Using political science to progress public health nutrition: a systematic review

Objective Poor dietary intake is the most important behavioural risk factor affecting health globally. Despite this, there has been little investment in public health nutrition policy actions. Policy process theories from the field of political science can aid understanding why policy decisions have occurred and identify how to influence ongoing or future initiatives. This review aims to examine public health nutrition policy literature and identify whether a policy process theory has been used to analyse the process. Design Electronic databases were searched systematically for studies examining policymaking in public health nutrition in high-income, democratic countries. Setting International, national, state and local government jurisdictions within high-income, democratic countries. Subjects Individuals and organisations involved in the nutrition policymaking process. Results Sixty-three studies met the eligibility criteria, most were conducted in the USA and a majority focused on obesity. The analysis demonstrates an accelerating trend in the number of nutrition policy papers published annually and an increase in the diversity of nutrition topics examined. The use of policy process theory was observed from 2003, however, it was utilised by only 14% of the reviewed papers. Conclusions There is limited research into the nutrition policy process in high-income countries. While there has been a small increase in the use of policy process theory from 2003, an opportunity to expand their use is evident. We suggest that nutrition policymaking would benefit from a pragmatic approach that ensures those trying to influence or understand the policymaking process are equipped with basic knowledge around these theories.

Neoliberal austerity and unemployment

Neoliberal fiscal austerity policies decrease public expenditure through cuts to central and local government budgets, welfare services and benefits and privatisation of public resources resulting in job losses. This article interrogates the empirical, theoretical, methodological and ideological relationships between neoliberalism, unemployment and the discipline of psychology, arguing that neoliberalism constitutes rather than causes unemployment...

Missing in space: An evaluation of imputation methods for missing data in spatial analysis of risk factors for type II diabetes

Background Spatial analysis is increasingly important for identifying modifiable geographic risk factors for disease. However, spatial health data from surveys are often incomplete, ranging from missing data for only a few variables, to missing data for many variables. For spatial analyses of health outcomes, selection of an appropriate imputation method is critical in order to produce the most accurate inferences. Methods We present a cross-validation approach to select between three imputation methods for health survey data with correlated lifestyle covariates, using as a case study, type II diabetes mellitus (DM II) risk across 71 Queensland Local Government Areas (LGAs). We compare the accuracy of mean imputation to imputation using multivariate normal and conditional autoregressive prior distributions. Results Choice of imputation method depends upon the application and is not necessarily the most complex method. Mean imputation was selected as the most accurate method in this application. Conclusions Selecting an appropriate imputation method for health survey data, after accounting for spatial correlation and correlation between covariates, allows more complete analysis of geographic risk factors for disease with more confidence in the results to inform public policy decision-making.

Electronic Building Passport - Final Report: Project 2 National Energy Efficient Building Project Phase 2

The National Energy Efficient Building Project (NEEBP) Phase One report, published in December 2014, investigated “process issues and systemic failures” in the administration of the energy performance requirements in the National Construction Code. It found that most stakeholders believed that under-compliance with these requirements is widespread across Australia, with similar issues being reported in all states and territories. The report found that many different factors were contributing to this outcome and, as a result, many recommendations were offered that together would be expected to remedy the systemic issues reported. To follow up on this Phase 1 report, three additional projects were commissioned as part of Phase 2 of the overall NEEBP project. This Report deals with the development and piloting of an Electronic Building Passport (EBP) tool – a project undertaken jointly by pitt&sherry and a team at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) led by Dr Wendy Miller. The other Phase 2 projects cover audits of Class 1 buildings and issues relating to building alterations and additions. The passport concept aims to provide all stakeholders with (controlled) access to the key documentation and information that they need to verify the energy performance of buildings. This trial project deals with residential buildings but in principle could apply to any building type. Nine councils were recruited to help develop and test a pilot electronic building passport tool. The participation of these councils – across all states – enabled an assessment of the extent to which these councils are currently utilising documentation; to track the compliance of residential buildings with the energy performance requirements in the National Construction Code (NCC). Overall we found that none of the participating councils are currently compiling all of the energy performance-related documentation that would demonstrate code compliance. The key reasons for this include: a major lack of clarity on precisely what documentation should be collected; cost and budget pressures; low public/stakeholder demand for the documentation; and a pragmatic judgement that non-compliance with any regulated documentation requirements represents a relatively low risk for them. Some councils reported producing documentation, such as certificates of final completion, only on demand, for example. Only three of the nine council participants reported regularly conducting compliance assessments or audits utilising this documentation and/or inspections. Overall we formed the view that documentation and information tracking processes operating within the building standards and compliance system are not working to assure compliance with the Code’s energy performance requirements. In other words the Code, and its implementation under state and territory regulatory processes, is falling short as a ‘quality assurance’ system for consumers. As a result it is likely that the new housing stock is under-performing relative to policy expectations, consuming unnecessary amounts of energy, imposing unnecessarily high energy bills on occupants, and generating unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, Councils noted that the demand for documentation relating to building energy performance was low. All the participant councils in the EBP pilot agreed that documentation and information processes need to work more effectively if the potential regulatory and market drivers towards energy efficient homes are to be harnessed. These findings are fully consistent with the Phase 1 NEEBP report. It was also agreed that an EBP system could potentially play an important role in improving documentation and information processes. However, only one of the participant councils indicated that they might adopt such a system on a voluntary basis. The majority felt that such a system would only be taken up if it were: - A nationally agreed system, imposed as a mandatory requirement under state or national regulation; - Capable of being used by multiple parties including councils, private certifiers, building regulators, builders and energy assessors in particular; and - Fully integrated into their existing document management systems, or at least seamlessly compatible rather than a separate, unlinked tool. Further, we note that the value of an EBP in capturing statistical information relating to the energy performance of buildings would be much greater if an EBP were adopted on a nationally consistent basis. Councils were clear that a key impediment to the take up of an EBP system is that they are facing very considerable budget and staffing challenges. They report that they are often unable to meet all community demands from the resources available to them. Therefore they are unlikely to provide resources to support the roll out of an EBP system on a voluntary basis. Overall, we conclude from this pilot that the public good would be well served if the Australian, state and territory governments continued to develop and implement an Electronic Building Passport system in a cost-efficient and effective manner. This development should occur with detailed input from building regulators, the Australian Building Codes Board (ABCB), councils and private certifiers in the first instance. This report provides a suite of recommendations (Section 7.2) designed to advance the development and guide the implementation of a national EBP system.

Healthy waterways social science research report 2015

Healthy Waterways aims to protect and enhance the condition of waterways across 19 catchment local government areas in Queensland. It does this by seeking to influence the decisions and actions – including social lifestyle choices – of community members who interact with these waterways. It then monitors the waterways in the 19 catchments to gauge the impact of these decisions and actions. Each year, Healthy Waterways produces a report on its activities and their impact on the condition of the waterways they are monitoring. This research will contribute to understanding the social component of that report, specifically the attitudinal and behavioural components that underpin social expectations and actions towards protecting and supporting local waterways in communities across the 19 catchment local government areas in Queensland.

Predictive technology and natural hazards: Risk for Australian planning authorities?

Purpose The object of this paper is to examine whether the improvements in technology that enhance community understanding of the frequency and severity of natural hazards also increased the risk of potential liability of planning authorities in negligence. In Australia, the National Strategy imposes a resilience based approach to disaster management and stresses that responsible land use planning can reduce or prevent the impact of natural hazards upon communities. Design/methodology/approach This paper analyses how the principles of negligence allocate responsibility for loss suffered by a landowner in a hazard prone area between the landowner and local government. Findings The analysis in this paper concludes that despite being able to establish a causal link between the loss suffered by a landowner and the approval of a local authority to build in a hazard prone area, it would be in the rarest of circumstances a negligence action may be proven. Research limitations/implications The focus of this paper is on planning policies and land development, not on the negligent provision of advice or information by the local authority. Practical implications This paper identifies the issues a landowner may face when seeking compensation from a local authority for loss suffered due to the occurrence of a natural hazard known or predicted to be possible in the area. Originality/value The paper establishes that as risk managers, local authorities must place reliance upon scientific modelling and predictive technology when determining planning processes in order to fulfil their responsibilities under the National Strategy and to limit any possible liability in negligence.

Playing the policy game: A review of the barriers and enablers of nutrition policy change

- Objective To progress nutrition policy change and develop more effective advocates, it is useful to consider real-world factors and practical experiences of past advocacy efforts to determine the key barriers and enablers to nutrition policy change. This review aimed to identify and synthesize the enablers and barriers to public policy change within the field of nutrition. - Design Electronic databases were searched systematically for studies examining policymaking in public health nutrition. An interpretive synthesis was undertaken. Setting: International, national, state and local government jurisdictions within high-income, democratic countries. - Results Sixty-three studies were selected for inclusion. Numerous themes were identified explaining the barriers and enablers to policy change, all of which fell under the overarching category, ‘political will’, underpinned by a second major category, ‘public will’. Sub-themes, including pressure from industry; neoliberal ideology; use of emotions and values, and being visible were prevalent in describing links between public will, political will and policy change. - Conclusions The frustration around lack of public policy change in nutrition frequently stems from a belief that policymaking is a rational process in which evidence is used to assess the relative costs and benefits of options. The findings from this review confirm that evidence is only one component of influencing policy change. For policy change to occur there needs to be the political will, and often the public will, for the proposed policy problem and solution. This review presents a suite of enablers which can assist health professionals to influence political and public will in future advocacy efforts.

Performance based planning in Queensland : A case of unintended plan-making outcomes

Performance based planning (PBP) is purported to be a viable alternative to traditional zoning. The implementation of PBP ranges between pure approaches that rely on predetermined quantifiable performance standards to determine land use suitability, and hybrid approaches that rely on a mix of activity based zones in addition to prescriptive and subjective standards. Jurisdictions in the USA, Australia and New Zealand have attempted this type of land use regulation with varying degrees of success. Despite the adoption of PBP legislation in these jurisdictions, this paper argues that a lack of extensive evaluation means that PBP is not well understood and the purported advantages of this type of planning are rarely achieved in practice. Few empirical studies have attempted to examine how PBP has been implemented in practice. In Queensland, Australia, the Integrated Planning Act 1997 (IPA) operated as Queensland's principal planning legislation between March 1998 and December 2009. While the IPA did not explicitly use the term performance based planning, the Queensland's planning system is widely considered to be performance based in practice. Significantly, the IPA prevented Local Government from prohibiting development or use and the term zone was absent from the legislation. How plan-making would be advanced under the new planning regime was not clear, and as a consequence local governments produced a variety of different plan-making approaches to comply with the new legislative regime. In order to analyse this variation the research has developed a performance adoption spectrum to classify plans ranging between pure and hybrid perspectives of PBP. The spectrum compares how land use was regulated in seventeen IPA plans across Queensland. The research found that hybrid plans predominated, and that over time a greater reliance on risk adverse drafting approaches created a quasi-prohibition plan, the exact opposite of what was intended by the IPA. This paper concludes that the drafting of the IPA and absence of plan-making guidance contributed to lack of shared understanding about the intended direction of the new planning system and resulted in many administrative interpretations of the legislation. It was a planning direction that tried too hard to be different, and as a result created a perception of land use risk and uncertainty that caused a return to more prescriptive and inflexible plan-making methods.

Urban growth dilemmas and solutions in China: Looking forward to 2030

China’s urbanization and industrialization are occupying farmland in large amounts, which is strongly driven by land finance regime. This is due to the intensified regional/local competition for manufacturing investment opportunities that push local governments to expropriate farmland at low prices while lease land at high market value to property developers. The additional revenue obtained in this way, termed financial increment in land values, can drive local economic growth, and provide associated infrastructure and other public services. At the same time, however, a floating population of large numbers of inadequately compensated land-lost farmers, although unable to become citizens, have to migrate into the urban areas for work, causing overheated employment and housing markets, with rocketing unaffordable housing prices. This, together with various micro factors relating to the party/state’s promotion/evaluation system play an essential role leading to some serious economic, environment and social consequences, e.g., on migrant welfare, the displacement of peasants and the loss of land resources that requires immediate attention. Our question is: whether such type of urbanization is sustainable? What are the mechanisms behind such a phenomenal urbanization process? From the perspective of institutionalism, this paper aims to investigate the institutional background of the urban growth dilemma and solutions in urban China and to introduce further an inter-regional game theoretical framework to indicate why the present urbanization pattern is unsustainable. Looking forward to 2030, paradigm policy changes are made from the triple consideration of floating population, social security and urban environmental pressures. This involves: (1) changing land increment based finance regime into land stock finance system; (2) the citizenization of migrant workers with affordable housing, and; (3) creating a more enlightened local government officer appraisal system to better take into account societal issues such as welfare and beyond.