Fostering Regional Cooperation and Integration for Recovery and Resilience: Guidance Note

The coronavirus disease or COVID-19 has brought countries together to mitigate its spread and cushion its adverse consequences. Regional cooperation will be perhaps even more important in building an inclusive, resilient, and sustainable economic revival. This guidance note advocates wider, deeper, and more open regional cooperation and integration. Cooperation can be widened to include regional health security, trade in information and communication technology-enabled services, and financial safety nets, for example. It can be deepened to reach more stakeholders and sectors. It can also become more open through flexible collaboration and greater sharing of knowledge and expertise.

Resilience in a Kenyan informal settlement during the COVID-19 pandemic

Informal settlements have been identified as locations both where the spread of COVID-19 has generally been slower than within the Global North and measures to restrain the pandemic have further intensified local peoples’ marginality as income decreases without welfare or financial safety nets. In this paper, qualitative fieldwork is detailed which commenced in Korogocho, an informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya, immediately prior to national COVID-19 restrictions. This March 2020, pre-COVID phase of the fieldwork focused on a community-based project and the basis for resilience in transforming local lives. During the next 12 months of the pandemic fieldwork continued, exploring experiences and reactions to restraining policies. These findings reinforce concerns about the impact of COVID-19 related restrictions on marginalised peoples’ income, food security, health, safety and gender-based violence. How the local people reacted to these effects highlights their creative resilience and adaptability. The paper concludes by examining the impact of, and responses to, the controlling measures on the social relationships and cohesion that underpins the community resilience.

Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Nurses: Where is the Financial Safety Net?

The COVID-19 pandemic placed many nurses in financial distress. Nurses House, Inc. provided nurses with financial assistance through an emergency grant supported by the American Nurses Foundation. In a three-month period between April 2020 till July 2020, Nurses House, Inc. distributed $2,734,500 to a total of 2,484 qualified grantees from across the United States. This article offers a brief review of literature to provide context about the guiding framework of the grant, Watson’s Theory of Human Caring, as an essential tenet to nursing and to the mission of Nurses House, Inc, and the financial impact of the pandemic. We discuss the methods, data analysis, and results of our study that analyzed demographic information from the applications of grant recipients. Regression analysis showed that regardless of income levels, nurses experienced financial distress. The discussion considers our findings in relation to such areas as age and full-time or part-time work status of grantees; reasons to apply, such as testing positive for COVID=19 (78%), work mandated quarantine (16%) and caring for a family member (6%); and study limitations. The conclusion offers implications for practice based on our analysis, which demonstrated that financial safety nets are both essential and helpful for nurses in times of crisis.

Pandemic may undo Egypt poverty gains

Significance The figure has been presented by the government as a vindication of its efforts to achieve fiscal sustainability while providing financial safety nets for the most vulnerable groups in society. However, the poverty rate is still higher than in 2015, and the new index was compiled before the full impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the economy had become clear. Impacts The economic impact of the pandemic appears to have been relatively light, but this can be attributed partly to statistical anomalies. The poverty rate fall indicates to the IMF and the World Bank that their programmes will eventually pay off for most Egyptians. There is uncertainty about the extent of the return of Egyptians from the Gulf and the effect of this on poverty and unemployment.

Financial burdens of insured adolescent and young adult cancer patients: A need for crowdfunding platforms, fundraisers, financial grants, and cost conversations with their cancer care team.

83 Background: Cancer patients in the United States often experience distress surrounding out of pocket costs from treatment. Adolescents and young adults (AYA) are more likely to be underinsured, skip care due to cost, go into debt, and file for bankruptcy after a cancer diagnosis than patients diagnosed at older ages. We conducted semi-structured interviews with AYA cancer patients and survivors to evaluate their experiences with health insurance, cancer costs and use of crowdfunding. Methods: Eligible participants were ages 18-39, diagnosed with cancer, and currently insured. Recruitment occurred largely through patient navigators at two large cancer centers from October 2019 to March 2020. Data was collected via individual semi-structured telephone interviews, which were analyzed for content. Questions were asked pertaining to crowdfunding platforms, fundraisers, satisfaction with current health insurance policy, and cost conversations with their cancer care team. Interviews were analyzed applying two rounds of thematic content analysis. Summary statistics were calculated for demographics. Results: Twenty-four interviews were completed, with more than half of participants being female (58%), most participants being Non-Hispanic White (79%), mean age at 26.5, and currently receiving cancer treatment (79%). Three themes emerged about AYAs’ experience with treatment costs and health insurance: 1) Even with insurance, cancer care was unexpectedly expensive and burdensome on financial wellbeing; 2) Conversations about cost with cancer care teams were brief and rare and 3) Crowdfunding platforms, fundraisers or financial grants were often used as financial safety nets, and did not cover all out of pocket costs. More than half of participants expressed interest in having cost conversations with their oncologist, nurse or social worker. All participants expressed a need for education on managing cancer costs and a particular interest in educational information on appeals and out of pocket costs. Conclusions: AYAs with cancer report unexpected costs and are interested in discussing this with their cancer care team. AYAs often receive money from fundraisers, financial grants or crowdfunding platforms to assist with the expenses of treatment. Discussions between cancer care teams and AYA patients about health insurance policies and cost saving mechanisms may help reduce out of pocket costs and reliance on external financial mechanisms.

Macroeconomic Developments and Prospects in Low-Income Developing Countries—2019

This paper is the fifth in a series that examines macroeconomic developments and prospects in low-income developing countries (LIDCs). LIDCs are a group of 59 IMF member countries primarily defined by income per capita below a threshold level. LIDCs contain one fifth of the world’s population—1.5 billion people—but account for only 4 percent of global output. The first chapter of the paper discusses recent macroeconomic developments and trends across LIDCs and, using growth decompositions, explores the key drivers of growth performance in LIDCs. A second chapter examines the challenges faced by LIDCs in implementing a value-added tax system, generally seen as a key component of a strong national tax system. The third chapter discusses how financial safety nets can be appropriately tailored to the specific needs of LIDCs, recognizing that an effective safety net is important for ensuring financial stability and underpinning public confidence in the financial system, thereby promoting financial intermediation.