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OBJECTIVES: Involving stakeholders in research helps ensure that research is relevant and responsive to stakeholder needs while improving the quality of the research. This research was conducted as part of AHRQ's Community Forum project which was charged with identifying emerging strategies and state of the art methods for engaging stakeholders. METHODS: We developed a conceptual framework for stakeholder engagement that informed this literature scan and assisted in organizing findings. The scan included a search of peer-reviewed literature, using academic databases as well as an Internet search of grey literature and Web sites. Our final review included 23 peer-reviewed articles, 15 grey literature documents, and 43 Web sites related to stakeholder engagement. To supplement our scan, we conducted 11 interviews with individuals experienced in the field of stakeholder engagement. Our technical experts also suggested organizations and Web sites to explore in our literature review. RESULTS: We identified many promising methods of involving stakeholders in research. One example is using online collaborative platforms to enable interactions between an organization and its stakeholders through a virtual space. These allow users to share information, work together, and provide feedback to stakeholders about how their input is being used. Other examples include product development challenges, utilizing existing online communities, and grassroots community organizing. Selected recommended practices from our review include gaining trust of stakeholders before involvement and maintaining throughout; selecting stakeholders for whom the decision or research has important consequences; and educating stakeholders on their roles, their responsibilities, and the topics being discussed. A limitation to our findings is that there are limited evaluation data measuring outcome effectiveness of these methods. CONCLUSIONS: Stakeholder involvement is critical to health care research. This presentation will highlight selected effective and creative approaches to stakeholder engagement. OBJECTIVES:To analyze the profile of care for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in health centers in border areas of Central America. METHODS: A crosssectional study in a sample of 3357 people received medical care for some STIs in 13 health centers in border areas of Central America, during 2007-2010. Doctors were trained and supplied medicines, condoms and HIV testing (basic package of health care). The sample of users was characterized according to sociodemographic variables and the associated factors with the probability of receiving the basic package of care for STIs were analyzed using additive probit regression models. RESULTS: Of the total users, 66% had 25 to 59 years old, and 93% of users were women. The most frequently diagnosed STI were Candidiasis, Bacterial Vaginosis, Trichomoniasis, Gonorrhea and Syphilis. 60% of prescriptions for these STIs were adhered to the international recommendations. 53.1 % of users received only medicines, 5.8 ...

Medicare can be counted on to control per enrollee spending growth over time, more than private insurers can.by Cristina Boccuti and Marilyn Moon ABSTRACT: Over the past three decades both Medicare and private insurers have initiated cost containment mechanisms to control the growth of spending on personal health care. To compare spending growth between these two payers, we present four measurement principles that should be implemented when drawing such comparisons, and we apply them to the National Health Accounts data files. We attribute Medicare's ability to equaland using our measures, actually exceed-the private sector in controlling the rate of health spending growth to Medicare's ability to price aggressively for the services it covers.

The authors use multinomial logit and multiple discriminant analyses to predict the probabilities that an individual will attain each of several occupational categories based on that individual's characteristics and qualifications. By estimating the parameters of this model from a sample of men and then applying them to a sample of women, the authors simulate the occupational distribution that these women would have attained had they been treated as if they were men. Even after making adjustments for taste differences between men and women, the authors find that their hypothetical results vary substantially from women's actual occupational distribution. They conclude that a significant portion of occupational segregation by sex can be attributed to discrimination. THE two most important manifestationsof sex discrimination in the labor market are wage differentials within occupations and differences in the occupational distributions of men and women. To understand fully the nature and impact of this discrimination, we must understand both underlying processes: that of wage determination and that of occupational attainment. Many researchers have used wage determination models to measure the extent of sex discrimination, frequently including some attempt to account for the variance in earnings across occupations.-We choose instead to focus directly on the process of occupational attainment.2 We develop a model that uses microdata to predict the probabilities that an individual will end up in each of several occupational categories. 'This commonly takes the form either of including occupational variables as regressors or of looking only at intra-occupational wage differentials. See, for example, Alan S. Blinder, "Wage Discrimination: Reduced Form and Structural . For an interesting way of directly comparing earnings distributions both within and between occupations, see Edward N. Wolff, "Occupational Earnings Behavior and the Inequality of Earnings by Sex and Race in the United States," Review of Income and Wealth, Series 22, No. 2 (June 1976), pp. 151 -66.2We use the term "occupational attainment" to mean only the net effect of all the forces and processes that determine the occupation of a particular individual. This should not be confused with the sociological use of the term nor with the sociological models of status attainment. Readers interested in a model

The 1980s have produced virtually no new federal health programs and few new benefits in existing programs. Congress has been largely consumed by efforts to constrain the growth of health entitlement programs created in an earlier era when tax revenues were easier to come by. Nevertheless, health and medical issues have remained popular subjects for politicians to address. And in the few instances where President Reagan actually proposed a liberalization of a federal program, Congress reacted with enthusiasm. In this paper, Judith Feder, Marilyn Moon, and William Scanlon explore the limits of health care reform-1980s style-pointing out that the Medicare catastrophic benefit under discussion on Capitol Hill is less than meets the eye or fits the rhetorio. Feder, who holds a doctorate in pliticul science from Harward University, and Scanlon, who has a similar degree in economics from the