Knowledge synthesis, translation and exchange in public health and health promotion: the role of a Cochrane review group

The Cochrane Collaboration is an international non-profit organisation that aims to produce high quality systematic reviews of the effectiveness of health interventions. This work is conducted by 51 Review Groups that span a  range of topics (e.g. pregnancy and childbirth, HIV/AIDS). The role of Fields within the Collaboration has been to actively engage relevant stakeholders internationally to improve the quality and relevance of reviews. Since the inception in 1996 of the Cochrane Public Health and Health Promotion Field, the Cochrane Collaboration has begun to embrace reviews related to public health and health promotion and is adapting to the changing needs of end-users. The introduction of a Cochrane health promotion and public health review group will help ensure that reviews will be oriented towards building evidence for equity and reducing inequalities and best meet the needs of decision-makers, practitioners and consumers. Our role as a Field has led to us working with a range of partners including reviewers,  researchers, practitioners and consumers. Knowledge synthesis, translation and exchange (KST&E) has emerged as an issue in need of further  exploration for practice to influence decision-makers and for policy to  influence practitioners. 2007 will be an exciting year for evidence-informed Health Promotion and Public Health (HPPH) both within the Cochrane Collaboration and for our partners in policy, practice and research.

Prevention of suicide : police powers, parliamentary intent and judicial interpretation

While in most countries suicide is no longer a crime, it is also acknowledged that the state has an interest in the preservation of human life, prevention of suicide, and protection of vulnerable persons from harming themselves. In a civil, secular and democratic society, however, the public law principle of state protective powers has to be balanced against the private law principle of personal autonomy (personal self-determination). Under the doctrine of autonomy, competent adults of sound mind can make legally binding voluntary choices, including the so-called ‘death-choice’ (refusal of life-sustaining or life-prolonging treatment as well as suicide). To add to the complexity, whereas the powers of the state in relation to suicide and its prevention have been codified, the concepts of personal autonomy and personal liberty are grounded in common law. Stuart v Kirkland–Veenstra [2008] VSCA 32, which is at present being considered by the High Court of Australia, exemplifies tensions that arise in the suicide-prevention area of jurisprudence. This article explores powers and duties of police officers in relation to suicide prevention and the notion of mental illness by reference to the Kirkland–Veenstra case, the relevant statutory framework and the common law.

An overview of IT outsourcing in public secto agenices

For the past 15 years, governments in the developed, Western world have been contracting out, or outsourcing, services as a key part of public sector reforms. Outsourcing has been argued to lead to cost savings, improved discipline, better services, access to scarce skills, and the capacity for managers to focus more time on the core business of their organizations (Domberger, 1998). Government outsourcing initiatives have encompassed a range of services, but given the large sums of money invested in IT assets, the outsourcing of IT services (IT outsourcing, or ITO) has been a major initiative for many agencies. Lacity and Willcocks (1998, p. 3) defined ITO as "handing over to a third party [the] management of IS/IT assets, resources and/or activities for required results." For public-sector outsourcing, this handover is usually made by way of a competitive tender. Case studies have reported ITO successes and failures (e.g., Currie & Willcocks, 1998; Rouse & Corbitt, 2003; Willcocks & Currie, 1997; Willcocks & Lacity, 2001; Willcocks & Kern, 1998), but much of the evidence presented to public-sector decision makers to justify this reform is anecdotal and unsystematic, and when investigated in depth, does not necessarily support widespread conclusions.

Freedom of political communication, public officials and the emerging right to personal privacy in Australia

In recent times Australian courts have demonstrated a willingness to fashion a right to personal privacy at common law. The Australian Law Reform Commission has noted this impOt1ant development and said it was likely to continue in the absence of legislative action in the area. The aim of this article is to outline a theoretical framework to underpin and inform the development of this emerging right - howsoever framed - and the extent to which it is possible for the law to provide meaningful privacy protection to public officials under the Constitution.

Motivational interviewing in the prevention and management of chronic disease : improving physical activity and exercise in line with choice theory

Discusses the relationship between motivational interviewing and choice theory in working with chronically ill clients/patients.

Public relations and the rhetoric of civil society

The intention of this paper is to build on a book by Anne Surma (2005). It takes some of Surma’s ideas probably beyond what was originally intended in order to suggest their logical conclusions for the practice of public relations. Surma argues that writing and reading of every type enables or otherwise facilitates or restricts imagination. Further, this shaping or inflection of the imagination leads to the shaping or the inflection of the type of ‘ethic’ which we are able to hold in our heads about the world which surrounds us. If this is the case then public relations writing, which has the very raison d’etre of influencing thought, must lend itself to important analysis in this regard. This paper presumes the reader has a basic understanding of Charles Saunders Peirce’s notion of semiotics.

Communicating climate change: public responsiveness and matters of concern

Since climate change captured global attention in the 1990s, the private individual, addressed as a member of a concerned public, has occupied a focal position in the discourse of environmental amelioration. Recently, a range of prominent books, films and television programs — for example, Tim Flannery’s The Weather Makers (2005), Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth (2006) and ABC TV’s Carbon Cops (2007) — have promoted the role of the individual as the ‘starting point’ for effective environmental action. These texts assume that the provision and comprehension of sufficient information to the public about climate change will change individual habits and practices. This accords with the ‘information-deficit model’ in environmental communication research, a concept that asserts a direct connection between individual awareness and response, and collective action. This paper discusses the limitations of this model, pervasive in both popular and official approaches to climate change. It will interrogate the philosophical assumptions that underlie it, in which nature and culture are polarised and the human is positioned in a certain, and separate, relationship to the non-human world — an inheritance of the very logic that enables the continued exploitation of nature. Applying Bruno Latour’s notion of a ‘matter of concern’ to climate change, where the gathering of a range of irreducible forces and im/materialities continually produce these phenomena, this paper proposes that, in thinking about climate change as essentially unrepresentable, a different mode of public engagement with the issue is asserted.