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American Journal of Preventive Medicine Dec 2021In the U.S., state-level household firearm ownership is strongly associated with firearm suicide mortality rates. Whether the recent increases in firearm suicide are...
INTRODUCTION
In the U.S., state-level household firearm ownership is strongly associated with firearm suicide mortality rates. Whether the recent increases in firearm suicide are explained by state-level household firearm ownership rates and trends remains unknown.
METHODS
Mortality data from the U.S. National Vital Statistics System and an estimate of state-level household firearm ownership rate were used to conduct hierarchical age-period-cohort (random-effects) modeling of firearm suicide mortality between 2001 and 2016. Models were adjusted for individual-level race and sex and for state-level poverty rate, unemployment rate, median household income in U.S. dollars, population density, and elevation.
RESULTS
Between 2001 and 2016, the crude national firearm suicide mortality rate increased from 6.8 to 8.0 per 100,000, and household firearm ownership rate remained relatively stable, at around 40%. Both variables were markedly heterogeneous and correlated at the state level. Age-period-cohort models revealed period effects (affecting people across ages) and cohort effects (affecting specific birth cohorts) underlying the recent increases in firearm suicide. Individuals born after 2000 had higher firearm suicide rates than most cohorts born before. A 2001-2006 decreasing period effect was followed, after 2009, by an increasing period effect that peaked in 2015. State-level household firearm ownership rates and trends did not explain cohort effects and only minimally explained period effects.
CONCLUSIONS
State-level firearm ownership rates largely explain the state-level differences in firearm suicide but only marginally explain recent increases in firearm suicide. Although firearms in the home increase firearm suicide risk, the recent national rise in firearm suicide might be the result of broader, more distal causes of suicide risk.
Topics: Firearms; Humans; Ownership; Poverty; Suicide; Unemployment; United States
PubMed: 34420829
DOI: 10.1016/j.amepre.2021.05.026 -
Journal of Applied Clinical Medical... May 2018
Topics: Ownership; Publishing
PubMed: 29691966
DOI: 10.1002/acm2.12335 -
Injury Prevention : Journal of the... Oct 2022Research surrounding firearm ownership is often contextualised within the perspectives of older white men. We expand this description using the perceptions of a diverse...
OBJECTIVE
Research surrounding firearm ownership is often contextualised within the perspectives of older white men. We expand this description using the perceptions of a diverse group of firearm-owning stakeholders.
METHODS
We conducted semistructured interviews from October 2020 to May 2021 with Colorado/Washington State stakeholders representing (1) firearm ranges/retailers; (2) law enforcement agencies or (3) relevant state/national firearm organisations. Data were analysed using standard qualitative techniques and included 25 participants, representing varied sociocultural groups including racial and ethnic minorities, political minorities and sexual minorities.
RESULTS
Participants for this analysis were of different self-identified sociocultural groups including racial and ethnic minorities (African American, Hispanic and Asian), political minorities (liberal) and sexual minorities, defined as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT). Perspectives on firearm ownership included an idea of gun culture as a component of (1) personal identity, (2) an expression of full citizenship and (3) necessary for self-protection. A strong subtheme was the intersection of minority group and firearm owner identities, creating a need for divergent social communities because of ideas on traditional gun culture. These communities are a safe place for individuals belonging to minority groups to escape negative external and internal group associations with firearms.
CONCLUSION
Perspectives on firearms and firearm ownership in the secondary analysis were heterogeneous and related to personal experiences, external and internal group pressures that influence individual behaviour. Understanding the breadth of perspectives on firearm ownership is imperative to engaging individuals for risk reduction. This study adds to the literature by expanding an understanding of the motivation for firearm ownership among diverse communities.
Topics: Black or African American; Female; Firearms; Hispanic or Latino; Humans; Male; Ownership; Qualitative Research
PubMed: 35470245
DOI: 10.1136/injuryprev-2022-044522 -
PloS One 2018Based on the database data of Chinese industrial enterprises from 2000 to 2007 and the LP method, this paper measures the total factor productivity of enterprises and... (Review)
Review
Based on the database data of Chinese industrial enterprises from 2000 to 2007 and the LP method, this paper measures the total factor productivity of enterprises and investigates the effect of different mixed ownership forms on enterprises' efficiency and the effect of heterogeneous ownership balance on the mixed ownership enterprises' efficiency. The state-owned enterprise and mixed ownership enterprise are identified by the enterprise's paid-up capital. The results show that, on the whole, for the mixed ownership enterprise, the higher the diversification degree of the shareholders is, the higher the efficiency becomes, and in different types of industries, the mixed forms of shareholders have different effects on the efficiency of enterprises. The heterogeneous ownership balance and the enterprise efficiency show nonlinear U-type relationships. Both the higher and lower heterogeneous ownership balance degrees will promote the enterprise's efficiency. However, when the ownership balance degree is in the range of [0.2 0.5], the increase in ownership balance will lead to the decline of enterprise efficiency. Therefore, when introducing non-state-owned capital, state-owned enterprises should take full account of their own characteristics by rationally controlling the shareholding ratio of non-state-owned capital and play the positive role of a mixed ownership structure in corporate governance with appropriate ownership balances.
Topics: Algorithms; China; Efficiency; Humans; Industry; Models, Theoretical; Ownership; Research
PubMed: 29614126
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0194433 -
Scientific Reports Jul 2022In the illusory body ownership, humans feel as if a rubber hand or an avatar in a virtual environment is their own body through visual-tactile synchronization or...
In the illusory body ownership, humans feel as if a rubber hand or an avatar in a virtual environment is their own body through visual-tactile synchronization or visual-motor synchronization. Despite the onset time and duration of illusory body ownership has been investigated, it is not clear how the onset time and duration change when a part of the body is missing from the full-body. In this study, we investigated the completeness of the full-body for the illusion onset and duration by comparing the following conditions: complete avatar, avatar missing hands and feet, and avatar with hands and feet only. Our results suggest that avatar hands and feet only shorten the duration of the illusion, and missing body parts, such as only hands and feet or no hands and feet, reduce the sense of body ownership and of agency. However, the effects of avatar completeness on the onset time are unclear, and no conclusions can be made in either direction based on the current findings.
Topics: Foot; Hand; Humans; Illusions; Ownership; Visual Perception
PubMed: 35821275
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-022-15835-x -
Journal of Autism and Developmental... Nov 2021This study investigated how autism spectrum disorder (ASD) impacts children's ability to identify ownership from linguistic cues (proper nouns vs. possessive pronouns)...
This study investigated how autism spectrum disorder (ASD) impacts children's ability to identify ownership from linguistic cues (proper nouns vs. possessive pronouns) and their awareness of ownership rights. In comparison to typically developing (TD) children matched on receptive language (M age equivalents: 53-56 months), children with ASD were less accurate at tracking owner-object relationships based on possessive pronouns and were less accurate at identifying the property of third parties. We also found that children with ASD were less likely to defend their own and others' ownership rights. We hypothesise that these results may be attributed to differences in representing the self and propose that ASD may be characterised by reduced concern for ownership and associated concepts.
Topics: Autism Spectrum Disorder; Autistic Disorder; Child; Child Development; Child, Preschool; Humans; Ownership
PubMed: 33492538
DOI: 10.1007/s10803-021-04872-6 -
Vision Research Sep 2021Rubin's face-vase illusion demonstrates how one can switch back and forth between two different interpretations depending on how the figure outlines are assigned. In the...
Rubin's face-vase illusion demonstrates how one can switch back and forth between two different interpretations depending on how the figure outlines are assigned. In the primate visual system, assigning ownership along figure borders is encoded by neurons called the border ownership (BO) cells. Studies show that the responses of these neurons not only depend on the local features within their receptive fields, but also on contextual information. Despite two decades of studies on BO neurons, the ownership assignment mechanism in the brain is still unknown. Here, we propose a hierarchical recurrent model grounded on the hypothesis that neurons in the dorsal stream provide the context required for ownership assignment. Our proposed model incorporates early recurrence from the dorsal pathway as well as lateral modulations within the ventral stream. While dorsal modulations initiate the response difference to figure on either side of the border, lateral modulations enhance the difference. We found responses of our dorsally-modulated BO cells, similar to their biological counterparts, are invariant to size, position and solid/outlined figures. Moreover, our model BO cells exhibit comparable levels of reliability in the ownership signal to biological BO neurons. We found dorsal modulations result in high levels of accuracy and robustness for BO assignments in complex scenes compared to previous models based on ventral feedback. Finally, our experiments with illusory contours suggest that BO encoding could explain the perception of such contours in higher processing stages in the brain.
Topics: Animals; Ownership; Pattern Recognition, Visual; Photic Stimulation; Reproducibility of Results; Visual Cortex
PubMed: 34023589
DOI: 10.1016/j.visres.2021.04.009 -
PloS One 2023The strategic choice of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) is crucial to the sustainable development of China's economy. This paper explores the impact of mixed-ownership...
The strategic choice of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) is crucial to the sustainable development of China's economy. This paper explores the impact of mixed-ownership reform on the strategic choice of SOEs from the shareholder power and the board power. We find that the greater the diversity of mixed shareholders, the depth of mixed equity, the control of mixed equity, and the excess control of mixed equity, the higher the degree of mixed-ownership reform, and the more likely it is to promote SOEs to choose the prospector strategy. The mechanism test states that the impact of mixed-ownership reform on enterprise strategy is achieved through the balance effect between non-state-owned shareholders and state-owned controlling shareholders with the same power, and the synergy effect between different powers of non-state shareholders. Further research indicates that the mixed-ownership reform has a stronger driving effect on the prospector strategy in SOEs under strict external supervision, competitive industries, and local areas. This study clarifies the governance logic of non-state-owned shareholders on the strategic positioning of SOEs by dual control rights, and it provides empirical evidence for the formulation of enterprises' market-oriented strategic objectives.
Topics: China; Industry; Ownership; Sustainable Development
PubMed: 37083868
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0284722 -
Health Affairs (Project Hope) Dec 2021Physician practices are increasingly being acquired by hospitals and health systems. Despite evidence that this type of vertical integration is profitable for hospitals,...
Physician practices are increasingly being acquired by hospitals and health systems. Despite evidence that this type of vertical integration is profitable for hospitals, the association between these acquisitions and the incomes of physicians in the acquired practices is unknown. We combined national survey data on physician practice ownership with data on physician income to examine whether hospital or health system ownership of physician practices was associated with differences in physician income during 2014-18. During the study period, hospital and health system ownership of physician practices increased by 89.2 percent, from 24.1 percent to 45.6 percent of all physicians in our sample. Among physician practices overall, vertical integration with hospitals or health systems was associated with, on average, 0.8 percent lower income compared with independent physicians after multivariable adjustment. In analyses by physician specialty, vertical integration of physician practices with hospitals or health systems was associated with lower income for nonsurgical specialists, no difference in income for primary care physicians, and slightly higher income for surgical specialists. Although vertical integration of physician practices is a rapidly growing trend, physicians might not directly benefit financially.
Topics: Hospitals; Humans; Income; Ownership; Physicians; Specialization; United States
PubMed: 34871086
DOI: 10.1377/hlthaff.2021.01007 -
The Milbank Quarterly Jun 2023Policy Points Over the past century, the tax-financed share of health care spending has risen from 9% in 1923 to 69% in 2020; a large part of this tax financing is now...
UNLABELLED
Policy Points Over the past century, the tax-financed share of health care spending has risen from 9% in 1923 to 69% in 2020; a large part of this tax financing is now the subsidization of private health insurance. For-profit ownership of health care facilities has also increased in recent decades and now predominates for many health subsectors. A rising share of physicians are now employees. US health care is, increasingly, publicly financed yet investor owned, a trend that has been accompanied by rising medical costs and, in recent years, stagnating or even worsening population health. A reconsideration of US health care financing and ownership appears warranted.
CONTEXT
Who pays for health care-and who owns it-determine what care is delivered, who receives it, and who profits from it. We examined trends in health care ownership and financing over a century.
METHODS
We used multiple historical and current data sources (including data from the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, government publications and surveys, and analyses of Medicare Provider of Services files) to classify health care provider ownership as: public, private (for-profit), and private (not-for-profit). We used US Census data to classify physicians' employers as public, not-for-profit, or for-profit entities or "self-employed." We combined estimates from the official National Health Expenditures Accounts with other data sources to determine the public vs. private share of health care spending since 1923; we calculated a "comprehensive" public share metric that accounted for public subsidization of private health expenditures, mostly via the tax exemption for employer-sponsored insurance plans or government purchase of such plans for public employees.
FINDINGS
For-profit ownership of most health care subsectors has risen in recent decades and now predominates in several (including nursing facilities, ambulatory surgical facilities, dialysis facilities, hospices, and home health agencies). However, most community hospitals remain not-for-profit. Additionally, over the past century, a growing share of physicians identify as employees. Meanwhile, the comprehensive taxpayer-financed share of health care spending has increased dramatically from 9% in 1923 to 69% in 2020, with taxpayer-financed subsidies to private expenditures accounting for much of the recent growth.
CONCLUSIONS
American health care is increasingly publicly financed yet investor owned, a trend accompanied by rising costs and, recently, worsening population health. A reassessment of the US mode of health care financing and ownership appears warranted.
Topics: Aged; United States; Humans; Ownership; Medicare; Delivery of Health Care; Health Expenditures; Insurance, Health; Financing, Government
PubMed: 37093703
DOI: 10.1111/1468-0009.12647