Potential public health impact of Age-Related Eye Disease Study results: AREDS report no. 11.

OBJECTIVE:

To estimate the potential public health impact of the findings of the Age-Related Eye Disease Study (AREDS) on reducing the number of persons developing advanced age-related macular degeneration (AMD) during the next 5 years in the United States.

METHODS:

The AREDS clinical trial provides estimates of AMD progression rates and of reduction in risk of developing advanced AMD when a high-dose nutritional supplement of antioxidants and zinc is used. These results are applied to estimates of the US population at risk, to estimate the number of people who would potentially avoid advanced AMD during 5 years if those at risk were to take a supplement such as that used in AREDS.

RESULTS:

An estimated 8 million persons at least 55 years old in the United States have monocular or binocular intermediate AMD or monocular advanced AMD. They are considered to be at high risk for advanced AMD and are those for whom the AREDS formulation should be considered. Of these people, 1.3 million would develop advanced AMD if no treatment were given to reduce their risk. If all of these people at risk received supplements such as those used in AREDS, more than 300,000 (95% confidence interval, 158,000-487,000) of them would avoid advanced AMD and any associated vision loss during the next 5 years.

CONCLUSION:

If people at high risk for advanced AMD received supplements such as those suggested by AREDS results, the potential impact on public health in the United States would be considerable during the next 5 years.

The EU Clinical Trials Regulation: Key Priorities, Purposes and Aims and the Implications for Public Health

The replacement of the European Union (EU) Clinical Trials Directive by the new Clinical Trials Regulation (CTR), which entered into force on 16 June 2014 but will not apply before 28 May 2016, provides an opportunity to review the legal and political context within which this important aspect of research law and policy sits and to reflect on the implications for public health. My aim in this article is to relate the context to the key purposes and aims of EU law and policy on clinical trials in order to explain and clarify its orientation. On that basis, I argue that the CTR and the changes it introduces to the law on clinical trials are part of the EU's continued focus on market optimisation. It is this focus that orients and directs the wider pharmaceutical development pipeline, but that undermines the achievement of key public health objectives.

Institutional Hybridity in Public Sector Reform: Replacement, Blending, or Layering of Administrative Paradigms

Despite an abundance of studies on hybridization and hybrid forms of organizing, scholarly work has failed to distinguish consistently between specific types of hybridity. As a consequence, the analytical category has become blurred and lacks conceptual clarity. Our paper discusses hybridity as the simultaneous appearance of institutional logics in organizational contexts, and differentiates the parallel co-existence of logics from transitional combinations (eventually leading to the replacement of a logic) and more robust combinations in the form of layering and blending. While blending refers to hybridity as an ‘amalgamate’ with original components that are no longer discernible, the notion of layering conceptualizes hybridity in a way that the various elements, or clusters thereof, are added on top of, or alongside, each other, similar to sediment layers in geology. We illustrate and substantiate such conceptual differentiation with an empirical study of the dynamics of public sector reform. In more detail, we examine the parliamentary discourse around two major reforms of the Austrian Federal Budget Law in 1986 and in 2007/2009 in order to trace administrative (reform) paradigms. Each of the three identified paradigms manifests a specific field-level logic with implications for the state and its administration: bureaucracy in Weberian-style Public Administration, market-capitalism in New Public Management, and democracy in New Public Governance. We find no indication of a parallel co-existence or transitional combination of logics, but hybridity in the form of robust combinations. We explore how new ideas fundamentally build on – and are made resonant with – the central bureaucratic logic in a way that suggests layering rather than blending. The conceptual findings presented in our article have implications for the literature on institutional analysis and institutional hybridity.

Personal and Public Involvement and its impact - Monitoring, measuring and evaluating the impact of Personal and Public Involvement (PPI) in Health and Social Care in Northern Ireland.

Introduction
This report details the findings from research conducted across Northern Ireland’s Health and Social Care Trusts during 2015 which examines the current state of Personal and Public Involvement (PPI). This is about how service users, carers and patients engage with staff, management and directors of statutory health and social care organisations. Most statutory health and social care organisations must, under legislation, meet the requirements of PPI. PPI has been part of health and social care policy in Northern Ireland since 2007 and became law two years later with the introduction of the Health and Social Care Reform Act (2009). It is, therefore, timely that PPI is now assessed in this systematic way in order to both examine the aspects which are working well and to highlight those areas where improvements need to be made. As far as possible, this Summary Report is written in an accessible way, avoiding jargon and explaining key research terms, so as to ensure it is widely understood. This is in keeping with established good practice in service user involvement research. This summary, therefore, gives a picture of PPI in Northern Ireland currently. There is also a fuller report which gives a lot more details about the research and findings. Information on this is available from the Public Health Agency and/or the Patient and Client Council.

European Union Biomedical Research Law and Policy and Citizen Science

In this chapter I focus on the EU's emerging biomedical research law and policy and examine the development of citizen science in this setting. The chapter argues that while what the analysis reveals might not be specific to the EU, attention to this organisation underlines important but often overlooked aspects of citizen science. That is, citizen science is (being) made less about promoting substantive involvement by citizens in the fashioning of biomedical trajectories and their empowerment as participants that pursue aims defined by themselves rather than others. Instead citizen science is underpinned by a more longstanding EU level approach to participation in science-based issues that sees it being harnessed, shaped and directed towards supporting the production and legitimation of organisational identity and sociotechnical order (in this case the EU’s). Within biomedical research law and policy citizen science might therefore be expected to support market-optimised biomedical futures and a dynamic internal market and economy. Citizen science is thereby implicated in the delineation of the boundaries of responsibility and accountability (and blame) for the (non-)realisation of public health priorities and objectives. In this way law and policy on participation and citizen science might support current research trajectories that do not serve all health needs.

U-TRACER® - the use of communication technology in higher education - an information visualization tool for the context of Portuguese public higher education

Information Visualization is gradually emerging to assist the representation and comprehension of large datasets about Higher Education Institutions, making the data more easily understood. The importance of gaining insights and knowledge regarding higher education institutions is little disputed. Within this knowledge, the emerging and urging area in need of a systematic understanding is the use of communication technologies, area that is having a transformative impact on educational practices worldwide. This study focused on the need to visually represent a dataset about how Portuguese Public Higher Education Institutions are using Communication Technologies as a support to teaching and learning processes. Project TRACER identified this need, regarding the Portuguese public higher education context, and carried out a national data collection. This study was developed within project TRACER, and worked with the dataset collected in order to conceptualize an information visualization tool U-TRACER®. The main goals of this study related to: conceptualization of the information visualization tool U-TRACER®, to represent the data collected by project TRACER; understand higher education decision makers perception of usefulness regarding the tool. The goals allowed us to contextualize the phenomenon of information visualization tools regarding higher education data, realizing the existing trends. The research undertaken was of qualitative nature, and followed the method of case study with four moments of data collection.The first moment regarded the conceptualization of the U-TRACER®, with two focus group sessions with Higher Education professionals, with the aim of defining the interaction features the U-TRACER® should offer. The second data collection moment involved the proposal of the graphical displays that would represent the dataset, which reading effectiveness was tested by end-users. The third moment involved the development of a usability test to the UTRACER ® performed by higher education professionals and which resulted in the proposal of improvements to the final prototype of the tool. The fourth moment of data collection involved conducting exploratory, semi-structured interviews, to the institutional decision makers regarding their perceived usefulness of the U-TRACER®. We consider that the results of this study contribute towards two moments of reflection. The challenges of involving end-users in the conceptualization of an information visualization tool; the relevance of effective visual displays for an effective communication of the data and information. The second relates to the reflection about how the higher education decision makers, stakeholders of the U-TRACER® tool, perceive usefulness of the tool, both for communicating their institutions data and for benchmarking exercises, as well as a support for decision processes. Also to reflect on the main concerns about opening up data about higher education institutions in a global market.

Intelligent predictive control for thermal comfort and energy savings in public buildings

This talk addresses the problem of controlling a heating ventilating and air conditioning system with the purpose of achieving a desired thermal comfort level and energy savings. The formulation uses the thermal comfort, assessed using the predicted mean vote (PMV) index, as a restriction and minimises the energy spent to comply with it. This results in the maintenance of thermal comfort and on the minimisation of energy, which in most operating conditions are conflicting goals requiring some sort of optimisation method to find appropriate solutions over time. In this work a discrete model based predictive control methodology is applied to the problem. It consists of three major components: the predictive models, implemented by radial basis function neural networks identifed by means of a multi-objective genetic algorithm [1]; the cost function that will be optimised to minimise energy consumption and provide adequate thermal comfort; and finally the optimisation method, in this case a discrete branch and bound approach. Each component will be described, with a special emphasis on a fast and accurate computation of the PMV indices [2]. Experimental results obtained within different rooms in a building of the University of Algarve will be presented, both in summer [3] and winter [4] conditions, demonstrating the feasibility and performance of the approach. Energy savings resulting from the application of the method are estimated to be greater than 50%.

Receptivity to Self-Service Technology (SST): A Research Overview and the Way Forward

In a digital era characterised by the need for efficiency and value, self-service technology rises as a delivery interface offered by public and private sector service providers. With the assumption of a win-win situation for both the provider and customers who can ‘do it themselves’ online/offsite and offline/onsite, stereotypes arise concerning antecedents for positive receptivity and impediments in adopting SSTs. The present paper offers a literature-based discussion of some of the existing and emerging perspectives in this domain; it delivers a contextual review of studies conducted, highlights controversial viewpoints that need to be reconsidered, and suggests future research themes that can make use of the emergent digital sources in data collection and analysis. The purpose is to spark future research on the extent to which SST is a champion for different service types, and to systematically study the customer profile to be targeted for its optimal use in value co-creation.

Social Capital in Inter-Organizational Partnership Research

This chapter focuses on the use of social capital as a construct to examine and explain the formation and operation of inter-organizational partnerships. In particular it shows how social capital contributes to the sustainability of a public sector partnership. In this research context social capital is defined as the networks, trust, norms and values that enable individuals and organizations to achieve mutual goals through collaboration. This definition draws upon the author’s empirical research on partnerships and partnership working in the field of post-compulsory education and her practical experience of establishing, managing and leading international partnerships for teaching and research in teacher education. The emphasis is on the practical application of social capital to qualitative data and on identifying sources of evidence, including research literature from different disciplines in the social sciences to interpret and theorize primary data. The first section of the chapter considers the complexities of defining social capital in the context of rival theoretical and political perspectives and leads to a discussion of the dimensions of social capital that are found in effective and sustained partnerships.

A fair day's wage? Perceptions of public sector pay

There is a scarcity of evidence pertaining to the general public's perception of public sector pay. Hence, in the present study, 161 women and 149 men were asked to estimate the wages 35 public sector professions should receive annually in the fictitious nation of Maldoria, based on a comparison value of an annual income of T10,000 for general practitioners. Analysis showed that only pilots were given a higher annual income than general practitioners; miners and local government workers were also provided with relatively high annual incomes. By contrast, newscasters were provided with the lowest annual income. Participants' sex did not affect these evaluations, and other demographic variables and public sector-related information of the participants were poor predictors of their evaluations. The implications of this research on public attitudes toward wage determination are discussed, and avenues for further research highlighted.

Training the public health workforce we need. Exploring perceptions for future public heath workers in Ecuador

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2015

Defining the nation, defining public television: discourses of publics on public service television in post-communist Latvia

Institutional and political economy approaches have long dominated the study of post-Communist public broadcasting, as well as the entire body of post-Communist media transformations research, and the enquiry into publics of public broadcasting has traditionally been neglected. Though media scholars like to talk about a deep crisis in the relationship between public broadcasters and their publics in former Communist bloc countries across Central and Eastern Europe, little has been done to understand the relationship between public broadcasters and their publics in these societies drawing on qualitative audience research tradition. Building on Hirschman’s influential theory of ‘exit, voice and loyalty’, which made it possible to see viewing choices audiences make as an act of agency, in combination with theoretical tools developed within the framework of social constructionist approaches to national imagination and broadcasting, my study focuses on the investigation of responses publics of the Latvian public television LTV have developed vis-à-vis its role as contributing to the nation-building project in this ex-Soviet Baltic country. With the help of focus groups methodology and family ethnography, the thesis aims to explore the relationship between the way members of the ethno-linguistic majority of Latvian-speakers and the sizeable ethno-linguistic minority of Russian-speakers conceptualize the public broadcaster LTV, as well as understand the concept of public broadcasting more generally, and the way they define the national ‘we’. The study concludes that what I call publics of LTV employ Hirschman’s described exit mechanism as a voice-type response. Through their rejection of public television which, for a number of complex reasons they consider to be a state broadcaster serving the interests of those in power they voice their protest against the country’s political establishment and in the case of its Russian-speaking publics also against the government’s ethno-nationalistic conception of the national ‘we’. I also find that though having exited from the public broadcaster LTV, its publics have not abandoned the idea of public broadcasting as such. At least at a normative level the public broadcasting ideals are recognized, accepted and valued, though they are not necessarily associated with the country’s de jure institutional embodiment of public broadcasting LTV. Rejection of the public television has also not made its non-loyal publics ‘less citizens’. The commercial rivals of LTV, be they national or, in the case of Russian-speaking audiences, localized transnational Russian television, have allowed their viewers to exercise citizenship and be loyal nationals day in day out in a way that is more liberal and flexible than the hegemonic form of citizenship and national imagination of the public television LTV can offer.

Good Practice in EU Public Service Media and Contemporary Practice in Jordan: A Comparative Analysis

UNESCO Amman Office Foreword: UNESCO Amman office is pleased to publish a comparative analysis between good Public Service Media (PSM) practices in Europe and the contemporary practice in Jordan. The study is part of the Support to Media in Jordan project, funded by the European Union, aiming to increase media freedom, media independence and journalistic professionalism in Jordan. The state owned broadcaster, Jordan Radio and Television (JRTV), has informed, entertained and educated Jordanians for decades. JRTV reaches almost every corner of the Kingdom and has the potential to serve all Jordanians with balanced, impartial and accurate news and programmes relevant to their day-to-day lives.Based on this potential there has been a long standing ambition to transform the JRTV from a state broadcaster to a public service broadcaster; from a TV and radio that predominately serves the state, to a broadcaster that serves the public and is independent from the Government of the day. This ambition is expressed also in the Support to Media in Jordan project, agreed between the Government an the EU, under which UNESCO has been asked to produce two studies: The comparative PSM analysis and a broader media landscape assessment based on UNESCO’s Media Development Indicators (MDI’s). The Jordanian MDI assessment was carried out by a team of national and international researchers during the first six months of 2015, and builds on the rich flora of recent studies on the Jordanian media landscape, as well as on original research. The study is available in Arabic and English. Professor Naomi Sakr carried out the comparative PSM analysis parallel to the MDI study, and in close cooperation with the MDI research team and UNESCO Amman office.

The frontiers of participatory public engagement

Currently missing from critical literature on public engagement with academic research is a public-centric analysis of the wider contemporary context of developments in the field of public engagement and participation. Drawing on three differently useful strands of the existing theoretical literature on the public, this article compares a diverse sample of 100 participatory public engagement initiatives in order to first, analyse a selection of the myriad ways that the public is being constituted and supported across this contemporary field and second, identify what socio-cultural researchers might learn from these developments. Emerging from this research is a preliminary map of the field of public engagement and participation. This map highlights relationships and divergences that exist among diverse forms of practice and brings into clearer view a set of tensions between different contemporary approaches to public engagement and participation. Two ‘frontiers’ of participatory public engagement that socio-cultural researchers should attend are also identified. At the first, scholars need to be critical regarding the particular versions of the public that their preferred approach to engagement and participation supports and concerning how their specific identifications with the public relate to those being addressed across the wider field. At the second frontier, researchers need to consider the possibilities for political intervention that public engagement and participation practice could open out, both in the settings they are already working and also in the much broader, rapidly developing and increasingly complicated contemporary field of public engagement and participation that this article explores.