Prehospital Staffing and Road Traffic Accidents: Physician Versus Trained Nonphysician Responders

Road traffic deaths, which affect people in their productive years, are projected to be the third leading cause of death by the year 2030. While most studies have focused on road infrastructure and vehicle safety, this study examined something new: the impact of prehospital response to road traffic accidents on the rate of death. Some countries send physicians to the scene of an accident; some send paramedics or registered nurses. The question this research sought to answer was whether the use of physician responders resulted in a lower rate of death compared to the use of nonphysician responders. The literature makes it clear that rate of road traffic death is related to country income and governance indicators, so first those variables needed to be equalized. My conceptual framework for this cross-sectional correlation study was the Haddon matrix, which organizes injuries by temporal (pre-event, event, and postevent) and epidemiological (host, agent, and environment) factors. Using World Health Organization data on road traffic injury and country income, World Bank data on governance indicators, and a literature search of 67 countries\u27 prehospital response profiles, significant negative correlations (p \u3e 0.001) were found for road traffic deaths and income, r (65) = -0.68, and governance indicators, r (65) = -0.646. No significant difference in the rate of road traffic death was found between physician and nonphysician prehospital staffing. Because increasing countries\u27 income and improving governance are long-term, ambitious goals for developing countries, training nonphysician prehospital responders appears to be the most effective social change to decrease the burden of road traffic deaths

Youth in Lebanon: Using collaborative and interdisciplinary communication design methods to improve social integration in post-conflict societies

In 1995, the World Summit for Social Development identified social integration as one of the three overriding objectives for social and economic development. This priority arose following a century that ended with the collapse of many states and the sharpening of strife around the world. Social integration was seen as a pathway to reinforcing common identities, supporting cooperation and lessening the likelihood of violence and conflict. For the past 20 years, governmental, academic and third sector organisations – with the United Nations at the forefront – sought to improve social integration. However their methods and interventions have commonly been restricted to policymaking and dialogue practices. Peacebuilding and reconciliation are affected by communication within and amongst different groups. Nonetheless, the potential for communication design to contribute towards social integration remains unexplored. This practice-led communication design research focuses on 18 to 30 year old youth in Lebanon – an extreme case of a politically, religiously, geographically, culturally and linguistically segregated post-conflict generation. The research adopts an innovative, interdisciplinary(1.) and collaborative(2.) approach, to explore the contribution of communication design methods towards social integration interventions. The interdisciplinary and collaborative case study process spans seven stages of practice: Discover, Delve, Define, Develop, Deliver, Determine Impact and Diverge. I developed this process with Darren Raven in 2010, and have been testing and refining it over the past five years through the socially-focused design projects of BA Design for Graphic Communication students and staff at the London College of Communication. This process builds on the Design Council’s Double Diamond design process by incorporating stages from the National Social Marketing Centre’s process. Through these stages, the research developed several innovative communication design methods: Explorations, a cultural probes toolkit exploring young people’s local context; Road Trip, an autoethnographic journey preparing the researcher; Connections, an effective method for recruiting stakeholders; Expressions Corner, a confidential diary room for understanding young people’s experiences, attitudes and behaviours; Imagination Studio, a collaborative workshop series for developing social integration interventions; Imagination Market, an efficient platform for piloting these interventions; and a Social Impact Framework; to evaluate the impact of the interventions and research. These methods enhanced candid input from young people, reduced ethical tensions, and improved their engagement with the research. The methods also involved youth and wider stakeholders in understanding and reframing the problem, invited them to generate and deliver solutions, strengthened their sense of ownership and therefore the sustainability of the research outputs, and finally, built their capabilities throughout the process. The social integration interventions developed and piloted through the case-study research ranged from a citizen journalism platform reducing media bias, to a youth-led internal tourism service encouraging geographic mobility. The evaluation of the 24-hour pilot interventions demonstrated a positive shift in young people’s willingness to integrate. The social impact and social value assessment suggests that effective social integration interventions – such as the ones developed and piloted in the case study research – have higher chances of delivering positive social and economic outcomes for the communities involved. This practice-led research presents a number of contributions, the most significant of which is a methodology, process and set of methods highly transferable across social integration challenges worldwide. The research also provides social integration theory and practice with a clear demonstration of the value and potential of communication design to advance interventions from replication to innovation. To communication design theory and practice, the research makes the case for the value of interdisciplinary and collaborative principles in enhancing rigour and social impact. Finally, to the Lebanese context, the research provides in-depth qualitative insights on social group dynamics, segments, and behaviours, which act as an evidence-base to underpin future local interventions. Beyond this thesis, the knowledge gained from this research will be disseminated to the various relevant communities of practice – including researchers, designers, policy makers, and community development workers – in the form of Creative Commons licensed design guidelines, as well as presentations, capacity building workshops, and academic publications. The dissemination of knowledge hopes to inspire and enable these communities to adopt, adapt and build on communication design methods when addressing social segregation challenges within their varying contexts. Notes in the text: (1.) Drawing on disciplines such as social, political, behavioural, and psychological sciences. (2.) Engaging multiple stakeholders including young people, civil society, institutions, topic experts and policy-makers

Town of Hanover, New Hampshire annual report for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2015 and 2016 town meeting.

This is an annual report containing vital statistics for a town/city in the state of New Hampshire

Tennessee Highway Safety Office Annual Report FFY 2018

https://digitalcommons.memphis.edu/govpubs-tn-safety-homeland-security-highway-safety-office/1008/thumbnail.jp

Town of Hanover, New Hampshire 2020 report.

This is an annual report containing vital statistics for a town/city in the state of New Hampshire

Town of Plainfield, New Hampshire annual reports 2014. Annual reports of the officers and selectmen and the school district.

This is an annual report containing vital statistics for a town/city in the state of New Hampshire

Tennessee Highway Safety Office FFY2018 Highway Safety Plan

https://digitalcommons.memphis.edu/govpubs-tn-safety-homeland-security-highway-safety-office/1009/thumbnail.jp

Ethnic Xenophobia as Symbolic Politics: A Cross-National Study of Anti-Migrant Activism from Brussels to Beirut

Xenophobia is examined almost exclusively as a prejudice of advanced western nations. I argue that the field of study of xenophobia must be re-conceptualized in order for comparative, cross-regional inquiry to take place. With a new concept of ethnic xenophobia, this dissertation examines the determinants and causal mechanisms of ethnic xenophobic activity across developed and developing countries. I integrate studies of xenophobia and theories of ethnic threat to explain that political elites rely on structural dimensions of threat to convert native anxieties into ethnic xenophobia through the use of anti-migrant myths and symbols. I extend Stuart Kaufman’s theory of symbolic politics to further explain how elites mobilize ethnic xenophobic activity in order to gain or maintain political advantage among the native selectorate in their respective competitions for power. I use a Heckman Selection Model and a Structural Equation Model to test this theory across 14,000 cases of ethnic xenophobic activity targeting refugees for seventy-two developed and developing countries from 1990 to 2014. The results suggest that elites- across both developed and developing countries- do indeed exploit native anxieties in the aftermath of structural crises and events to provoke and mobilize hostilities toward migrants. A most-different systems design is also used to illustrate the causal mechanisms of the argument across two pairs of cases, including Kenya and the Netherlands and Lebanon and the United States. These cases provide additional support to the cross-regional explanation of ethnic xenophobic activity. This research opens the door to further exploration of similarities in the patterns and trends of ethnic xenophobia and anti-migrant intolerance across different country contexts. The results suggest that efforts for the protection of migrants against such expressions of prejudice require improvement; and that relationships between native and migrant populations matter a great deal for the exploitation of fears and anxieties by political elites especially in and around elections

Towards Urban Resilience - Proceedings - International Workshop - Barcelona 2017

The complexity of urban systems and the uncertainty of the impact of urbanization and climate change ask for new ways of thinking about planning objectives and solidarity in action. Cities are complex, adaptive systems of networked services and infrastructures. Growing urban populations, the concentration of resources and capital, unclear contingency planning, the often inadequate and environmentally unsound water supply and sewage management, the menacing continual destruction of ecosystems, and out-dated infrastructures and buildings, all present massive challenges to city planning. With the goal of strengthening resilience, there has been a lasting change of perspective in planning. The scope has been broadened from a specialized viewpoint to an interdisciplinary understanding of interactions and processes within the cityscape. Resilience is an anticipatory principle that transcends risk reduction and attempts to mitigate the effects of system failures while increasing capacities. The overall aim is to combine resilience strategies and sustainability by: i) enhancing sustainable urbanization ii) improving ecosystems and nature-based solutions iii) developing climate change adaptation and mitigation iv) strengthening community-based approaches and social resilience Developing a network is an important step to promote resource-sensitive urban design and enable educational and professional shift towards resilience and sustainability. Thus, the International Workshop at UIC Barcelona in cooperation with UN-Habitat’s City Resilience Profiling Programme (CRPP) and TU Darmstadt will offer the possibility to bring innovative ideas on resilience to discussion. The joint research hub, Urban Resilience Institute (URI), in cooperation with UN-Habitat CRRP aims to analyse practices and processes in the design of resilient and sustainable cities. The hub will gather young researchers from the European Joint Doctorate Programme within the Mundus Urbano Consortium, and from the Fellowship Programme on “Urban Infrastructures in Transition: The Case of African Cities,” as well as the research group on Critical Infrastructures at TU Darmstadt. Currently working from academic institutions based in Europe, researchers from Germany, India, Italy, Kenya, Lebanon, Uganda, and Spain, will present their research projects in four sessions covering the topics of: critical infrastructures, resource-sensitive urban design, housing and land management, and post-crisis emergency reconstruction; opening for discussion on conceptional approaches “towards urban resilience” with international researchers, Master- and PhD-students. Sessions: A_Critical Infrastructures: As the dependency on technology increases, there is a growing need to reflect on the role of infrastructures to sustain human activities. Infrastructures are critical for the functioning of society, not only as the physical components in cities, or ‘hardware,’ but also as structures embedded with the intangible essence of human groups and our understanding of them in specific contexts and throughout time. B_Resource-sensitive Urban Design: In face of rapid urbanization and the negative impacts of climate change on natural and built environments, this session calls analysis of practices and processes of resource-sensitive urban design. Urban design can contribute towards an educational and professional shift towards resilience and sustainability by focusing on integrative approaches, such as district-based networks, low-impact approaches, and climate-adaptive planning and building. C_Resilience and Multi-level Governance: This session seeks cross-scalar and multi-level frameworks which help in understanding cities as complex and adaptive systems. Contributions should problematize urbanization processes and include tools and strategies which explain scalar arrangements of nature and power. The role of international and global frameworks will deem necessary in laying the base for transition and transformation of cities, and to contribute to the development of urban resilience. D_Post-Crisis Emergency Reconstruction and Upgrading: This session aims at understanding refugee camps as a form of urbanization and sets the basis for rethinking camp design and their temporality. Contributions should bridge social structures and their physical transformations, as a means for their integral regeneration. This session looks at examples where resilience in the social fabric of informal settlements and low housing estates can create a sense of belonging and act as a force for their physical upgrading