Text by A.M. Homes.

There is currently heightened interest in optimizing health care through the generation of new knowledge on the effectiveness of health care services. The United States must substantially strengthen its capacity for assessing evidence on what is known and not known about "what works" in health care. Even the most sophisticated clinicians and consumers struggle to learn which care is appropriate and under what circumstances. Knowing What Works in Health Care looks at the three fundamental health care issues in the United States-setting priorities for evidence assessment, assessing evidence (systematic review), and developing evidence-based clinical practice guidelines-and how each of these contributes to the end goal of effective, practical health care systems. This book provides an overall vision and roadmap for improving how the nation uses scientific evidence to identify the most effective clinical services. Knowing What Works in Health Care gives private and public sector firms, consumers, health care professionals, benefit administrators, and others the authoritative, independent information required for making essential informed health care decisions.

In addition to reprinting the PDF of the CMS CoPs and Interpretive Guidelines, we include key Survey and Certification memos that CMS has issued to announced changes to the emergency preparedness final rule, fire and smoke door annual testing requirements, survey team composition and investigation of complaints, infection control screenings, and legionella risk reduction.

Depression is a widespread condition affecting approximately 7.5 million parents in the U.S. each year and may be putting at least 15 million children at risk for adverse health outcomes. Based on evidentiary studies, major depression in either parent can interfere with parenting quality and increase the risk of children developing mental, behavioral and social problems. Depression in Parents, Parenting, and Children highlights disparities in the prevalence, identification, treatment, and prevention of parental depression among different sociodemographic populations. It also outlines strategies for effective intervention and identifies the need for a more interdisciplinary approach that takes biological, psychological, behavioral, interpersonal, and social contexts into consideration. A major challenge to the effective management of parental depression is developing a treatment and prevention strategy that can be introduced within a two-generation framework, conducive for parents and their children. Thus far, both the federal and state response to the problem has been fragmented, poorly funded, and lacking proper oversight. This study examines options for widespread implementation of best practices as well as strategies that can be effective in diverse service settings for diverse populations of children and their families. The delivery of adequate screening and successful detection and treatment of a depressive illness and prevention of its effects on parenting and the health of children is a formidable challenge to modern health care systems. This study offers seven solid recommendations designed to increase awareness about and remove barriers to care for both the depressed adult and prevention of effects in the child. The report will be of particular interest to federal health officers, mental and behavioral health providers in diverse parts of health care delivery systems, health policy staff, state legislators, and the general public.

"TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Synthesis 433: Significant Findings from Full-Scale Accelerated Pavement Testing documents and summarizes significant findings from the various experimental activities associated with full-scale accelerated pavement testing (f-sAPT) programs that have taken place between 2000 and 2011. The report also identifies gaps in knowledge related to f-sAPT and where future research may be needed. NCHRP Synthesis 433 is designed to expand the f-sAPT base of knowledge documented in NCHRP Syntheses 325 and 235, both with the same title of Significant Findings from Full-Scale Accelerated Pavement Testing. f-sAPT is the controlled application of a wheel loading, at or above the appropriate legal load limit, to a pavement system to determine pavement response in a compressed time period. The acceleration of damage is achieved by one or more of the following factors: increased repetitions, modified loading conditions, imposed climatic conditions, and thinner pavements with a decreased structural capacity which have shorter design lives"--

This report is the proceedings of a 2003 symposium on "Electronic Scientific, Technical, and Medical Journal Publishing and Its Implications," which brought together experts in STM publishing, both producers and users of these publications, to: (1) identify the recent technical changes in publishing, and other factors, that influence the decisions of journal publishers to produce journals electronically; (2) identify the needs of the scientific, engineering, and medical community as users of journals, whether electronic or printed; (3) discuss the responses of not-for-profit and commercial STM publishers and of other stakeholders in the STM community to the opportunities and challenges posed by the shift to electronic publishing; and (4) examine the spectrum of proposals that has been put forth to respond to the needs of users as the publishing industry shifts to electronic information production and dissemination.

From the 2013 Orange Prize–winning author of May We Be Forgiven. Only a work of such searing, meticulously controlled brilliance could provoke such a wide range of visceral responses. Here is the incredible story of an imprisoned pedophile who is drawn into an erotically charged correspondence with a nineteen-year-old suburban coed. As the two reveal—and revel in—their obsessive desires, Homes creates in The End of Alice a novel that is part romance, part horror story, at once unnerving and seductive.