National healthcare as executed through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) was introduced in 2010, but was discussed for several decades prior to its enactment. Section 5210 of the ACA established funding for a Regular and Ready Reserve Corps (RRRC) to provide support to local healthcare entities with emergency preparedness. It is unknown what impact Section 5210 of the ACA has had on local emergency preparedness, as well as what obstacles are encountered with implementing this piece of legislation at the local level. The purpose of this case study was to understand the obstacles encountered at a local level by healthcare entities by combining rational choice theory and complex adaptive systems through Ostrom's institutional analysis and development theory. Data for this case study were obtained through interviews with 6 hospital emergency coordinators of hospitals in the Tennessee Highland Rim Region. These data were coded and analyzed following Moustakas' modified Van Kaam procedure. Findings from this study concluded that participants perceived that Section 5210 of the ACA did not impact hospital operations at the local level. However, other obstacles including employee turnover, communication, and process standardization and education are perceived to exist in terms of planning and emergency preparedness. The results of this study may impact social change by enhancing state and local policy makers' ability to identify and create a future roadmap for health care policy implementation at local and regional levels.

About 50% of adults in the United States suffer from at least 1 mental health challenge in their lifetime. Annually, mental health and substance use disorders cost the United States about $800 billion, leaving individuals with unaffordable cost of care and the nation with diminished productivity and revenue. With the Essential Health Benefits and Medicaid expansion under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), healthcare resources were created to address gaps in behavioral healthcare. There is a need to understand how the healthcare law has influenced the availability of behavioral health services and access to needed care. This study explored the lived experiences of 10 behavioral health service recipients to identify the benefits and challenges of the PPACA on behavioral health services. Participants from Anne Arundel County, Maryland, were purposefully selected and interviewed face-to-face. Relative advantage, compatibility, and complexity were characteristics of the diffusion of innovation theory used for the exploration of this research. Based on the interpretive phenomenological approach, Nvivo 11 Pro was used for data coding, management, organization, and analysis. There was the shared belief among participants that the PPACA improved their access to adequate and affordable behavioral healthcare. Effective network of care and having health insurance seemed to have improved health outcomes. Findings from this study highlight issues of common interest to healthcare stakeholders while providing reasonable platforms for objectively addressing complex challenges, which tend to undermine the possibility of adopting policies that could yield positive dividends for all parties involved.

Passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) in 2010 prompted the question of how independent businesses may react to the employer mandate in the PPACA. The law is based on the theory of managed competition and it is more likely to affect businesses with fewer employees than to affect larger businesses that already offer health insurance. The purpose of this quantitative, pre-experimental study was to examine the strategic responses of independent retail business owners in Hillsborough County, Florida, regarding their perceptions of the employer mandate in the PPACA. Before 2014, there was a great deal of non-peer-reviewed literature in which researchers made predictions about the PPACA and independent business perceptions regarding the new law. To determine independent business owners' perceptions of and strategies for addressing the PPACA, a random sample of 309 independent retail businesses in Hillsborough County was invited by e-mail to participate in an online survey. The quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, t tests for hypothesis testing, and chi-square goodness-of-fit analyses to confirm the results without using means. None of the alternative hypotheses were supported, indicating that the PPACA may not have an adverse effect on job creation for independent retail businesses in Hillsborough County. The findings of this study can indirectly promote positive social change by communicating to independent business owners and individuals that healthcare insurance options exist. This question was important to academics and business professionals, because the strategies employed by business owners may affect job creation.

Following the enactment of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010, politicians, media, and lobbyists rendered a number of conflicting and confusing interpretations of its merits and demerits. Such interpretations intensified the skepticism and concerns of small business enterprise (SBE) owners. The purpose of this study was to develop a representative, prioritized list of SBE owners' concerns or resistance factors. The goal was to create a useful guide for SBE owners who are seeking ways to reducing the adverse financial impact of the law. With social choice theory as the theoretical framework, 50 randomly selected SBE owners across 5 distinct industry groups from Richmond, Virginia, participated in an online, cross-sectional, pairwise comparison survey. The overall results of an analytic hierarchy process indicated that the top-ranked resistance factor of SBE owners was insurance premiums, followed by quality of care and the tax burden. However, these rankings were not uniform among industry groups. With a focus on these crucial concerns, SBE owners could benefit by seeking approaches to reduce the business costs of health care. The implications for positive social change include the potential for business organizations, researchers, and policymakers to channel SBE owners' voice for a socioeconomic growth by addressing their concerns in seeking improvements from the ACA.

African Americans as a group tend to have numerous health issues, and by the time they seek healthcare, the conditions often advance into more serious ailments. Researchers have shown that cultural distrust of the U.S. healthcare system coupled with some discriminatory practices has hindered African Americans seeking care and taking full advantage of the healthcare system. With the introduction of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), there is some confusion about the application of the law, resulting in many intended beneficiaries misinterpreting it, and not accessing quality healthcare. This interpretive phenomenological study explored how African Americans in the Washington D.C., metropolitan area understand and interpret ACA provisions related to their healthcare needs. A sample of 10 African Americans adults participated in in-depth interviews that generated data for this study. Critical communicative methodology provided a framework for exploring the phenomenon. Study findings highlight the themes of interpreting the ACA to mean having more individual control and responsibility for healthcare decisions and having fewer perceived restrictions acting as barriers to access healthcare. Study results contribute to social change by providing knowledge to those who implement healthcare policy on optimal policy delivery to intended beneficiaries. This knowledge may also apply to other new social policy dissemination, thus ensuring policies reach their intended target populations, facilitating optimal utilization.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) of 2010 requires hospital systems in the United States to shift the culture of patient care from a focus on sick-care to a focus on prevention and wellness care. Little is known about how hospital systems will make this culture shift while retaining quality patient care. The purpose of this case study of a pioneering hospital-based PPACA-compliant initiative was to answer the research question of how Wallace's revitalization movement theory (RMT) "a rapid culture change model"could serve as a transferable evaluation framework for PPACA prevention and wellness care compliance in hospital-based programs. Kingdon's policy streams theory provided a conceptual framework. Data analysis included iterative, thematic coding of interviews with 3 primary stakeholders responsible for developing the policy, planning, and program implementation strategies of the Center for Total Health (CTH). Nineteen extensive primary source documents were included in the analysis as well. Findings supported the utility of the RMT structure and definitions in the identification of culture change dynamics in CTH. Additionally, this structure served as a scaffolding for grouping individual and institutional rapid culture change dynamics into stages that could be evaluated in terms of PPACA compliance. These stages effectively identified a Kingdon policy window in which PPACA mandates could be expected to result in culture change in multiple streams of public policy development, not only in wellness and sickness prevention, but also in local, state, and national health cost-saving initiatives in food-as-medicine, community identity, public health support networks. It could also reduce chronic disease and the rising institutional care delivery costs.

<p><strong>Essay in Political Science, C-level, by Camila Alvarez Cea, spring semester 2010.</strong></p><p><strong> </strong></p><p><strong>Tutor: Alf Sundin</strong></p><p><strong>“Reality or a Political Mirage? – A Study of the Swedish Press Views on the Health Insurance Reform in the USA”</strong></p><p> </p><p>The purpose of this essay is partly to examine whether the picture that Swedish press presents of the health insurance reform in the US, which is part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Act bill, will be of crucial importance to the possibilities that the American population has to receive health insurance. The main research question is accordingly: <em>“Does the picture that Swedish press presents of the health insurance reform in the USA, seem like something that will be of radical importance to the possibilities of the population to receive healthcare?”</em> The purpose is also to examine in which model (demand or market) the opinions of the Swedish press fits. This purpose will be answered by using three specific questions asking whether their opinions differ when it comes to three criterions: organization, financing/resources and delivery systems. These criterions come from a model from Milton I. Roemer’s book “National health systems of the world,” which also is the theoretical foundation of this essay.</p><p> </p><p>The methodological approach of this essay is a qualitative text analysis along with an analysis chart, where the three criterions have been examined from the reporting of the four Swedish newspapers chosen for this essay. The conclusions that have been reached from the analysis chart are that the opinions differ greatly within Swedish press, and that the picture that Swedish press presents of the health insurance reform is that it will become easier for the American population to receive health care.</p>

In June 2012, the Supreme Court of the United States decided the fate of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in a case called National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius. While initially the decision seemed favorable to supporters of the bill, Chief Justice Roberts’ majority opinion could likely render the bill ineffective in implementation and it creates more Constitutionally confusing precedent than it resolves. Among the questions that now rise to the surface are: will Congress be able to raise the tax to a level where it will become effective? What is now mandatory for states to adopt into their Medicaid programs? Where is the line for the federal government with regards to coercion? What are the definitions of direct and indirect taxes? And, how binding is the Origination Clause of the Constitution?

This narrative inquiry explores how the Building Skills, Building Homes Project, which was undertaken in Saskatchewan, Canada from April November 2003, exemplified a learning strategy for self-sustainable community development through the straw bale construction of two buildings. Being self-sustainable involves searching for an interconnected way of living with our environment. Finding a strategy that connects what is ecologically sound, such as straw bale construction, with current modes of living, is a complex process that necessitates new kinds of community education relationships. A retrospective analysis of the authors experience with the project and a conversational interview with one of the participants of the Building Skills, Building Homes Project will illustrate the adult learning that happens between learners working together on a joint project, which facilitates a growing awareness of what self-sustainable living entails. The research question framing this study is: What links can community educators make using the Building Skills, Building Homes Project as an example of ecological community sustainability?

This degree project is about sustainable low-cost housing in Ethiopia with a focus on CSSB-technology, which is one method of constructing houses. The project allowed me to visit Ethiopia during seven weeks in 2010, to observe, gather information and to perform tests regarding the specific subject. It is a sub-project to a larger research project initiated in 2002 at Halmstad University in an attempt to introduce low-cost housing technologies for the Kambaata Region in Ethiopia. The aim of the research project has been to develop and test new, sustainable, low-cost building technologies intended for the population, with regard to local traditions, needs and affordability. / Sustainable Low-Cost Housing for the Kambaata region in Ethiopia