Reducing Risk

Every day we make decisions about our health - some big and some small. What we eat, how we live and even where we live can affect our health. But how can we be sure that the advice we are given about these important matters is right for us? This book will provide you with the right tools for assessing health advice.

The understanding of how to reduce risk factors for mental disorders has expanded remarkably as a result of recent scientific advances. This study, mandated by Congress, reviews those advances in the context of current research and provides a targeted definition of prevention and a conceptual framework that emphasizes risk reduction. Highlighting opportunities for and barriers to interventions, the book draws on successful models for the prevention of cardiovascular disease, injuries, and smoking. In addition, it reviews the risk factors associated with Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia, alcohol abuse and dependence, depressive disorders, and conduct disorders and evaluates current illustrative prevention programs. The models and examination provide a framework for the design, application, and evaluation of interventions intended to prevent mental disorders and the transfer of knowledge about prevention from research to clinical practice. The book presents a focused research agenda, with recommendations on how to develop effective intervention programs, create a cadre of prevention researchers, and improve coordination among federal agencies.

What are my chances of completing this project successfully? What could prevent me? How can I anticipate potential threats? These are the kinds of questions you are likely to ask yourself when you become responsible for an important project. And these are the kinds of question Reducing Project Risk will help you answer. Drawing on examples from a variety of business activities as well as on their own extensive experience, the authors propose a systematic approach to dealing with risk. They provide both a conceptual framework and the practical techniques for identifying, analysing and controlling risks of any type. Among other things you will learn: ¢ how to carry out an objective review of the factors involved ¢ how to recognize the warning signs so that you can head off trouble before it strikes ¢ how to take care of the 'people side' of project management. Here is a book that will be welcomed not just by professional project managers but by anyone using human and material resources to accomplish a complex task.

As the culminating volume in the DCP3 series, volume 9 will provide an overview of DCP3 findings and methods, a summary of messages and substantive lessons to be taken from DCP3, and a further discussion of cross-cutting and synthesizing topics across the first eight volumes. The introductory chapters (1-3) in this volume take as their starting point the elements of the Essential Packages presented in the overview chapters of each volume. First, the chapter on intersectoral policy priorities for health includes fiscal and intersectoral policies and assembles a subset of the population policies and applies strict criteria for a low-income setting in order to propose a "highest-priority" essential package. Second, the chapter on packages of care and delivery platforms for universal health coverage (UHC) includes health sector interventions, primarily clinical and public health services, and uses the same approach to propose a highest priority package of interventions and policies that meet similar criteria, provides cost estimates, and describes a pathway to UHC.

For any software developer who has spent days in “integration hell,” cobbling together myriad software components, Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk illustrates how to transform integration from a necessary evil into an everyday part of the development process. The key, as the authors show, is to integrate regularly and often using continuous integration (CI) practices and techniques. The authors first examine the concept of CI and its practices from the ground up and then move on to explore other effective processes performed by CI systems, such as database integration, testing, inspection, deployment, and feedback. Through more than forty CI-related practices using application examples in different languages, readers learn that CI leads to more rapid software development, produces deployable software at every step in the development lifecycle, and reduces the time between defect introduction and detection, saving time and lowering costs. With successful implementation of CI, developers reduce risks and repetitive manual processes, and teams receive better project visibility. The book covers How to make integration a “non-event” on your software development projects How to reduce the amount of repetitive processes you perform when building your software Practices and techniques for using CI effectively with your teams Reducing the risks of late defect discovery, low-quality software, lack of visibility, and lack of deployable software Assessments of different CI servers and related tools on the market The book’s companion Web site, www.integratebutton.com, provides updates and code examples.

Reducing Adolescent Risk: Toward an Integrated Approach focuses on common influences that result in a number of interrelated risk behaviors in order to design more unified, comprehensive prevention strategies. Edited by Daniel Romer, this book summarizes presentations and discussions held at the Adolescent Risk Communication Institute of the University of Pennsylvania Annenberg Public Policy Center. Concentrating on common causes for varied risk behaviors, a group of leading researchers and intervention specialists from different health traditions synthesize current knowledge about risks to adolescent health in several areas, including drugs and alcohol, tobacco, unprotected sex, suicide and depression, and gambling. Primarily intended for graduate students, scholars, and researchers in psychology, sociology, social work, and public health, Reducing Adolescent Risk is also an extraordinary resource for policy makers in government organizations and foundations.

Topics include : risk assessment, disaster management, adjustment to the hazard (accepting, sharing, reducing loss), earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, snow avalances, storms, biophysical hazards (extreme temperatures, epidemics, frost, wildlifires), floods, droughts, technological hazards (i.e. Bhopal and Chernobyl), etc.