EASIT IO1 report

EASIT IO1 report summarizes the results of an online survey involving 128 participants. Its objective was to gather information on the current situation regarding the training and practice of easy-to-understand (E2U) content in the EU, especially in the countries involved in the EASIT project. The results have contributed to offering a snapshot of the experience of professionals and to highlight possible areas of need and of improvement in E2U trainin

Handbook of Easy Languages in Europe

The Handbook of Easy Languages in Europe describes what Easy Language is and how it is used in European countries. It demonstrates the great diversity of actors, instruments and outcomes related to Easy Language throughout Europe. All people, despite their limitations, have an equal right to information, inclusion, and social participation. This results in requirements for understandable language. The notion of Easy Language refers to modified forms of standard languages that aim to facilitate reading and language comprehension. This handbook describes the historical background, the principles and the practices of Easy Language in 21 European countries. Its topics include terminological definitions, legal status, stakeholders, target groups, guidelines, practical outcomes, education, research, and a reflection on future perspectives related to Easy Language in each country. Written in an academic yet interesting and understandable style, this Handbook of Easy Languages in Europe aims to find a wide audience

Deadly Divisions: Class and Stigma as Fundamental Social Causes of Spatial Health Inequalities

The objective of this dissertation is to investigate how class and stigma influence spatial inequalities in health across the US, from the structural to the individual level. Class, stigma, and subsequent access to capital resources are not equally distributed across the US. Women, poor, and minority populations continue to have unequal access to capital resources across the country, though this is spatially determined. Similarly, while there are health inequalities along the same social cleavages at the national level, they differ significantly across localities. Research has not paid enough attention to the fundamental social causes of inequities, resulting in the inability to address questions about how the foundational structure of American society influences health and well-being. I link the theory of the fundamental social causes of health inequalities to the theoretical toolkit of Pierre Bourdieu to investigate the influence of class and stigma on spatial health inequalities. I use a mixed-methods approach to capture data at multiple levels of analysis. First, I investigate how class and stigma at the structural level are related to spatial health inequalities in the US. I use national quantitative data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Kaiser Family Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the United Health Foundation to investigate the distribution of economic and cultural capital in the US using Bourdieu’s field of power as a heuristic device to explicate the relationship between access to capital resources and self-rated health and life-expectancy in the US. To further contextualize the place that West Virginia holds in the national social landscape I carry out a content analysis to determine how the state is represented in national media, with a focus on the portrayal of health. I then use state level data to map the counties of West Virginia on the social field of the state based on access to economic and cultural capital. Finally, I turn to one county in the state of West Virginia, and the county high school, to carry out an ethnographic study following an academic cohort of adolescents. I pair participant observations in the high school and communities with surveys of nearly the whole class (n=71) at two time points and personal diaries recording daily practices in the lives of a subset of these students as they experience the coronavirus pandemic gripping the nation. I use this data to map students and families, and their health-related practices and behaviors on the social field, defined by the county parameters of available capital resources and youth’s own perceptions of their place in the social hierarchy. Place-based studies often end up disconnecting communities from the larger society and it is my aim to present a model that can be used to situate any community within the larger social fields in which they are embedded. Ultimately, it is my goal to contextualize, as richly as possibly, one community in America to understand the statistical and perceived differences and distances in the social structure to power, or economic and cultural capital, and how that position relates to health inequities. I use theory and method to facilitate a double gaze—up at how power is used to divide and categorize at the structural level and down at how social arrangements influence perceptions and outcomes—bridging the macro-level determinants and micro-level consequences of class and stigma in the production and reproduction of health inequalities

Handbook of Easy Languages in Europe

The Handbook of Easy Languages in Europe describes what Easy Language is and how it is used in European countries. It demonstrates the great diversity of actors, instruments and outcomes related to Easy Language throughout Europe. All people, despite their limitations, have an equal right to information, inclusion, and social participation. This results in requirements for understandable language. The notion of Easy Language refers to modified forms of standard languages that aim to facilitate reading and language comprehension. This handbook describes the historical background, the principles and the practices of Easy Language in 21 European countries. Its topics include terminological definitions, legal status, stakeholders, target groups, guidelines, practical outcomes, education, research, and a reflection on future perspectives related to Easy Language in each country. Written in an academic yet interesting and understandable style, this Handbook of Easy Languages in Europe aims to find a wide audience

Implement exercise in the oncological setting

Over the past 20 years, the understanding of the role of physical activity in cancer has been increased. Traditionally, patients were advised to rest, recovery, and save energy during and after anticancer treatments. Nevertheless, it is now clear that physical activity may help alleviate some side effects caused by therapies and a sedentary lifestyle; consequently, cancer patients should be encouraged to perform exercise. Epidemiological evidence shows that post-diagnosis physical activity is associated with enhancing patients \u2018survival, especially in breast, colon, and prostate cancer. In cancer patients, exercise acts by improving health-related skills, particularly cardiorespiratory fitness, strength, and body composition. Moreover, several trials demonstrated that a regular exercise program effectively relieves some cancer and treatments \u2018side effects, such as fatigue, nausea, and vomiting, thereby improving patients\u2019 quality of life. The last update of the American College of Sports Medicine\u2019 guidelines recommends that patients perform 90 minutes per week of aerobic exercise at moderate intensity, with strength activities twice a week. Despite these important benefits, in Italy, the spread of exercise-oncology programs and the research in the exercise oncology field are still poor, negatively impacting patients and producing a gap in the literature. The purpose of this thesis is trying to fill this gap, increasing the available literature, and proposing an exercise program based on patients\u2019 needs and the current guidelines. Chapter one is dedicated to a brief introduction about physical activity in cancer. In chapters two, three, four, and five, the experimental studies that led to the development of patient-centred exercise program are presented. Chapters six and seven report two other studies investigating exercise as part of the multimodal approach in counteracting cancer cachexia. The last chapter is dedicated to a summary of the main thesis results

Uses of English as a Lingua Franca in Domain-specific Contexts of Intercultural Communication

This special issue of Lingue e Linguaggi collects the contributions presented at the International Conference Uses of English as a Lingua Franca in Domain-Specific Contexts of Intercultural Communication, which took place at the University of Salento, Italy, in December 2019. The Conference represented the conclusion of a PRIN Project co-funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research, which started from the assumption that ELF is an area needing a more principled systematic investigation since, so far, it has not been recognized as a use of English that is independent from English as a Native Language. The chapters of this special issue concern ELF variations employed in: (a) institutional, professional, as well as ‘undeclared’ migration settings (UniSalento Unit); (b) digital media employed for global communication (UniVerona Unit); (c) multicultural and multilingual classrooms characterizing contemporary western societies (UniRoma Tre Unit). The contributions enquire into the ELF uses in domain-specific discourses that demonstrate the extent to which the English language comes to be appropriated by non-native speakers who, indeed, do not experience it as an alien ‘foreign’ language, but rather as a ‘lingua franca’ through which they feel free to convey their own native linguacultural and experiential uses and narratives, rhetorical and specialized repertoires and, ultimately, their own socio-cultural identities. The contributors’ research has provided evidence in support of an acknowledgement that people from different linguacultural backgrounds appropriate English by making reference to their own different native semantic, syntactic and pragmatic codes through which they convey their own communicative needs

Characterizing Relational Values to Inform Message-Framing at the Boa Ogoi Historical Site

In an increasingly polarized political climate–particularly in the U.S.– environmental issues such as climate change and its effects on the environment have become hot-button partisan talking points resulting in further division. This has led to research on ways to communicate science which does not further inflame political tensions, but rather reinforces and validates the audience’s values. Science communication research provides the foundation for my case study, which focuses on characterizing the environmental values and worldviews of land managers residing and working near the Boa Ogoi Historical Site in southern Idaho. The Northwest Band of Shoshone Nation (NWBSN) is in the process of building a cultural interpretive center at Boa Ogoi, as well as restoring the land surrounding the site of the 1863 Bear River Massacre to ecological conditions similar to the years before the event. The Tribe has shown interest in working with their neighbors, particularly those upstream. This could help them achieve larger restoration goals for Boa Ogoi, particularly improving the highly degraded water quality on the site. This research seeks to inform the Tribe’s and the Tribe’s restoration collaborators’ communication efforts with upstream landmanagers. My first study uses interview data with 12 nearby land managers to identify important values underlying the relationship that local land stewards have with the management of their land. I compare these values with a profile of the dominant political and religious groups of the area. Interview participants largely identify as land stewards who feel a responsibility to care for land as well as their communities. In my second study, data from my interviews highlighted important plant and animal species in the region, specifically beaver, mule deer, elk, and Russian olive. My analysis of the relationships that landowners have with these species shows that they manage them largely out of a sense of responsibility to their neighbors and community, as well as a responsibility to future generations. Many of the study participants were members of families who had resided in the area for multiple generations, which gives many of them knowledge of and preferences related to managing these species. Understanding how these individuals value the species in question could be important for building working relationships between the Tribe and their neighbors, such as collaborative invasive species management and a collective effort to improve habitat for valued game species like mule deer