Investigating the impact of Hurricane Maria on an ongoing birth cohort in Puerto Rico

Population and Environment - Prior to Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico already had 200+ hazardous waste sites, significant contamination of water resources, and among the highest rates of preterm birth...     

A Systems Approach to the Policy‐Level Risk Assessment of Exotic Animal Diseases: Network Model and Application to Classical Swine Fever

Exotic animal diseases (EADs) are characterized by their capacity to spread global distances, causing impacts on animal health and welfare with significant economic consequences. We offer a critique of current import risk analysis approaches employed in the EAD field, focusing on their capacity to assess complex systems at a policy level. To address the shortcomings identified, we propose a novel method providing a systematic analysis of the likelihood of a disease incursion, developed by reference to the multibarrier system employed for the United Kingdom. We apply the network model to a policy‐level risk assessment of classical swine fever (CSF), a notifiable animal disease caused by the CSF virus. In doing so, we document and discuss a sequence of analyses that describe system vulnerabilities and reveal the critical control points (CCPs) for intervention, reducing the likelihood of U.K. pig herds being exposed to the CSF virus.     

Approved Social Work Training in Northern Ireland: Using Research to Examine Competence‐based Learning and Influence Policy Change

This article reports on how research activity helped describe and analyse ASW (Approved Social Worker) learning experience as well as acting as a catalyst for change and development in policy and practice in Northern Ireland. The paper contextualizes the study by outlining the legislation, the main features of the ASW role and the approach to ASW training in Northern Ireland, and by reviewing the literature on the efficacy and value of competence‐based learning. While the findings do not provide conclusive evidence that a competence‐based approach is inherently more effective than previous courses, they do indicate that candidates who were trained in this way were moderately more satisfied than those who had participated in non‐competence based programmes. The research also highlights the importance of the interrelationship between training, practice experience and support in developing and sustaining competence. The paper concludes with a review of the recommendations arising from the study and an analysis of the developments in training and regulations relating to practice experience and re‐approval of ASWs since publication of the research. The study is of contemporary interest given the proposed changes to the role of ASWs/Mental Health Officers in the context of the reviews of UK mental health law.     

From Congo: newspaper photographs,public images and personal memories

Photographs of labouring children are common, but their capacity to provide unique sources of evidence of the working lives of children remains neglected. Studies of children's work and labour tend to relegate the value of still photographic images to a place on the front cover of books or perhaps to the occasional in‐text illustration. As this paper argues, the potential of still photography does not stop here. By drawing on a qualitative research project exploring the work of children in England and Wales, this paper argues that research employing photo‐diary techniques can add much to our knowledge and understanding of children's working lives.     

Walking,sensing, belonging: ethno-mimesis as performative praxis

This article outlines a research project that used participatory action research (PAR) and arts practice (ethno-mimesis) to explore the senses of belonging negotiated by asylum seekers, refugees and undocumented migrants in the English East Midlands. At the core of this project was a walking event in which refugees and new arrivals guided long-term residents through the city, tracing an imaginary and real journey that linked the here and now with the then and there. Reflecting on the ways that walking evokes and invokes, this article suggests that while walking should not be privileged as a way of knowing, it has certain sensate, embodied, relational and collective attributes which rendered it particularly useful as a means of exploring the importance of being-in-place among a group whose lives are often depicted as markedly transnational.     

Disentangling the exposure experience: the roles of community context and report-back of environmental exposure data

This article examines participants' responses to receiving their results in a study of household exposure to endocrine disrupting compounds and other pollutants. The authors study how the "exposure experience"-the embodied, personal experience and understanding of chronic exposure to environmental pollutants-is shaped by community context and the report-back process itself. In addition, the authors investigate an activist, collective form of exposure experience. The authors analyze themes of expectations and learning, trust, and action. The findings reveal that while participants interpret scientific results to affirm lay knowledge of urban industrial toxics, they also absorb new information regarding other pollutant sources. By linking the public understanding of science literature to the illness and exposure experience concepts, this study unravels the complex relationship between lay experience and lay understanding of science. It also shows that to support policy development and/or social change, community-based participatory research efforts must attend to participants' understanding of science.