Shopping for food: lessons from a London borough

Purpose – This paper aims to measure access to food in an inner London borough. Design/methodology/approach – There were six phases, which included designing food baskets, consultation with local residents and a shop survey. Recognising the cultural make-up of the borough food baskets and menus were developed for four key communities, namely: White British, Black Caribbean, Turkish, and Black African. Three areas were identified for the study and shopping hubs identified with a 500-metre radius from a central parade of shops. Findings – The findings paint an intricate web of interactions ranging from availability in shops to accessibility and affordability being key issues for some groups. It was found that in the areas studied there was availability of some key healthy items, namely fresh fruit and vegetables, but other items such as: fresh meat and poultry, fish, lower fat dairy foods, high fibre pasta and brown rice were not available. Access was found to be defined, by local people, as more extensive than just physical distance to/from shops – for many shopping was made more difficult by having to use taxis and inconvenient buses. Small shops were important in delivering healthy food options to communities in areas of deprivation and were judged to offer a better range and more appropriate food than the branches of the major supermarket chains. Research limitations/implications – The importance of monitoring the impact of shops and shop closures on healthy food availability is emphasised. From a policy perspective the findings suggest that approaches based on individual agency need to be balanced with upstream public health nutrition approaches in order to influence the options available. Originality/value – The paper is arguably the first to examine and dissect the issue of food availability and accessibility in the inner London borough in question, especially in the light of its proposed redevelopment for the London Olympics in 2012

PROTOCOL: The Effects of School‐Based Decision Making on Educational Outcomes in Low and Middle Income Contexts: A Systematic Review

The Problem Education is internationally understood to be a fundamental human right that offers individuals the opportunity to live healthy and meaningful lives. Evidence from around the world also indicates that education is vital for economic and social development, as it contributes to economic growth and poverty reduction, sustains health and well‐being, and lays the foundations for open and cohesive societies (UNESCO, 2o14). In recognition of the vital importance of education, governments across the globe have made a substantial effort to expand and improve their education systems, as they strive to meet the Education for All goals, adopted by the international community in 1990. These efforts have borne remarkable results; it is estimated that the number of out‐of‐school children has halved over the last decade (ibid, p. 53). However, there are still serious barriers to overcome, particularly in terms of access, completion and learning (Krishnaratne, White, & Carpenter, 2013). Access to education ‐ particularly for girls, poor children and children in conflict‐affected areas ‐ remains a crucial issue. The 2013 Global Monitoring Reports claims that an estimated 57 million children are still out of school, over half of whom are in sub‐Saharan Africa (UNESCO, 2014, p.53).1 Furthermore, despite increases in enrolment numbers, there has been almost no change since 1999 in the percentage of students dropping out before the end of the primary cycle. The evidence also indicates that many children enrolled in school are not learning. Recent estimates suggest that around 130 million children who have completed at least four years of school still cannot read, write or perform basic calculations (UNESCO, 2014, p. 191)

Improving Population and Poverty Estimates with Citizen Surveys: Evidence from East Africa

The paper sets out to explore the possibility that citizen-led surveys provide a better coverage of populations and specifically of hard-to-reach poorer areas than the international standardized household surveys which are the basis for many of the estimates used in assessing progress toward meeting the MDGs and will be for the SDGs. This hypothesis is based on the argument that, the local volunteer enumerators of citizen-led surveys are likely to be more sensitive to the specificities of local population distribution and (recent) changes than those centrally trained; and may be more effective at reaching hard-to reach groups such as those nomadic groups and those in urban slums. To test the hypothesis, the results of UWEZO (meaning “capability”) surveys have been compared at a regional level with those of contemporaneous DHS surveys in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda for estimates of access to water and electricity. Overall, at national level, we find that UWEZO estimates for access to clean water were lower at a statistically significant level than those of DHS and these differences were statistically significant at the 0.01% level; in particular, the DHS values were much higher in regions where there are high concentrations of nomads and of urban slums, implying that the UWEZO surveys “catch” more poverty. The suggestion therefore is that citizen surveys such as UWEZO provide better, and more accurate, coverage of the poorest of the poor. Using the lowest estimate of the percentage “missing” in urban slums and extrapolating to all developing countries, there are an estimated 369 million missing from the sampling frames of standardized household surveys worldwide. This has important implications for the “Leave no one behind” appeal of the UN Secretary General and for the UN’s “Data Revolution”. Some suggestions are made about how to progress improved population estimates

Economic analysis of cost-effectiveness of community engagement to improve health

The problems of applying the standard framework of economic evaluation to this issue are reviewed in section 1, covering 1. Multiple perspectives and time frames 2. Identifying and costing activities and specifically the costs of volunteer time 3. Identifying and measuring benefits 4. Identifying comparator communities 5. How the intervention interacts with the community and therefore identifying end gainers and losers and how the former might compensate the latter 6. Attribution of any changes in community (health) to the approaches and methods of community engagement 7. Quantification across the whole range of community engagemen

Social fragmentation, deprivation and urbanicity: relation to first-admission rates for psychoses

<i>Declaration</i> <i>of</i> <i>interest</i>: None. <i>Background</i>: Social disorganisation, fragmentation and isolation have long been posited as influencing the rate of psychoses at area level. Measuring such societal constructsis difficult. A census-based index measuring social fragmentation has been proposed. <i>Aims</i>: To investigate the association between first-admission rates for psychosis and area-based measures of social fragmentation, deprivation and urban/rural index. <i>Method</i>: We used indirect standardisation methods and logistic regression models to examine associations of social fragmentation, deprivation and urban/rural categories with first admissions for psychoses in Scotland for the 5-year period 1989–1993. <i>Results</i>: Areas characterised by high social fragmentation had higher first-ever admission rates for psychosis independent of deprivation and urban/rural status. There was a dose–response relationship between social fragmentation category and first-ever admission rates for psychosis. There was no statistically significant interaction between social fragmentation, deprivation and urban/rural index. <i>Conclusions</i>: First-admission rates are strongly associated with measures of social fragmentation, independent of material deprivation and urban/rural category

Twenty-first century response of Petermann Glacier, northwest Greenland to ice shelf loss

Ice shelves restrain flow from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Climate-ocean warming could force thinning or collapse of floating ice shelves and subsequently accelerate flow, increase ice discharge, and raise global mean sea levels. Petermann Glacier (PG), northwest Greenland, recently lost large sections of its ice shelf, but its response to total ice shelf loss in the future remains uncertain. Here, we use the ice flow model Úa to assess the sensitivity of PG to changes in ice shelf extent, and to estimate the resultant loss of grounded ice and contribution to sea level rise. Our results have shown that under several scenarios of ice shelf thinning and retreat, removal of the shelf will not contribute substantially to global mean sea level (< 1 mm). We hypothesise that grounded ice loss was limited by the stabilization of the grounding line at a topographic high approximately 12 km inland of its current grounding line position. Further inland, the likelihood of a narrow fjord that slopes seawards suggests that PG is likely to remain insensitive to terminus changes in the near future

Geology as a Contribution to Land Use Planning in LaPorte County, Indiana

LaPorte County, in northwestern Indiana, is in a geologically complex region underlain at shallow depths by depositional sequences of glacial till, 1 outwash sand and gravel, and lacustrine silt and clay. The combined agents of ice, wind, and water have sculptured these deposits into a topographically varied landscape ranging from sandy flats of the Kankakee Outwash and Lacustrine Plain to partly wooded hilly uplands on the Valparaiso Moraine. Beneath the glacial materials, which range from 25 to 350 feet in thickness, is a sequence of Paleozoic rocks that is about 4,000 feet thick. Limestone, dolomite, sandstone, and shale, complexly interlayered and varying in thickness, make up the bedrock units, which provide ground water potential and contain potentially commercial deposits of gypsum near LaPorte

Are health-promoting prisons an impossibility? Lessons from England and Wales

Investigates 1999/2000 health promotion activities in prisons in England and Wales and documents the range and quality of health promotion occurring in prisons, against which future activity might be measured. Finds that health promotion is under-resourced and the concept and practice poorly understood. Health needs assessment tended to be analysis of and for health-care services and, except in a minority of cases, did not include consultation with staff, prisoners or their families. Where responsibility was shared and the work based on multi-disciplinary approaches, it seems more likely to have been reported accurately as health promotion activity. The official policy of a healthy settings/whole prison approach was not understood by many and its application was limited. The findings have informed the development of a new health promotion strategy for the prison service in England and Wales

What have we already learned from the CMB?

The COBE satellite, and the DMR experiment in particular, was extraordinarily successful. However, the DMR results were announced about 7 years ago, during which time a great deal more has been learned about anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). The CMB experiments currently being designed and built, including long-duration balloons, interferometers, and two space missions, promise to address several fundamental cosmological issues. We present our evaluation of what we already know, what we are beginning to learn now, and what the future may bring.Comment: 20 pages, 3 figures. Changes to match version accepted by PAS