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This article examines the role of civil society organizations (CSOs) in contesting healthcare commercialization in Malaysia. The article uses a novel framework to analyze the emergence of CSOs to protect the interests of the disadvantaged against commercialization initiatives. CSO action has expanded following the formation of social networks and election into parliament of individuals who share their views to oppose healthcare commercialization in the country. Against the odds, the evidence suggests that a significant presence of CSOs has emerged to challenge healthcare commercialization. Political changes have also given CSOs the opportunity to campaign for the protection of the interests of the disadvantaged in Malaysia’s healthcare development processes.

Following the Minimum Food Security Quota (MFS-Quota) proposed by Ruiz Estrada (2010) to evaluate and determine the food sustainability of any given country in the event of any natural disaster, this paper sets out to apply the MFS-Quota to test Malaysia’s food storage and supply readiness for any potential natural disaster that may critically affect the socio-economic and political well-being of the country. The primary objective of the MFS-Quota is to calculate the approximate amount of annual food storage that any country needs in order to subsist through any potential natural disaster. As such, any country could build its own MFS-Quota based on its agriculture production system(s) and national food policy focus.

Crime is obviously a menace to economic growth and progress, but to acutely understand the enormity of its impact on economic performance for effective policy action, requires a credible means of measurement. Given the crime notoriety of the most of Central America and the struggling state of their economies, this article attempts to discern from econometric evaluation and analyses, the calculable economic impact of crime on the region's economic progress. From analyses of results, we find the model to be credible and useful following its provision of a much more accurate degree to which crime affects economic performance in Central America, which we find critical to guide policy measures.

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