NIH: Suggest social justice items for Electronic Health Records

My source: Spirit of 1848 list [The collaborative tool is very interesting]
Let's make suggestions for inclusion of social justice factors in Electronic Health Records by participating in the NIH activity described below.

Dear colleague,

Your input is requested to help make recommendations for a standardized set of patient-reported variables to be collected in primary care and public health electronic health records (EHRs), which will lead to unprecedented data harmonization and opportunities for health research. In order to participate in this process:

• Please visit the website for the collaborative tool: www.gem-beta.org
• Click on the blue button at the top titled "EHR Campaign." Or alternatively, click on the News tab and then the associated EHR campaign title.
• Read the summary statements written by the expert panels
• Enter your comments on the recommended measures, and if needed, suggest alternative measures (see attachment for detailed instructions).
• Forward this request to your colleagues who may be interested in this initiative

Comments will be accepted through April 4, 2011.

Background about this Collaborative Effort

Several institutes within the National Institutes of Health in collaboration with the Society of Behavioral Medicine are coordinating an effort to identify a core set of brief, practical measures to recommend for use in adult primary care and public health electronic health records (EHRs), and we are inviting you and all members of your affiliated organizations to join this collaborative effort.

The HITECH Act and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act place new emphasis on the widespread and meaningful use of electronic health records (EHRs). This is an important advance, with one significant exception: Currently EHRs fail to capture data reflecting crucial health behaviors and psychosocial issues. Such patient-reported variables are both health outcomes themselves, and major determinants of other health outcomes.

To address the critical need for patient-reported data, we are organizing an effort to evaluate and recommend actionable, patient-reported measures of health behaviors and psychosocial factors for use in electronic health records (EHRs) within adult primary care and public health settings. In order to facilitate broad participation in the development of standard measures we are using a three-phase process of consensus building.

In the first phase panels of subject matter experts were convened for each of 13 behavioral domains to review available measures and to recommend up to 4 reliable, practical measures for each domain that would be appropriate to utilize in primary care and public health settings and to be reported in EHRs.

*Your input is being requested for the second and third phases of the project.*

For the second phase we are using the NCIs Grid-Enabled Measures (GEM) Database to gather feedback from all stakeholders. In order to participate in this process, please visit the GEM website, www.gem-beta.org, and click on the blue button at the top titled "EHR Campaign." Or alternatively, click on the News tab and the associated header for the EHR campaign. Begin by reading the summary statements written by the expert panels, view the recommended measures, enter your comments on the recommended measures, and if needed, suggest alternative measures. Comments will be accepted through April 4, 2011.

The third phase will be a workshop/town hall meeting on May 2, 2011 at the NIH bringing together scientists, practitioners, policy makers, and patient/consumer representatives to review the results of this campaign and make recommendations on standard consensus measures for behavioral health and health behavior screening in primary care and public health settings. We encourage everyone interested in this effort to participate, and more information about this meeting will be forthcoming. Immediately following this workshop there will be a closed session meeting of key stakeholders to make final recommendations based on feedback obtained from the GEM tool and the open meeting.

Workshop participants will receive a summary of the meeting as well as information on final recommendations. Subsequent to the meeting, organizers and key stakeholders will discuss strategies to build support and implement plans to advance the adoption and incorporation of a core set of patient-reported behavioral and psychosocial measures in primary care and public health EHRs.

We truly thank you for your participation in this project to standardize the collection of behavioral data in EHRs because it will enable the collaborative group to put forth the best possible recommendations and ultimately improve patient outcomes.

Sincerely,

The EHR Measures Meeting Planning Committee
Maureen P Boyle, Ph.D.
AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow
Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research
Office of the Director, NIH
31 Center Drive, Building 31, Room B1-C19; MSC 2027
Bethesda, MD 20892-2027

KT-EQUAL future events - Ageing Research and Design 4 Health Conf.

Dear colleague,

KT-EQUAL is planning lots of interesting events in the next few months focused on aspects of ageing research.

Below are a few upcoming events that may be of interest to you, more information can always be found on our website.

Upcoming workshops include topics such as -

• digital inclusion
• ethical dilemmas
• and creative societies.

A flyer is available with more information about these exciting free events.

The I'dgo consortium has also confirmed the full programme for their seminar on An international perspective on the Built Environment for an Ageing Population: Issues in maintaining access to outdoor places on the 16th February 2011.

Another upcoming conference which is still accepting papers* is the Design for Health Conference in Sheffield Hallam University on the 13th-15th July 2011
http://www.design4health.org.uk/

We look forward to seeing you at some of our events in the future.

Best Wishes

Helen Haigh
KT-EQUAL Co-ordinator
University of Sheffield

PJ adds: *Kirsty Christer at SHU contacted me re. D4H to advise that submissions are open until 7th Feb.

Rhinos, evidence based medicine and 'out-reach'

It would be be marvellous to be able to introduce h2cm to the nursing, health and social care communities in Asia, especially China. According to Flag Counter just two visitors. There are the good - effective ways of doing that and the not so good. How the following measures up I'm not sure...

Working in health we are surely aware of the need to base what we do on evidence. Although nurses are not necessarily independent as the patient advocate. Advocacy is still an important part of the nursing role and one requiring specific advice in some instances.

Earlier this month a Guardian article related the ever more precarious position of the South African rhino and how claims about the curative properties of rhino horn as a medicine fuels poaching. The UK is nowhere near South Africa or China so what gives? What gives is the Planet, the tiger too and the biosphere in general. Apparently rhino horn is just compacted keratin and has no medicinal properties.

Nurses tend to be a green, ecologically minded group and the best source of change comes from within. It is never easy to change the beliefs of others, especially when your culture venerates its elders. Belief also remains a powerful factor in health. Despite this do nurses not have a duty to challenge beliefs that are wrong, to educate their communities?

What price true literacy: spiritual, 3Rs, ICT, health, environmental ....?

There must be a way for nurses to unite on this - 

across cultures, borders, digital barricades, politics, beliefs ....

As we make a difference individually with patients and carers ... collectively can we extend our reach to other communities too? While there's still time - and we try not to bite our nails.

Interesting and clearly ironic in the UK that after a generation public health is to have a new service with a return to the local authorities.

Grand Challenges for Global Health: 15th - access to clean, clear, knowledge

Dear HIFA2015 colleagues,

The news item below is forwarded from the Global Health Council, which reports the mHealth Summit taking place this week in washington DC. It is especially good to see that Bill Gates is giving a keynote address. This suggests that the Gates Foundation may be poised to address the 15th Grand Challenge for Global Health, as proposed by international health leaders in The Lancet:

"The Gates Foundation identified fourteen challenges [Grand Challenges for Global Health] but a fifteenth challenge stares us plainly in the face: The 15th challenge is to ensure that everyone in the world can have access to clean, clear, knowledge - a basic human right, and a public health need as important as access to clean, clear, water, and much more easily achievable."

Tikki Pang (WHO), Muir Gray (NHS, UK), and Tim Evans (WHO): 'A 15th grand challenge for global public health.' The Lancet 2006; 367:284-286.
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140673606680501/fulltext

When HIFA2015 was in planning back in 2006, the lead author of the above paper, Dr Tikki Pang (Director of Research policy and Cooperation at WHO) said: 'HIFA2015 is an ambitious goal but it can be achieved if all stakeholders work together'. Bill and Melinda Gates are critical stakeholders. I look forward to see Bill Gates' presentation. Will the Gates Foundation take up the 15th Challenge? Will the Gates Foundation prioritise the challenge of health information for all by 2015?

Bill Gates keynote yesterday is not yet available on the web, but it will be soon at: http://mhealthsummit.org/conference/live-webcast

I hope that Bill Gates will use this opportunity to articulate a clear and specific vision from the Gates Foundation: a vision of a world where people are no longer dying for lack of access to appropriate, reliable healthcare information. With their support, there is no doubt this vision can and will be realised.

With best wishes,
Neil

HIFA2015 profile: Neil Pakenham-Walsh is the coordinator of the HIFA2015 campaign and co-director of the Global Healthcare Information Network. He started his career as a hospital doctor in the UK, and has clinical experience in rural Ecuador and Peru.  For the last 20 years he has been committed to improving the availability of healthcare information for health workers in developing countries. He has worked with the World Health Organization, the Wellcome Trust, Medicine Digest and INASP (International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications). www.hifa2015.org  neil.pakenham-walsh AT ghi-net.org

My source:  www.hifa2015.org

compose, direct, conduct and 'dilute to taste' outcomes

In Drupal musings 12 I mentioned that the classification of nursing practice is not necessarily at the forefront of nursing's mind set against the turbulence and rush of clinical areas.* This is especially so at the moment as nurses on wards, clinics and community try to identify savings.

I am interested in classification in part as this is the raison d'être for the health career model; on a mental (cognitive) level, in practice and potentially in virtual representations of health care activities. For learners it is an extra to hold the bicycle saddle for those first turns of the pedals. Additionally, for those who have completed many rides and races (lifelong learners) they can reflect on how they got there, and plan for the next round.

As a conceptual framework then h2cm is, like classification, in the background. The model can help to compose, direct and conduct (c-d-c) nursing (health and social) care. Classification matters to ALL nurses because we need to know not only the c-d-c of nursing but the outcomes too.

If all the above is in the background, then together with classification the health career model can help differentiate nursing as a discipline and make nursing visible. We can only take heed of the adage "divide and conquer" by being able to differentiate nursing from other disciplinary contributions. Then perhaps we can truly identify and so define the facets of integrated, interprofessional and multidisciplinary care that must also be person-centred. As nurses and the team respond to the individual's trauma (assault, illness, chronic disease ...), they can also assure their combined values, which must be defined and articulated if there is to be a unified philosophy.

If the respective professions have not noticed (I am sure they have) 'professionalism' is itself under assault in terms of unique knowledge and skills, respect, power and status. To a degree this a good thing. It is also called 'progress': countering restrictive practices, improving service access and challenging institutionalised and state paternalism. Professionalism is accorded for reasons of accountability, education, responsibility, integrity and advocacy. Amid the public (mental) health disaster that we face - the professions - are needed more than ever and if the assault is taken too far ... ?

* Should you know of examples where classification IS at the forefront of nursing practice please let me know - h2cmng @ yahoo.co.uk.

Achieving the health-related MDGs. It takes a workforce!

Dear colleagues,

With reference to the upcoming MDG Summit and the UN Global Strategy for Women's and Children's Health, Dr Manuel Dayrit would like to share with you the above-mentioned page that was published today on the HRH website, which highlights the human resources for health situation in the 49 focus countries.

Achieving the health-related MDGs. It takes a workforce!
Link: http://www.who.int/hrh/workforce_mdgs/en/index.html

Density of doctors, nurses and midwives in the 49 priority countries
Link: http://www.who.int/hrh/density_chart.pdf

Please note that the link to the chart is:
http://www.who.int/hrh/fig_density.pdf

Kind regards,

Rebecca Bailey on behalf of Dr Manuel Dayrit
Rebecca J. Bailey, MSPH, CEd
Technical Officer
Health Workforce Education and Production
WHO/HSS/HRH

My source:
Ellen BONITO: bonitoe at wpro.who.int
GANM (Global Alliance for Nursing and Midwifery): GANM at ibp.wa-research.ch

<->

In Mevagissey, Cornwall last month browsing in Hurley Books, I came across a copy of Maps and Diagrams: Their Compilation and Construction by F.J. Monkhouse, et al. (1967). At three pounds - a historical bargain. Prompted by the charts above I will scan the cover and share some of the text/ideas here in the near future.

I was saddened to see that in Padstow The Strand Bookshop has closed - apparently in January 2009. As a listed building who knows perhaps it might smell of books once again!

Born HIV Free campaign announces 11 million views for "Baby in the Sky" creative film

Dear Writer and Blogger,

In our series of news related to the 6-month Born HIV Free campaign, we are delighted to send you a press release focussing on the specially created film "Baby in the Sky" created by Les Bonzoms for this campaign.

The film has attracted a great deal of attention through YouTube and other broadcasts, helping to make people aware about the campaign.

Thanks as ever for your support,

Brendan
Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide France, Paris

“Baby in the sky”: a stunning new film made by Les Bonzoms specially for the Born HIV Free campaign attracts more than 11 million viewers on dedicated YouTube channel

Geneva, 6 July 2010 – The YouTube channel dedicated to The Global Fund’s Born HIV Free campaign which was launched seven weeks ago, has already been seen by more than 11 million viewers. The channel features an exceptional animation film called “Baby in the Sky”, created by the design team Les Bonzoms and with music of Amy Winehouse. Euronews, the international news channel, joins the campaign by also featuring the video until October.

“The purpose of the Born HIV Free campaign is to encourage millions of people to support The Global Fund so we can finally put an end to the tragedy of 430,000 babies being born HIV-positive every year, when we have the means and the expertise to prevent this.” says Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, Global Ambassador for the protection of mothers and children against AIDS. “Hopefully this beautiful film will reach a wide audience because of its creative ingenuity, and inspire millions of people to support The Global Fund so we can finally put an end to this terrible injustice.”

“Baby in the Sky” is a highly creative and imaginative animated film that conveys the beauty of life ahead for an unborn child. The film artistically portrays an imaginary journey in a world full of adventurous landscapes and fantastic creatures. It ends with a call from Carla Bruni-Sarkozy for an HIV-free generation in which she says “Life is a beautiful journey. Don’t let AIDS kill it.”

The film owes its powerful soundtrack to multi-award winning and singer/songwriter artist Amy Winehouse, who offered the pro-bono use of her “Back to Black” song for the film.

“It was a question of finding a true resonance with the images in the film created by Bonzoms”, says musician / producer Julien Civange, who conceived the Born HIV Free campaign, about the use of Winehouse’s music. “We wanted to find a piece that was modern but also well known, something that carried the same sensibility as the film. The magic came with the soundtrack by Amy Winehouse, an artist that Carla considers one of the greatest and most talented of her generation and who was generous enough to participate in the campaign.”

The animation can be viewed on the Born HIV Free YouTube channel and will also be distributed through various social and mass media platforms during the course of the campaign.

Since June 20, Euronews, the international news channel, has been broadcasting “Baby in the Sky” on its network in 155 countries. The film is shown in 90-second slots an average of three times a day for the first month and then once a day thereafter. Broadcasting of the film will continue until 5 October 2010.

"All of us at Euronews are very proud to be associated with this initiative, which is supported by an incredible positive animated film" said Philippe Cayla, Chairman of the Executive Board of Euronews. "We are glad to open Euronews' influential and far-reaching network to such professionals and experts fighting to eradicate HIV transmission during pregnancy. We are mobilized to make a success of this campaign and we strongly believe that Euronews' viewers will be deeply moved and will want to participate in the Born HIV Free campaign," Mr Cayla added.

CNBC has also been broadcasting the video on its network in Europe, Middle East and Africa since the launch of the campaign.

Speaking about the distinctive nature of the “Baby in the Sky” project, Jack-Antoine Charlot, a designer from Les Bonzoms said: “It was necessary to stop playing with the notion of guilt as an incentive for people to act and instead to reinforce a sense of wanting to share and take part in something. In the case of mother-to-child HIV transmission, the medications already exist to stop it. The problem is one of mobilization.”

After the film, viewers are invited to show their support by signing their name on the campaign’s “virtual wall of support”, on the www.bornhivfree.org website. The campaign asks people - by the simple act of clicking a button - to register their support for the work of The Global Fund and for the elimination of mother to child transmission of HIV by 2015.

Watch the videos on: www.youtube.com/bornhivfree

Knowledge Management & E-Learning: An International Journal (KM&EL)

As Editors-in-Chief of Knowledge Management & E-Learning: An International Journal (KM&EL), we are very pleased to announce the release of the special issue "E-Health: Accessing Knowledge for Global Health". Please see below for a detailed description of the contents.

A FREE copy of this Issue can be downloaded at Knowledge Management & E-Learning: An Int. Journal (KM&EL)

http://www.kmel-journal.org/ojs/index.php/online-publication

KM&EL Lab
http://kmel-lab.org/website/index.html

******************************
The contents of the special issue
******************************

Editorial: E-Health: Accessing Knowledge for Global Health
By Patricia Abbott

The Relevance of Telehealth across the Digital Divide: The transfer of knowledge over distance
By Ton AM Spil, Roel W Schuring, Margreet B Michel-Verkerke, Reuben Mugisha, Peter JB Lagendijk

Knowledge Networking for Family Planning: The Potential for Virtual Communities of Practice to Move Forward the Global Reproductive Health Agenda
By Megan O'Brien, Catherine Richey

Developing Nursing and Midwifery Communities of Practice for Making Pregnancy Safer
By Jody Rae Lori, Debbie Diaz Ortiz, Sandra Oyarzo, Patricia Abbott, Sandra Land

Managing knowledge across boundaries in healthcare when innovation is desired
By Mats Edenius, Christina Keller, Staffan Lindblad

The use of synchronous video-conference teaching to increase access to specialist nurse education in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
By Jennifer Chipps

Learning AIDS in Singapore: Examining the effectiveness of HIV/AIDS efficacy messages for adolescents using ICTs
By Arul Indrasen Chib, May O. Lwin, Zhuomin Lee, Victoria W. Ng, Priscilla H. P. Wong

Development of an online sleep diary for physician and patient use
By Jacqueline Blake, Don Kerr

************************************
Forthcoming Issue Vol.2, No.3, Sep 2010
Special Issue on "Advanced Learning and Performance Technologies, Open Contents, and Standards" - Best Papers Selected from the Conference ICCE C3 2009

Table of Contents

Editoral: Advanced Learning and Performance Technologies, Open Contents, and Standards
By Kiyoshi Nakabayashi, Fanny Klett (IEEE Fellow), Stephen J.H. Yang

Automatic Generation System of Multiple-choice Cloze Questions and its Evaluation
By Takuya GOTO, Tomoko KOJIRI, Toyohide WATANABE, Tomoharu IWATA, Takeshi YAMADA

The Effects of Blended Instruction on Oral Reading Performance and their Relationships to Five-Factor Model of Personality
By Noritake Fujishiro, Isao Miyaji

Design and Implementation of Extensible Learner-adaptive Environment
By Kiyoshi Nakabayashi, Yosuke Morimoto, Yoshiaki Hada

Specifying Cases for TEL in an SME
By Vladan Devedžić, Sonja Radenković, Jelena Jovanović, Viktor Pocajt

The Design of a Sustainable Competency-Based Human Resources Management : A Holistic Approach
By Fanny Klett (IEEE Fellow)

Building Virtual Collaborative Research Community Using Knowledge Management Approach
By Ju-Ling Shih, Jussi Nuutinen, Gwo-Jen Hwang, Nian-Shing Chen

Situational Language Teaching in Ubiquitous Learning Environments
By Angus F.M. Huang, Stephen J.H. Yang, Gwo-Jen Hwang, Chin-Chung Tsai

Understanding Retailers' Acceptance of Virtual Stores
By Irene Y.L. Chen

*******************************
Call for Papers:
http://www.kmel-journal.org/ojs/index.php/online-publication/announcement
*******************************

Editors-in-Chief
Maggie M. Wang (magwang at hku.hk)
Stephen Yang (jhyang at csie.ncu.edu.tw)

Knowledge Management & E-Learning: An International Journal (KM&EL)
http://www.kmel-journal.org/ojs/index.php/online-publication

My source: GANM (Global Alliance for Nursing and Midwifery) list

Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice

Dear All,

I’m pleased to advise you that the next edition of the forum has been published in the Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice. I hope you enjoy the ongoing efforts of all our contributors and will be encouraged to submit your next manuscript to the journal.
With kind regards
Joachim and Carmel
Co-editors

Volume 16 Issue 3 (June 2010)

Editorial

Variability, continuity and trust – towards an understanding of uncertainty in health and health care (p 401-402)
Joachim P. Sturmberg
DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2753.2010.01458.x

Original Articles

Homeostasis and Gauss statistics: barriers to understanding natural variability (p 403-408)
Bruce J. West
DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2753.2010.01459.x
Abstract
Music in the Park. An integrating metaphor for the emerging primary (health) care system (p 409-414)
Joachim P. Sturmberg, Carmel M. Martin, Di O'Halloran
DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2753.2010.01460.x
Abstract
W(h)ither complexity? The emperor's new toolkit? Or elucidating the evolution of health systems knowledge? (p 415-420)
Carmel M. Martin, Margot Félix-Bortolotti
DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2753.2010.01461.x
Abstract
Power law relationships between health care utilization and symptom assessment among people with panic attacks (p 421-426)
David Katerndahl
DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2753.2010.01462.x
Abstract
Social factors in clinical complexity: reflections from a paediatric unit (p 427-430)
Shruti Sarkar, Dipankar Sarkar
DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2753.2010.01463.x
Abstract
How do primary care doctors deal with uncertainty in making diagnostic decisions? : The development of the 'Dealing with Uncertainty Questionnaire' (DUQ) (p 431-437)
Antonius Schneider, Bernd Löwe, Stefan Barie, Stefanie Joos, Peter Engeser, Joachim Szecsenyi
DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2753.2010.01464.x
Abstract
Joachim P Sturmberg
Prof. of General Practice
PO Box 3010
Wamberal, NSW 2260
Australia
http://monash.academia.edu/JoachimSturmberg
The core value of medical care is the improvement of personal health, the value inherent and constant since the beginnings of medicine, and the achievement of personal health depends on an ongoing personal relationship with the doctor. - The Foundations of Primary Care. Daring to be different.

Community Informatics and Older People: A Call for Papers

This call for papers is for a special issue of the Journal of Community Informatics on ICTs and Older Persons. Examples of activities using ICTs for support of the elderly in Less Developed Countries are particularly encouraged.

Community Informatics and Older People: A Call for Papers

If you have an article (or an idea for one) contact
Geneloeb Aronin, Ph.D. by July 15th geneloeb at gmail.com.

The peer-reviewed Journal of Community Informatics (www.ci-journal.net) is inviting submissions of articles for a special issue on community informatics and elderly. Community Informatics is concerned with the use of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) to enable and empower local communities including for personal, social, cultural or economic development of and within communities.

There has been a recent a surge in the use of ICTs involving the geriatric community, elderly and those associated with their care or needs. This activity has taken several forms, including: the elderly communicating with others by computers and other technologies; technical devices used to monitor needs or send warnings; information from governments is now available online including training programs for older people to access such information; and the use of ICTs to support community caregivers for the elderly, self-help and self-care for the elderly, and as an infrastructure for the development of virtual community connections among the elderly and between the elderly and others are burgeoning areas of community care and in some places part of the public health system. We would very much welcome explorations and systematic (and other) accounts of these processes and others.

Now is the opportunity to examine model practices of ICT to benefit communities of older persons and their families, to support their care and their caregivers within communities and to suggest new ways in which ICTs can be used to maximize community based initiatives and opportunities.

Articles in the planned issue will focus on the use of ICTs for personal, social, cultural or economic development of, and within, communities for the elderly. We would look to include paradigms for reaching out to elderly people who can not yet access ICTs for these benefits; demonstrate improved technical frameworks for community based ICT applications; show the effectiveness of applications and new ways technology may be applied. Examples of activities using ICTs for support of the elderly in Less Developed Countries are particularly encouraged.

What other ideas and suggestions do you have? Email the co-ordinator for this issue,
Geneloeb: geneloeb at gmail.com

With Best Wishes for an Even Better Day

Gene-loeb
Gene-loeb Aronin, Ph.D.

Health, social care and personal map making

There have been two series running on BBC 4 in the UK over recent months and currently with a cartographic and historical focus:

see - The Beauty of Maps

This Vermeer - The Art of Painting - was featured in one programme and reveals the power and status of maps as Wikipedia also explains.

It is natural to see the health career model as a map, but this map is not just the preserve of the wealthy. Hodges' model can be used universally by all - a common framework.


Use of the term map and its synonyms is in turn common in medicine in many forms:

The map of medicine
Anatomical charts
WHO Global Health Atlas
The Malaria Atlas Project (MAP)
Globalis
HealthMap

The above sites reveal how maps, charts and atlases relate the individual, geography and health.

In addition to its geographic connotation projection also has a psychological meaning. Hodges' model provides a substrate* on which to project personalised, national and global health.

An individual; a people; a nation: for each a journey .... and for each a map ....

Image source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Painting_%28Vermeer%29

* You have to love that floor ;-)

Injustice: Why social inequality persists by Daniel Dorling

I first came across the work of (Prof.) Danny Dorling in the 1990's in connection with workshops on visualization in the social sciences and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The other week I read a feature on his (very timely) book in the Society section of The Guardian (O'Hara, 2010).

You do wonder exactly where we are in policy terms given the interval since the Black Report. Dorling's book then sounds like a must-read, with the information posted below from the publishers.


In addition in Waterstones at the weekend I found The Spirit Level, available on their 3 for 2 offer. The links also posted below with an insightful 2009 review of The Spirit Level by Daniel Ben-Ami on sp!ked; plus a related LGC & HSJ event:

Implementing the Recommendations of the Marmot Review:
Reducing Health Inequalities

Injustice: Why social inequality persists

About This Book

Few would dispute that we live in an unequal and unjust world, but what causes this inequality to persist? Leading social commentator and academic Danny Dorling claims in this timely book that, as the five social evils identified by Beveridge are gradually being eradicated, they are being replaced by five new tenets of injustice, viz:

• elitism is efficient;
• exclusion is necessary;
• prejudice is natural;
• greed is good; and
• despair is inevitable.

In an informal yet authoritative style, Dorling examines who is most harmed by these injustices and why, and what happens to those who most benefit. Hard-hitting and uncompromising in its call to action, this is essential reading for everyone concerned with social justice.

"His attack on elitism and despair is impressive, his factual evidence undeniable." Rt Hon David Blunkett MP

Additional resources for Injustice: http://www.policypress.co.uk/injustice_appendix.asp

Dorling, D., Orford, S. and Harris, R. (1998) Visualization in the Social Sciences, A Report for the ESRC/JISC Advisory Group on Computer Graphics, AGOCG Technical Report No 41 (ISSN 1356-9066). Report as a PDF

O'Hara, M. (2010). Why Britain's battle to bring down social inequality has failed, p.1 of the SocietyGuardian section of the Guardian on Wednesday 21 April 2010.

The Spirit Level: book

The Equality Trust, established by the authors.

Distorting the spirit of equality, sp!ked review of books.

Charity song 'Change for the Better' for World Malaria Day

We [The Butterfly Tree] are launching a charity song, entitled 'Change for the Better' for World Malaria Day, April 25th, to raise funds and global awareness of malaria.

No less that 80% will be used to buy mosquito nets and malaria testing kits.

Your support could save a child's life:

http://www.thebutterflytree.org.uk/pages/2010/africa-malaria-2010/

My source:
LinkedIn Groups, Non Profit Network - MojaLink,
Jane Kaye-Bailey

Development of a robotic health assistant to the management of malaria among nomads

The following very interesting item was posted on the Healthcare Information For All by 2015 [HIFA2015] list (I have added some formatting and links).

Dear All,

We received a Grand Challenges Exploration grant (a Gates Foundation initiative) for the development of a robotic health assistant to the management of malaria among nomads whose access to health service has always posed a concern. A robotic health assistant was constructed using aluminum casing. The device has three components: an interactive non-replaceable section that processes information and provides output. A replaceable laboratory containing supplies for qualitatively distinguishing between fevers associated with malaria and those that are non-malaria and a second replaceable component, a dispensary containing analgesics, ant malaria [*] and antibiotics for treating different types of fevers. The user communicates with the device using three buttons and receives feedback in Fulfude the nomadic Fulani language. The device interviews the user, processes the user’s responses and gives instructions. The accuracy of the information provided by the patient (user), and the ability of the user to carry out the instructions are critical to illness outcome. The device is solar-powered, is able to repeat previous instructions as many times as the patient desires, and provides referral.

Ten such robotic health assistants (ROBODOCs) were deployed among two main groups of nomads (those with previous experience using communication devices such as handheld mobile phones and those without such experience). The volunteer user was given basic information on the use, the switch-ON button, charging the device, and replacing the components. The user contacts a Field Assistant with hand-held mobile phone who in turn alerts the Research Supervisor whenever a case is managed. The Supervisor holds a phone interview with user and beneficiary patient at the end of the consultation with Robodoc as part of the quality assurance.

Robodoc was withdrawn after three months of deployment. Members of the community, beneficiaries and users were interviewed. Each device was examined for durability in the field. The ten units managed more than 80 cases of fever and appropriately diagnosed and treated 90% of them. Previous experience with using a modern communication device was not an important factor in the use of the Robodoc. The nomads found the device very useful and made suggestions on how it may be used for the management of several other health problems besides fevers.

We are keen to publish the findings from testing the device in a peer-reviewed journal. Does anyone have an idea of any journal that may be interested in this sort of research?

Oladele Akogun

HIFA2015 profile: Oladele Akogun is a professor of public health parasitology at the Federal University of Technology, Yola, Nigeria and Principal Scientist at the Common Heritage Foundation/Nigeria. He has spent over 24 years carrying out research and community service on access of community populations to health care delivery among marginalized populations. He is a pioneer researcher and contributor to the development of the community directed intervention approach to health service delivery now used in onchocerciasis control in Africa. With a Grand Challenges exploration (GCE) grant from The Gates Foundation, he is leading a team to develop a robotic health assistant for the management of malaria among nomads. He sits on two committees of the WHO/African region and on 5 committees at the Federal Ministry of Health, Nigeria. He has worked at various times as consultant to Constella-Futures, Africare and WHO where he worked for a year as Technical Adviser. He has made presentations to the African Regional Ministers forum on Primary Health, the US Congressional subcommittee on international aid and PAHO. He holds a PhD (1991) from the University of Jos and a Master of Public Health (2008) from the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. Some of his views are expressed in http://blog4globalhealth.wordpress.com/bios/akogun1/
akoguno AT yahoo.com

[*Notes from HIFA2015 moderator:
1. I think this should read 'antimalarials'.
2. A picture of the device in action is available on the Gates Foundation website at:
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/global-health/Pages/grand-challenges-explorations.aspx
'Oladele Akogun of the Common Heritage Foundation in Nigeria is testing a 'fever kit' for use among nomadic populations. The device is equipped with simple diagnostic tools and prerecorded treatment instructions in the native language to help nomadic caregivers accurately diagnose and treat fevers in a way that reduces mortality and drug resistance.' Thanks, Neil PW]
(In re-posting I have added the image at left.)

How can maps provide motivation?

"The class of maps that go beyond navigation to consolidate thought and convey a message belong to the broader class of infographics that aggregate words and numbers in a visual medium. While charts and graphs are often used to show progress to a goal, nothing personalizes the objective like measuring status, and revealing shortcomings, on a map."

-- Matt Ball, editor, the Americas / Asia Pacific


My source: V1 Newsletter Volume 4 / Issue 13/ March 30, 2010

http://twitter.com/spatialsustain

MCQ (question) on clinical coding and classification

Q. The development of clinical coding and classification systems, such as International Classification of Diseases (ICD) is …

1. a manifestation, since the 1960s, of health care specialisation and technology in medicine?
2. a product of the National Programme for Information Technology and the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation (IHTSDO)?
3. a product of Körner statistics and resource management in the 1990s?
4. a product of the 18th century driven by death?
5. an international initiative prompted by The Plague and launched by Dr Who?

Answer and further reading to follow next month.

Health & holistic care in the 21st and 22nd Century

With the technical means at our disposal it is relatively easy to provide information to the masses. Facebook, Google and advertisers are increasingly better versed to target information not just our way, but your way.

Health education and preventive medicine programs depend on the dissemination of health and well-being information, that in turn also relies on access to an expanding digital infrastructure. Equality of access to information communications technologies is now the province of human rights and not just manifestos whether ambitious or binned.

There is much talk of trying to categorise the stage (and hence maturity) of our civilization: hence we talk about being in the information age.

In health care terms this is clearly the case. The provision of information is a key operation and goal of the UN and WHO as per the Millennium Development Goals. Amid the MDG and multiple other related initiatives we need to take care that the habits of many thousands of years do not dilute our efforts.

There is a danger that just as we have broadcast seeds to grow crops,
we will repeat the exercise with technology's reach and
so many seeds will fall on stony ground and
so not take root and
grow.

As people working in the development field know only too well, initiatives like Health Information for All by 2015 and national efforts are not just about the provision of information. In some respects that is not as big a problem as it once was (though is still presents a huge challenge) with community, urban and developmental informatics. Mobile phones and various technologies can get information to people. Increasingly though the problem is one of sufficient or extended literacy. This extends the conventional educational literacy and notion of the 3R's - Reading, wRiting and aRithmetic.

What knowledge do I need about my health and that of the 'other' gender and ethnic groups with whom I share this 'home'. What knowledge do I need in order to live long and then be able to prosper and do so sustainably?

Allied with the problem of literacy is seeking the attention of individuals. This perhaps is why infant, primary and secondary schooling are so important - learning to attend is the most important lesson of all. Especially as health and well-being messages must compete in the multi-spectral communications channels polluted with so much dross.

The MDG make clear the above requirement in Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education:

2.1. Net enrollment and retention in primary education
2.2. Proportion of pupils starting Grade 1 who also reach the last grade of primary education
2.3. Literacy rate of 15-24 year old #

With the requisite baseline - personalised literacies and the information that HIFA2015 and others can provide then individuals can achieve a level of health and well-being knowledge commensurate with living (and dying well) in the 21st century:

and 2nd-by-2nd the

growing proportion of the global population that will know the
22nd century. ...

# Thanks to Remi Akinmade and HIFA-2015 list
http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/Host.aspx?Content=Indicators/OfficialList.htm

Literacy on W2tQ
http://hodges-model.blogspot.com/search/label/literacy

RCN UK 2010 General Election 6 priorities - framed in Hodges' model

Please sign up: NURSING COUNTS

The RCN's 6 priorities hit the POLITICAL sweet-spot. In the table below I have related each of the priorities to a care domain of Hodges' model with a rationale that follows:

Give nurses time to train	Protect the Nation's health
Improve care for those with long term conditions	Standing up for staff who speak out Safer staffing levels Sustain health care investment

Timeout from the clinical arena for training is always a political issue. It is also at the behest of the individual. This includes individual practitioners and their managers.

The public's health (and mental health) is of course grounded in the group, but is initially framed by evidence, knowledge and preventive medicine.

Long term conditions may impact the quality of life of the individual concerned, but the effect on carers and the social ripples are also profound.

The Demand - Supply equation in health care may be reduced to raw, mechanical numbers, but they quickly become the political football of investment statistics.

So many false economies in stretching the more expensive resources when it comes to staff AND patient (carer) safety. Skill mix and staffing levels are vital for job satisfaction, service development, quality and safe outcomes.

Motivation and intent may be concepts exercised by individuals, but the political environment must support nurses who speak out for high standards of care, safety, the public good.

Midwifery Materials for Haiti - in French/Creole - NEEDED

My source as posted to the GANM and on HIFA 2015 lists:

I am writing the (GANM) community to ask for assistance in gathering online midwifery and nursing materials - in the French or Creole language, for Haiti.

The National Nurse School University and Faculty of Medicine in Haiti has collapsed and they have lost most of their training materials. Dr. Larouche was killed in that collapse - he was teaching an OB course to the midwifery class at the time. I do not know the fate of the nursing/midwifery students, but one can imagine that the outcome is probably not a good one. Dr. Larouche was filling the void left by the untimely death of Madame G.Francoeur last year (she died in an auto accident).

Midwifery in Haiti was just recovering after the sadness of the loss of Mme Francoeur - and the earthquake has now destroyed most everything that they had.

Agnes Jacobs, UNFPA survived and has been emailing from Haiti. She and her colleagues are working to pick up the pieces and try to reconstruct materials for training midwives and nurses in life saving skills.

I am writing to members of the GANM asking for support in finding DIGITAL materials that we can provide to Agnes for the time being. It is VERY hard to get shipments of books and things to Haiti right now, but in the future, I suspect that Agnes will be able to use books, and guides, and computers to rebuild midwifery in Haiti. So eventually we will ask for books and things, but right now it is very hard to get these types of things to her. I know she is not alone, I know that COHI, PAHO, and many others are on the ground. I think the GANM can work with all these others to help in whatever way we can.

Johns Hopkins is sending a team to Haiti, including Dr. Beth Sloand who has been travelling to Haiti with students for over a decade. Beth does not have room to take printed materials, but she can maybe take a packed hard drive or CDs/DVDs that we load with teaching materials. Agnes does have a computer and internet (sporadically) - so I have been discussing with her the potential of sending digital materials which she can start to use right away until printed materials can be provided.

She welcomes health materials in French and or Creole primarily. They should be materials that can *instantly be used to teach midwives and community health workers* - so scientific articles that require interpretation and reconstruction into teaching materials are not what I am asking for at the moment. Right now there are no resources to turn scientific literature into teaching materials. Do you have teaching materials that you would be willing to share?

I would like to ask that people send either direct links to online resources that we can copy down to a CD or send useful teaching materials that we can put on a CD.

Please email them to the GANM or to me (pabbott2 @ son.jhmi.edu)

Regine Marton wrote already directing us to look at Hesperian and the WHO Reproductive Library (in French). We have the Hesperian material now. The WHO library is helpful.

If you have any quality materials for training of midwives that you would like to donate or direct us to find, please let us know. Please send scientifically sound materials - the last thing that Haiti needs are questionable methods or what we call in the US "hocus-pocus" (unproven claims or "magic").

I hope this makes sense and that the GANM community will come together to help Haiti in a “different” way. I think what we are doing is unique – while of course there are huge needs for emergency care and the like we are looking one step ahead to helping Haiti rebuild its educational infrastructure.

Best Regards,
Patti Abbott
GANM Moderator and "Electronic Midwife"

Sahana OSS response in Haiti

My source: Community informatics list [ciresearchers]:

Sahana Software Foundation
Haiti Earthquake Response
Status Report #1
January 17, 2010 00:00 UTC

The Sahana Software Foundation and the Sahana community responded with a massive voluntary effort immediately following the earthquake that has devastated the poor country of Haiti. Working around the clock, we have set up a hosted instance of Sahana (the first deployment of SahanaPy following a disaster!) on a public website that is already filling gaps in the information management requirements of the massive relief operation.

Major Accomplishments

We have a Haiti 2010 Sahana Disaster Response Portal - a live and active website up at http://haiti.sahanafoundation.org which contains a feeds from many of the relief agencies and links to Sahana modules that are actively being used to help coordinate the relief effort.

We have a Sahana Haiti wiki page where we are tracking all of our and others' activites at: http://wiki.sahana.lk/doku.php/haiti:start

We have a requirements page where we record all the modification, configurations, and changes to Sahana based on the mission requirements at: http://wiki.sahana.lk/doku.php/haiti:requirements

The Haiti 2010 Sahana Disaster Response Portal provides the following functionality:

1. An Organization Registry - serves to track organizations and offices working on the ground in Haiti. Organizations are encouraged to self-register and report their office locations - alternatively, individual organization office or lists of offices can be e-mailed to haiti-orgs@googlegroups.com and we have volunteers to assist with data entry and to aggregate lists from other sources. We have entered data from pre-disaster lists of organizations working in Haiti available from UN OCHA. We can assume that these organizations will be working on the relief efforts, but expect that most of their office locations will be different as most organizations have been forced to move into tents given that few buildings remain standing and usable in the capital. We are working to validate these lists with the organizations directly.

The site serves up both KML for Google Earth users and GeoRSS for everyone else, and will generate reports of organization activities and the gaps (uncovered sectors by geographic location). This site will hopefully become the main resource for accurate information about the organizations working on the ground, where they are located, and what activities they are engaged in, and the resources in terms of staff and equipment that they have available to them. (Currently, data is admittedly sparse but we expect more details to become available as the coordination efforts take root on the ground). We are coordinating with UN OCHA, Google and others on sources of accurate lists and updates.

What are the gaps in our information collection? We have a large and we think accurate list of organizations, but not much office location information. Without this, it becomes hard to generate data that can be used as a layer in a GIS system. We are encouraging people to report this information - preferably by GPS coordinates, but any location information that we can use to manually geo-reference the office is valuable. We hope to be able to enhance our capabilities such that we can produce polygons showing organization's areas of coverage by sector. Please direct organizations working in Haiti to our site to register their offices and activities!

2. A Missing Persons Registry / Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) Registry - we are working with Google and others on an agreed common standard for the exchange of Missings Persons data using the PFIF standard. The Google site at http://haiticrisis.appspot.com/ is the main aggregator collecting all missing and found persons reports and we are encouraging all people to send data to that site. [We are struggling a little as Google's feed is not fully PFIF compliant and the lack of unique record identifiers makes it more complex to set up true synchronization without the creation of duplicate records. We continue to work with Google on this and hope to have a resolution and solution within the next few hours.] We will also be embedding Google's widget on our site for collecting missing person information. Google will be making their data available via a PFIF feed and we will be importing it into Sahana's Missing Persons registry. From there, Sahana can add value to the simple lists being collected.

In particular, Sahana's Disaster Victims Identification registry - or DVI - which is used to management the handling and tracking and tracing of the deceased, dead bodies and their identification. There is currently no other known application for this and we hope that those working in this area will find Sahana extremely valuable. Sahana will have the ability to cross-reference missing persons information with the identified and unidentified deceased, thus facilitating reconciliation efforts. The Sahana Missing Persons registry has additional physical description information fields and we hope to be able to utilize some of the image matching capabilities available to extend these capabilities further. Organizations interested in utilizing these capabilities (which will not be made open for public use) should contact the Sahana team at
sahana-haiti@lists.launchpad.net.

Any updated missing persons status information will be pushed back to the main Google repository from Sahana.

3. Situation Mapping - Sahana's site is able to map all of the geo-referenced data within Sahana - primarily the organization data, but we have also manually entered a data layer of hospitals and medical facilities. Sahana has worked with members of the OSGeo community to obtain a fast tiled set of the current imagery being made available by Digital Globe. Sahana is also leveraging the constantly updated set of Open Street Map tiles. These are acting as backdrop for the offices that are being entered as part of the Organization Registry. Other data sources that are ready and available to be leveraged by Sahana and SahanaPy for other deployments include reports from Ushahidi, various point layers from Open Street Map, location names, USGS earthquakes, and locations from GeoNames. We will continue to build out these capabilities further as relevant layers are made available.

Capabilities we are working on:

The following capabilities are in the process of being developed and we expect will soon be available:

4. Request Management: We are working with the US State Department, Ushahidi and some other voluntary efforts on a project to process SMS messages with requests for assistance sent from survivors in Haiti. SMS text messages sent to a short code in Haiti will go into Ushahidi, who will have volunteer translators to add some structure to the message, identifying the sender's name, location (to the extent possible), and category of the message - a missing persons report, a request for assistance, etc. The message will go into a Ushahidi GeoRSS feed that will be captured by Sahana and fed into a simple Request Management system where the requests for assistance (such as "send water" to a certain village or neighborhood) can be made visible to relief organizations working on the ground. Organizations can fulfill or claim requests for handling and message the person back that assistance is coming. (Missing persons information will be captured by Google).

5. Translation: In addition, our translation project is now set up for Kreol and French translation and we may utilize a pool of Kreol-speaking volunteers being set up by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) to help in these efforts. Interested translators should be directed initially to:
http://translate.hfoss.eu/wiki/Translation to become oriented in the process.

6. Shelter Registry and Disaster Victims Registry: In the coming days, we expect that there will be a requirement to start tracking the location of temporary shelters now being established, and possible registration of the survivors. We will prepare Sahana's existing registries for such purposes, which will produce further consumable data layers as well as additional missing persons reconciliation capabilities.

If you want to help:

We are using the IRC #sahana channel on freenode as our main coordination tool. Join the chat room to volunteer for tasks and someone from our core volunteer team will direct you - this room is actively staffed on a 24x7 basis.

But first, please check out the wiki pages to see what are the current requirements and areas of focus. We have a lot of volunteer Python and PHP programmers already working on the codebase, but we can probably use more. Please review the requirements page in particular to see where you might help.

We also have a large need for non-technical help - particularly for documentation support - user guidelines and instructions in particular - including some nice screenshots. See
http://trac.sahanapy.org/wiki/UserGuidelines to get started.

We also need help with Bug & Functionality testing. Please submit bug reports and feature request to: http://trac.sahanapy.org/newticket

For documentation and testing efforts - please use the development site at
http://haiti-orgsdev.sahanafoundation.org - NOT THE LIVE SITE PLEASE.

Finally, we could use help maintaining our own wiki - both the main page and requirements... much of this can be culled from the chat room logs - and helping to update some of the common public repositories of information about similar efforts, such as the crisis commons wiki at
http://crisiscommons.org/wiki/index.php?title=Haiti/2010_Earthquake, although they are doing a pretty good job at tracking us ourselves.

Remember to add yourself to the wiki as part of team, and what you are doing.

Acknowledgements

Personally, I have never been a part of such a collaborative and cooperative effort on the part of different organizations to come together and to help each other and to not replicate efforts. The Sahana community has worked closely and constantly with InSTEDD, Ushahidi, haitianquake.com, Google, the Crisis Camp participants, and others I apologize for not mentioning and we wouldn't have been able to accomplish all that we have without this, and for this I am very grateful.

The around the clock efforts of many of the Sahana community are too numerous to mention here, and at risk of leaving anyone out, I would just like to thank everyone for all that they have done and been able to do while juggling responsibilities such as full-time jobs and families.

This has been a new model for Sahana deployments - rather than waiting for a specific customer to come forward to take ownership of Sahana, we have self-deployed and I think this will be a likely successful model for the future. More and more, technology projects are stepping forward and doing good directly.

So go forth and do good.

Best regards,
Mark
==========
Mark Prutsalis
President & CEO
Sahana Software Foundation
Tel 860-499-0332
Fax 801-697-8731
mark at sahanafoundation.org
http://www.sahanafoundation.org