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Adapting a Participatory Group Programme for Caregivers of Children with Complex Neurodisability from Low-, Middle-Income Countries to a High-Income Setting: Moving from “Baby Ubuntu” to “Encompass”
Get PDFThe “Baby Ubuntu” programme is a well-established, low-cost, community-based intervention to support caregivers of children with complex neurodisability, like cerebral palsy, in low- and middle-income country (LMIC) contexts. This process-focused paper describes our utilisation of the ADAPT guidance to adapt “Baby Ubuntu” for use in ethnically and linguistically diverse, and economically deprived urban boroughs in the United Kingdom (UK). The process was guided by an adaptation team, including parents with lived experience, who explored the rationale for the intervention from local perspectives and its fit for this UK community. Through qualitative interviews and co-creation strategies, the perspectives of caregivers and healthcare professionals substantially contributed to the “Encompass” programme theory, drafting the content, and planning the delivery. Ten modules were co-produced with various topics, based on the “Baby Ubuntu” modules, to be co-facilitated by a parent with lived experience and a healthcare professional. The programme is participatory, allowing caregivers to share information, problem solve, and form supportive peer networks. The “Encompass” programme is an example of a “decolonised healthcare innovation”, as it aims to transfer knowledge and solutions developed in low- and middle-income countries to a high-income context like the UK. Piloting of the new programme is underway
Indirect reciprocity in the public goods game with collective reputations
Get PDFIndirect reciprocity unveils how social cooperation is founded upon moral systems. Within the frame of dyadic games based on individual reputations, the ‘leading-eight’ strategies distinguish themselves in promoting and sustaining cooperation. However, in real-world societies, there are widespread interactions at the group level, where individuals need to make a singular action choice when facing multiple individuals with different reputations. Here, through introducing the assessment of collective reputations, we develop a framework that embeds group-level reputation structure into public goods games to study the evolution of group-level indirect reciprocity. We show that changing the criteria of group assessment destabilizes the reputation dynamics of leading-eight strategies. In a particular range of social assessment criteria, all leading-eight strategies can break the social dilemma in public goods games and sustain cooperation. Specifically, there exists an optimal, moderately set assessment criterion that is most conducive to promoting cooperation. Moreover, in the evolution of assessment criteria, the preference of the leading-eight strategies for social strictness is inversely correlated with the payoff level. Our work reveals the impact of social strictness on prosocial behaviour, highlighting the importance of group-level interactions in the analysis of evolutionary games and complex social dynamics
Violence across the life course and physical and mental health trajectories in later life: a 13-year population-based cohort study in England
Get PDFBACKGROUND: Evidence shows that violence in childhood affects health in adulthood, and violence in adulthood is associated with worse health. However, the extent to which violence-related health disparities persist into later life and whether the gap between victims and non-victims narrows, remains stable, or widens over time are unclear. This study aimed to examine the long-term effects of childhood and lifetime violence on health trajectories in older age.
METHODS: The English Longitudinal Study of Ageing is one of the only cohort studies to cover violence across the lifespan alongside health trajectories in later life. Data were collected every 2 years between 2006 and 2019 and experiences of violence and limiting long-standing illness or disability (LLSID) were self-reported. We used logistic multilevel regressions and growth curve modelling to examine associations between parental physical abuse in childhood, lifetime physical or sexual violence, and any violence across the life course, with subsequent change in LLSID and depressive symptoms in later life, adjusted for demographic (age, gender, marital status, and region), socioeconomic (education, occupational class, tenure, and financial hardship), and social (household size and caregiving) attributes. Depressive symptoms were measured with the Centre for Epidemiological Studies Depression scale.
FINDINGS: Of the 9771 participants who responded to the questionnaire, 6171 answered all three questions about experiences of violence and were included in this cohort. Any experience of violence was consistently associated with worse health in older age, including depression scale score of at least 4 (men: adjusted odds ratio 1·99, 95% CI 1·34-2·94; women: 1·38, 1·02-1·86) and LLSID (men: 1·74, 1·08-2·81; women: 2·15, 1·45-3·17). The patterns were evident in men and women.
INTERPRETATION: Physical and mental health disadvantages associated with experiencing violence in childhood and adulthood are sustained throughout later life. There was little evidence that health disparities between victims and non-victims reduce over time. Preventing violence in both childhood and adulthood could promote healthy ageing. FUNDING: UK Prevention Research Partnership
Cambodia in 2023 and 2024: Hun Manet Rules, but His Father’s Shadow Looms Large
Get PDFThe end of 2024 marked the first full calendar year in power for Cambodia’s new prime minister, Hun Manet. Manet inherited the position from his father, Hun Sen, in August 2023, fulfilling long-standing expectations of a dynastic succession within the Hun family. Questions remain about the balance of power between Manet and his father, who continues to wield significant influence. Internationally, Cambodia has sought to maintain its political and economic ties with China at the same time as tentatively improving relations with the United States and other countries. However, its international relations were strained by its centrality to Southeast’s Asia’s online scam epidemic. The economy showed signs of a post-pandemic recovery, but challenges remain, including the contraction of the Chinese economy, global inflation, and domestic struggles in important sectors like tourism and construction, as well as a growing personal debt crisis that could pose economic and political challenges in the future
Behavioural Economics in EU Competition Law: Article 102 TFEU, the Digital Markets Act, and Informed Assumptions of Irrationality
Get PDFThis article analyses how EU competition law uses insights from behavioural economics to determine whether business conduct is illegal. Various Article 102 TFEU decisions against Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Apple have reflected behavioural findings on non-rational decision-making, as do obligations imposed on gatekeepers by the Digital Markets Act (DMA). Regardless of whether one accepts the underpinning analysis, behavioural economics is informing EU competition law. The issue is how it should do so. Both Article 102 enforcement and the DMA incorporate behavioural economics in different ways, neither of which is simply a corollary of being “ex post antitrust” or “ex ante regulation”. It is argued that the certainty of Article 102 enforcement would benefit from replicating the DMA’s informed assumptions of irrationality. While the Commission’s current approach of context-specific factual analysis when applying Article 102 faithfully captures the contingency of biases in behavioural economics and facilitates accurate outcomes, it has resulted in uncertainty as to when conduct is prohibited. The DMA’s assumptions of irrationality admittedly distort behavioural economics and will produce some inaccurate outcomes. Nevertheless, if suitably informed by research and enforcement experience, assumptions of irrationality offer the opportunity for Article 102 decisions to reflect behavioural insights without abandoning legal certainty
Evaluating a digital mental health intervention for people with Parkinson’s (PACT): acceptability and feasibility randomised controlled trial
Get PDFObjectives: We developed a web application (PACT app) based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy to support mental health for people with Parkinson’s. Here, we assess the app’s acceptability and the feasibility of conducting a randomised controlled trial to evaluate its effectiveness.
Method: This was a two-armed parallel group design with 2:1 allocation to the PACT app or waiting-list control and a single, post-intervention follow-up. Feasibility outcomes included recruitment and retention rate, intervention engagement and satisfaction. Secondary outcomes included measures of anxiety, depression, quality of life, and cost-effectiveness. Treatment effects for secondary outcomes were estimated using linear regression, following the intention-to-treat principle.
Results: Fifty-seven people with Parkinson’s were randomised to 4 weeks of PACT app (n = 38) or waiting-list control (n = 19). Recruitment, retention rate, intervention use, and acceptability met our progression criteria. Intervention effects were in the expected direction for all outcomes and largest for measures of depression (Hedges g = −0.96; 95% CI = −1.47 to −0.46) and committed action (Hedges g = 0.87; 95% CI = 0.38 to 1.35).
Conclusion: Progression criteria were met, and PACT was acceptable to people with Parkinson’s. It has potential efficacy and cost-effectiveness. A future larger trial to fully evaluate efficacy is needed.
Trial registration: ISRCTN65177345 (01/09/2023)
A method to rapidly match environmental impact data to > 60 dietary datasets
Get PDFThere is growing interest in assessing the environmental impacts of diets due to the awareness of the link with human and planetary health. Until now, a limiting factor in this field has been linking information on the environmental impacts of foods to detailed, individual-level dietary data that accurately reflects people’s food consumption habits. Here we present (i) a method to link environmental impact data to a food description and classification system (FoodEx2); (ii) a resulting dataset of environmental impact values matched to 4089 food descriptors; and (iii) an example of applying this data to assess the environmental footprints of diets from Brazil and the USA. Our methodology and dataset enhance the interoperability between environmental and nutritional data, facilitating the assessment of the environmental impact of dietary intakes from different countries. They can be used by researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and consumers to reduce the environmental impact of diets
Automating science journalism tasks: emerging opportunities
Get PDFDigital tools have the potential to both semi-automate science journalist tasks including the incorporation of more diverse voices in science journalism. This paper reports new design science research that developed then elicited first feedback on one digital prototype with algorithms that semi-automated selected science journalism tasks. The feedback revealed that almost all of participating science journalists were comfortable with increased automation of at least of some of their tasks, as long as opportunities to control and personalize this automation remained. The feedback also revealed the potential value of automation to discover and incorporate a wider range of expert voices, depending on geographical location. The paper ends with preliminary design implications for future semi-automation that provides digitized support for science journalism tasks, then a discussion of the paper’s wider research contributions
Results of the Ontology Alignment Evaluation Initiative 2024
Get PDFThe Ontology Alignment Evaluation Initiative (OAEI) aims at comparing ontology matching systems on precisely defined test cases. These test cases can be based on ontologies of different levels of complexity and use different evaluation modalities. The OAEI 2024 campaign offered 13 tracks and was attended by 13 participants. This paper is an overall presentation of that campaign
From fashion blogger to media professional: Networked blogfriends, proximity privilege and making a media career from the North American fashion blogipelago
Get PDFIn the two decades since fashion blogging emerged as a distinct sub-genre, a generation of early fashion bloggers has risen to prominence as writers and editors in the media industries, despite not starting their blogs – as many later did – as a route to a fashion-related career. This study traces the career histories of one such networked group of writers. All participated in early fashion blogging and now work in media, mostly in New York and Toronto.
Drawing on nine interviews with individuals from the early North American fashion blogipelago, this article argues that their professional success is not simply attributable to personal skill or the visibility of digital communications. Rather, an interplay of several factors gave rise to the opportunities leading to their established media careers: the affordances of blogging to develop professional skills and confidence; participation in networks of ‘blogfriends’, and proximity to one of North America’s media centres. This aspect, dubbed ‘proximity privilege’ by one participant (Mlotek 2019), demonstrates how enduringly geographically embedded the cultural industries are. By inhabiting one of these fashion media centres, even temporarily, the interviewees benefitted from proximity to existing networks and opportunities that consolidated the visibility and skills afforded by fashion blogging
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