Community food security gaps in surveillance and monitoring

This paper describes the gaps in monitoring and surveillance identified while conducting Community Food Security assessments in three geographical areas located in south-east Queensland, Australia

Determinants of participation restriction among community dwelling stroke survivors : a path analysis

Background: Apart from promoting physical recovery and assisting in activities of daily living, a major challenge in stroke rehabilitation is to minimize psychosocial morbidity and to promote the reintegration of stroke survivors into their family and community. The identification of key factors influencing long-term outcome are essential in developing more effective rehabilitation measures for reducing stroke-related morbidity. The aim of this study was to test a theoretical model of predictors of participation restriction which included the direct and indirect effects between psychosocial outcomes, physical outcome, and socio-demographic variables at 12 months after stroke.--------- Methods: Data were collected from 188 stroke survivors at 12 months following their discharge from one of the two rehabilitation hospitals in Hong Kong. The settings included patients' homes and residential care facilities. Path analysis was used to test a hypothesized model of participation restriction at 12 months.---------- Results: The path coefficients show functional ability having the largest direct effect on participation restriction (β = 0.51). The results also show that more depressive symptoms (β = -0.27), low state self-esteem (β = 0.20), female gender (β = 0.13), older age (β = -0.11) and living in a residential care facility (β = -0.12) have a direct effect on participation restriction. The explanatory variables accounted for 71% of the variance in explaining participation restriction at 12 months.---------- Conclusion: Identification of stroke survivors at risk of high levels of participation restriction, depressive symptoms and low self-esteem will assist health professionals to devise appropriate rehabilitation interventions that target improving both physical and psychosocial functioning.

Destination brand equity among the host community : a potential source of comparative advantage for DMO's

Since the emergence of the destination branding literature in 1998, there have been few studies related to performance measurement of destination brand campaigns. There has also been little interest to date in researching the extent to which a destination brand represents the host community’s sense of place. Given that local residents represent a key stakeholder group for the destination marketing organisation (DMO), research is required to examine the extent to which marketing communications have been effective in enhancing engagement with the brand, and inducing a brand image that is congruent with the brand identity. Motivated by conceptual and practical aims, this paper reports the trial of a hierarchy of consumer-based brand equity (CBBE) for a destination, from the perspective of residents as active participants of local tourism. It is proposed that strong levels of CBBE among the host community representsa strong level of CBBE among the host community represents a source of comparative advantage for a destination, for which the DMO could proactively develop into a competitive advantage.

Community engagement : exploring a relational approach to consultation and collaborative practice in Australia

Community engagement is increasingly being employed by Australian organizations as a key strategy to incorporate representative community opinions into decision-making. This trend is reflected by Australian local and state governments legislating for community consultation in major infrastructure projects and the increasing role of public relations practitioners to manage these programs. This study explores community engagement founded on relational theory and proposed a typology of engagement employing a relational framework. An exploratory study of 20 Australian infrastructure projects with a mandatory consultation component is analyzed applying this framework. Results indicate little discrimination between the terms engagement, consultation, and participation; however, a range of tactics supported both collaborative and advocacy approaches. The implications for adopting a relational framework for community engagement programs are discussed.

Creating deep and broad change through research and systems approaches in early childhood education for sustainability

The co-authors raise two matters they consider essential for the future development of ECEfS. The first is the need to create deep foundations based in research. At a time of increasing practitioner interest, research in ECEfS is meagre. A robust research community is crucial to support quality in curriculum and pedagogy, and to promote learning and innovation in thinking and practice. The second 'essential' for the expansion and uptake of ECEfS is broad systemic change. All level within the early childhood education system - individual teachers and classrooms, whole centres and schools, professional associations and networks, accreditation and employing authorities, and teacher educators - must work together to create and reinforce the cultural and educational changes required for sustainability. This chapter provides explanations of processes to engender systemic change. It illustrates a systems approach, with reference to a recent study focused on embedding EfS into teacher education. This study emphasises the apparent contradiction that the answer to large-scale reform lies with small-scale reforms that build capacity and make connections.

Videogames, learning, and the social context : approaches to an ethnographic case study

Focusing on the role-playing simulation game SCAPE (Sustainability, Community and Planning Education), this paper proposes that potential disparities between game design practice and the meaning-making process of the players need to be addressed in a wider ecology of learning. The cultural setting of the gameplay experience, and also the different levels of engagement of the players, can be seen to pose vital questions, which are in and of themselves objects of inquiry. This paper argues that ethnographic participant-observation, which is a recognized approach in game studies, allows taking the wider ecology of learning into account to explore the various relations that shape the gameplay.

Community engagement for sustainable urban futures : editorial preface

This special issue of Futures is concerned with community engagement strategies that help to inform medium and long-term futures studies in order to foster sustainable urban environments. Recent special issues of Futures, such as Human Extinction (41:10) and Utopian Thought (41:4), reflect the increasing significance of sustainability issues, which is why we present another crucial component of sustainability, community engagement. Responding to futurists’ long term concerns about climate change outlined in Futures 41(9) [1], Stevenson concluded that we can no longer support infinite growth, and that our goal should be to reshape the economy to let us live within our means. In the face of the continued and accelerated crisis in environmental, economic and social sustainability, a number of trends informed our call for papers on the possible role of community engagement in contributing to enhanced urban sustainability: • Changes in the public sphere in terms of participation, online deliberation systems, polity of urban futures; • The possible use of user-generated content for urban planning (paralleling the rise of user generated content elsewhere); • The related role of social networking, collective and civic intelligence, and crowd- sourcing in urban futures; • The rise of technologies such as wireless Internet and mobile applications, and the impact of neogeography, simulations and 3D virtual environments that reproduce and analyse complex social phenomena and city systems in urban futures, design and planning.

A quite unreasonable state of affairs : corporate social responsibility and the John Lewis Partnership

On the surface the subjects of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Critical Management Studies (CMS) seem to be closely related. Both are concerned with reflecting on the impact of management and organisation on employees, the wider community and the environment. Both suggest that there may be a need for organisations to take responsibility for and account of people other than shareholders and both have used the concept of accountability to suggest that organisations may need to do more than just comply with the legal framework.

Crime, Rurality and Community

Criminology has tended to treat crime as predominantly an urban phenomenon. A review of the available, albeit rather limited, empirical evidence regarding crime and law and order in rural New South Wales (NSW) raises some doubts about the urban-centric focus of criminology and opens up a range of other interesting questions concerning the differential social construction of crime problems in some rural localities, in particular the tendency to racialise questions of crime and law and order. Rather than simply developing an empirical and theoretical account of urban/rural differences, however, the paper suggests a conceptual framework for local and regional studies drawing on the work of Norbert Elias and Robert Putnam.

Violence, Spatiality and other Rurals

Occidentalism, which treats the other as the same, can be detected in both the criminological and rural sociological treatment of violence in the sociospatial sites of rural countrysides. Criminology tends to mistakenly assume that violence in the modern world is primarily an urban phenomenon (Baldwin & Bottoms, 1976, p. 1; Braithwaite, 1989, p. 47). If violence in rural settings is encountered it tends to be treated as a smaller scale version of the urban problem, or the importation of an otherwise urban problem - as the corrupting influence of the gesellschaft within the gemeinschaft. Within much rural sociology violence is rendered invisible by the assumption that rural communities conform to the idealised conception of the typical gemeinschaft society, small-scale traditional societies based on strong cohesiveness, intimacy and organic forms of solidarity. What these bonds conceal, rather than reveal - violence within the family - remains invisible to the public gaze. The visibility of violence within Aboriginal families and communities presents a major exception to the spatially ordered social relations which render so much white family violence hidden. The need to take into account the complexity and diversity of these sociospatial relations is concretely highlighted in our research which has taken us out of the urban context and confronted us not only with the phenomenon of the violence of other rurals, but also with fundamentally competing claims on, and conceptions of, space and place in the context of a racially divided Australian interior. This article represents the second installment of conceptual reflections on this research, with the first having been published in this journal in 1998.

Evaluation of community participation for the development of culture-based fisheries in village reservoirs of Sri Lanka

In this paper an attempt is made to identify the socioeconomic characteristics of a community that influences the development and management of culture-based fisheries in village reservoirs of Sri Lanka. Socioeconomic data were collected from 46 agricultural farming communities associated with 47 village reservoirs in Sri Lanka. Principal component analysis indicated that scores of the first principal component were positively influenced by socioeconomic characteristics that are favorable for making collective decisions. These included leadership of the officers, age of the group, percentage of active members of the group, percentage of kinship of the group, percentage of common interest of the group, and percentage of participation of the group. The size of the group had negative effect on the first principal component. The principal component scores of communication were positively related to willingness to pay (P< 0.001). The communities with socioeconomic characteristics favouring collective decision making were in favor of culture-based fisheries. Homogeneity of group characteristics facilitated successful development of culture-based fisheries.

60Sox and the 2bobmob : mentoring in an online learning community for creative industries graduates

Knowledge intensive services are the fastest growing segment of the international economy and the digital creative industries are a key segment therein. Australia is well positioned to exploit this opportunity but has a skills shortage in the digital content industries in terms of commercial ready graduates. We report on a solution to this problem, in the form of an online creative community of practice – www.60Sox.org - where new graduates are mentored by Australian industry leaders - the 2bobmob. We describe this community of practice as a virtual creative ecology and discuss networks, peer feedback and mentoring as key elements of post-tertiary learning, in the context of portfolio career progression.

Practising public relations in the global community of the 21st century : a comparison of business practices and culture in three world regions

Non-Western practitioners across the globe instinctively attempt to implement Western-based public relations models and theories, often unsuccessfully, regardless of their surrounding environment. This paper reviews business practices and reveals that in Europe, company interests are a main priority, while in Asia, the line between business and personal relationships is extremely blurred. Cultural dimensions and topois were even more varied between the three regions. Implications for the adoption of Western models of public relations practice are discussed.

Strategic directions report for the social determinants of health project

This report presents the outcomes of a project undertaken by the VACCHO Public Health Research Unit to explore ways to build capacity in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social determinants research. The project was funded by the Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal Health.----- The project involved a series of four social determinants research workshops conducted in July and August 2009 and a collaborative forum conducted in September 2009. Invitations to participate were extended to the VACCHO membership and the nine universities in Victoria. Three workshops were held with ACCHOs (in Bendigo, Melbourne and Gippsland), and one workshop with universities (in Melbourne).----- The workshops aimed to build VACCHO’s social determinants research capacity and provide direction for VACCHO on ways to more effectively engage in Aboriginal health research. Through the workshops, VACCHO aimed to work with ACCHOs to identify research processes and issues that are equitable and sustainable, and which address the social determinants of health.----- At the workshops, participants explored questions around the priorities for the social determinants of Aboriginal health and considered the key partnerships that might be important to social determinants research.----- At the workshops with ACCHOs, participants identified key research priorities and questions in Aboriginal social determinants and health. This focus reflects the need for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community representatives to identify the priorities in health and social determinants research. Identifying these priorities is important if researchers are to respond in a meaningful way and undertake relevant research in the most urgent areas of need. At the university workshop, participants focused on identifying research process and implementation issues in social determinants research.----- The final forum brought together ACCHOs, university representatives, invited presenters and participants from justice, education and housing departments, and representatives from non-government funding organisations. The forum aimed to provide an insight into how priorities and funding decisions are made, and how research can help to ensure they are influenced by the priorities of the community. The findings from the workshops were presented at the forum and used to develop pathways for future research.

The meaning of cancer for Australian Aboriginal women : changing the focus of cancer nursing

Aim: The purpose of the study was to explore why Aboriginal women participate in cancer screening programs but appear reluctant to following-up results, or accept medical advice about treatment. Methods: Interpretive ethnography, a qualitative methodology, was used to explore Aboriginal women’s perception of cancer, and the cultural context in which meaning was constructed and influenced treatment decision. Data collection, which occurred over two years, involved fieldwork, participant-observation, face-to-face interviews and focus groups, in two rural Aboriginal communities. Forty eight interviews were recorded from a cross section of the communities, including cancer survivors and patients, family members, health care providers and other women from the community. Results: Key findings were that Aboriginal women’s had a fearful and fatalistic attitude toward cancer, doubted the efficacy of treatment and carried an enduring ambivalence toward the authority of whiteman’s medicine. The women faced a dilemma of wanting access to cancer treatment options but feared entering hospital or clinics not attuned to their cultural needs. Conclusion: The findings highlight the need for a culture-centred approach that decentres the authority of conventional services and instead gives prominence to Aboriginal cultural values as a focal point in cancer control. It should be the responsibility of cancer nurses and others to engage with their local Aboriginal communities to build relationships that foster an exchange of learning about cultural differences that make a difference to how cancer control is practiced.