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This study aims to describe the COVID-19 risk mitigation strategies implemented in California prisons and the impact of these policies on the mental health of incarcerated women.

The authors conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews with ten women who were over the age of 50 and/or had a chronic illness and had been incarcerated in California prisons during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors also interviewed ten health-care providers working in California jails or prisons during the pandemic. Interviews were analyzed using a grounded theory coding framework and triangulated with fieldnotes from ethnographic observations of medical and legal advocacy efforts during the pandemic.

Participants described being locked in their cells for 23 hours per day or more, often for days, weeks or even months at a time in an effort to reduce the spread of COVID-19. For many participants, these lockdowns and the resulting isolation from loved ones both inside and outside of the prison were detrimental to both their physical and mental health. Participants reported that access to mental health care for those in the general population was limited prior to the pandemic, and that COVID-19 risk mitigation strategies, including the cessation of group programs and shift to cell-front mental health services, created further barriers.

There has been little qualitative research on the mental health effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on incarcerated populations. This paper provides insight into the mental health effects of both the COVID-19 pandemic and COVID-19 risk mitigation strategies for the structurally vulnerable older women incarcerated in California prisons.

This paper examines the contested value of healthy life and wellbeing in a context of severe austerity, exploring how the value of “Public Health” is constructed through and with material-discursive practices and accounting representations. It seeks to explore the political and ethical implications of constructing the valuable through a shared consensus over the “facts” when addressing complex, multi-agency problems with long time horizons and outcomes that are not always easily quantifiable.

The theorisation, drawing on science and technology studies (STS) scholars and Karen Barad's (2007) agential realism, opens up the analysis to the performativity of both material and discursive practices in the period following a major re-organisation of activity. The study investigates two case authorities in England and the national regulator through interviews, observations and documentary analysis.

The paper demonstrates the deeply ethical and political entanglements of accounting representations as objectivity, consensus and collective action are constructed and resisted in practice. It goes on to demonstrate the practical challenges of constructing “alternative accounts” and “intelligent accountabilities” through times of austerity towards a shared sense of public value and suggests austerity measures make such aims both more challenging and all the more essential.

Few studies in the accounting literature have explored the full complexity of valuation practices in non-market settings, particularly in a public sector context; this paper, therefore, extends familiar conceptual vocabulary of STS inspired research to further explore how value(s), ethics and identity all play a crucial role in making things valuable.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of abstinence-based sexual education programs delivered in parallel to Thai parents and their early adolescent daughters to promote sexual abstinence and improve communication regarding sexual topics between them and their parents.

A quasi-experimental design included groups of parent/daughter dyads; Group 1 (controls) (n=40), Group 2 Adolescent Program (n=40) and Group 3 Adolescent Parent Program (APP) (n=42). Outcome measures included parent–adolescent communications and adolescents’ sexual abstinence cognitions and intent to abstain from sexual behaviors, measured at five and nine weeks post-programs.

Generalized estimating equation analyses indicated that the dual program (APP) was more effective in increasing parental communication with their daughters compared with Group 1 (p-value<0.05) and only the daughters in the APP program reported more positive subjective norms, sense of perceived behavioral control and intent to abstain than did Group 1 (p-value<0.05).

The overarching goal of supporting the development of family environments where female adolescents are able to talk about sexuality is essential for adolescent sexual health promotion. The data provide further evidence that a dual program with simultaneous parent and female adolescent interactive activities over three sessions is superior compared with programs that target either the parents or the adolescents only. Hence, further replication with more parent–daughter dyads and then within more diverse cultures and populations is warranted. Developing and testing a similarly structured program for parents and sons is also required.

The purpose of this paper is to outline the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Libraries (GLs) initiative approach to advocacy and how it informs, guides, and integrates impact data to support sustainability of GL program results.

The paper defines advocacy in the context of GL, and explores the GL grant planning process, tools, and collaboration between advocacy and impact specialists. Results are demonstrated through grantee examples that illustrate a variety of approaches to library advocacy using impact data at local, country, and regional levels.

The paper demonstrates the importance of identifying community needs, designing impact measures to demonstrate how libraries help to address those needs, and the variety of ways impact evidence can be used to effectively advocacy for public libraries. This basic formula can be applied to advocacy efforts ranging from a broad national policy to a small incremental change in perceptions of libraries by local decision makers.

This paper reinforces the essential link between library impact measurement data and successful advocacy.

The purpose of this paper is to critically review the context of adult protection in Ireland with a focus on older people. The paper traces advances and current limitations in policy, regulation, practice and legislation.

A review of historical and current contexts in adult safeguarding in Ireland is presented with consideration of key public reviews and commentaries related to care provision, governance and the legislative status of adults at risk.

While Ireland’s journey to provide adult safeguarding responses for older people has progressed since 2002, there remain many gaps. Further work needs to be addressed urgently to enable a comprehensive alignment of fit-for-purpose, responsive legislation, practice and policy to meet the complex and diverse needs of an increasing ageing population who may require safeguarding support. This includes fostering robust inter-sectorial collaboration, safeguarding legislation and cultural change related to human rights approaches.

The paper is a discussion on the context of adults safeguarding in relation to practice, policy and legislation.

Identifies the need for significant reform in the Irish system of health service. Argues for an overarching, inter-sectorial approach to addressing adult safeguarding, which focuses on prevention as well as early intervention.

The paper offers a review of the current diverse elements comprising current adult safeguarding and older people in Ireland and integrates legislative, regulatory, policy and practice realities. Challenges are illustrated within the context of reactive rather than proactive safeguarding agendas which are linked to public scandals and debates. The paper argues for a more integrated and robust inter-sectorial approach to safeguarding underpinned by adult safeguarding legislation and an overarching governance structure.

This study aims to understand, from the analysis of the work of a Brazilian network of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), how advocacy on human rights issues is developed to defend causes before the legislative branch, identifying its contributions and effectiveness. For this, were observed, the strategies and tactics employed in the implementation of two advocacy campaigns promoted by a Brazilian NGOs network.

The research adopts the method of inductive investigation with a qualitative approach and uses the techniques of semi-structured in-depth interviews and documentary research. The paper is developed within the scientific field of public relations (PR), uses as reference the critical theory and the rhetorical theory of PR, and is based on the concept of advocacy.

Some results of the advocacy are observed, such as the greater awareness of political decision-makers, in addition to the influence on the definition of the political agenda and on the action of the political decision-makers.

Among the limitations of this study are the time span for analyzing the campaigns' actions, which could be extended to observe long-term results, as well as the dedication of the study exclusively to the legislative branch since the campaigns also sought to influence decision-making in the executive branch.

The results found encourage the strengthening of the democratic environment since it increases the power and influence of civil society in the political decision-making of the legislative branch.

The study showed that advocacy, as a PR activity, increases civil society participation in political decisions.

This study aims to assess and decompose the sustainable development using the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) in Iran in 2018, for proposing agenda-setting of public policy.

It ranks the SDGs not only in Iran but also in the region and the world to reveal the synergetic effects.

Based on the results, subaltern-populace generally suffers from the hegemonic domination of ruling elite-bourgeois, lack of strong institutions, heterogeneous policy networks and lack of advocacy role of non-governmental organizations, due to no transparency, issues in law or no rule of law, no stringent regulation, rent, suppression and Mafia, all leading to corruption and injustice.

To stop the loop of corruption-injustice, Iran should homogenize the structure of the policy network. Furthermore, the failed SDGs of the three-geographic analysis are the same in a character; all of them propose SDG 3, good health and well-being as a serious failed goal.

In this regard, strong evidence is the pandemic Coronavirus, COVID 19 since 2019, due to its highly-disastrous consequences in early 2020 where the public policymakers could not adopt policies promptly in the glob, particularly in Iran.

In Iran, in addition to this, the malfunction of health is rooted in “subjective well-being” and “traffic deaths,” respectively. Concerning the transportations system in Iran, it is underscored that it is damaging the sustainable development from all the three pillars of sustainable development including, economic, social and environmental.

The purpose of this paper is to report on performance measurement and impact assessment progress made in 14 countries as part of the Global Libraries initiative, starting with the early country grants in Mexico and Chile. For the mature grants in Bulgaria, Botswana, Poland, Romania, Ukraine and Viet Nam which were recently completed or are approaching completion, the nature of the country program is outlined, before the impact assessment work is described and some recent results and conclusions are reported. A similar approach is adopted with pilot and new grants in Colombia, Indonesia, South Africa, Turkey and Lithuania.

The country reports are presented as a series of case studies, in some cases supplementing those in an earlier special issue of this journal.

Where appropriate, recent country-specific survey findings are reported.

This paper shares Global Libraries IPA learning at country level with people in other countries who may be contemplating public library evaluation at regional, national or local level or who are interested in performance measurement and impact evaluation.

These cases studies reflect concentrated impact assessment and performance measurement work at country level across a range of countries over more than 12 years.

The aim of this paper is to contribute to a greater understanding of non-profit organization (NPO) management control systems (MCS) and accountability in organizations providing support service for capacity constrained service users. Specifically, the paper examines the role of MCS and accountability in supporting mission realization in NPOs providing services to people with intellectual disabilities and reflects on this in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The research comprised a case study of four NPOs providing services to people with intellectual disabilities in Ireland conducted prior to the global COVID-19 pandemic. The study probed management's perceptions of stakeholders and examined the manner in which the design and use of MCS and accountability processes supported mission realization.

Service users were regarded as the least powerful stakeholder and consequently the least attended to in terms of MCS and accountability processes. The absence of relational and dialogical accountability with service users is not only central to maintaining this power asymmetry but also poses a threat to mission realization. These deficits can be addressed through the integration and monitoring of internal advocacy activities into MCS and accountability processes, which, on reflection, may also mitigate some of the negative consequences for service users of isolation from external support networks in times of crisis.

This research has opened up an area for enquiry – internal advocacy – heretofore not addressed in the management accounting literature, opening up a novel vein for future research. Such research could further examine the role of internal advocacy, drawing from and adding to the research in other support service domains. A number of objectives and questions might be considered: (1) probing the level of management recognition of the role of direct engagement in advocacy activities in supporting service user agency; (2) identifying with service users and management the nature and attributes of effective advocacy activities and practices; (3) questioning how such advocacy activities and practices might be reflected in MCS; (4) identifying what service user stakeholders regard as effective accountability to them in relation to their needs and objectives; and (5) assessing the impact on service user experience and on NPO mission realization of internal advocacy activities and the monitoring and review thereof through MCS. These suggestions for future research draw attention to aspects of support service delivery that have the potential to be profoundly influential on service outcomes.

A performance management model reflecting the identified need to incorporate internal advocacy mechanisms into organizational management control systems is proposed in an effort to increase accountability of NPOs to their core mission stakeholder – service users. This model may be of value to NPO management as they move from a medical-model of care to a rights-based model for service delivery in care settings.

The paper reflects the importance of listening to the voice of vulnerable service users in NPO care settings and proposes a mechanism for embedding internal advocacy in formal management control systems and accountability processes.

In proposing an “agency” supportive relational and dialogical accountability logic for such organizations, underpinned by “internal advocacy”, this research provides theoretical and practical insights for accountability processes and the design of MCS. The findings contribute empirically, not just to the NPO management and MCS literature but also to understanding the relational interaction of service users with service organizations, and what this means in supporting service user objectives and realization of organizational mission.

The menstrual health and menstrual hygiene management (MHM) of incarcerated women remains relatively low on the agenda of public health interventions globally, widening the inequitable access of incarcerated women to safe and readily available menstrual health products (MHP). The COVID-19 pandemic has adversely impacted on the MHM gains made in various development sectors in the global North and South, through its amplification of vulnerability for already at-risk populations. This is especially significant to developing countries such as South Africa where the incarcerated female population are an often-forgotten minority.

This viewpoint highlights the ignominious silence of research and policy attention within the South African carceral context in addressing MHM. The ethical and political implications of such silences are unpacked by reviewing international and local literature that confront issues of inequality and equitable access to MHP and MHM resources within incarcerated contexts.

Structural inequalities in various contexts around the world have exacerbated COVID-19 and MHM. Within the prison context in South Africa, women face multiple layers of discrimination and punishment that draw attention to the historical discourses of correctional facilities as a site of surveillance and discipline.

This study acknowledges that while this viewpoint is essential in rising awareness about gaps in literature, it is not empirical in nature.

The authors believe that this viewpoint is essential in raising critical awareness on MHM in carceral facilities in South Africa. The authors hope to use this publication as the theoretical argument to pursue empirical research on MHM within carceral facilities in South Africa. The authors hope that this publication would provide the context for international and local funders, to assist in the empirical research, which aims to roll out sustainable MHP to incarcerated women in South Africa.

The authors believe that this viewpoint is the starting point in accelerating the roll out of sustainable MHP to incarcerated females in South Africa. These are females who are on the periphery of society that are in need of practical interventions. Publishing this viewpoint would provide the team with the credibility to apply for international and national funding to roll out sustainable solutions.

It is hoped that the gaps in literature and nodes for social and human rights activism highlighted within this viewpoint establish the need for further participatory research, human rights advocacy and informed civic engagement to ensure the voices of these women and their basic human rights are upheld.