Framework, principles and recommendations for utilising participatory methodologies in the co-creation and evaluation of public health interventions

Background: Due to the chronic disease burden on society, there is a need for preventive public health interventions to stimulate society towards a healthier lifestyle. To deal with the complex variability between individual lifestyles and settings, collaborating with end-users to develop interventions tailored to their unique circumstances has been suggested as a potential way to improve effectiveness and adherence. Co-creation of public health interventions using participatory methodologies has shown promise but lacks a framework to make this process systematic. The aim of this paper was to identify and set key principles and recommendations for systematically applying participatory methodologies to co-create and evaluate public health interventions. Methods: These principles and recommendations were derived using an iterative reflection process, combining key learning from published literature in addition to critical reflection on three case studies conducted by research groups in three European institutions, all of whom have expertise in co-creating public health interventions using different participatory methodologies. Results: Key principles and recommendations for using participatory methodologies in public health intervention co-creation are presented for the stages of: Planning (framing the aim of the study and identifying the appropriate sampling strategy); Conducting (defining the procedure, in addition to manifesting ownership); Evaluating (the process and the effectiveness) and Reporting (providing guidelines to report the findings). Three scaling models are proposed to demonstrate how to scale locally developed interventions to a population level. Conclusions: These recommendations aim to facilitate public health intervention co-creation and evaluation utilising participatory methodologies by ensuring the process is systematic and reproducible

Modelling a wireless connected swarm of mobile robots

It is a characteristic of swarm robotics that modelling the overall swarm behaviour in terms of the low-level behaviours of individual robots is very difficult. Yet if swarm robotics is to make the transition from the laboratory to real-world engineering realisation such models would be critical for both overall validation of algorithm correctness and detailed parameter optimisation. We seek models with predictive power: models that allow us to determine the effect of modifying parameters in individual robots on the overall swarm behaviour. This paper presents results from a study to apply the probabilistic modelling approach to a class of wireless connected swarms operating in unbounded environments. The paper proposes a probabilistic finite state machine (PFSM) that describes the network connectivity and overall macroscopic behaviour of the swarm, then develops a novel robot-centric approach to the estimation of the state transition probabilities within the PFSM. Using measured data from simulation the paper then carefully validates the PFSM model step by step, allowing us to assess the accuracy and hence the utility of the model. © Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2008

An Examination of Not-For-Profit Stakeholder Networks for Relationship Management: A Small-Scale Analysis on Social Media

Using a small-scale descriptive network analysis approach, this study highlights the importance of stakeholder networks for identifying valuable stakeholders and the management of existing stakeholders in the context of mental health not-for-profit services. We extract network data from the social media brand pages of three health service organizations from the U.S., U.K., and Australia, to visually map networks of 579 social media brand pages (represented by nodes), connected by 5,600 edges. This network data is analyzed using a collection of popular graph analysis techniques to assess the differences in the way each of the service organizations manage stakeholder networks. We also compare node meta-information against basic topology measures to emphasize the importance of effectively managing relationships with stakeholders who have large external audiences. Implications and future research directions are also discussed

Detecting Foci of Malaria Transmission with School Surveys: A Pilot Study in the Gambia.

BACKGROUND: In areas of declining malaria transmission such as in The Gambia, the identification of malaria infected individuals becomes increasingly harder. School surveys may be used to identify foci of malaria transmission in the community. METHODS: The survey was carried out in May-June 2011, before the beginning of the malaria transmission season. Thirty two schools in the Upper River Region of The Gambia were selected with probability proportional to size; in each school approximately 100 children were randomly chosen for inclusion in the study. Each child had a finger prick blood sample collected for the determination of antimalarial antibodies by ELISA, malaria infection by microscopy and PCR, and for haemoglobin measurement. In addition, a simple questionnaire on socio-demographic variables and the use of insecticide-treated bed nets was completed. The cut-off for positivity for antimalarial antibodies was obtained using finite mixture models. The clustered nature of the data was taken into account in the analyses. RESULTS: A total of 3,277 children were included in the survey. The mean age was 10 years (SD = 2.7) [range 4-21], with males and females evenly distributed. The prevalence of malaria infection as determined by PCR was 13.6% (426/3124) [95% CI = 12.2-16.3] with marked variation between schools (range 3-25%, p<0.001), while the seroprevalence was 7.8% (234/2994) [95%CI = 6.4-9.8] for MSP119, 11.6% (364/2997) [95%CI = 9.4-14.5] for MSP2, and 20.0% (593/2973) [95% CI = 16.5-23.2) for AMA1. The prevalence of all the three antimalarial antibodies positive was 2.7% (79/2920). CONCLUSIONS: This survey shows that malaria prevalence and seroprevalence before the transmission season were highly heterogeneous

Falciparum malaria molecular drug resistance in the Democratic Republic of Congo: a systematic review

peer reviewedBackground: Malaria cases were estimated to 207 million in 2013. One of the problems of malaria control is the emergence and spread of Plasmodium falciparum strains that become resistant to almost all drugs available. Monitoring drug resistance is essential for early detection and subsequent prevention of the spread of drug resistance by timely changes of treatment policy. This review was performed to gather all data available on P. falciparum molecular resistance in DR Congo, as baseline for future assessments. Methods: The search for this review was undertaken using the electronic databases PubMed and Google Scholar using the terms “malaria”, “Congo”, “resistance”, “molecular”, “antimalarial”, “efficacy”. Articles were classified based on year of collecting, year of publication, sample size and characteristics, molecular markers analysed and polymorphisms detected. Results: Thirteen articles were included and five genes have been analysed in these studies: pfcrt, pfdhps, pfdhfr, pfmdr1 and K13-propeller. The majority of studies included were not representative of the whole country. Conclusion: This systematic review demonstrates the lack of molecular resistance studies in DRC. Only 13 studies were identified in almost 15 years. The MOH must implement a national surveillance system for monitoring malaria drug resistance and this surveillance should be conducted frequently and country-representative

Medication errors and blood pressure control among patients managed for hypertension in public ambulatory care clinics in Botswana

Background The prevalence of hypertension in low- and middle-income countries is rapidly increasing, with most cases undiagnosed and many poorly controlled among those diagnosed. Medication reconciliation studies from high-income countries have demonstrated a high occurrence of antihypertensive medication errors and a strong association between medication errors and inadequate blood pressure control, but data from low- and middle-income countries are lacking. Methods and Results We conducted a cross-sectional study from April to October 2018 of adult patients on pharmacologic management for known hypertension at 7 public health facilities in Kweneng East District, Botswana. Our aims included to evaluate the frequency of uncontrolled hypertension, the frequency and type of medication errors causing discrepancies between patient-reported and prescribed antihypertensive medications, and the association between medication errors and uncontrolled hypertension. Descriptive analyses and multivariable logistic regression were used. The prevalence of uncontrolled hypertension was 55% among 280 enrolled adult patients, and 95 (34%) had &#x2265;1 medication error. The most common errors included patients taking medications incorrectly (11.1%; 31/280), patients omitting medications (7.9%; 22/280), and unfilled prescriptions caused by pharmacy stock outs (7.5%%; 21/280). Uncontrolled hypertension was significantly associated with having &#x2265;1 medication error compared with no errors (adjusted odds ratio, 3.26; 95% CI, 1.75-6.06; P &lt;0.001). Conclusions Medication errors are strongly associated with poor blood pressure control in this setting. Further research is warranted to assess whether medication reconciliation and other low-cost interventions addressing root causes of medication errors can improve the control of hypertension and other chronic conditions in low- and middle-income countries

Chemical variability in volcanic gas plumes and fumaroles along the East African Rift System: New insights from the Western Branch

The origin of magmatic fluids along the East African Rift System (EARS) is a long-lived field of debate in the scientific community. Here, we investigate the chemical composition of the volcanic gas plume and fumaroles at Nyiragongo and Nyamulagira (Democratic Republic of Congo), the only two currently erupting volcanoes set on the Western Branch of the rift. Our results are in line with earlier conceptual models proposing that volcanic gas emissions along the EARS mainly reflect variable contributions of either a Sub-Continental Lithospheric Mantle (SCLM) component or a Depleted Morb Mantle (DMM) component, and deeper fluid. At Nyiragongo and Nyamulagira, our study discards a major contribution of a high 3He/4He mantle plume component in the genesis of volcanic fluids beneath the area. High CO2/3He in fumaroles of both volcanoes is thought to reflect carbonate metasomatism in the lithospheric mantle source. As inferred by previous results obtained on the lava chemistry, this carbonate metasomatism would be more pronounced beneath Nyiragongo. This supports the idea of the presence of distinct metasomes within the lithospheric mantle beneath the Western Branch of the rift

AutoMoDe-Arlequin: Neural Networks as Behavioral Modules for the Automatic Design of Probabilistic Finite-State Machines

We present Arlequin, an off-line automatic design method that produces control software for robot swarms by combining behavioral neural-network modules generated via neuro-evolution. The neural-network modules are automatically generated once, in a mission-agnostic way, and are then automatically assembled into probabilistic finite-state machines to perform various missions. With Arlequin, our goal is to reduce the amount of human intervention that is required for the implementation or the operation of previously published modular design methods. Simultaneously, we assess whether neuro-evolution can be used in a modular design method to produce control software that crosses the reality gap satisfactorily. We present robot experiments in which we compare Arlequin with Chocolate, a state of the art modular design method, and EvoStick, a traditional neuro-evolutionary swarm robotics method. The preliminary results suggest that automatically combining neural-network modules into probabilistic finite-state machines is a promising approach to the automatic conception of control software for robot swarms.SCOPUS: cp.kinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe