Sri Lankan tsunami refugees: a cross sectional study of the relationships between housing conditions and self-reported health

BACKGROUND: On the 26th December 2004 the Asian tsunami devastated the Sri Lankan coastline. More than two years later, over 14,500 families were still living in transitional shelters. This study compares the health of the internally displaced people (IDP), living in transitional camps with those in permanent housing projects provided by government and non-government organisations in Sri Lanka. METHODS: This study was conducted in seven transitional camps and five permanent housing projects in the south west of Sri Lanka. Using an interviewer-led questionnaire, data on the IDPs' self-reported health and housing conditions were collected from 154 participants from transitional camps and 147 participants from permanent housing projects. Simple tabulation with non-parametric tests and logistic regression were used to identify and analyse relationships between housing conditions and the reported prevalence of specific symptoms. RESULTS: Analysis showed that living conditions were significantly worse in transitional camps than in permanent housing projects for all factors investigated, except 'having a leaking roof'. Transitional camp participants scored significantly lower on self-perceived overall health scores than those living in housing projects. After controlling for gender, age and marital status, living in a transitional camp compared to a housing project was found to be a significant risk factor for the following symptoms; coughs OR: 3.53 (CI: 2.11-5.89), stomach ache 4.82 (2.19-10.82), headache 5.20 (3.09-8.76), general aches and pains 6.44 (3.67-11.33) and feeling generally unwell 2.28 (2.51-7.29). Within transitional camp data, the only condition shown to be a significant risk factor for any symptom was household population density, which increased the risk of stomach aches 1.40 (1.09-1.79) and headaches 1.33 (1.01-1.77). CONCLUSION: Internally displaced people living in transitional camps are a vulnerable population and specific interventions need to be targeted at this population to address the health inequalities that they report to be experiencing. Further studies need to be conducted to establish which aspects of their housing environment predispose them to poorer health

Fostering teacher community development: A review of design principles and a case study of an innovative interdisciplinary team

To deal with recent reforms and the accompanying complexity of work in secondary education, ongoing collaboration between teachers has become more important. A community is seen as a promising learning environment to support and embed collaboration into the culture of the school. However, community theory for the design of teacher communities seems underdeveloped. Therefore, this study aims to formulate a set of design principles to foster the development of teacher communities in secondary education. The set of design principles is based on a review of literature, as well as on a best-practice case. The case study was used to validate design principles from the literature in the target context. The resulting design principles were based on context-intervention-mechanismoutcome logic that takes into account the context-dependency of interventions as well as the mechanisms that help with understanding of how interventions produce certain outcomes. Implications for practice relate to ownership and co-design of the arrangement. The set of design principles provides a practical basis for teachers and administrators aiming to facilitate community building in their school. Future research is recommended on testing the effectiveness of the arrangement in the target context by means of a multiple case study.NWO-pro

School Effects on the Wellbeing of Children and Adolescents

Well-being is a multidimensional construct, with psychological, physical and social components. As theoretical basis to help understand this concept and how it relates to school, we propose the Self-Determination Theory, which contends that self-determined motivation and personality integration, growth and well-being are dependent on a healthy balance of three innate psychological needs of autonomy, relatedness and competence. Thus, current indicators involve school effects on children’s well-being, in many diverse modalities which have been explored. Some are described in this chapter, mainly: the importance of peer relationships; the benefits of friendship; the effects of schools in conjunction with some forms of family influence; the school climate in terms of safety and physical ecology; the relevance of the teacher input; the school goal structure and the implementation of cooperative learning. All these parameters have an influence in promoting optimal functioning among children and increasing their well-being by meeting the above mentioned needs. The empirical support for the importance of schools indicates significant small effects, which often translate into important real-life effects as it is admitted at present. The conclusion is that schools do make a difference in children’s peer relationships and well-being

Statistical modeling of heart rate variability to unravel the factors affecting autonomic regulation in preterm infants

\u3cp\u3eAnalyzing heart rate variability (HRV) in preterm infants can help track maturational changes and subclinical signatures of disease. We conducted an observational study to characterize the effect of demographic and cardiorespiratory factors on three features of HRV using a linear mixed-effects model. HRV-features were tailored to capture the unique physiology of preterm infants, including the contribution of transient pathophysiological heart rate (HR) decelerations. Infants were analyzed during stable periods in the incubator and subsequent sessions of Kangaroo care (KC) - an intervention that increases comfort. In total, 957 periods in the incubator and during KC were analyzed from 66 preterm infants. Our primary finding was that gestational age (GA) and postmenstrual age (PMA) have the largest influence on HRV while the HR and breathing rate have a considerably smaller effect. Birth weight and gender do not affect HRV. We identified that with increasing GA and PMA, overall HRV decreased and increased respectively. Potentially these differences can be attributed to distinct trajectories of intra- and extrauterine development. With increasing GA, the propensity towards severe HR decelerations decreases, thereby reducing overall variability, while with increasing PMA, the ratio of decelerations and accelerations approaches unity, increasing overall HRV.\u3c/p\u3

A strategy to reduce critical cardiorespiratory alarms due to intermittent enteral feeding of reterm neonates in intensive care

\u3cp\u3eBACKGROUND: Many preterm infants require enteral feeding as they cannot coordinate sucking, swallowing, and breathing. In enteral feeding, milk feeds are delivered through a small feeding tube passed via the nose or mouth into the stomach. Intermittent milk feeds may either be administered using a syringe to gently push milk into the infant's stomach (push feed) or milk can be poured into a syringe attached to the tube and allowed to drip in by gravity (gravity feed). This practice of enteral feeding is common in neonatal intensive care units. There is, however, no evidence in the literature to recommend the use of one method of feeding over the other.\u3c/p\u3e\u3cp\u3eOBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to investigate which of the two methods of feeding is physiologically better tolerated by infants, as measured by the incidence of critical cardiorespiratory alarms during and immediately after feeding.\u3c/p\u3e\u3cp\u3eMETHODS: We conducted a prospectively designed observational study with records of all feeding episodes in infants of gestational age less than 30 weeks at birth and with a minimum enteral intake of 100 mL/kg/day. In total, 2140 enteral feeding episodes were noted from 25 infants over 308 infant-days with records for several characteristics of the infants (eg, gestational age), feeding (eg, the position of infants), and of nursing-care events before feeding (eg, diapering). Logistic regression with mixed effects was used to model cardiorespiratory alarms for the push and gravity methods of feeding.\u3c/p\u3e\u3cp\u3eRESULTS: After adjustments were made for all confounding variables, the position of infants was found to be statistically significant in changing the outcome of critical alarms for the two methods of feeding (P=.02). For infants in the lateral position, push feeds led to 40% more instances of one or more critical cardiorespiratory alarms in comparison with the gravity method. Both methods of feeding created a statistically comparable number of alarms for infants in the prone position.\u3c/p\u3e\u3cp\u3eCONCLUSIONS: This study provides objective data that may assist in optimizing enteral feeding protocols for premature infants. The incidence of critical cardiorespiratory alarms for infants in the lateral position can be lowered by the use of gravity instead of push feeding. No differences were observed between the two types of feeding when infants were in the prone position.\u3c/p\u3