Health visitors’ views on promoting oral health and supporting clients with dental health problems: a qualitative study

Background - Inequalities in dental decay in young children persist, resulting in high admission rates for general anaesthetics for tooth extractions. Health visitors have the potential to improve dental attendance and oral health in families least likely to engage with dental services. There is little evidence on health visitor views on this. Methods - Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of 17 health visitors working in both affluent and deprived areas in a single UK city. Interviews were audio recorded, transcribed, anonymized and analysed following a constructivist grounded theory approach. Results - Knowledge of oral health was high and health visitors requested oral health education specific to the communities they worked in. Health visitors reported effective, formal referral processes to other health services but not to primary NHS dental services even when dealing with infants in pain. Health visitors interviewed were largely unaware of specific NHS dental services which reduce barriers to dental care including interpreting services and dental services for children with additional needs. Conclusions - Health visitors interviewed were knowledgeable and enthusiastic about oral health but not about dental services. Inadequate links with NHS dental services may limit their effectiveness in oral health improvement and this needs to be addressed

Economic Policy Department Ministry for Finance

The Short-Term Quarterly Econometric Forecasting Model for Malta (STEMM) is the basis for the official macroeconomic projections, the fiscal projections and the fiscal targets of the Government of Malta. STEMM is a Keynesian model where aggregate demand determines output in the presence of price rigidities in the short-term. The model was originally developed in 2001 by the Economic Policy Department through the assistance of Cambridge Econometrics (UK). The model is medium-scale, consisting of six main blocks. It is composed of 47 identity equations and 69 behavioural equations, most of them specified as an error correction model specification estimated on quarterly European System of Accounts (ESA) 2010 chain-linked data from 1995 to 2016 in accordance with the Engle-Granger two-stage approach. Moreover, there are 47 exogenous variables, consisting of economic variables related to our trading partners, exchange rates, commodity prices, fiscal variables and dummy variables.peer-reviewe

Interactions between recovery and energy policy in South Africa

The COVID-19 pandemic caused a severe economic shock to which governments responded by announcing large-scale recovery packages with magnitudes unseen before. While some of these policies have been expected to have positive environmental outcomes (“green” policies), most of them have not been designed to address those challenges (“colourless”). Focusing on the economic recovery program announced in South Africa, a country still heavily reliant on fossil-fuels, this paper shows how colourless recovery policy can increase environmental harm, whereas green elements in recovery packages can enhance the decarbonisation effects of energy policy and promote positive economic outcomes. The analysis uses the energy-environment-economy model E3ME to simulate effects of different kinds of recovery policies and quantify the combined impact of a package of measures