between the small scale producers in thin markets and the vertical connections between different tiers of the same supply chain. The study analyzes the traditional approach to linking producers namely through cooperatives and itinerant traders and the relatively newer innovations using ICT. The study finds that farmers linked through the different mechanisms are more integrated to international supply chains or are able to better manage supply chains longer than would otherwise be the case. Intermediaries play several roles including providing transport services and facilitating market exchanges, payments, risk sharing and quality improvements. Generally, information technology driven innovations make it easier to integrate adjacent steps in the value chain. This report on logistics performance at the sub-national level is an on-going endeavour. Similar analysis is being carried out in some countries in Africa to identify the evolving role of intermediaries in low income regions. The results will be developed into a major publication on this topic, with recommendations on how development agencies, civil society and the private sector can improve the design of strategies to reduce logistics costs in low income areas.

A Development Emergency: the title of this year's Global Monitoring Report, the sixth in an annual series, could not be more apt. The global economic crisis, the most severe since the Great Depression, is rapidly turning into a human and development crisis. No region is immune. The poor countries are especially vulnerable, as they have the least cushion to withstand events. The crisis, coming on the heels of the food and fuel crises, poses serious threats to their hard-won gains in boosting economic growth and reducing poverty. It is pushing millions back into poverty and putting at risk the very survival of many. The prospect of reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015, already a cause for serious concern, now looks even more distant. A global crisis must be met with a global response. The crisis began in the financial markets of developed countries, so the first order of business must be to stabilize these markets and counter the recession that the financial turmoil has triggered. At the same time, strong and urgent actions are needed to counter the impact of the crisis on developing countries and help them restore strong growth while protecting the poor. Global Monitoring Report 2009, prepared jointly by the staff of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, provides a development perspective on the global economic crisis. It assesses the impact on developing countries, their growth, poverty reduction, and other MDGs. And it sets out priorities for policy response, both by developing countries themselves and by the international community. This report also focuses on the ways in which the private sector can be better mobilized in support of development goals, especially in the aftermath of the crisis.

'Healthy Development: The World Bank Strategy for Health, Nutrition, and Population Results' updates the Bank's contribution to improving health outcomes, including the 2015 Millennium Development Goals, at a time when new and existing multilateral organizations, bilateral partners, and foundations are increasing their commitment to global health.

We present unique audit-study evidence on health care quality in rural India, and find that most private providers lacked medical qualifications, but completed more checklist items than public providers and recommended correct treatments equally often. Among doctors with public and private practices, all quality metrics were higher in their private clinics. Market prices are positively correlated with checklist completion and correct treatment, but also with unnecessary treatments. However, public sector salaries are uncorrelated with quality. A simple model helps interpret our findings: Where public-sector effort is low, the benefits of higher diagnostic effort among private providers may outweigh costs of potential overtreatment.

PREVENTION AND HEALTH PROMOTION VS DISEASE TREATMENT The United States currently has a health care system that is overly focused on the provision of sick care, which can be defined as health care that prioritizes the management and treatment of disease versus prioritization of wellness, prevention, and health promotion 2 The United States expends far more financial resources on the provision of health care than other countries in the world 3 However, we consistently report worse health and health care outcomes than other developed nations and, increasingly, certain developing nations 2,3 The United States spends approximately $4.8 trillion on health care for costs primarily allocated to treating disease 3,4 The sole type of health care that has the potential for improving population health-primary care-is the segment of health care that receives the least amount of investment,2 despite its crucial role in supporting our nation's health 5 The primary care system is underresourced and often overburdened with diagnosing, treating, and managing disease, with much less attention given to supporting wellness, preventing illness, and promoting health.6 The inability of the primary care system to better address population health and wellness has resulted in an increasingly costly health care system3,4 that overly utilizes the costliest procedures6 and misses its greatest potential: elevating the health of our entire nation. A health status snapshot of the overall US population highlights troublesome trends; for example, most adults 18years and older in the United States have one or more largely preventable chronic conditions, and 63% of people 65years and older live with multiple chronic conditions.7 In addition, over the past decade, life expectancy has on average decreased or stagnated8 relative to the extent of the financial expenditures associated with our costly health care system and relative to other nations where greater investments in social care have been well integrated into traditional clinical care3,4 As a notable exemplar, the Indian Health Service, which is responsible for providing federal health services to the American Indian and Alaska Native population, is chronically underfunded and meets less than half of the health care needs of the population.9 This contributes to the lower life expectancy of American Indians and Alaska Natives, approximately eight years less than that of the general US population.8 Furthermore, projections regarding the future population health status of our nation highlight a trajectory characterized by increasing numbers of individuals developing one or more chronic diseases 2,7 The effects of chronic disease on the overall well-being and financial stability of the United States cannot be understated.10 The current trajectory is unsustainable and has farreaching implications for US households as well as the overall health of the population and the economic stability of our nation.11 Of dire concern are the billions of dollars that health economists identify as the costs we contribute to maintaining an inequitable health care system.12 The country desperately needs a paradigm shift: a reimagined model of care that more fully integrates clinical care centered on prevention and health promotion while also embedding social care into an integrated model of health service provision that bridges public health and primary care. According to the Ending Unequal Treatment report, greater investments in Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Section 1115 Health Related Social Needs Demonstration projects are promising and should be further scaled up 2,13 These projects use Medicaid dollars to address the health-related social needs of program participants. COMMUNITY-ENGAGED CLINICAL AND SOCIAL CARE Health inequities reflect unjust and unfair negative health outcomes that are most noticeably observed in minoritized and marginalized populations.2 Furthermore, health care inequities reveal the deliberate and unconscious ways in which health care systems and providers allocate services and deliver care 2 Health care inequities occur within a broader context of health inequity and are inextricably tied to the social environments where people live, learn, work, and play (i.e. the social and structural determinants of health), and they involve both the tangible provision of public goods and services such as housing and education and social processes such as systemic and structural racism and anti-immigrant sentiment that are embedded throughout health care systems and broader society.15-17 The distinction between health care inequities and health inequities is meaningful and warrants consideration regarding how a novel, more effective primary care system could be designed to better integrate both clinical and social care into a robust delivery system across multiple levels, including the individual provider-patient level and the health care institutional level.

The importance of transport corridors for trade and development, including for some of the poorest countries in the world, is widely recognized in this book. A new consensus has also emerged that reducing trade costs and improving access to corridors is not just a matter of building infrastructure. The policies that regulate transport services providers and the movement of goods along corridors are important determinants of the social rate of return on such infrastructure investment. This book avoids optimistic assumptions regarding the prospects for new high-level agreements and decisions to facilitate transit or the possible benefits from increased use of technology. Instead, the authors argue that much can be done through the implementation of readily available existing tools. The use of these tools is often hampered by not only capacity constraints; but, equally if not more important, a lack of commitment. Political economic factors in both the landlocked countries and their transit neighbors must be recognized and addressed. This book offers examples of possible implementation strategies that, while challenging, should in principle help in overcoming these political economic constraints. The main message is that to bring about efficient trade corridors governments and stakeholders should focus on properly implementing the fiscal, regulatory, and procedural principles for international transit that encourage quality-driven logistics services. The various implementation challenges are the primary focus of this book.

The advent of self-driving technology marks a significant milestone in the evolution of modern transportation and logistics services. More importantly, self-driving food delivery services are expected to play a significant role in environmental protection by operating on batteries instead of the traditional gasoline. The current study examines the relationship between perceived attributes, image, normative factors, and behavioral intentions in the context of eco-friendly self-driving food delivery services. The study deepens the framework by identifying the moderating role of country development status. The study gathered samples from 313 panels in South Korea, a developed country, and 315 respondents in Mongolia, a developing country. The results of the South Korean dataset showed that two types of perceived attributes, perceived innovativeness and perceived risk significantly affect image, which in turn leads to the formation of behavioral intentions. Normative factors, such as subjective norms and personal norms, also positively affect behavioral intentions, and subjective norms increase personal norms. The results of the Mongolian dataset indicated that all paths are statistically supported. Lastly, the moderating role of the country development status was found in the relationship between (1) perceived innovativeness and perceived risk, (2) subjective norms and personal norms, and (3) subjective norms and behavioral intentions.

PurposeThe Customary Land Delivery Institutions (CLDIs) provide the platform for the supply of developable land in most cities in sub-Saharan African countries. While there is a need to measure the effectiveness of CLDIs to compare their performance with others or themselves over time, there is however a dearth of evidence-based frameworks that could be adopted for such an assessment. This study developed a framework for the evaluation of the effectiveness of CLDIs. This is with a view to providing a tool for measuring the performance of land governance.Design/methodology/approachA total of 46 good governance criteria for measuring the various dimensions of CLDIs generated from the literature were transformed into a measurable scale which was validated by a panel of 16 experts through a modified Delphi approach. A pilot study was also conducted on 42 land-based professionals to assess the reliability of the framework. Content Validity Index (CVI) was calculated for relevancy scores while clarity was measured by clarity score. Cronbach alpha was also employed to measure the reliability of the framework.FindingsThe result of the 46 criteria validated by the experts revealed that 89.5% of items in the developed instrument have a content validity index (I-CVI) equal to or greater than the 0.85 threshold and a mean I-CVI of 0.90. With the CVI score and the analysis of the comments made by the experts, six items were removed from the instrument and a total of six new items were added. The final corrected instrument after a further iteration had a total of 46 items. The reliability test also revealed a Cronbach alpha score of 0.82.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper provides a framework useful for developing countries, especially in the development of land delivery policies and provides a framework for the analysis of the important aspects thereof.Originality/valueThis paper demonstrates the development of a holistic framework for the assessment of CLDIs which hitherto were not in existence.