An evaluation of a tiered interrelated intervention to address hazardous/ harmful drinking

In Northern Ireland, alcohol misuse impacts negatively on individual drinkers, families and communities. The ‘Alcohol and You Project’ in the South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust is a funded project providing a range of inter-related services with the Trust and alcohol/drug misuse charities. It includes a self-help interactive website, brief intervention drop in clinics and counseling services. Queen's University Belfast is evaluating the effectiveness of the project to reduce hazardous/ harmful drinking.

The Role and Effectiveness of Public – Private Partnerships (NHS LIFT) in the Development of Enhanced Primary Care Premises and Services:Report for the National Institute for Health Research Service Delivery and Organisation programme

The research project analysed the role and effectiveness of LIFT via a multi-method study which included semi-structured interviews with policy elites and users, as well as case studies and an exploratory analysis of the financial characteristics of three LIFT Companies. While the team felt that it was able to identify key aspects relating to the advantages and drawbacks surrounding LIFT, some aspects relating to the representativeness of the study was adversely affected by a reluctance of PCTs to participate in the case study analysis and commercial confidentiality restrictions. The study was nonetheless able to identify important issues in relation to the funding and procurement of primary care premises and services.

Civic engagement in a divided society: the role of Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of a university in a society emerging from decades of political violence and to show ways in which public engagement can help promote democratic practice and contribute to the strengthening of peace. Our understanding of the concept of public engagement follows the UK National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement definition:

'Public engagement describes the myriad of ways in which the activity and benefits of higher education and research can be shared with the public. Engagement is by definition a two-way process, involving interaction and listening, with the goal of generating mutual benefit .'

The case study is provided by the example of Queen's University Belfast. We will begin by examining some of the history and context of the university, then discuss the political and social context of Northern Ireland, before going on to examine some of the publicly engaged work being carried out by Queen's and consider how this might be taken forward.

Community engagement in Belfast: Queen's University and the Sandy Row community

This chapter examines a case study of a university-community civic engagement project involving a homework club in an area of significant educational and social disadvantage. The chapter gives voice to community leaders who talk about the role of the initiative and their relationship with the university.

A Pilot Study of Reciprocal Peer Tutoring in Irish Medium Schools

A pilot study to investigate the effects of mathematics peer tutoring in Irish medium primary schools was undertaken. Five schools and 90 students took part in the pilot. Materials and resources that had previously been shown to work in English medium Scottish schools were translated into Irish by CCEA. Irish medium teachers attended three professional development days. Teachers implemented the peer tutoring techniques during mathematics lessons during a period of 16 weeks. Changes in attainment were measures with an Irish translation of the Scottish Survey of Achievement Mathematics Test. Results were positive. Student attainment was significantly raised during the 16-week implementation period by over one standard deviation. This equated to one-year’s worth of mathematics development during this time period. Results must be treated with caution. No control group was used in the pilot study. However, results are very promising and indicate that reciprocal role peer tutoring may be a useful pedagogy in Irish medium education. Further work would be required to establish this definitively.

Perspectives on social citizenship in the EU – from status positivus to status socialis activus via two forms of transnational solidarity

Ever since the inauguration of EU citizenship, elements of social citizenship have been on the agenda of European integration. European level social benefits were proposed early on, and demands for collective labour rights have followed suit. This chapter uses the theoretical umbrella of transnational social citizenship in order to link transnational access to social benefits and collective labour rights. It promotes transnational rights as the best way to conceptualise EU social citizenship as an institution enabling the enjoyment of EU integration without being forced to forego social rights at other levels. Such a perspective sits well in a collection on EU citizenship and federalism, since it simultaneously challenges demands of renationalisation of social rights in the EU and pleas to reduce EU-level citizenship rights to a merely liberal dimension. Social citizenship as promoted here requires an interactive conceptualisation of regulatory and judicial powers at different levels of government as typical for federal systems.
In linking citizenship with human rights the chapter highlights different statuses of citizens. It argues that the rights constituted by social citizenship derive from a status positivus and a status socialis activus, expanding the time-honoured categories of Jellinek. This concept is developed further by linking the notions of receptive solidarity to the status positivus and the notion of participative solidarity to the status socialis activus. In relation to European Union citizenship it promotes a sustainable transnational social citizenship catering for receptive and participative solidarity.
These ideas contrast with most current discourses on EU citizenship. The stress on social citizenship takes issue with a retreat to mere liberalist notions of EU-level citizenship, and the stress on rights takes issue with conceptualising EU citizenship as a community bond with obligations, downplaying the empowering potential of rights. The difficulty of conceptualising transnational social citizenship is to avoid, on the one hand, taking up the tune of populist discourses imagining those moving beyond state borders as a threat to national social citizenship and, on the other hand, to reject the legitimate fears of those remaining at home of creating rupture in the social fabric of Europe’s society. Promoting transnational social citizenship rights based on receptive and participative solidarity the present chapter aims to contribute to avoiding these pitfalls.

A Constitution of Social Governance for the European Union

his chapter considers the EU’s socio-economic constitution under the lens of humaneness. It argues that the EU’s unique socio-economic constitution demands equilibrium of socio-economic integration instead of widening the gap between economic integration at EU levels and social integration at national levels. While the EU lacks the legislative competences to achieve this equilibrium, the constitutional principle still prevails. Indeed, the EU competences reflect its own values as well as the socio-economic constitutions of its constituent Member States. These frequently do not allow for total state-governance of social spheres such as working life, education, care or other social services. Instead, societal actors are given scope to (co-)govern these spheres at national levels. Accordingly, the apparent tension between the EU’s socio-economic values and principles and its limited competences in the social policy field can be resolved through a dynamic interpretation of the EU Treaties towards a “constitution of social governance”. This interpretation reads the Treaties as authorising governance by societal actors. The chapter connects the idea of humanness to the ideals of social governance at EU level and proposes two options for practical application of the concept. These are rules for trans-national labour markets based on European collective labour agreements and a European higher education sector developed by agreements between universities.

Queen's University Belfast, RCUK Open Access Compliance Report 2014/2015

Queen's University Belfast has submitted its open access compliance report to the RCUK for 2014/2015. Queen's receives an annual open access block grant from RCUK. The funds are made available to support universities in meeting the requirements of the RCUK open access policy, in particular meeting the cost of article processing charges (APC) to make articles open access through the publisher.

Escaping the Holocaust: human and health capital of refugees to the United States, 1940-42

The large-scale persecution of Jews during World War II generated massive refugee movements. Using data from 20,441 predominantly Jewish passengers from 19 countries traveling from Lisbon to New York between 1940 and 1942, we analyze the last wave of refugees escaping the Holocaust and verify the validity of height as a proxy for human and health capital. We further show this episode of European migration displays well-known features of migrant self-selection: early migrants were taller than late migrants; a large migrant stock reduces migrant selectivity; and economic barriers to migration
apply. Our findings show that Europe experienced substantial losses in human and health capital while the US benefitted from the immigration of European refugees.

Development of a potent and selective cell penetrant Legumain inhibitor

This Letter describes the continued SAR exploration of small molecule Legumain inhibitors with the aim of developing a potent and selective in vitro tool compound. Work continued in this Letter explores the use of alternative P2-P3 linker units and the P3 group SAR which led to the identification of 10t, a potent, selective and cellularly active Legumain inhibitor. We also demonstrate that 10t has activity in both cancer cell viability and colony formation assays.

Queen's University Belfast, APC Expenditure Report 2015

The Library’s Open Access Team has submitted, on behalf of the University, an Article Processing Charges (APCs) expenditure report to Jisc Collections for 2015. In 2015 Queen’s University Belfast had a total APC spend of £138,039 which enabled 123 articles by Queen’s authors to be made open access via the gold route. This is a significant increase in both APC spend and the number of articles made open access in comparison to 2014.

Supra-treatment threshold neonatal jaundice: Incidence in HIV-exposed compared to non-exposed neonates at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Blantyre, Malawi

INTRODUCTION: Jaundice is the yellowish pigmentation of the skin, sclera, and mucous membranes resulting from bilirubin deposition. Children born to mothers with HIV are more likely to be born premature, with low birth weight, and to become septic-all risk factors for neonatal jaundice. Further, there has been a change in the prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) of HIV guidelines from single-dose nevirapine to a six-week course, all of which theoretically put HIV-exposed newborns at greater risk of developing neonatal jaundice.

AIM: We carried out a study to determine the incidence of severe and clinical neonatal jaundice in HIV-exposed neonates admitted to the Chatinkha Nursery (CN) neonatal unit at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH) in Blantyre.

METHODS: Over a period of four weeks, the incidence among non-exposed neonates was also determined for comparison between the two groups of infants. Clinical jaundice was defined as transcutaneous bilirubin levels greater than 5 mg/dL and severe jaundice as bilirubin levels above the age-specific treatment threshold according the QECH guidelines. Case notes of babies admitted were retrieved and information on birth date, gestational age, birth weight, HIV status of mother, type of feeding, mode of delivery, VDRL status of mother, serum bilirubin, duration of stay in CN, and outcome were extracted.

RESULTS: Of the 149 neonates who were recruited, 17 (11.4%) were HIV-exposed. One (5.88%) of the 17 HIV-exposed and 19 (14.4%) of 132 HIV-non-exposed infants developed severe jaundice requiring therapeutic intervention (p = 0.378). Eight (47%) of the HIV-exposed and 107 (81%) of the non-exposed neonates had clinical jaundice of bilirubin levels greater than 5 mg/dL (p < 0.001).

CONCLUSIONS: The study showed a significant difference in the incidence of clinical jaundice between the HIV-exposed and HIV-non-exposed neonates. Contrary to our hypothesis, however, the incidence was greater in HIV-non-exposed than in HIV-exposed infants.