Search results

Mental well-being is associated with positive outcomes throughout the life course. This study aims to examine interventions delivered by allied health professionals (AHPs) to alleviate community stressors adversely impacting public mental health and well-being.

Review inclusion criteria comprised experimental and qualitative process evaluations of public mental health interventions delivered by AHPs. Electronic searches in Cinahl, Embase, Medline, PsycINFO and the Cochrane Library, were combined with grey literature searches of National Institute for Health and Care Excellence public health guidance. A narrative synthesis and the Effective Public Health Practice Project appraisal tool were used to evaluate the evidence.

A total of 45-articles were included in the review describing AHP-delivered interventions addressing social disadvantage, trauma, bullying, loneliness, work-related stress, transitional stress, intersectionality, pain and bereavement. No articles were identified evaluating interventions delivered by operating department practitioners or orthoptists. A conceptual map was developed summarising the stressors, and a typology of public mental health interventions defined including: place-based interventions, discrete/one-off interventions, multi-component lifestyle and social connector interventions and interventions targeting groups at risk of mental health conditions.

Many mental health conditions begin in childhood, and a strength of the review is the life course perspective. A further strength is compiling a compendium of public mental health outcome measures used by AHPs to inform future research. The authors excluded many articles focussed on clinical interventions/populations, which did not meet review inclusion criteria. While playing a key role in delivering public mental health interventions, clinical psychologists are not defined as AHPs and were excluded from the review, and this may be construed a limitation. Given heterogeneity of study designs and interventions evaluated numerical analyses of pooled findings was not appropriate.

The review highlights the breadth of community stressors on which AHPs can intervene and contribute in public mental health contexts, stressors which correspond to those identified in UK Government guidance as currently important and relevant to address. The findings can inform developing community public mental health pathways that align with the UK National Health Service (NHS) Long Term Plan, on prevention and early intervention to protect community mental health and well-being. Further can inform the NHS strategic direction for AHPs including informing ways of increasing utilisation of core AHP skills to optimise contributions in public mental health agendas.

It is surprising there were not more AHP delivered evaluations of interventions for other stressors important to address in public mental health settings, for example gambling, domestic violence or that used digital technology, and these are areas for future research. Future research should identify the most active/effective dimensions of multi-component interventions which could be informed by frameworks to guide complex intervention development. The relative paucity of research identified, highlights the predominant focus of research to date on interventions for clinical mental health conditions and populations. The lack of preventative approaches is evident, and an important area for future research to align with UK health and social care priorities.

The review highlights AHP-delivered interventions impacting diverse community stressors across the life course. The findings can inform developing public mental health pathways aligned with government health service priorities to protect mental health and well-being, prioritise prevention and early intervention and increase utilisation of AHP skills across public mental health settings.

This research aims to investigate effective public library environmental education interventions in order to inform the development of a framework for public libraries.

A qualitative research method was developed incorporating surveys and follow-up interviews with librarians working in USA public libraries, who were known to have been involved in environmental education initiatives.

The research determined which environmental education interventions were most likely to lead to action and behaviour change in public library users. The resulting discussion has allowed for the creation of a framework which establishes factors useful for successful implementation of environmental education programmes and activities. These elements include partnership, institutional commitment, inclusion and outreach and practical activities linked to a larger vision.

The research participants were limited to those libraries in the USA which were all affiliated with the American Library Association (ALA) Resilient Communities programmes and had received grants.

The paper concludes with a framework for implementing environmental education programmes in public libraries. Effective interventions are also shared which provide practical ideas and strategies.

Providing structure and considerations for establishing an environmental programme enables libraries to build on experiences of other libraries. As climate change action becomes a more pressing issue, providing these interventions supports action.

The paper discusses the concepts of environmental education and the role which public libraries can play in this arena, concluding that sustainable development should be treated as a new tenet of librarianship and environmental education as a new research field of library and information science.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss contemporary approaches to workplace health and well‐being, articulating key differences in the intervention architecture between public and workplace health contexts and implications for intervention design.

Contemporary practice is discussed in light of calls for a paradigm shift in occupational health from a treatment orientation to an holistic approach focused on mitigation of the causes of ill health and the promotion of well‐being. In practice, relatively few organizations have or seem able to engage with a broader perspective that encompasses challenges to health and well‐being associated with contextual organizational drivers, e.g. job design/role, workload, systems of reward, leadership style and the underpinning climate. Drawing upon insights from public health and the workplace safety tradition, the scope for broadening the perspective on intervention (in terms of vectors of harm addressed, theory of change and intervention logic) is discussed.

There are important differences in scope and options for intervention between public health and workplace health contexts. While there is scope to emulate public health practice, this should not constrain thinking over intervention opinions. Increased awareness of these key differences within work organizations, and an evidence‐based epidemiological approach to learning has the potential to strengthen and broaden the approach to workplace health and well‐being management.

The authors argue that approaches to workplace well‐being interventions that selectively cross‐fertilise and adapt elements of public health interventions offer promise for realising a broader change agenda and for building inherently healthy workplaces.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the direct involvement of public administrations in the supply side of electronic communications markets based on the Spanish experience. It is an example of the difficult balance in the public private interplay in next generation electronic communications networks.

Starting from a general overview of the conditions for public intervention in the development of infrastructures established by the electronic communications regulatory framework, this paper analyses the case of Spain as an illustrative example taking into consideration some specific initiatives to illustrate the different possible mechanisms of intervention on the supply side.

It is the opinion of the authors that a framework of public‐private collaboration in the field of electronic communications infrastructure development is consistent with the industry liberalisation model chosen one decade ago in Spain and it could be particularly adequate in an environment of financial hardship such as the present one, which leads to a greater demand for efficiency in the use of public and private resources. However, the conditions and limitations for public involvement should be persistently respected. In addition, there are novel policy instruments on the supply side that could help the deployment of next generation networks without the burden of substituting private initiative.

The paper presents a systematic analysis of policy instruments for direct intervention of public administrations in the supply side of electronic communications market, including the specific situation of Spain. It is also a contribution to the debate on the role of public administrations in developing electronic communications infrastructures.

To assist in achieving cost effective health care allocations in a collective choice setting, the purpose of this paper is to illustrate the use of a tool not common in the public budgeting literature but is common in the health economics literature.

Through a meta-analysis of the health care spending literature that computed the value of quality-adjusted life years, the authors provide an alternative approach for budgeters and policymakers.

The authors provide an alternative approach for budgeters and policymakers for weighing the benefits of alternative health care spending allocations.

The authors introduce an alternative approach for weighing the benefits of alternative health care spending allocations. As a tool for budgeting professionals, cost per QALY allows for the opportunity to raise cost-effectiveness of public health expenditures as a tool for governments to allocate resources based on outcomes, rather than inputs.

As the provision of public services in many advanced welfare states has increasingly come to be marked by competition, social enterprises have actively been encouraged by governments to become involved in the delivery of public services. While the evaluation of complex public health interventions has arguably become increasingly more sophisticated, this has not been the case where social enterprise is concerned: evaluation of the actual impacts of social enterprises remains significantly underdeveloped by comparison. This study aims to support the establishment of a robust evidence base for the use of social enterprise as a policy instrument.

This paper assesses the potential of three methodological approaches common in the evaluation of complex public health interventions and applies them to the complex realm of community-led social enterprise.

Only through the involvement of different comparator groups, based on the research questions addressed, would it be possible to disentangle the embedded characteristics of organisations such as social enterprises. Each of the methods adopted in this research is time-consuming and resource-intensive and requires the researcher to possess advanced skills. Public officials should recognise the complexity and resource-intensive nature of such evaluation and resource it accordingly. If the aim of policymakers is to understand the added value of social enterprise organisations, an integrative research approach combining different research methods and design should be implemented to improve generalisability.

This study applies a range of favoured approaches to evaluate “complex” public health interventions include systematic reviews, realist evaluation and quasi-experimental investigation. However, such evaluation approaches have rarely been applied before in the context of social enterprise.

Built heritage is one of the biggest assets that Lisbon's central downtown has accumulated since eighteenth century. The efficient use of these assets is a challenge for both the owners of individual buildings and society as a whole. Recently, a new regeneration initiative was announced for Lisbon's historic district. This paper aims to address the urban problems of old Lisbon's downtown, to discuss the existing public intervention framework and to present an integrated information management system aimed at providing technical and economic information needed to improve co‐ordination between public sector and private agents.

The research methodology of the study is an interpretative case study method. The case study approach is one of the most commonly used research designs in qualitative research. The contents and conclusions from the research were obtained by means of: a review of publications and current practices related to urban regeneration; a review of data and information on urban regeneration studies; a survey conducted throughout the duration of the study; and a case study.

The integrated information management system presented in this paper is a tool that allows the management agency of the Lisbon's historic district to the take full advantage of the potentialities of the area, namely the strategic location and the historic and architectonic heritage.

A great number of buildings in the historic district are classified as buildings of “public heritage”. The findings suggest that property and economic activity can be the driving forces for revitalising Lisbon's historic district.

This paper is aim to understand the key features of old Lisbon's downtown and to analyse existing practice in managing built heritage on the historic district. It also seek to identify how an information management system could improve the current intervention practices, in the area, that agency follows.

In this paper, I offer a series of reflections on some issues involved in evaluating complex public policy programmes in a context of rapid change and against the background of an activist government setting exacting standards for the delivery of public service outcomes. I argue that the overlay of pressures on programme evaluation as a result of the engagement with such complex public policy interventions presents a series of challenges for evaluation.

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 analyze the art-based project of Full Llove Inn as a tactical urbanism intervention and urban tourist attraction. The project consisted of an elevated room-car, displayed in the public space of Amsterdam from August 2006 to September 2007.

The research was conducted between December 2017 and November 2018 in Amsterdam. The study applied the methodological tools of semi-structured interviews, textual analysis and participatory observation.

Full Llove Inn provided an extraordinary allure for visitors and residents. It created a sense of intra-personal and inter-personal existential authenticity for local and non-local guests, respectively, while introducing a pop-up hotel as a new form of tactical initiative.

Due to the inability to contact non-local guests for interviews, the only source of data was based on tourist experiences about Full Llove Inn derived from the hotel guest book.

The research suggests that pop-up hotels may be used by Destination Management Organizations as a means of strengthening the brand image and creating a competitive edge for cities.

The research indicates that art-inspired tactical interventions in the public space of civic environments could constitute a social capital while generating interactions between residents and visitors.

For the first time in the tourism literature, this study investigates the impact of tactical projects on destination branding from the perspective of both locals and visitors.