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The purpose of this paper is to describe the authors’ experience operationalizing the care delivery value chain (CDVC) as a management and continuous quality improvement (QI) approach to strengthen HIV/AIDS services provided in Northern Togo through addressing gaps across a care continuum.

The authors led a series of discussions to develop a CDVC specific to existing HIV/AIDS services in Northern Togo. Using the CDVC framework, 28 specific gaps in service delivery were identified and integrated into a strategic QI plan.

At 12 months, 92 percent of delivery gaps had demonstrated improvement. The CDVC framework proved to be valuable in the following ways. First, it facilitated the first comprehensive mapping of HIV/AIDS services in the Kara region of Togo. Second, it enabled the identification of gaps or insufficiencies in the currently available services across the full continuum of care. Third, it catalyzed the creation of a strategic QI plan based on identified gaps.

This case description is the authors’ experience in one setting and should not be considered comparative in nature. Furthermore, the approach described may not be applicable to all initiatives and/or organizations. As described, the lack of sophisticated and comprehensive data collection systems limited the authors’ ability to collect reliable data on some of the QI initiatives planned.

The operationalization of the CDVC framework is an effective approach to drive continuous QI.

Through the operationalization of the CDVC, the authors developed a new approach for assessing existing services, identifying gaps in service delivery and directing continuous QI initiatives in a strategic manner.

A discipline is bound by some combination of a shared subject matter, shared theory, and shared technique. Yet modern economics is seemingly without limit to its domain. As a discipline without a shared subject matter, what is the binding force of economics today? The authors combine topic modeling and text analysis to analyze different approaches to inquiry within the discipline of economics. The authors find that the importance of theory has declined as economics has increasingly become defined by its empirical techniques. The authors question whether this trajectory is stable in the long run as the binding force of the discipline.

Numerous commentators have suggested that Barack Obama represents a new “post-racial” politics in the United States, distinct from a pre-existing contentious form that originated with the civil rights era. Drawing on secondary historical data, Mr. Obama's presidential campaign speeches, and county-level electoral returns from Indiana and North Carolina, I argue in contrast to such claims that post-racial politics comprise the latest in a line of successive attempts by the Democratic Party to articulate the New Deal voting bloc, in which the white suburban middle class is the primary constituency while African Americans are of secondary importance. By addressing the question of “Obama and the Politics of Race” in this way, this chapter seeks to integrate political parties into the study of racial ideologies. Specifically, it suggests that the latter may originate and subsequently develop in the context of partisan struggle.