Implementation of Clean Indoor Air Laws: Complaints, Citations, and Fines or Sanctions Related to Possible Violations of the Kansas Clean Indoor Air Act.

Objective: To determine how well the Kansas Clean Indoor Air Act was being observed and enforced.

Design: A survey inquired about complaints, citations, and fines or sanctions after the implementation of the Kansas Clean Indoor Air Act; inquiry was also made about the law's effectiveness. Descriptive statistics and Poisson tests of statistical significance were used.

Factors affecting the progress of community health assessment and improvement activities in kansas.

Context: Community health assessment (CHA) and community health improvement planning (CHIP) are important functions for local health departments (LHDs) but may present challenges, particularly in rural settings.

Objective: The purpose of this 2-year, mixed-methods study was to identify factors that impede or promote the timeliness and quality of CHA-CHIP completion in Kansas.

Design: Focus group interviews, conducted at baseline (2012) and at 1 year (2013), included 15 and 21 groups, respectively.

Voices across Kansas: community health assessment and improvement efforts among local health departments.

Context: Community health assessment (CHA) and community health improvement planning (CHIP) is central to public health accreditation and essential functions and therefore important to local health departments (LHDs). However, rural states face significant challenges to pursue public health accreditation.

Objective: The purpose of this statewide study was to identify factors that impede or promote the timeliness of CHA and CHIP completion.

The role of race and ethnicity in the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) in four states: are there baseline disparities, and what do they mean for SCHIP?

Background: Elimination of racial and ethnic disparities in health has become a major national goal. The State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) has the potential to reduce disparities among the children who enroll if they exhibit the same disparities that have been documented in previous studies of low-income children. To determine the potential impact of SCHIP on racial and ethnic disparities, it is critical to assess baseline levels of health disparities among children enrolling in SCHIP.

Children with special health care needs enrolled in the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP): patient characteristics and health care needs.

Background: Children with special health care needs (CSHCN) often require more extensive services than children without special needs. The State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) in many states typically provides less extensive benefits and services than do state Medicaid programs. To design SCHIP to address the needs of CSHCN adequately, it is important to measure the degree to which children who enroll in SCHIP have special health care needs and to assess their health status and unmet health care needs.

Who's enrolled in the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP)? An overview of findings from the Child Health Insurance Research Initiative (CHIRI).

Background: The State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) was enacted in 1997 to provide health insurance coverage to uninsured low-income children from families who earned too much to be eligible for Medicaid.

Objectives: To develop a "baseline" portrait of SCHIP enrollees in 5 states (Alabama, Florida, Kansas, Indiana, and New York) by examining: 1) SCHIP enrollees' demographic characteristics and health care experiences before enrolling in SCHIP, particularly children with special health care needs (CSHCN), racial and ethnic minority children, and adolescents; 2) the quality of the care adolescents received before enrollment; and 3) the changes in enrollee characteristics as programs evolve and mature.

Methods: Each of 5 projects from the Child Health Insurance Research Initiative (CHIRI) surveyed new SCHIP enrollees as identified by state enrollment data.

Performance of a mail-administered version of a stroke-specific outcome measure, the Stroke Impact Scale.

Objective: To evaluate the feasibility and concurrent validity of a new, mail-administered, stroke-specific outcome measure, the Stroke Impact Scale (SIS).

Design: Observational cohort study.

Setting And Patients: Stroke patients who had lived independently in the community prior to their stroke and who were candidates for post-stroke rehabilitation were recruited from nine, high-volume, Department of Veteran Affairs Medical Centers.

Adherence to postacute rehabilitation guidelines is associated with functional recovery in stroke.

Background And Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine if compliance with poststroke rehabilitation guidelines was associated with better functional outcomes.

Methods: An inception cohort of 288 stroke patients in 11 Department of Veteran Affairs Medical Centers hospitalized between January 1998 and March 1999 were followed prospectively for 6 months. Data were abstracted from medical records and telephone interviews.