Psycho-educational group therapy in acute psychiatric units: creating a psychosocial culture. An update of spread and effectiveness of a psychosocial intervention in Italian psychiatric wards

The implementation of a Cognitive-Behavioural Group Intervention (CBGI) in Italian general hospital psychiatric units started in the years 2000-2001 in two Italian regions. Over the years it has became more and more popular also in other psychiatric units located in the rest of the country. Based on the "stress-vulnerability-coping" theory, the CBGI is a replicable and innovative psychosocial intervention that promotes the active involvement of inpatients in decisions concerning their individual objectives and care. In the present article, the authors briefly describe this intervention and the main findings regarding its implementation in several psychiatric units in different Regions of Italy. The authors emphasize that such a psychosocial approach to inpatient care is needed because it can produce improved clinical outcomes, reduction in untoward events and increased staff and inpatient satisfaction. However, its introduction and use still represent a major cultural and managerial challenge in our country

Towards an understanding of the political economy of the PPCR

While an analysis of the Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR) is inseparable from wider discussion on adaptation finance, this article primarily focuses on the drivers and ideologies that shaped the PPCR governance and delivery structures. The core narrative of mainstreaming adaptation into development through a process of government-centred policy reform challenges many principles of the UNFCCC process. Utilising the structures of international financing institutions as implementing agencies, heightens this tension. The central idea of mainstreaming adaptation through climate-proofing existing development initiatives utilises the standard economic growth narrative. This climate ‘add-on’ approach to development allows the World Bank Group and other multilateral development banks (MDBs) to claim a space in managing future climate finance flows. This drive by the Bank plays out in the exclusivity of the design process for the PPCR and through the implementation modalities, which severely curtail opportunities for multi-stakeholder dialogue and thus the potential for development of broad country ownership of programmes

Task sharing in Zambia: HIV service scale-up compounds the human resource crisis

BACKGROUND: Considerable attention has been given by policy makers and researchers to the human resources for health crisis in Africa. However, little attention has been paid to quantifying health facility-level trends in health worker numbers, distribution and workload, despite growing demands on health workers due to the availability of new funds for HIV/AIDS control scale-up. This study analyses and reports trends in HIV and non-HIV ambulatory service workloads on clinical staff in urban and rural district level facilities. METHODS: Structured surveys of health facility managers, and health services covering 2005-07 were conducted in three districts of Zambia in 2008 (two urban and one rural), to fill this evidence gap. Intra-facility analyses were conducted, comparing trends in HIV and non-HIV service utilisation with staff trends. RESULTS: Clinical staff (doctors, nurses and nurse-midwives, and clinical officers) numbers and staff population densities fell slightly, with lower ratios of staff to population in the rural district. The ratios of antenatal care and family planning registrants to nurses/nurse-midwives were highest at baseline and increased further at the rural facilities over the three years, while daily outpatient department (OPD) workload in urban facilities fell below that in rural facilities. HIV workload, as measured by numbers of clients receiving antiretroviral treatment (ART) and prevention of mother to child transmission (PMTCT) per facility staff member, was highest in the capital city, but increased rapidly in all three districts. The analysis suggests evidence of task sharing, in that staff designated by managers as ART and PMTCT workers made up a higher proportion of frontline service providers by 2007. CONCLUSIONS: This analysis of workforce patterns across 30 facilities in three districts of Zambia illustrates that the remarkable achievements in scaling-up HIV/AIDS service delivery has been on the back of sustained non-HIV workload levels, increasing HIV workload and stagnant health worker numbers. The findings are based on an analysis of routine data that are available to district and national managers. Mixed methods research is needed, combining quantitative analyses of routine health information with follow-up qualitative interviews, to explore and explain workload changes, and to identify and measure where problems are most acute, so that decision makers can respond appropriately. This study provides quantitative evidence of a human resource crisis in health facilities in Zambia, which may be more acute in rural areas

E-G8 Forum Mark Zuckerberg talks with Maurice Lévy

Maurice Lévy (Chairman & CEO Publicis Groupe) interviews Mark Zuckerberg during the E-G8 conference in 2011https://epublications.marquette.edu/zuckerberg_files_videos/1062/thumbnail.jp

Compliance by issue, 1998 Birmingham G8 Summit

UofT G8 Information Centre: Analytical Studies1998 Birmingham Summi

Has Patriarchy been Stealing the Feminists' Clothes? Conflict-related Sexual Violence and UN Security Council Resolutions

The UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 2106, in June 2013, and the declaration on preventing sexual violence in conflict adopted by G8 in London, in April 2013, signal a possible paradigm shift in how the international community can do ‘gender’, particularly in the arena of conflict?related sexual violence. Whilst UNSCR 1325 and its successors succeeded in drawing greater attention and funding to the particular needs of some women, they failed in comprehensively responding to the phenomenon of conflict?related sexual violence. This is largely due to a systematic reluctance to confront the reality of conflict?related sexual violence against men and boys, coupled with an active complicity in silencing that reality in what effectively reverted to a patriarchal discourse dressed up in feminist clothing. A new and unashamedly gender?inclusive resolution is required if gender?based violence (GBV) interventions are to be released from the stifling grip of a patriarchal mode of ‘doing gender’