INSPIRE Compliance of Public Health Information – A Danish Case Study

Geographical information systems have become important to research, planning, commercial businesses, and health organisations in the public and private sectors. Data management and sharing are advantageous considering that repeating tasks is costly. The existence of several versions of the ‘same’ dataset raises concerns over data reliability and authority. Digitisation, which largely involves spatial information, is one approach for sharing data. Thus, digitisation is a vital part of the Danish e-government strategy. A well-functioning spatial data infrastructure (SDI) is an important prerequisite for e-governance. Implementation of the INSPIRE Directive has placed emphasis on SDI within key ministries and has resulted in several national services with free access to spatial data. However, until now, public health information has not been a part of the Danish SDI. In Denmark, several organisations have created independent public health datasets, and the infrastructure of the data is undocumented. Obtaining an overview of the available health data suitable for spatial applications is not easy. Most public health data do not have any spatial references, but it should be linked to features with a spatial reference, for example, administrative units or addresses. According to Danish legislation, health information is private, which imposes great limitations on the use of health data. Human health information should not be isolated, which is more or less the situation today, but rather seamlessly combined with other data. The aim of the current research is to identify available public health data in Denmark, including links to spatially referenced features, and to analyse its compliance with the principles of the INSPIRE Directive. The INSPIRE Directive includes the theme of human health and safety, and it is the basis for identifying available health data

INSPIRE Compliance of Public Health Information – A Danish Case Study

Geographical information systems have become important to research, planning, commercial businesses, and health organisations in the public and private sectors. Data management and sharing are advantageous considering that repeating tasks is costly. The existence of several versions of the ‘same’ dataset raises concerns over data reliability and authority. Digitisation, which largely involves spatial information, is one approach for sharing data. Thus, digitisation is a vital part of the Danish e-government strategy. A well-functioning spatial data infrastructure (SDI) is an important prerequisite for e-governance. Implementation of the INSPIRE Directive has placed emphasis on SDI within key ministries and has resulted in several national services with free access to spatial data. However, until now, public health information has not been a part of the Danish SDI. In Denmark, several organisations have created independent public health datasets, and the infrastructure of the data is undocumented. Obtaining an overview of the available health data suitable for spatial applications is not easy. Most public health data do not have any spatial references, but it should be linked to features with a spatial reference, for example, administrative units or addresses. According to Danish legislation, health information is private, which imposes great limitations on the use of health data. Human health information should not be isolated, which is more or less the situation today, but rather seamlessly combined with other data. The aim of the current research is to identify available public health data in Denmark, including links to spatially referenced features, and to analyse its compliance with the principles of the INSPIRE Directive. The INSPIRE Directive includes the theme of human health and safety, and it is the basis for identifying available health data

The Burqa Ban: Legal Precursors for Denmark, American Experiences and Experiments, and Philosophical and Critical Examinations

As the title of the article suggests, “The Burqa Ban”: Legal Precursors for Denmark, American Experiences and Experiments, and Philosophical and Critical Examinations, the authors embark on a factually investigative as well as a reflective response. More precisely, they use The 2018 Danish “Burqa Ban”: Joining a European Trend and Sending a National Message (published as a concurrent but separate article in this issue of INTERNATIONAL STUDIES JOURNAL) as a platform for further analysis and discussion of different perspectives. These include case-law at the international level while focusing attention on recent rulings and judicial reasoning by the ECtHR and the ECJ; critical thought-experiments in religion, morality, human rights, and the democratic public space; a contextualized account of burqa-wearing interventions by federal and state governments and, moreover, various courts in the United States; and philosophical commentary and, in some instances, criticism of the Danish and/or European (French, etc.) approach. The different contributions have different aims. The section on case-law at the international level reports on those central judgments that, in effect, helped to pave the path for the Kingdom of Denmark’s burqa ban. Concerning the concurring judges at the ECtHR, the opinions served to uphold a preexisting ban and to grant a wide margin of appreciation to the national authorities, thereby limiting the Court’s own review. As regards to the ECJ, the legality of company rules that contain a policy of neutrality for the workplace was examined, with a similar outcome. The authors who discuss religion, morality, human rights and the democratic public space are endeavoring to, respectively, appeal to ethics as a testing stone for law and to both challenge and address several forms of “expressivist worry” in connection with face veils. In doing so, the authors ask a number of thought-provoking questions that hopefully will inspire public policymakers to careful analysis. While the section that is devoted to American perspectives highlights a comprehensive survey of political and legal responses to, in particular, full-face veils like the burqa, the relevant author also incorporates public perceptions and, in the course of examining these, draws a parallel to “the fate” of the hoodie. The constitutionality of burqa-wearing in America, so it also appears, is partially an open question, but differentiating between religious, political, or personal reasons is a de jure premise. Given that the Danish legislators who drafted law L 219 to ban burqa-wearing in public places rely on a reference to political Islam, they relegate religious and personal reasons to the private domain, thereby also adopting secularism as a premise. This is explored in the last author response of the article, more precisely, in an account of the underlying materialism that, in turn, is applied to Muslim women. If policymakers and legislators engaged in Thinking Things Through exercises, they could, as a minimum, avoid law-making strategies that are not in the spirit of the theory they themselves invoke, albeit tacitly. While the aim of, as it were, arresting culturally self-contradicting legislators is unique for the section in question, all the authors who contribute to the joint research project have one end-goal in common, namely to inform about important perspectives while at the same time opening up for parameters for (more) fruitful, constructive and (if need be) critical debate in the future. With this in mind, four recommendations are presented by the research director for the project. Legally, politically, socially and culturally, conflict-resolution should not translate the relationship between rulers and the ruled into a separation ideology, an instance of controllers versus the controlled. All things being equal, that is the objective limit for a democratic society

Accreditation in general practice in Denmark:study protocol for a cluster-randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND: Accreditation is used increasingly in health systems worldwide. However, there is a lack of evidence on the effects of accreditation, particularly in general practice. In 2016 a mandatory accreditation scheme was initiated in Denmark, and during a 3-year period all practices, as default, should undergo accreditation according to the Danish Healthcare Quality Program. The aim of this study is primarily to evaluate the effects of a mandatory accreditation scheme. METHODS/DESIGN: The study is conducted as a cluster-randomized controlled trial among 1252 practices (clusters) with 2211 general practitioners in Denmark. Practices allocated to accreditation in 2016 serve as the intervention group, and practices allocated to accreditation in 2018 serve as controls. The selected outcomes should meet the following criteria: (1) a high degree of clinical relevance; (2) the possibility to assess changes due to accreditation; (3) availability of data from registers with no self-reporting data. The primary outcome is the number of prescribed drugs in patients older than 65 years. Secondary outcomes are changes in outcomes related to other perspectives of safe medication, good clinical practice and mortality. All outcomes relate to quality indicators included in the Danish Healthcare Quality Program, which is based on general principles for accreditation. DISCUSSION: The consequences of accreditation and standard-setting processes are generally under-researched, particularly in general practice. This is the largest study in general practice with a randomized implementation approach to evaluate the clinical effects of a nation-wide mandatory accreditation scheme in general practice. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT02762240. Registered on 24 May 2016. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13063-017-1818-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Feasibility study on a European foundation statute: final report

This feasibility study covers seven major objectives. It offers an overview of the main types of foundations in EU Member States; presents estimates of the economic scale of the European foundation sector, also in comparison with the United States; examines the main regulatory differences in the legal treatment of foundations across the EU; estimates cross-border activities as well as barriers and their economic relevance; analyses the importance and cost implications of these barriers; explores possible modalities of eliminating existing barriers; and assesses further possible effects of a European Foundation Statute

How do we Understand Working Environment Policies, Programmes and Instruments?

How do different forms of regulation influence working environment and working life? How can centrally formulated programmes create changes at complex, often multi-layered local work places, and how can insights from work life studies shed light on the social mechanisms at stake in different types of regulation? Under the heading of working environment policies, programmes and instruments, the aim of the current issue has been to address these issues. In essences, it is society’s intentional attempt to regulate working environment conditions in the workplace. It could be through health and safety legislation and labour inspection. But it is much more than that: The states are not restricted to writing rules, inspecting and sanctioning them. They put together insurances systems and they support massive campaign efforts. And they get labour market parties, nationally, by the sector or within the companies or workplaces, involved in similar activities; sometimes, labour market parties or other stakeholders even do it without prompts from the state. All these efforts are made to a larger or smaller extent because they are seen as beneficial to the health of the employees. But we know surprisingly little about how policies, programmes and instruments work, the social processes at stake, to what extent they do work and whether there could be better ways to reach the overall goal of creating a better working environment. There seems to be several reasons for the lack of knowledge about the processes involved in regulating the working environment (...

The implementation of 'new phase' European social dialogue agreements and texts in European member states

The research evaluates the implementation of the Framework Agreements on Telework and Work-related Stress in Belgium, Denmark, UK, and Czech Republic and in the banking and local Government sectors within these countries. Further, it evaluates the various factors that explain divergent implementation outcomes in countries and sectors. It develops two benchmarks to assess the efficacy of the Agreements as modes of European social partner ‘soft’ law governance; a benchmark that assesses the procedural implementation of the Agreements, and a benchmark that assess the substantive implementation of the Agreements. A multi-level governance theoretical approach is also adopted. It emerged that ‘effective’ procedural implementation of the Agreements largely occurred in Belgium and Czech Republic, but did not occur to the same degree in Denmark and UK. It also emerged that the substantive effect of the Agreements was patchy and that the substantive impact of the Telework Agreement was greater than that of the Work-related Stress Agreement. Although structural factors were important in explaining divergent implementation outcomes, it also emerged that it was primarily policy and actor related factors that explained divergent national and sectoral implementation outcomes. The research ends with a rather skeptical evaluation of the Agreements as modes of European social partner ‘soft’ law governance