Monthly Archives: January 2022

Healthcare cash plans have evolved to satisfy modern demands for healthier lifestyles in a Covid-19 world. Today, cash plans are a world away from their humble beginnings, offering greater choice and faster and cheaper access to a range of varied services.

COVER and Medicash explore the changing nature of health cash plans in 2022; from new technological advancements in the world of healthcare, to a focus on preventative services and the challenge of keeping services affordable and on employees' radar in a post-Covid-19 new normal. How can you ensure you keep up with the cash plan evolution?

Read the eBook here

Including interviews with Medicash chief executive, Sue Weir, and insights from numerous health insurance experts, the eBook is split into three sections, examining the past, present and future of the health cash plan.

The Past' section examines the transformation of the cash plan from the "unrecognisable" product to the one we are familiar with today; the "Present" section includes articles on how the health cash plan has adapted to the remote working revolution, the evolution of the virtual GP service as part of the cash plan, and how health cash plans help differentiate employers in a crowded market; while the Future' section looks at how cash plans will have to adapt to the workplace of the future.

Read the eBook here

Excerpt from:

The health cash plan's evolution for a new normal - COVER

25 Years for Children: Understanding the Past to Inspire the Future

A new study published today takes stock of the challenges and achievements of the Children and Armed Conflict (CAAC) mandate based on 25 years of existence and suggests a renewed way forward to invigorate the protection of children affected by armed conflict based on prevention, collaboration, reintegration, and a strengthened monitoring mechanism.

The Study on the evolution of the Children and Armed Conflict mandate 1996-2021, the first comprehensive study to analyse in a holistic manner the challenges, opportunities, and successes in delivering the United Nations CAAC mandate since its creation in 1996, will be launched today during a high-level event co-hosted by Norway and other co-sponsors to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the mandate.

We have come a long way since the establishment of the Children and Armed Conflict mandate 25 years ago. Understanding how the mandate has evolved and how it has been implemented over the years can assist the international community to better prepare the next 25 years, while providing an opportunity to renew our commitment to the protection of children from armed conflict and the prevention of grave violations, emphasized the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict, Virginia Gamba.

The study was produced by the Office of the Special Representative and presents the evolution of the CAAC mandate since its inception by the adoption of Resolution 51/77 by the General Assembly in 1996. Extensive consultancies have been conducted with Member States, UN entities, and civil society organizations throughout 2021 to support and infuse the development of the study and the Special Representative is grateful to all who contributed for their valuable inputs and observations.

The study provides a photography of the current situation of my mandate, as we mark its 25th anniversary. But it opens the window to a strengthened way forward by highlighting some collective recommendations to inspire the next 25 years, as we increase our engagement to ensure a better protection of children in situations of armed conflict worldwide, added Virginia Gamba.

Since children are at the heart of the mandate, their voices and messages are also central to this study and have been included through focus group discussions and consultations facilitated by the Dallaire Institute, Defence for Children International, and the International Rescue Committee.

Giving children living amidst hostilities a voice remains the core of the Children and Armed Conflict mandate, as their needs are the ones that guide us in our efforts to better protect them protecting them. Today I ask the international community to renew its commitment for conflict-affected children and do more, do better to protect them from harm, and to redouble efforts to end all violations against children in situations of armed conflict, added Virginia Gamba

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For additional information, please contact:

Fabienne Vinet, Communications Officer, Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict+1-212-963-5986 (office) / +1-917-288-5791 (mobile) / vinet@un.org

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https://www.instagram.com/nochildreninwar/www.twitter.com/childreninwarwww.facebook.com/childrenandarmedconflict

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Study on the evolution of the Children and Armed Conflict mandate 1996-2021 - World - ReliefWeb

By Erin HunsaderStaff Writer

GREEN BAY With the No. 1-seeded Green Bay Packers preparing to host a divisional playoff game this weekend, plenty of fans will be cheering on the Green and Gold from the stands.

Leading those cheers are not just cheerleaders, but an ongoing piece of Packers history.

The Green Bay Packers became one of the first professional football teams to have cheerleaders in 1931, when Green Bays East and West high schools squads graced the sidelines for several games.

The Pack cheer squad performed for more than five decades under three separate names the Packerettes, the Golden Girls and the Green Bay Sideliners.

I was actually a Packer Sideliner from 1978-80, Cheryl Long said. They changed the name a couple of times. It was Packerettes (1950), then Golden Girls (1961-72). Then it was back to Packerettes (1973-77). Then it was the Sideliners (1977-86), and then it just became cheerleaders.

The creation of cheerleaders cheering on the Pack dates back to the times of Vince Lombardi when he recruited Door County native Mary Jane Sorgel to organize a professional cheering squad.

The Green Bay Packers Golden Girls stand in formation on the field in 1968. Neville Public Museum Photo

Sorgel, now 95, took the job recruiting young women from Door County and surrounding areas.

I heard that (Lombardi) said he didnt want the cheerleaders to be like the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, former Packerette and Green Bay Sideliner Tane Van Rite said. He wanted us to be a bit more innocent.

Van Rite said Green Bay cheerleaders were younger than most of their counterparts in the NFL at that time.

She said she was barely in high school the first year she tried out.

When I tried out for Packerettes, you had to be thirteen, Van Rite said. I tried out at that age and I was on it for three years. For the Sideliners, you had to be sixteen, and I was sixteen. I was lucky that way.

At that young of an age, Van Rite said the cheerleaders still traveled with the team and also made a little bit of green for themselves.

She said the cheerleaders received $10-15, depending on whether or not it was a home or an away game.

Everybody was so nice and hard-working, she said. You werent doing it for the money.

The cheerleaders were also athletes. Van Rite said they learned to perform 20-30 routines per game, with the challenge of not having a recording, but live band music that they had to dance to, which she said they didnt get to rehearse with until they were on the field.

We never had set music to a recording, Van Rite said. We had live band music, which was very difficult, very challenging. We performed live performances that were on the sideline that echoed, so our sound system was hard to hear. Nobody up in the stands knew why we were off.

Van Rite said Shirley Van, the coach at the time, would have a cassette recording of whatever the band gave her, but that wasnt necessarily what the band would play on the field, so it was hard for (the cheerleaders) to look good, but people didnt care.

People were forgiving to that, she said. They liked that we were smiling and energetic.

Beyond the musical challenges, Van Rite said, the other struggle was of course the temperature it is the Frozen Tundra.

We didnt have sideline heaters or anything like that, she said. One year, John Brockington (former Packers running back), himself bought each of us insulated capes, and they were very nice.

Even with the challenges, Van Rite said it was an honor to be a part of the Packers franchise and be in Lambeau Field.

In a way, you kind of felt locally famous, she said. My dad was so proud that I was a Packer cheerleader.

Van Rite said her family actually had an interesting tie to Lombardi.

My grandfather sewed Vince Lombardis coats, she said. Frank Aiello was his name. He was a tailor right over from Italy Everybody we knew, who knew Vince Lombardi, said he was a very polite man.

Van Rite said she didnt know Lombardi, but did meet former player and head coach Bart Starr and his wife, and was able to form a friendship with them because of her connection as a former Packer cheerleader.

They were/are the kindest people, and they appreciated us because we were never winning back then, Van Rite said of the years when she was cheering. It made us proud to be such a part of a hometown organization.

She and Long shared the field as well, Van Rite said,

She was on it the three years when I was a Sideliner, she said.

The cheerleading alumni continue to get together and cheer on the Green and Gold.

Most recently, Long said, they participated in Past the Pom challenge, which was a challenge several NFL alumni cheerleaders participated in to keep spirits up when fans couldnt attend games due to COVID-19.

The Green Bay cheerleaders were disbanded in 1988.

However, in 2007 the sidelines were again filled with cheers of Go Pack Go.

The team currently uses college cheerleading squads from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and St. Norbert College to rile the crowd of more than 70,000 as the cheerleading tradition carries on.

More here:

The evolution of the Green Bay cheerleaders - The Press-Times

News headlines in both financial services trade publications and national media outlets alike have homed in over the past several weeks on the topic of interest rateson where they have come from, where they stand now and what level rates may reach in the new year.

As often happens in such situations, PLANADVISER has received an extensive amount of written commentary from investment experts on the interrelated subjects of interest rates, inflation and economic growth. They offer viewpoints that seek to go beyond the headlines and illuminate the underlying market forces defining the day.

In the analysis of Brad McMillan, chief investment officer (CIO) for Commonwealth Financial Network, market watchers may be feeling an undue sense of panic about the current interest rate situation.

The panic of the day is the news about interest rates, he writes. The headlines state (correctly) that rates have moved up sharply in recent days. They state (correctly) that stocks have pulled back, noting this fact is due to that increase (which is possibly but not necessarily true). And they state (incorrectly, I believe) that higher rates are going to derail the economy and the markets, in that order.

McMillan says this narrative is pretty standard for this stage of the economic cycle.

The economy is growing, so the Fed, more worried about inflation than employment, starts to raise interest rates, he notes. Higher rates, mathematically, will mean slow growth and lower stock valuations. Cue the headlines. What is missing, as usual, is context.

In McMillans view, the growing concerns about the recent rise in interest rates are based on a couple of assumptions. First is the assumption that the increase reflects a problem with the financial markets.

Second, there is the thinking that current ratesfrom which we see the increaseare, by definition, correct, and the increase, therefore, represents a change from the correct rate levels, McMillan writes. Both assumptions are wrong.

For context, McMillan looks at the past 10 years of interest rates for the 10-year Treasury note. The current yield is about 1.8%, up in recent days from around 1.5%. McMillan agrees with the broader headlines that this is a sharp and sizable increase.

But this rate increase is dwarfed by the ones we saw in 2020 and 2021, he points out. Neither of those increases derailed the recovery, despite the headlines at the time. And, looking back before the pandemic, the interest rates take us back only to the lower end of the range in the latter part of the last decade. In other words, the recent spike is simply reversing part of the drop during the pandemica drop caused by extreme fiscal and monetary policy actions.

Put another way, McMillan argues, rates right now are moving back to the lower end of the normal range for the past decade. He says this should give individual and institutional investors some solace amid the frightening headlines.

Comments sent from investment management firm Ninety One, penned by strategist Russell Silberston, sound a decidedly different note. Silberston argues investors may actually be underestimating how far interest rates will rise, meaning bond yields have much further to riseand bond prices to fallthan commonly expected. He says his argument is based on some basic market history from the past 10 years.

In December 2015, six years after the global financial crisis overwhelmed the global economy and caused interest rates around the world to be slashed, the U.S. Federal Reserve raised the target for its benchmark federal funds rate by 0.25% to 0.5%, Silberston recalls. However, it then took a year for the tightening cycle to kick off in earnest, with another 25 basis point [bps] hike in December 2016, which, in turn, was followed by a series of 25-point hikes each calendar quarter that followed.

This took the Feds overnight rate to 2.5% by December 2018, Silberston explains, and, within seven months, the Fed was forced to partially reverse some of this tightening, reducing its rate to 1.75% over the second half of 2019 as financial markets wobbled badly despite the economy performing well.

With the Federal Reserve again on the verge of a tightening cycle, financial markets are replaying the post-crisis playbook and assuming the Fed is only going to be able to raise its rate to around 1.75%, Silberston says. This is well short of any assessment of the economically neutral level of interest rates, as they will be stymied by the desire to shrink their balance sheet, too. Why, then, in the face of multi-decade highs in inflation, are markets so sanguine about the interest rate outlook? The answer lies in the Feds balance sheet, and in particular the level of excess reserves placed there by commercial banks.

As Silberston observes, when a central bank undertakes quantitative easing, it creates reserves for itself and, with these, buys government bonds and other assets. These sit as an asset on the banks balance sheets.

The money they created to buy those assets ends up in the banking system, and in turn finds its way back to the central bank as excess reserves, he writes. These, like any bank deposit, are a liability for the central bank. Thus, in accounting terms, both assets and liabilities at the central bank have grown. When it comes to quantitative tightening, the process is reversed. The central bank either sells or allows a bond to mature, thus shrinking their assets. However, their liabilities also shrink as commercial bank excess reserves fall in tandem.

Looking forward and comparing the Federal Reserves policy options that are available today relative to what was possible in the wake of the Great Recession, Silberston says the situation is quite differentmore different than some market watchers appear to realize. His arguments are fairly technical and have to do with the way the Federal Reserve estimates its liabilitieshow it did so in the period before the pandemic and how it is doing so now.

Whatever the reason, [in the prior cycle] the Feds compass was on the wrong setting and it overdid quantitative tightening and withdrew far more liquidity than the banking sector needed, Silberston writes. It is this rather technical aspect of the Feds operations that we believe was behind the aborted tightening cycle in 2016 to 2018, rather than the federal funds rate being driven to a level that the economy could not withstand.

This time, in Silberstons view, is different. He warns that, to avoid the same whipsaw happening again when it embarks on quantitative tightening in this cycle, the Fed has introduced new on-demand tools to control overnight interest rates, both to the upside and downside. In theory, at least, policymakers should be able to run the balance sheet down more quickly without causing the liquidity shortages that characterized the last tightening cycle.

Again, if this view is correct, the market is underestimating how far high interest rates will rise, meaning bond yields have much further to rise, and bond prices to fallthan hitherto, Silberston concludes.

For his part, McMillan does not fully agree with that take, but he also acknowledges that investors may be overlooking some potential risks.

Lets look at a few assumptions. The first one says the current spike is a problem in financial markets, McMillan suggests. Looking at the [historical rate] chart, however, the problem seems to have come from the pandemic. Now, from an economic perspective, this problem is starting to fade. In this sense, the recent increase is a recovery from a problem, not an indicator of one.

The second assumption says recent rates are the correct and normal ones, McMillan writes.

Yet here again, due to the pandemic, this is definitely not the case, he argues. If both of these assumptions are wrongand they arethe narrative we are seeing in the headlines must be wrong as well. This logic would also extend to further rate increases. If rates for the 10-year Treasury notes go to 2.5%, they would be within the central range over the pre-pandemic years. It is only when rates begin to rise above 3% for a sustained period, not briefly, that the prospects of significant economic damage will start to get material. The years from 2013 to 2019 show that the economy and the markets can do quite well with rates between 2% and 3%.

After making that point, McMillan is quick to point out that significant risks remain.

Growth stocks are showing the strain, and this has had a disproportionate impact on the market, he observes. The housing sector might slow down as mortgage rates increase, but again this trend would be an adjustment, not a wholesale change. The economy and markets can and do adjust to changes in interest rates. This environment is a normal part of the cycle and one we see on a regular basis. The current trend is perhaps a bit faster than weve been seeing, but it is a response to real economic factorsand, therefore, normal in context. That is why there is no need to panic.

Read more:

Making Sense of the Interest Rate Evolution - Planadviser.com

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed how B.C. residents work, live and communicate. Behind the scenes, one expert in digital health systems says the way we think and talk about health has shifted drastically, too.

Elizabeth Borycki is a professor in the School of Health Information Science at the University of Victoria. Her work revolves around health informatics developing, implementing and maintaining digital technologies in healthcare such as patient records and telehealth programs.

Her field has been at the forefront of new patient-facing solutions to problems posed by COVID-19. From Zoom calls with family doctors to text alerts about booster shots, health technology has evolved rapidly.

There are a lot of technologies that we had in the healthcare system that are now being used more extensively because of COVID, Borycki told Black Press Media. And there have been new technologies that have been introduced to be able to support things like social distancing.

The number of physicians and patients familiar with virtual care jumped significantly between 2019 and 2020 because of the pandemic. Nearly two years later, medical care has evolved into a hybrid system of in-person and online options.

There was a real push towards bringing in virtual care so that health professionals could still connect with vulnerable individuals, Borycki said. But you also have face-to-face visits taking place.

READ MORE: Island Health looks to shorten wait times for booster shots with new mass clinics

A positive outcome of this shift, she added, is that patients have more choice in how they receive healthcare services.

A person can say that theyd like to have information presented to them in different ways not only online, but by phone, or through texting or face-to-face.

Two initiatives Borycki said best represent advances in patient choice are the B.C. Centre for Disease Control COVID-19 dashboard and its vaccination booking system.

The latter makes getting a COVID vaccine as accessible as possible and communicating directly with residents was especially vital at the onset of vaccination efforts, she said.

Getting people into queue, prioritizing based on risk and then having individuals choose what form of communication they want (worked well), she said. We immunized a huge number of people in this province in a very short period of time. And if we didnt have those processes in place, we might not have been able to effectively do that.

Moving forward, especially with the Omicron wave challenging the way officials handle COVID, health informatics experts will have to consistently revisit the best ways to tell B.C. residents pandemic news, Borycki said.

COVID is a virus that is mutating, and its changing so we need technologies to be able to disseminate that information in a safe manner, as well as to guide people to the services they need.

READ MORE: B.C. shortens wait between second, third vaccine doses for pregnant people

READ MORE: Langford woman with cystic fibrosis critical of Islands COVID testing process

Do you have a story tip? Email: tegwyn.hughes@blackpress.ca.

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CoronavirusTechnologyUniversity of Victoria

Originally posted here:

COVID driving evolution of health information technology: UVic expert Saanich News - Saanich News

Republic Day 2022: India is celebrating its 72nd Republic Day on January 26. Like every year, the President of India will unfurl the national flag, also called the Tiranga, or tricolour, at the Red Fort, New Delhi. Below, we look at the evolution and significance of the Indian flag.

The first national flag of India was designed in 1904 by Sister Nivedita. It was a red coloured flag with yellow stripes at the edges, a Vajra in the middle with the words Vande Mataram flanking both sides.

On August 7, 1906, the first tricolour flag was hoisted at Parsee Bagan Square (Greer Park) in Kolkata. It had three horizontal bands of blue, yellow and red, with eight stars representing the eight provinces of India at the time and the words Vande Mataram inscribed in the yellow band. The bottom red stripe depicted the Sun and a crescent moon and star.

Madam Bhikaji Cama unfurled a similar flag at Stuttgart, Germany, on August 22, 1907.

In 1917, a third flag, with the Union Jack, five red and four horizontal bands, seven stars and a crescent moon with a star appeared. It was hoisted by Dr. Annie Besant and Lokmanya Tilak during the Home Rule movement.

In 1921, freedom fighter Pingali Venkayya designed the Swaraj flag. The top band was white, the middle band green and the bottom band in red. A Charkha or spinning wheel was spread across the three sections and represented Indias independence from British rule.

In 1931, the green band went to the top, the white band to the middle with the Charkha inside it and saffron replaced the red at the bottom. Dr. Rajendra Prasad replaced the Charkha with the Ashok Chakra after Indias independence.

The present flag was adopted by the Constituent Assembly on July 22, 1947, as the flag of the Dominion of India. When India became a Republic, the design was retained.

The saffron colour of the flag represents courage. The white portion represents peace and truth and the Ashok Chakra represents Dharma or moral law. The green band represents fertility, growth and auspiciousness.

Read all the Latest News, Breaking News and Coronavirus News here.

The rest is here:

Republic Day 2022: History, Evolution and Significance of Indian Tricolour - News18