Feminist health promotion in practice: Analysis of a UK voluntary sector women-centred project and partnership working towards empowerment

Background/Objectives This paper discusses a voluntary sector strategic partnership and delivery project involving eleven women-centred organisations who worked together to support the most vulnerable women and girls across a city in the north of England 2017-2021, aiming to 1. Improve and extend access to services and support; 2. Provide a holistic response to meet complex needs; 3. Empower women and girls. This paper details the project and partnership model and illustrate the importance of feminist health promotion as a tool for change. Methods This article draws upon a three year longitudinal qualitative evaluation, underpinned by a feminist methodology. Our evaluation placed the project staff, partners, stakeholders and service users at the centre of qualitative data collection, drawing upon a co-produced Theory of Change approach and associated framework analysis to assess the extent to which the project and partnerships aims had been met. Our sample includes 34 service users and 54 professionals (19 of which are repeat interviews) with data gathered between 2017-2020. Results Data from our evaluation shows a successful project model supporting vulnerable women in a holistic and empowering way to ensure that their complex needs were met. Our evaluation data also highlights the successes and challenges of a complex partnership aiming to advocate for women on a strategic local level. There were several positive outcomes resulting from partnership work to collectively advocate and raise awareness of the issues affecting women and girls, despite internal challenges. Discussion Feminist health promotion requires further analysis as a mechanism to achieve emancipatory innovation. Our data uncovers the hidden dichotomy between external success, such as achieving the delivery outcomes, and internal partnership politics, which are underexplored in the literature. Despite these challenges, our evidence shows that this project and partnership was a successful gendered intervention that had positive empowering impacts on many of those involved

The influence of Body Mass on the 30-15 Intermittent Fitness Test in Rugby Union

Poster presentatio

York Passivhaus Building Performance Evaluation

The York Passivhaus is a 3-bed home in York, North Yorkshire, that achieved Passivhaus certification on completion in 2015. The project aim is to evaluate the building fabric and system performance of the home seven years post-completion against design targets and initial performance tests. Areas of interest are energy consumption, ventilation and air quality, thermal comfort, airtightness and building fabric. Looking at these in turn, fuel bills were used to explore how gas and electricity consumption had changed since occupation in 2016. Gas use was higher during the first year postcompletion in 2016 but has steadily declined since. Electricity use has remained relatively constant. The annual energy consumption in 2023 was 2467kWh for gas (20kWh/m2/year) and 1652kWh (13kWh/m2/year) for electricity, which is between 60 and 74 per cent less for gas and between 9 and 39 per cent less for electricity than the average UK house. The mechanical ventilation heat recovery (MVHR) system was not balanced when flow rate test results were compared against commissioning figures, as extract air flow rates were higher than intake air flow rates. This meant that the system no longer satisfied Passivhaus requirements. Air quality was monitored inside and outside of the home over 12 months. For CO2, a high level of IAQ was recorded, with an average of less than 872 ppm. CO2 levels dropped when the MVHR filters were changed coupled with the onset of warmer weather. Higher noise levels associated with the MVHR system ceased following a service. Higher levels of particulate matter (PM) were recorded at the front of the house, close to a car parking area. Three peak periods were examined to see how particulates generated externally or internally rose and fell over time. Spikes in internal PM levels were generally due to cooking or use of the woodburning stove and dissipated quickly. Elevated PM level patterns recorded outside were often mirrored inside but at a much lower level. Twenty internal sensors monitored temperature and humidity levels. Temperatures remained constant above 15°C throughout winter with all sensors staying within a 3-4°C range, indicating a low level of thermal variation across the home. However, internal temperatures were quite low – usually under 20°C, despite the space heating system defaulting to set points of 24°C during the day and 15°C at night during the winter months. This suggests that the space heating system was undersized for the current occupancy level, as design calculations were based on higher occupancy assumptions. It was assumed at the design stage that the wood-burning stove would meet 30 per cent of the home’s heating demand when during the monitoring period it was rarely used. During warmer weather, higher temperatures were recorded across the two southwest facing first-floor bedrooms. There was no evidence of overheating when the home was occupied during warmer weather. In general, the house is still extremely airtight with a mean permeability of 0.86 m3/(h.m2) @50Pa. However, this is a significant increase in air leakage in relative (rather than absolute) terms since certification was carried out in October 2015, where a mean permeability of 0.39m3/(h.m2) @ 50Pa was recorded. The little air leakage detected appears to come from window seals at casements, the boiler flue, plus some air movement behind plasterboard in the upstairs rooflights, and at wall-to-ceiling, or wall-to wall-junctions. The air leakage area has increased only slightly – from around 73cm2 to 104cm2. Therefore, after seven years the home now satisfies EnerPHit rather than Passivhaus airtightness requirements. A QUB test was used to measure fabric performance. First, a design-stage heat transfer coefficient (HTC) for the home was calculated, which was 69.5 W/K and then tested against. Three tests were done in the summer/autumn of 2022 and two in the winter of 2023. The average measurement was 76.3 W/K. This is a low HTC but 10 % greater than the designstage performance calculation. Overall, as a seven-year-old Passivhaus, the home’s performance is still exceptional compared to current-day new-build homes. Some performance aspects have deteriorated since completion, such as the airtightness and MVHR performance, which could be associated with wear and tear. It is not possible to compare changes to air quality, thermal comfort and HTC, as they were not monitored post-completion. The only area of note is thermal comfort in winter depending on the temperature sought by occupants, as the space heating system is not designed for the current occupancy level and could be considered on the cool side of comfortable

EXPRESS: How to combat feelings of emptiness in solo dining?

Solo dining is a growing trend in hospitality, yet little is known about how to improve solo consumers’ experiences. This research identifies feelings of emptiness as a key emotional response that helps explain why solo diners’ experiences tend to be less favorable than those of group diners. Drawing on emotion regulation theory and embodied cognition, we propose that pleasure appeals counteract anticipated emptiness through hedonic framing, while fast-tempo music conveys auditory “fullness” via cross-modal metaphors. Three between-subject experiments with British solo diners by default test and support our hypotheses. Study 1 shows that solo (vs. group) dining lowers satisfaction due to increased feelings of emptiness. Study 2 finds that pleasure-based advertising appeals (vs. challenge-based) increase solo consumers’ purchase intention before consumption. Study 3 reveals that fast-tempo (vs. slow-tempo) ambient music enhances solo diners’ satisfaction by mitigating feelings of emptiness during consumption

Paper salvage in Britain during the Second World War

This article builds upon recent scholarship on the recycling – or ‘salvage’ – schemes organized by the British government during the Second World War. Viewing the act of recycling as part of an interactive ‘communications circuit’, it uses records produced by the Ministry of Information to analyse the development of publicity produced for the national salvage campaign. Particular attention is paid to the public's role in shaping the course of the campaign. By demonstrating that a disjuncture between publicity and perceptions of inaction led to a sense of frustration, the article suggests that this example complicates the notion of a ‘people's war’

Inspirational Leaders

Terry Hodgkinson Inaugural Lectur

Using Redundant Reads for Improving Performance and Availability of Distributed Replicated Systems with Relaxed Consistency

Distributed NoSQL databases is a new time of data storages which offer configurable levels of consistency so that data can scale across many geographically distributed nodes. In order to achieve high system availability and allow a quick response the architects of modern large-scale web applications such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. often decide to weak consistency requirements. In this paper, we put forward the idea of using redundant read requests to further reduce response time and improve availability of replicated distributed systems operating at a relaxed consistency level. The proposed approach was implemented on a testbed Cassandra NoSQL cluster. Our evaluation results show that redundant reads can be considered as an effective means of reducing the probability of extreme delays that regularly occur in distributed systems. In some scenarios, the proposed mechanism can not only improve system availability and minimize the worst-case execution time, but also reduce the average response time despite the increase in system workload

Using peer research processes to understand strategies to support those with severe, multiple and complex health needs

Objectives: There has been an increased focus in policy discourse on individuals with severe, multiple and complex needs. This paper seeks to understand how best to enable these individuals to take greater control of their health. Design: Qualitative, user-led, peer research Setting: Large urban UK city. Method: Trained peer researchers with previous experience of severe and multiple disadvantage gathered data using a snowball sampling approach from 21 individuals engaged in a service specifically designed to provide for their needs. Results: The study identified enabling factors that create conditions for individuals with severe and multiple disadvantage to take greater control of factors impacting on their health and social situations. These included working holistically with individuals, understanding the interconnected issues impacting on health, developing trusting relationships with professionals and working within a positive framework that fosters self-belief and is focused on salutogenesis rather than pathogenesis. Conclusion: There exists a set of enabling factors that may support individuals facing particular challenges in their lives. While derived from within a specific geographical context, findings have relevance to other settings in relation to ways of working. Peer research demonstrates itself to be a research approach well suited to understanding lived experiences

The Ideal Victim: A Critical Race Theory (CRT) Approach.

Using a Critical Race Theory (CRT) framework, this paper analyses Black and Black mixed- race people's experiences of reporting crime. It is based on qualitative interviews with twenty participants. The analysis finds that the process of becoming the (un) victim is mediated through the intersection of race with gender and masculinity, class and migrant status. Ultimately, Black and Black mixed-race men are the ‘ideal offender’ rather than the ‘ideal victim’ (Christie, 1986). The article finds that the (un)victim experiences racial re-victimisation and develops an altered perception of the police as a trusted body. The racialized affect of being the (un)victim is greater than the effects of minor crime on the victim. The challenges that this poses to the relationship between Black communities and the police are explored and the implications for future practice discussed