<p> After decades of global intervention to conquer diseases, healthcare in many countries is still lacking. Assessments of medical laboratories in developing countries today find poor infrastructure conditions with no standardized processes or quality assurance to guarantee accurate results and enable quality healthcare. Bringing healthcare programs in developing countries up to international standards remains a challenge. </p><p> Currently, there is a scarcity of scientific research related to the determinants of success in implementing quality management systems (QMS). There has been little research dedicated to identifying the critical success factors for medical laboratories striving to improve the accuracy and reliability of their testing services in developing countries. </p><p> In over nine years of research, the author realized there was a need for incorporating Critical Success Factor (CFS) methodology into laboratory modernization efforts. This time frame included CDC sponsored trips to several African countries and collaborating with the Vietnam Administration for Medical Services/Ministry of Health (VAMS), Centers for Disease Control-Vietnam (CDC-vn) and seven universities to build laboratory capacity and initiate laboratory improvements to meet national and international laboratory standards. In 2017, VAMS approved a proposed study to identify CSFs in four laboratories in Vietnam. </p><p> The research question this study sought to answer was "What are the top five critical success factors for successful implementation of QMS into laboratories in Vietnam?" with an outcome of improved accuracy and reliability of testing results. This study utilized both qualitative and quantitative research methods employing principles of descriptive research. A demographic survey, semi-structured interview, content analysis, and benchmarking were utilized to identify the top five CSFs and barriers. Content analysis was employed to review CSF definitions and categorize all 220 listed CSFs into ten comprehensive and mutually exhaustive categories. Two research assistants assisted the researcher place each CSF into one of the ten categories. Rigorous and non-rigorous methods measured interrater reliability with the categorization of CSFs. Cohen Kappa values were > 0.85 indicating excellent reliability and accuracy between the assistants and the researcher. Chi-square values were all > 0.05 (p &lt; 0.05) indicating demographic variables did not statistically impact findings. </p><p> Qualitative responses were gathered through personal interviews, a demographic survey, and benchmarking. Using a stratified convenience sampling, participants represented four levels of stakeholders: laboratory staff, laboratory managers, hospital administrators, and clinicians utilizing laboratory services. </p><p> Data from this study found the top five CSFs were: staff knowledge of QMS, laboratory management leadership knowledge and skills, staff commitment to the QMS change process, mentorship, and hospital administration support. In addition to determining the top five CSFs, the study revealed information about encountered or perceived barriers to successful QMS implementation. The participants in this study identified lack of staff knowledge on QMS, lack of financial support from the hospital administration, ineffective laboratory manager leadership knowledge and skills, lack of laboratory infrastructure, and lack of sufficient resources. </p><p> The study&rsquo;s findings add to the body of knowledge in strengthening medical laboratory services and may serve as a basis for continued research in this area of health care. Local, national, and international partners may use this information to tailor training materials and activities to better meet the needs of participating laboratories across Vietnam.</p><p>

This project delineates a cultural history of modern Hinduism in conversation with contemporary Indian literature. Its central focus is literary adaptations of the Sanskrit epic the Mahābhārata, in English, Hindi, and Bengali. Among Hindu religious texts, this epic has been most persistently reproduced in literary and popular discourses because its scale matches the grandeur of the Indian national imagining. Further, many epic adaptations explicitly invite devotion to the nation, often emboldening conservative Hindu nationalism. This interdisciplinary project draws its methodology from literary theory, history, gender, and religious studies. Little scholarship has put Indian Anglophone literatures in conversation with other Indian literary traditions. To fill this gap, I chart a history of literary and cultural transactions between both India and Britain and among numerous vernacular, classical, and Anglophone traditions within India. Paying attention to gender, caste, and cultural hegemony, I demostrate how epic adaptations both narrate and contest the contours of the Indian nation.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(人間・環境学) / 甲第21848号 / 人博第877号 / 新制||人||210(附属図書館) / 2018||人博||877(吉田南総合図書館) / 京都大学大学院人間・環境学研究科相関環境学専攻 / (主査)教授 市岡 孝朗, 教授 加藤 眞, 教授 瀬戸口 浩彰, 准教授 西川 完途 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Human and Environmental Studies / Kyoto University / DGAM

This dissertation uses discursive formation as the methodological approach to examine representations of Indian Christians in eleven Bollywood movies released during the 2004-2014 decade. The decade witnessed the exit and eventual re-entry of the Hindu Right, and the citizenry during that period experienced centrist, liberal, and secular governance. Since the present of Indian Christianity is inextricable from a colonial past, and Bollywood emerges in response to colonialism, a postcolonial intervention in methodology and theory is undertaken. A postcolonial perspective illuminates the discourses that enable the formation of the postcolonial nation, i.e., the ways a nation imagines its culture, people, traditions, boundaries, and Others. There is a suggested relationship between the representations of Indian Christians in Bollywood movies and the decade of secular governance because the analysis is approached from the position that culture and media produce and re-produce each other. The representations of Christians in Bollywood movies are a product of contemporary and historical cultural, legal, political, and social discourses. This dissertation demonstrates that representations of Christians as hypersexual women and emasculated men within an emergent Hindu modernity discursively constructs India as a Hindu nation, and Christians as the westernized Other. The theoretical contributions pertain to belonging in the nation through homonationalism and hypersexualization; the relationship between democratic representations and media; the postcolonial ambivalent identity of the Bollywood industry because of way it represents Indian Christians in response to colonialism; and the Indian Christian community’s postcolonial identity as a way to make sense of their contemporary and historical identity.

Little existing research examines how Vietnamese American individuals conceptualize wellness in relation to the community in which they live. Fewer studies examine the ways in which communities of Vietnamese expatriates form networks of support, based around community resources. Even fewer, if any, focus on these qualities within the context of Boston’s own Little Saigon – Fields Corner. This ethnography analyzes discussions with and observations of individuals living in a predominantly Vietnamese neighborhood in Boston who are a part of a support group for families of children with special needs. Through this analysis, two key themes emerge. First, through the learning of information and sharing of knowledge, this Network’s connections have impacts far beyond the four walls of their bi-weekly meeting space. Second, wellness for the parents in this group is directly tied to existing as a part of a community support network which allows them to successfully navigate three distinct institutions of care for their children – the medical and special education systems, as well as the expression of Vietnamese culture that exists in this neighborhood. I argue that in discussions with members of this support group, it is necessary to focus on channels alternative to biomedical mental health services when confronting the pursuit of a life worth living. This network acts as a site of social change through parental advocacy for their children’s flourishing within various institutions. Parents then act as vectors of consciousness to raise awareness for specific action. Within this context, parents are enabled to fight for their definition of a life worth living and their personal wellbeing.

As part of his anthropological fieldwork, in January 1958 Daniel J. Scheans took a census of Suba, an Ilokano barrio in Paoay, Ilocos Norte, the Philippines. The purpose of the thesis was. to use the Suban data to develop, describe and.test a method for analyzing census data for small populations (1000 or fewer persons). The method was to be complete, to generate as much information as possible based on the data collected, to expose weaknesses and gaps in the data collected and in the data collection procedures, to aid future census-takers .in structuring the content of and procedures for taking a census, to be computerized for speed and ease of analysis and adjustment, and to furnish data sufficiently free from methodological variations to allow meaningful comparisons of different populations.

Nonverbal communication is especially significant in the area of intercultural communication. Familiar signals often signify and convey different and unexpected messages, usually out-of-awareness, and then unfamiliar stimuli cause confusion and uneasiness. This is a report of Thai NVC, which intends (1) to describe selected Thai nonverbal behavior, (2) to relate these to appropriate time and context, (3) to explain a cultural component that makes the behaviors acceptable and/or mandatory, and (4) to report how Thai nonverbal behaviors may affect intercultural and cross-cultural communication. Selected Thai nonverbal messages are described: (1) nonverbal signals: the sign language of wai, the kinesthetic behaviors of eye movement, and hand movements which include receiving, pointing, indicating farewell, rejection, negation, disagreement, beckoning, applause, counting, bad odor signal, insulting signal, and angry and friendly signals, (2) nonverbal action: the action of feet and khwan, postures which include sitting, walking and standing, (3) object language: four religious ceremonies of lod khrc kaaw pun, dam hua, wai khruu, and wi sa kha bu chaa; the use of artifacts: phra cee dii, phra phud tharubb, khryan raan ta krud, (dta gkroot) and jan, colors (clothing) which includes yellow, khaki, blue, red, daily color, black and white, the material orientation to directions such as staircase positions; cooking art which includes breakfast and eating, (4) paralanguage: the Thai linguistic parallel to paralanguage, especially vocal intensity (loudness and softness), (5) personal and social distance which includes proxemic behaviors of infancy, late childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, and male and female public positions, and male and female sleeping positions (6) olfaction: artificial scents and natural body odors, and finally (7) skin sensitivity: touch and temperature. The method used to gather data was through participant observation. The descriptions of these illustrative Thai NVC behaviors are drawn from the writer's personal firsthand knowledge of Thai life, from Thai informants, his field work experiences as a research assistant to a Cornell University anthropologist in Thailand, from his experience as an interpreter-translator for the U.S. Army there, and his observations of Thai nonverbal behaviors among Thai migrants and student s in many natural settings in ·the United States of America. The approach of “Participant Observation” is a social and cultural anthropological technique best described by Bruyn. The study shows that Thais are rigidly taught behaviors early in life, which portray nonverbal messages. These become a part of Thai cultural communication norms. Thus, Thais communicate through explicit and unquestioned sets of norms, using proper, desirable, and appropriate behavior for them. Since these cultural norms are taught early in life, they are out-of-awareness and deeply ingrained. Evidence is given that Thai NVC behavior is culturally interpreted. In intercultural and cross-cultural communication, this should be taken into consideration to prevent erroneous interpretation.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(人間・環境学) / 甲第19070号 / 人博第723号 / 新制||人||173(附属図書館) / 26||人博||723(吉田南総合図書館) / 32021 / 京都大学大学院人間・環境学研究科相関環境学専攻 / (主査)教授 市岡 孝朗, 教授 加藤 眞, 教授 瀬戸口 浩彰 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Human and Environmental Studies / Kyoto University / DGAM

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