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The rapid deterioration of the earth’s natural ecosystems are increasing the risk of human morbidity and mortality worldwide. Hydrometeorological hazards are concentrating contaminants from the damaged environment and exposing large vulnerable populations to life threating illnesses and death. This study performed a retrospective health risk assessment on two recent events where such impacts unfolded, namely, the 2015 south east Equatorial Asia smoke haze disaster and the 2016 Melbourne thunderstorm asthma epidemic. The purpose of this paper is to test if the characterisation of health risk warranted earlier and more effective risk reduction activities prior to the disasters occurring.

A retrospective health risk characterisation assessment was performed combing United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Risk Health Aspect in Disaster Risk Assessment (2017) framework with a thematic and targeted word literature review to identify the level of risk knowledge prior to each event. A risk characterisation matrix was then created to characterise the health risk of each hazard event.

The 2015 south east Equatorial Asia smoke haze disaster risk assessment was characterised as “extreme” health risk and the 2016 Melbourne thunderstorm asthma epidemic was characterised as “high” health risk.

Reaching the goals of the Sendai Framework require strategies and plans which urgently address the catastrophic level of mortality risk posed by exposure to environmental contaminants.

Innovative approaches and partnerships are necessary to mitigate the risk from the deteriorating health of the environment and natural ecosystems, along with disaster response initiatives that reduce exposure of vulnerable people on a large scale.

This research was designed to expand the understanding of how brand familiarity may affect the motivation to process word-of-mouth (WOM) information in brand evaluation. The pre-WOM brand attitude certainty is expected to explain the moderation effect. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Two experiments were conducted. The study participants were undergraduate students from a major university in Singapore. The main statistical analysis was done using a two-way analysis of covariance.

The results of Experiments 1 and 2 support the prediction that consumers are more likely to use the perceived expertise of the WOM sender to evaluate an unfamiliar brand vs a familiar brand. Experiment 2 also provides some preliminary evidence that this interaction effect may be due to the difference in certainty of the study respondents in regards to the pre-WOM evaluation of unfamiliar and familiar brand.

This manipulation method of presenting WOM in a printed format may understate the impact of WOM. A more vivid manipulation of WOM that allows for a feedback loop may be considered for future research.

The results highlight the importance of considering the strength dimensions of brand attitudes (e.g. attitude certainty) in the marketplace. For marketers of unfamiliar brands, source factors (e.g. expertise of WOM sender) are important to consider for effective use of WOM to market their products. For familiar brands, source factors are less relevant.

This paper highlights the importance of considering attitude certainty and the subsequent malleability of attitude toward new information about the brand in the marketplace. Hence, marketers and researchers who are interested in changing brand attitude should take meta-attitude factors into consideration.

The purpose of this study is to describe council structure, its benefits, supportive and obstructive factors and developmental needs as a part of shared governance in a university hospital.

This is a descriptive study, where semi-structured interviews with 12 nurses was conducted in 2014 and documents from 75 council meetings from 2009 to 2014 were gathered and analyzed. Qualitative content analysis method was used on the data.

The study hospital has been developing nursing shared governance with unique structure and processes of councils. Professors and university researchers act as chair and members are voluntary nursing staff. The factors supporting the councils are nurse managers’ support, enthusiastic personnel and neighboring university. The factors obstructing the councils are lack of time, understanding and skills. The work of the councils benefits the organization by improving patient care, harmonizing nursing practices and informing decision-making. The council’s developmental needs were more visibility, concentration into everyday problems and interprofessionality.

Applying nursing shared governance structures into an organization improves the professional practice environment of nursing personnel.

The study hospital has its own, unique council structure. It did not cover the whole hospital or all of the nursing personnel, but it is already producing promising results. It should be given an official status and more support from nurse managers, and it should be developed into an inter-professional discussion. The results presented here indicate that shared governance, even, in its early stage, contributes positively to the quality of care, harmonizes nursing practices and informs decision-making. Applying shared governance structures into an organization improves the professional practice environment of nursing personnel. The study showed concrete supporting and obstructing factors that should be notified in nursing leadership.

Despite the extensive empirical studies on nursing shared governance, there is very little research on councils in the Scandinavian countries.