Pylons in the back yard: local planning and perceived risks to health

Health fears arising from the presence of high-voltage power lines in residential areas have received recent attention in spatial planning. A study of stances taken by planning authorities in England and Wales shows their willingness to give expression to the concerns of local communities through precautionary measures, and the difficulties encountered in the face of official statements and industry opposition. These attempts to embody local feeling in patterns of development are illustrative of the increasing prevalence of a sense of risk in contemporary society. The spatial patterns of risk are also revealed, which owe much to the presence and distribution of industrial infrastructure in the landscape and to the associated contested use of land.</p

Designing theoretically-informed implementation interventions

Clinical and health services research is continually producing new findings that may contribute to effective and efficient patient care. However, the transfer of research findings into practice is unpredictable and can be a slow and haphazard process. Ideally, the choice of implementation strategies would be based upon evidence from randomised controlled trials or systematic reviews of a given implementation strategy. Unfortunately, reviews of implementation strategies consistently report effectiveness some, but not all of the time; possible causes of this variation are seldom reported or measured by the investigators in the original studies. Thus, any attempts to extrapolate from study settings to the real world are hampered by a lack of understanding of the effects of key elements of individuals, interventions, and the settings in which they were trialled. The explicit use of theory offers a way of addressing these issues and has a number of advantages, such as providing: a generalisable framework within which to represent the dimensions that implementation studies address, a process by which to inform the development and delivery of interventions, a guide when evaluating, and a way to allow for an exploration of potential causal mechanisms. However, the use of theory in designing implementation interventions is methodologically challenging for a number of reasons, including choosing between theories and faithfully translating theoretical constructs into interventions. The explicit use of theory offers potential advantages in terms of facilitating a better understanding of the generalisability and replicability of implementation interventions. However, this is a relatively unexplored methodological area

The Inclusion of Pupils with Special Educational Needs: A Study of the Formulation and Implementation of the National Curriculum Physical Education in Britain

The paper examines the planned and unplanned outcomes associated with the inclusion of pupils with special educational needs (SEN) in the National Curriculum Physical Education (NCPE) in Britain. This involves the use of key concepts from figurational sociology, and documentary analysis, to examine the emergence of disability as a social issue in British society and in secondary school education. Norbert Elias’ game models (Elias, 1978) are then used to analyse the NCPE 1992, 1995 and 2000 documents, and their associated consultation materials. This allows the researcher to identify all the major players involved in the formulation of the NCPEs, and the extent to which the objectives of each player, and their subsequent power struggles with each other, impacted upon the overall objectives and content of the NCPEs. The game models are then used to examine the extent to which the objectives of the players involved in the implementation of the NCPE generated outcomes which none of the players planned for, or could have foreseen

The Matthew effect in environmental science publication: A bibliometric analysis of chemical substances in journal articles

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>While environmental research addresses scientific questions of possible societal relevance, it is unclear to what degree research focuses on environmental chemicals in need of documentation for risk assessment purposes.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In a bibliometric analysis, we used SciFinder to extract Chemical Abstract Service (CAS) numbers for chemicals addressed by publications in the 78 major environmental science journals during 2000-2009. The Web of Science was used to conduct title searches to determine long-term trends for prominent substances and substances considered in need of research attention.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The 119,636 journal articles found had 760,056 CAS number links during 2000-2009. The top-20 environmental chemicals consisted of metals, (chlorinated) biphenyls, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, benzene, and ethanol and contributed 12% toward the total number of links- Each of the top-20 substances was covered by 2,000-10,000 articles during the decade. The numbers for the 10-year period were similar to the total numbers of pre-2000 articles on the same chemicals. However, substances considered a high priority from a regulatory viewpoint, due to lack of documentation, showed very low publication rates. The persistence in the scientific literature of the top-20 chemicals was only weakly related to their publication in journals with a high impact factor, but some substances achieved high citation rates.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The persistence of some environmental chemicals in the scientific literature may be due to a 'Matthew' principle of maintaining prominence for the very reason of having been well researched. Such bias detracts from the societal needs for documentation on less well known environmental hazards, and it may also impact negatively on the potentials for innovation and discovery in research.</p

ReseArch with Patient and Public invOlvement: a RealisT evaluation - the RAPPORT study

Background Patient and public involvement (PPI) is a prerequisite for many funding bodies and NHS research ethics approval. PPI in research is defined as research carried out with or by the public rather than to, about or for them. While the benefits of PPI have been widely discussed, there is a lack of evidence on the impact and outcomes of PPI in research. Objectives To determine the types of PPI in funded research, describe key processes, analyse the contextual and temporal dynamics of PPI and explore the experience of PPI in research for all those involved. Mechanisms contributing to the routine incorporation of PPI in the research process were assessed, the impact of PPI on research processes and outcomes evaluated, and barriers and enablers to effective PPI identified. Design A three-staged realist evaluation drawing on Normalisation Process Theory to understand how far PPI was embedded within health-care research in six areas: diabetes mellitus, arthritis, cystic fibrosis, dementia, public health and learning disabilities. The first two stages comprised a scoping exercise and online survey to chief investigators to assess current PPI activity. The third stage consisted of case studies tracked over 18 months through interviews and document analysis. The research was conducted in four regions of England. Participants Non-commercial studies currently running or completed within the previous 2 years eligible for adoption on the UK Clinical Research Network portfolio. A total of 129 case study participants included researchers and PPI representatives from 22 research studies, and representatives from funding bodies and PPI networks

Bonding and the agency risk premium: An analysis of migrations between the AIM and the Official List of the London Stock Exchange

Firms that change their listing from the less regulated AIM to the more regulated main section of the London Stock Exchange exhibit positive abnormal returns on the announcement day. For firms moving in the opposite direction, both announcement and implementation day abnormal returns are negative. Following implementation, the pattern is reversed for both categories of firm. We show that differences in liquidity, conventional risk factors and in medium to long term firm survival rates between the two listing regimes do not explain the observed patterns of returns, suggesting that the answer lies in the different bonding requirements of the two market segments and an agency risk premium.JEL Codes: G12, G14, G15, G30, G32, G3

On the relevance of the “genetics-based” approach to medicine for sociological perspectives on medical specialization

This paper draws on a study on the development of medical genetics as a medical specialism in the UK and Canada to reflect on how local and national contexts affect specialty formation. The paper begins by supporting earlier findings in the literature that stress, first, technological innovations as driving specialty formation, and, second, the domination of physicians in the division of medical labour. Beyond this, however, the paper explores the specific circumstances under which geneticists set about turning their work into a medical specialism based on a “genetics-based approach” to illness and how “medical genetics” as a specialism was assessed and configured to fit national and regional health service requirements

Building health research systems to achieve better health

Health research systems can link knowledge generation with practical concerns to improve health and health equity. Interest in health research, and in how health research systems should best be organised, is moving up the agenda of bodies such as the World Health Organisation. Pioneering health research systems, for example those in Canada and the UK, show that progress is possible. However, radical steps are required to achieve this. Such steps should be based on evidence not anecdotes. Health Research Policy and Systems (HARPS) provides a vehicle for the publication of research, and informed opinion, on a range of topics related to the organisation of health research systems and the enormous benefits that can be achieved. Following the Mexico ministerial summit on health research, WHO has been identifying ways in which it could itself improve the use of research evidence. The results from this activity are soon to be published as a series of articles in HARPS. This editorial provides an account of some of these recent key developments in health research systems but places them in the context of a distinguished tradition of debate about the role of science in society. It also identifies some of the main issues on which 'research on health research' has already been conducted and published, in some cases in HARPS. Finding and retaining adequate financial and human resources to conduct health research is a major problem, especially in low and middle income countries where the need is often greatest. Research ethics and agenda-setting that responds to the demands of the public are issues of growing concern. Innovative and collaborative ways are being found to organise the conduct and utilisation of research so as to inform policy, and improve health and health equity. This is crucial, not least to achieve the health-related Millennium Development Goals. But much more progress is needed. The editorial ends by listing a wide range of topics related to the above priorities on which we hope to feature further articles in HARPS and thus contribute to an informed debate on how best to achieve such progress