Field-testing of the revised, draft South African Paediatric Food-Based Dietary Guidelines amongst mothers/caregivers of children aged 0–12 months in the Breede Valley sub-district, Western Cape province, South Africa

Objectives: To assess the appropriateness and understanding of the revised, draft South African Paediatric Food-Based Dietary Guidelines (SA-PFBDGs) amongst mothers/caregivers of children aged 0–12 months. Exposure to guidelines with similar messages, barriers and enablers to following of the guidelines were also assessed. Design: Qualitative data were collected from 14 focus-group discussions (FGDs), conducted in isiXhosa (n = 5), English (n = 4) and Afrikaans (n = 5), totalling 73 mother/caregiver participants. Setting: Worcester, Breede Valley sub-district, Western Cape province. Subjects: The study population included mothers/caregivers who were older than 18 years. Results: The majority of participants had previous exposure to variations of messages similar to the revised, draft SA-PFBDGs. Health platforms and practitioners (community health centres, antenatal classes, nurses, doctors) and social networks and platforms (family, magazines, radio) were mentioned as primary sources of information. Barriers to following the messages included: inconsistent messages (mainly communicated by healthcare workers), contrasting beliefs and cultural/family practices, limited physical and financial access to resources, poor social support structures and the psycho-social and physical demands of raising a child. Conclusion: The revised, draft SA-PFBDGs for the age range 0–12 months have been field-tested in English, Afrikaans and isiXhosa. The messages in some of the revised, draft SA-PFBDGs were not understood by the participants, indicating that a degree of rewording should be considered to facilitate understanding of the guidelines by the public. The National Department of Health should consider the findings of this study, and use these standardised message/s to optimise infant and young child feeding

How Common is Common Human Reason?:The Plurality of Moral Perspectives and Kant’s Ethics

In his practical philosophy, Kant aims to systematize and ground a conception of morality that every human being already in some form is supposedly committed to in virtue of her common human reason. While Kantians especially in the last few years have explicitly acknowledged the central role of common human reason for a correct understanding of Kant’s ethics, there has been very little detailed critical discussion of the very notion of a common human reason as Kant envisages it. Sticker critically discusses in what ways Kant is committed to the notion that there are certain rational insights and rational capacities that all humans share, and thus investigates critically how Kant thinks moral normativity appears to the common human being, the rational agent who did not enjoy special education or philosophical training

Institutionalising Kant's political philosophy: Foregrounding cosmopolitan right

There exists a longstanding debate over the global institutional implications of Immanuel Kant's political philosophy: does such a philosophy entail a federal world government, or instead only a confederal ‘league of nations’? However, while the systematic nature of Kant's tripartite ‘doctrine of right' is well recognised, this debate has been conducted with all but exclusive focus on ‘international right' in particular. This article, by contrast, brings ‘cosmopolitan right' firmly into view. It proceeds by way of engagement with the two Kantian arguments made in defence of a ‘league of nations’ in discussion of international right, each of which appeals to aspects of states’ supposed ‘personhood’: the first appeals to states’ distinctive moral personality; the second to states’ physical manifestation. The article considers what happens when we assess these arguments not just in light of the demands of international right, but also in light of cosmopolitan right, and thus in light of public right more comprehensively. The answer is that such arguments cannot succeed as full defences of a league of nations. Indeed, when we assess such arguments with cosmopolitan right in view, they point instead – either tentatively or definitively – in the direction of world government

Trade-offs in the performance of workflows - quantifying the impact of best practices

Business process redesign is one of the most powerful ways to boost business performance and to improve customer satisfaction [14]. A possible approach to business process redesign is using redesign best practices. A previous study identified a set of 29 different redesign best practices [18]. However, little is known about the exact impact of these redesign best practices on workflow performance. This study proposes an approach that can be used to quantify the impact of a business process redesign project on all dimensions of workflow performance. The approach consists of a large set of performance measures and a simulation toolkit. It supports the quantification of the impact of the implementation of redesign best practices, in order to determine what best practice or combination of best practices leads to the most favorable effect in a specific business process. The approach is developed based on a quantification project for the parallel best practice [8] and is validated with two other quantification projects, namely for the knockout and triage best practices

Field-testing of the revised, draft South African Paediatric Food-Based Dietary Guidelines amongst mothers/caregivers of children aged 0–12 months in the Breede Valley sub-district, Western Cape province, South Africa

Objectives: To assess the appropriateness and understanding of the revised, draft South African Paediatric Food-Based Dietary Guidelines (SA-PFBDGs) amongst mothers/caregivers of children aged 0–12 months. Exposure to guidelines with similar messages, barriers and enablers to following of the guidelines were also assessed. Design: Qualitative data were collected from 14 focus-group discussions (FGDs), conducted in isiXhosa (n = 5), English (n = 4) and Afrikaans (n = 5), totalling 73 mother/caregiver participants. Setting: Worcester, Breede Valley sub-district, Western Cape province. Subjects: The study population included mothers/caregivers who were older than 18 years. Results: The majority of participants had previous exposure to variations of messages similar to the revised, draft SA-PFBDGs. Health platforms and practitioners (community health centres, antenatal classes, nurses, doctors) and social networks and platforms (family, magazines, radio) were mentioned as primary sources of information. Barriers to following the messages included: inconsistent messages (mainly communicated by healthcare workers), contrasting beliefs and cultural/family practices, limited physical and financial access to resources, poor social support structures and the psycho-social and physical demands of raising a child. Conclusion: The revised, draft SA-PFBDGs for the age range 0–12 months have been field-tested in English, Afrikaans and isiXhosa. The messages in some of the revised, draft SA-PFBDGs were not understood by the participants, indicating that a degree of rewording should be considered to facilitate understanding of the guidelines by the public. The National Department of Health should consider the findings of this study, and use these standardised messages to optimise infant and young child feeding