Commentary: new pluralistic strategies for research in clinical practice

This article provides a Commentary on a paper by Warner and Spandler (2012. The Spandler and Warner paper draws on the ‘triangle of communication’ to develop the FIND framework for research and to promote and support new ways of gathering evidence for the development of strategies of evaluation, intervention and treatment in clinical psychology. This article discusses this in terms of the pluralism in qualitative research (PQR)approach to show the benefits and limitations of flexible, high quality research approaches to service development

Institutionalizing health impact assessment in London as a public health tool for increasing synergy between policies in other areas

Objectives: To describe the background to the inclusion of health impact assessment (HIA) in the development process for the London mayoral strategies, the HIA processes developed, how these evolved, and the role of HIA in identifying synergies between and conflicting priorities of different strategies.Study design: Case series.Methods: Early HIAs had just a few weeks for the whole HIA process. A rapid appraisal approach was developed. Stages included: scoping, reviewing published evidence, a stakeholder workshop, drafting a report, review of the report by the London Health Commission, and submission of the final report to the Mayor. The process evolved as more assessments were conducted. More recently, an integrated impact assessment (IIA) method has been developed that fuses the key aspects of this HIA method with sustainability assessment, strategic environmental assessment and equalities assessment.Results: Whilst some of the early strategy drafts encompassed some elements of health, health was not a priority. Conducting HIAs was important both to ensure that the strategies reflected health concerns and to raise awareness about health and its determinants within the Greater London Authority (GLA). HIA recommendations were useful for identifying synergies and conflicts between strategies. HIA can be successfully integrated into other impact assessment processes.Conclusions: The HIAs ensured that health became more integral to the strategies and increased understanding of determinants of health and how the GLA impacts on health and health inequalities. Inclusion of HIA within IIA ensures that health and health inequalities impacts are considered robustly within statutory impact assessments. (C) 2010 The Royal Society for Public Health. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Spiders in African Children\u27s Stories

The first literature that many American children come into contact with consists of Mother Goose rhymes. One of the very familiar ones is Little Miss Muffet. Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet, Eating her curds and whey;When along came a spider, who sat down beside her, And frightened Miss Muffetaway

Another Look at African Cultures through Picture Books

I realized how difficult it is to describe what life is like for a child growing up in Africa when I was asked to make a presentation to two 6th grade classes. In the course of the presentation, I said, Africa is not a country:\u27 I had to smile to myself as I saw the shocked look on the face of a little girl sitting right in front of me. Her mouth dropped open and I knew that she thought I had made a very great error

Using Biography in the Elementary Classroom

When biography first gained recognition as a genre for adults, it was not considered an appropriate form of literature for children. As it began to gain a place in children\u27s literature, as was true of most books written for children at the time, biography was used as a tool for teaching children to emulate the hero

The Image of Libraries and Librarians in Children\u27s Literature

A new action figure of a frumpy librarian who moves her index finger to her lips with \u27amazing push-button shushing action!\u27 has librarians around the world raising their voices in protest. A public library director from Maine said in response to the bespectacled woman in a cardigan, long plain skirt and sensible shoes, The shushing thing just put me right over the edge. It\u27s so stereotypical, I could scream

Changes in the 17th Edition of Sears List of Subject Headings

Users coming to our library catalogs are more often looking for materials dealing with particular subjects rather than seeking specific titles or authors. Therefore, when we prepareour catalogs we must take special care to use terminology which will best retrieve this material. We must pay special attention to the aboutness of each item in order to select themost precise term

Africa Is Not a Country: Teaching African Culture through Picture Books

When you hear a news report from Nigeria, Sudan, Kenya, or South Africa, what comes to your mind? Is it a part of the world that interestsyou? Do you listen intently to what follows? Do you view Africa as one big country or are you aware of the many languages, 7 -F7 cultures, and countries that are there? Or do you just turnoff until the next news item comes up? up

An African Safari Through Children\u27s Books: Part II

What is like for an American family to raise their children in African country? What is it like for the children who are sometimes known as third culture kids because they are neither totally a part of their parents\u27 culture nor totally a part of the adopted African culture, but rather are a combination of both