Spatial spread of farm animal diseases

Data on cattle movements within the United Kingdom have recently become available. As part of the conditions for lifting an export ban on British beef following the bovine spongiform encephalopathy epidemic, the European Union required that the UK should have "An effective animal identification and movement recording system". The Cattle Tracing System (CTS) was introduced in September 1998, and the scheme was extended to include all cattle by the beginning of 2001. Contact networks have proved valuable in studying the epidemiology of diseases in man, such as human immunodeficiency virus; the availability of CTS cattle movement data has enabled contact network analysis to be applied to diseases of farm livestock. The CTS data may be represented as a large network; cattle holdings are represented as nodes, with a movement of cattle between holdings being an edge. To address concerns about the quality of this cattle movement data, a field study was conducted on Lewis, one of the Western Isles of Scotland. Farmers were recruited with the assistance of the local veterinary surgeon, and asked to record a range of potential risk behaviours relating to the transmission of infectious diseases (moving livestock, sharing pasture, etc.) for a one-month period. For the study area in question, movements of cattle not reported to CTS (especially to or from common grazing land) were a substantial contribution to the contact network during the study period. A wide range of measures of network structure exist, but their relevance to the dynamics of infectious diseases on networks is unclear. To address this, a discrete-time stochastic SIR simulation model of disease on a network was designed and implemented in software. Using this simulation model, a network model with the key structural features of the CTS contact network was constructed, by considering a range of measures of network structure, and testing resulting model networks against CTS-derived networks. The resulting model was shown to predict the dynamics of a simulated disease model on that contact network more closely than existing models of global network structure. Much work on the contact structure of the UK cattle herd has relied on relatively simple static network representations of movement data. By using simulated diseases, the serious shortcomings of static network representations compared to more complex dynamic network representations were demonstrated. A substantial library of software for the generation and analysis of large networks, and the simulation of disease thereupon, has been produced, and has been made generally available. The design and implementation of this software is discussed, including the algorithms and data structures deployed, as well as validation of the software, and its portability to different computing platforms.This work was funded by BBSRC and the Tetra-Laval Research Fund; its revision was funded by the Wellcome Trust

Readmission and the social construction of mental disturbance

This dissertation examines recurrent patterns in the interaction between psychiatric patients and the systems of knowledge and power that constitute them as patients. These patterns are traced both in the historical migmti::m of patients into and out of the asylum, and in the language used by doctors and patients to account for such migration. Transcripts of interviews with patients and case notes written by doctors are subjected to new forms of quantitative analysis and this is used together with qualitative interpretation to reveal the ways in which disciplinary power operates through confession and surveillance to constitute psychiatric subjects in the tension between freedom and incarceration.PsychologyD.Litt. et Phil. (Psychology

What next? opportunities for young people with learning disabilities after leaving school

Abstract available: p.

The role of Supported Employment in promoting positive health behaviour of people with learning disabilities in work

This mixed method research study originally contributes to understand the role covered by Supported Employment Agencies (SEAs) in promoting positive health behaviours of employees with learning disabilities. Employment is rarely experienced by people with learning disabilities. Supported Employment Agencies provide a service to facilitate the employment experience for people with learning disabilities, through supporting in finding, keeping and maintaining a job. While many studies on employment have highlighted health benefits for the general population in employment, data is lacking for people with learning disabilities. This study wants to understand if and how Supported Employment Agencies support the health of their clients with learning disabilities. The quantitative phase of this study involved managers of Supported Employment Agencies completing a web-survey to understand the strategies used by Supported Employment Agencies preventing health risk behaviours and promoting health. In the qualitative phase of this study Grounded Theory Method was used to discover the role played by Supported Employment Agencies in supporting the health of their clients with learning disabilities. For this purpose interviews with mangers and job coaches of Supported Employment Agencies and interviews with employees with learning disabilities were held. Results from this study reveal Supported Employment Agencies to influence the health of employees with learning disabilities in several ways, both informally and formally. Indeed, health was a key element in all phases of supported employment, even if Supported Employment Agencies were not formally committed and funded to promote health. The thesis highlights the potential for SEAs to capitalise on their role as employment mediators to promote health outcomes and healthy lifestyles for employees with learning disabilities