Perceptions of the social determinants of health by two groups more and less affiliated with public health in Canada

BACKGROUND: Despite strong academic recognition of the SDOH both in Canada and internationally, acknowledgement and uptake of the SDOH in health policy and public consciousness have remained weak. This paper aims to discern reasons for limited action on the SDOH by examining the perceptions of the SDOH held by two groups more and less affiliated with public health in Canada. We conducted formal consultation with group members on their interpretation of the SDOH and their thoughts on the nature and basis of differences between those more and less aligned with the SDOH as a basis for action. Thematic analysis was used to evaluate the views of the two groups. FINDINGS: Group 1 (community/public health workers) felt overwhelmed when confronted with questions regarding action on the SDOH within the context of their professional lives. They suggested an expanded list of health determinants that included factors such as voluntarism and happiness, transcending traditional notions of “root causes.” Furthermore, they did not articulate value-based reasons why others would oppose the SDOH; rather, in line with their professional roles, they adopted a value-neutral and pragmatic approach to working to improve health. Group 2 (child and youth advocacy organization members) seemed rooted in the 1986 Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion framework, with their recommendations aligned with strategies such as building healthy public policy and reorienting health services. Neither group made reference to issues of social justice or inequity when they made suggestions for improving health. CONCLUSIONS: We found that two groups with different affiliations to formal public health could discuss the SDOH without acknowledging the inequitable distribution of power and resources that lies at its root. We also found that those working in public health had difficulty moving beyond individual actions that they or their clients could take to improve health. For a group more focused on advocacy than direct service provision, the Ottawa Charter framework seemed more easily suited to their recommendations for action than suggesting actions that would address the SDOH. Our findings indicate that there remains work to be done in terms of translating the SDOH concept into action in Canada

The film producer as the long-stay business tourist: Rethinking film and tourism from a Gold Coast perspective

Studies of the connection between film and tourism have tended to foreground film-induced tourism whether as a consequence of films being made in particular locations or as arguments for encouraging film production activity in a particular location. In both cases film production is seen to be beneficial for the ancillary benefits it creates in terms of destination awareness. In this article, however, we suggest that film-induced tourism is a somewhat limited way of perceiving the relationship between film production, tourism and place. By focusing on the example of the Gold Coast, we argue that the provision of film and television production services to 'footloose' producers is approached here as a form of tourism alongside other niche tourism markets. In this context, film production becomes another tourism business segment to be pitched to, catered for, with special requirements that need to be met. Furthermore there are significant synergies between tourism and the servicing of international film production, beyond film-induced tourism. This is apparent in the sharing of expertise and infrastructure; in the way that place identities as tourist destinations are critical to the branding of places as production locations; for the opportunities presented by significant tourism and leisure economies for retaining a flexible workforce that can accommodate the fly-in-fly-out nature of film and television production. It is our argument that where the Gold Coast is concerned, tourism has been a central partner in the development of the Gold Coast as a greenfield production location

'SCREENSCAPES': PLACING TV SERIES IN THEIR CONTEXTS OF PRODUCTION, MEANING AND CONSUMPTION

The main argument of this paper is that television participates in a complex, cultural process through which environmental meanings and values are produced and consumed. Using the theoretical model of the 'circuit of culture' the ways in which a city's imagery is embedded in the processes of representation, production, and consumption are explored. First, two types of the TV crime genre are examined in order to outline how the differences between them cause and require contrasting geographical imaginations of contemporary Cologne. Second, the contexts of production are looked at in order to explain how the city's representation is inextricably linked to the politics of determining film locations. Finally, the ways in which fans perceive the city through television are explored. In conclusion, it becomes clear that space and genre are highly interdependent elements in crime series, and that environmental meanings are constructed and contested in multiple everyday contexts of media use and appropriation. Copyright (c) 2007 by the Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG.

News place-making:applying ‘mental mapping’ to explore the journalistic interpretive community

Scholarship in visual communications, media, and geography explore how news media assign meanings to environment through narratives of and about place. In this study, however, the author aims to move scholarship from evaluating journalistic place representations to exploring the cultural and ideological processes of how these place representations come to be. Understanding how journalists construct place adds depth to knowledge about news as a social and cultural construction, and contributes to previous research on news place-characterizations. This study enacts a methodology called ‘mental mapping’ and serves as a call for communication scholars to consider such participatory methods. Data for this study come from interviews with 30 participants, including reporters from three newspapers, public officials, and residents of Iowa City, USA. In the end, this study identifies a visual methodology for exploring the role and influence of how journalists work and represent place in the news, a process the author calls news place-making