This research seeks to determine the necessary conditions for the United States to host another Olympic Games. To lay the foundation for my research, I historically trace the declining number of cities bidding for the Olympics. While exogenous factors such as political protests, terrorist acts, and boycotts contribute to a decline in the number of candidate cities from 1968 to 1984, modern disinterest in hosting the Olympics is motivated by endogenous dynamics derived from the bidding process. To determine how the bidding process affects the likelihood of hosting the Olympics and uncover the roots of successful bids, I analyze four case studies of former United States bids. These case studies include: Denver’s withdrawn bid for the 1976 Winter Olympics, Los Angeles’ successful bid for the 1984 Games, Boston’s relinquished bid for the 2024 Olympics, and consequentially, Los Angeles’ bid for the 2024 Olympics. I argue the structure of the bidding process inherently favors special interests with the most to gain from hosting the Games at the expense of the city as a whole. Stemming from the central condition of public support, I deduce six underlying conditions that are pivotal for successful bids: 1) the use of existing facilities and infrastructure; 2) absence of opposition groups; 3) private funding; 4) ‘insurance’ measures against cost overruns; 5) alignment of Olympic plans and urban development; and 6) greater use of the region. These conditions do not guarantee a successful Olympic bid, but are fundamental for the Olympic Games to return to the United States.

The Child Abuse Committee in the University of Oregon Medical School was formed in 1966 to help the staff recognize child abuse cases and do something about them. This research report is an evaluation of their effectiveness as I an agency attempting to prevent further injury to the children involved. Indications are that timely intervention and subsequent "follow through" have been helpful to the families and improved the situation substantially. A study of the abuse cases seen through the hospital for the calendar years of 1969 and 1970 revealed that almost all of the children from these study years who were seriously injured came from two parent homes with their natural parents. Comparisons between the two study years indicate a more comprehensive handling of suspected abuse cases in 1970 with corresponding improvement in outcome.

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The objective of this study was to gain increased knowledge regarding BlackRock’s ability to influence their Swedish owned companies. The scope of this thesis has been to study eight companies where BlackRock have holdings. The actions of BlackRock are studied from two approaches, direct influence and indirect influence based on the literature review. The direct influence is a formal approach, including information regarding BlackRock’s participation in the nomination committee, the board of directors and their votes during the annual general meetings. The indirect influence consists of non-legal binding activities and includes information regarding BlackRock’s use of broad-based communication in form of CEO letter, where interpretations of the CEO letter have been compared to the studied companies’ annual reports. The study uses a qualitative method strategy with a deductive approach, together with data triangulation. The collected results and the analysis showed that BlackRock uses both direct and indirect methods to influence and deviates from the Swedish corporate code of governance in their methods of influence. One of the conclusions was that BlackRock, with their CEO letter, managed to influence their owned companies in regards to sustainability reporting according to SASB och TCFD framework.

There is an increasing need for companies to act more responsibly in sustainability related issues due to pressures from their stakeholders. This increased pressure comes with a corresponding need for companies to report on their actions. As the stakeholders of companies do not have the opportunity to assess the credibility of the reporting themselves, the responsibility falls upon a third party to give assurance on the contents of the report. The assurance of such will be an important part in providing reliability to the sustainability work and report. One important corporate governance function responsible for overseeing the sustainability reporting and the assurance thereof is the audit committee. Therefore, this study will examine the effect of audit committee characteristics on the quality of sustainability assurance. Due to the novelty of the concept of sustainability assurance and as not many previous studies have addressed the issue of the quality, the authors proposed the following research question: “How do audit committee characteristics influencesustainability assurance quality?”. The findings from the study are analyzed through the shareholder-stakeholder theory, legitimacy theory, agency theory and the resource dependency theory. The shareholder-stakeholder and legitimacy theory are used to analyze the audit committees role as a governance function and the agency and resource dependency theory are applied to the different characteristics. This quantitative study includes data from the top 100 publicly listed companies in Sweden with a separate audit committee appointed by and amongst the board. The study uses observations from the fiscal year 2021, with data collected through content analysis. This thesis is conducted under a positivist paradigm, with a deductive approach. The data is tested through OLS regression, and the analysis is conducted with grounds in previous literature and theory. The results of this study are in some respects in line with a previous study but has also found differing results. Companies with audit committees with at least one member with industry expertise are more likely to have higher quality assurance on their sustainability report. Apart from the previous study, this study did not find a significant relationship of the independence and meeting frequency of audit committees. A significant relationship was neither found to the gender diversity, size, or experience of audit committees. Therefore, the authors can conclude that the research question is answered and that the results indicate that the audit committee may not be the best explanatory basis for the quality of sustainability assurance.

Magister Public Health - MPH / Disparity in health service delivery between Ghana’s urban and rural areas has been noted to have contributed significantly to the huge gap that exists in health status between the rural and urban areas in the country. Consequently, since the Alma Ata Conference in 1979, Ghana has had a policy of making community-based services available to all, through community-based care and has adopted the Community-based Health Planning and Services (CHPS) Initiative as a national health reforms strategy to mobilize volunteerism, resources and cultural institutions for supporting community-based primary health care. The successful implementation of the CHPS initiative rests heavily on the participation and involvement of the communities.

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