4 research outputs found
The impact of Participatory Budgeting on health and wellbeing:A scoping review of evaluations
Background: Participatory budgeting (PB), citizens deliberating among themselves and with officials to decide how
to allocate funds for public goods, has been increasingly implemented across Europe and worldwide. While PB is
recommended as good practice by the World Bank and the United Nations, with potential to improve health and
wellbeing, it is unclear what evaluations have been conducted on the impact of PB on health and wellbeing.
Methods: For this scoping review, we searched 21 databases with no restrictions on publication date or language.
The search term ‘participatory budget’ was used as the relevant global label for the intervention of interest. Studies
were included if they reported original analysis of health, social, political, or economic and budgetary outcomes of
PB. We examined the study design, analysis, outcomes and location of included articles. Findings are reported
narratively.
Results: From 1458 identified references, 37 studies were included. The majority of evaluations (n = 24) were of PB
in South America, seven were in Europe. Most evaluations were case studies (n = 23) conducting ethnography and
surveys, focussing on political outcomes such as participation in PB or impacts on political activities. All of the
quantitative observational studies analysing population level data, except one in Russia, were conducted in South
America.
Conclusion: Despite increasing interest in PB, evaluations applying robust methods to analyse health and
wellbeing outcomes are scarce, particularly beyond Brazil. Therefore, implementation of PB schemes should be
accompanied by rigorous qualitative and quantitative evaluation to identify impacts and the processes by which
they are realised
Lacticaseibacillus casei in Diet of Juvenile Convict Cichlid Fish (Amatitlania nigrofasciata): Evaluating Growth Performance, Digestive Enzyme Activities, Immune Responses, and Stress Resistance
Modulation of nutrient utilization, growth, and immunity of Nile tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus: the role of probiotics
Fluid Biomarkers of Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration
A timely diagnosis of frontotemporal degeneration (FTD) is frequently challenging due to the heterogeneous symptomatology and poor phenotype–pathological correlation. Fluid biomarkers that reflect FTD pathophysiology could be instrumental in both clinical practice and pharmaceutical trials. In recent years, significant progress has been made in developing biomarkers of neurodegenerative diseases: amyloid-β and tau in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) can be used to exclude Alzheimer’s disease, while neurofilament light chain (NfL) is emerging as a promising, albeit nonspecific, marker of neurodegeneration in both CSF and blood. Gene-specific biomarkers such as PGRN in GRN mutation carriers and dipeptide repeat proteins in C9orf72 mutation carriers are potential target engagement markers in genetic FTD trials. Novel techniques capable of measuring very low concentrations of brain-derived proteins in peripheral fluids are facilitating studies of blood biomarkers as a minimally invasive alternative to CSF. A major remaining challenge is the identification of a biomarker that can be used to predict the neuropathological substrate in sporadic FTD patients