Playing public health: building the HIVe

In thinking through the impact of digital media on how frontline workers, activists, practitioners and researchers understand and fight HIV and AIDS, it is important to acknowledge that digital media does not only provide new channels and strategies for communicating information around HIV prevention and education. It also establishes innovative domains for conceiving of, and building, ‘resilient communities’ like The HIVe. Such digital interventions are cultural assets that confront biomedical and behavioural approaches to HIV prevention and education. Immersive and social technologies, network ubiquity and low cost mobile phones provide new tools for aggregating, representing, collecting and disseminating community-based and led data that ‘plays’ public health differently. This play involves fore-fronting the success of social science HIV prevention and education against the essentialist logic of dominant biomedical approaches. ‘Playing public health’ provides an entirely new and comprehensive picture of the agency of the HIV virus that goes beyond the pathology of the individual. This paper proposes the goal of putting HIV prevention back into the ‘game’ of public health and playing it to win by building The HIVe

Service Clustering: Building Cohesive Public Service Capacity

The human services support system of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, incorporates a complex and concentrated network of services for its economically disadvantaged citizens.In 2004, the Allegheny County Department of Human Services (DHS) served 231,400 people by administering 2,190 contracted services through a network of 384 direct service providers, most being autonomous, nonprofit organizations.1 Local government relies heavily on nonprofit organizations to address the physical, mental, and emotional health of individual residents, which in turn improves the quality of life for families and communities.Allegheny County residents consequently enjoy a human service delivery system with great geographical access to a variety of service providers.A network of 384 direct service providers delivering services across five DHS program offices provides choice to individuals.This ample supply of service delivery options enables consumers to select direct service providers in close geographic proximity to their residence, as well as an opportunity to select a provider based upon its particular service delivery approach.That said, this abundance of supply options, while likely attractive to the consumer, entails a cost to government or the funder in its costs to administer contracts with each autonomous, direct service provider.The Forbes Funds commissioned The Hill Group, Inc., to conduct a study of the human service delivery system in Allegheny County to determine if there were opportunities to enhance the system's capacity. Specifically, this study investigates whether there is an opportunity to maintain choice in service delivery, a benefit of the Allegheny County human services system, while creating operating efficiencies and enhancing mission effectiveness.This study addresses the following questions:What is the supply and demand continuum of human services in Allegheny County?Is there evidence of equilibrium or disequilibria between human services provided and demand for human services?Are there high or low concentrations of service providers geographically clustered around clients or any natural market sheds of human services activities?Can geographical concentrations of providers and clients be leveraged for efficiency through various forms of collaboration without compromising choice or delivery of services?Would the geographic clustering of human service organizations lead to any costsavings to the public (government or funders) or to nonprofit organizations

Capacity Building in Public Sector Organisations

During the last two decades the world has experienced a major transformation in thinking on the role of government in provision of services and socio-economic development. This change in thinking has come about as a result of the inability of two major philosophies of production—capitalism and socialism—to redistribute resources for the improvement in the living condition of the masses. Both the philosophies have shortcomings. Capitalism encourages entrepreneurship and growth, but it also creates extreme economic disparities leading to poverty. Socialism in its attempt to create an egalitarian society curbs and stifles entrepreneurship, leading to discontentment and economic inefficiencies. Developing countries have followed, by and large, a mix of these philosophies but the result has not been encouraging in most of the cases. Economic distortions and inefficiencies have been the common outcome. In addition, human development indicators and the quality of life in these countries has fallen far below the minimum acceptable standard. Inequitable distribution of resources is attributed to the absence of a participative and democratic political structure on the one hand, and mismanagement of resources and the absence of a facilitative administrative structure on the other. The latter attribute is now commonly termed as poor ‘governance’ of resources.

Correlation Analysis of Building Performance and Occupant’s Satisfaction via Post Occupancy Evaluation for Malaysia’s Public Buildings

The purpose of a building is to provide shelter for activities that carried out by the building users. The question is, does the facilities in the building perform well and appropriate to its use? The needs of occupants are affected by the building performance and on occupants’ evaluation of the buildings. Hence, Post Occupancy Evaluation (POE) is introduced to empower the occupants’ opinion as the benchmark of building performance evaluation. POE comprises as one of the technique that is used to evaluate whether a building meets the user’s requirement. The broad aim of this paper is to determine the correlation of public buildings and occupant’s satisfaction; in order to seek possible opportunities for government involvement (as the building owner) and the public (as the user) to evaluate the performance criteria. By using a proposed framework of POE, the study has revealed that 74% of the aspects in building performance are in high correlation with the occupants’ satisfaction. The study concludes that the application of POE is effective and beneficial to be used by the public sector in evaluating the performance of public buildings in Malaysia.Post occupancy evaluation; Public buildings; Building performance; occupants’ satisfaction; Correlation analysis

Building Public Confidence: Ending Racial Profiling in Nebraska

The report reviewed data collected by the Nebraska Crime Commission. The ACLU's analysis of the data found that "profiling in Nebraska traffic stops disproportionately and negatively affects communities of colors." The ACLU report focuses on three findings: 1) People of color are more likely to be pulled over. 2) People of color are more likely to be arrested: a white driver has a 1 in 48 chance of being arrested compared to a 1 in 13 chance for drivers of color. The data showed that there was not a significant difference in the actual offenses committed by the drivers. 3) People of color are more likely to be subjected to searches

The Rise, Fall and Rise of the British Public Library Building

Focuses on recent developments and controversies surrounding public library buildings noting that despite predications of the death of the library due to the information revolution and the availability of digital resources, library buildings are attracting renewed attention and, generally, increased use. Suggests that the public library building may have an important role in the new local government philosophy of “place shaping”, and particularly in the “community engagement” agenda which is part of this approach. Explores the debate about the nature of the public library space and whether policies which emphasize the role of the public library as a welcoming community space run counter to many people's idea of the library building as a quiet place for silent contemplation and study. Suggests how public libraries may take forward the community engagement and user consultation agendas through use of the public library space, focusing particularly on the potential of reader and reading development activities for bringing people together and encouraging their contributions and ideas about public library services. Concludes with a discussion of how an emphasis on the role of the public library building in community engagement activities may impact on the ideals of community librarianship

Building History: Public History Students make Community History More Accessible through Building History Projects

Historic buildings shaped, witnessed, bear evidence of, and can serve asaccessible gateways to the history of a community. They also cancontribute the development of a community’s identity. The case for thevalue of aging structures and the task of arguing for their preservationmay fall upon the shoulders of underfunded and under resourced localhistorical societies. Public history students and local historicalsocieties benefit from collaborative service-learning experiences wherestudents help the historical society document local history and buildtheir work place skills. Students also gain an awareness of theimportance of the work historical societies do and the needs of thecommunities that they serve. This presentation will discuss the learningexperiences of students in an undergraduate public history class whoworked with a local historical society to document and share the storiesof historic structures that are located the town’s historic main street.It will describe the evolution of this collaborative activity, describeproject stages, assignment topics, means of coordination betweenacademic librarian, public history professor, students, and historicalsociety, the benefits for all involved, the outcomes of the project, andnext steps that are envisioned. It will invite discussion of similarexperiences or suggestions of how the collaboration, which is expectedto be repeated, might be improved

Implementing Education Policy: Getting From What Now? to What Works

Outlines key lessons from the 2011 Education Grantmakers Institute about funding the implementation of policy change as well as advocacy and building public will. Offers framework for planning, stakeholder engagement, capacity building, and communication

Keberkesanan polisi kelulusan membina bangunan di Kota Padang, Sumatera Barat Indonesia

The establishment and implementation of a regulatory system that sets the minimum quality requirements to control land use and building activities so as to provide a safe living environment is vital especially in the rapidly increasing urban population of developing countries. In Kota Padang, Indonesia, land use and building control is carried out through the Building Control Permit (or Izin Mendirikan Bangunan (IMB)). This study evaluates the effectiveness of IMB as a tool to control land use planning and building, and identifies the factor which influences its effectiveness. A survey research approach was used in this study. Data was obtained from building owners both with IMB and without IMB to examine their perceptions of IMB implementation. Interviews with the relevant government officials in order to assess the problems encountered in issuing IMB was also carried out. The study found that the number of buildings with IMB is significantly low (41%) while 59% with IMB do not comply with the minimum requirements. The values of Cramer’s V and Spearman’s correlation coefficient indicate that owners’ income, building function, building location, level of understanding of IMB and capacity of government agency which implement IMB are factors that contribute to the number of IMB application. Factors which influence IMB compliance are knowledge about land use planning, location and building enforcement. The study concludes that the implementation of IMB as land use and building control instrument in Kota Padang currently is not effective. The study suggests the need to improve public awareness and public support for planning and development control by ensuring more active public participation in planning process while the capacity of the government in development control be upgraded

Toward an Effective Government–Public Relationship: Organization–Public Relationship Based on a Synthetic Approach to Public Segmentation

The goal of this study is to identify and understand an effective government–public relationship building based on a synthetic approach to public segmentation. Using a national survey dataset, this study examines how different types of publics have trust differently in federal, state, and local government. By exploring how situational and cross-situational variables predict trust in government, the study finds that there are different predictors for trust in each level of government. Further, the results provide important insight into how public relations practitioners and researchers can build and maintain an effective government–public relationship with the key publics. Thus, the current study aims to fundamentally make contribution to theoretical and practical development in relationship-building research