Outdoor Learning in the Early Years. 3rd Edition Helen Bilton Abingdon : Routledge (2010) pp. 272 Pbk. £21.99 ISBN 978-0415454773

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Developing a community facilitator-led participatory learning and action women's group intervention to improve infant feeding, care and dental hygiene practices in South Asian infants: NEON programme

INTRODUCTION: The Nurture Early for Optimal Nutrition (NEON) study is a multiphase project that aims to optimize feeding, care and dental hygiene practices in South Asian children <2 years in East London, United Kingdom. The multiphase project uses a participatory learning and action (PLA) approach facilitated by a multilingual community facilitator. In this paper, we elaborate on the process and results of the Intervention Development Phase in the context of the wider NEON programme. METHODS: Qualitative community-based participatory intervention codevelopment and adaptation. SETTING: Community centres in East London and online (Zoom) meetings and workshops. PARTICIPANTS: In total, 32 participants registered to participate in the Intervention Development Phase. Four Intervention Development workshops were held, attended by 25, 17, 20 and 20 participants, respectively. RESULTS: Collaboratively, a culturally sensitive NEON intervention package was developed consisting of (1) PLA group facilitator manual, (2) picture cards detailing recommended and nonrecommended feeding, care and dental hygiene practices with facilitators/barriers to uptake as well as solutions to address these, (3) healthy infant cultural recipes, (4) participatory Community Asset Maps and (5) list of resources and services supporting infant feeding, care and dental hygiene practices. CONCLUSION: The Intervention Development Phase of the NEON programme demonstrates the value of a collaborative approach between researchers, community facilitators and the target population when developing public health interventions. We recommend that interventions to promote infant feeding, care and dental hygiene practices should be codeveloped with communities. Recognizing and taking into account both social and cultural norms may be of particular value for infants from ethnically diverse communities to develop interventions that are both effective in and accepted by these communities. PATIENT AND PUBLIC INVOLVEMENT AND ENGAGEMENT: Considerable efforts were placed on Patient/Participant and Public Involvement and Engagement. Five community facilitators were identified, each of which represented one ethnic/language group: (i) Bangladeshi/Bengali and Sylheti, (ii) Pakistani/Urdu, (iii) Indian/Gujrati, (iv) Indian/Punjabi and (v) Sri Lankan/Tamil. The community facilitators were engaged in every step of the study, from the initial drafting of the protocol and study design to the Intervention Development and refinement of the NEON toolkit, as well as the publication and dissemination of the study findings. More specifically, their role in the Intervention Development Phase of the NEON programme was to: 1. Support the development of the study protocol, information sheets and ethics application. 2. Ensure any documents intended for community members are clear, appropriate and sensitively worded. 3. Develop strategies to troubleshoot any logistical challenges of project delivery, for example, recruitment shortfalls. 4. Contribute to the writing of academic papers, in particular reviewing and revising drafts. 5. Develop plain language summaries and assist in dissemination activities, for example, updates on relevant websites. 6. Contribute to the development of the NEON intervention toolkit and recruitment of the community members. 7. Attend and contribute to Intervention Development workshops, ensuring the participant's voices were the focus of the discussion and workshop outcomes

The Potential of Antimicrobial Peptides as Biocides

Antimicrobial peptides constitute a diverse class of naturally occurring antimicrobial molecules which have activity against a wide range of pathogenic microorganisms. Antimicrobial peptides are exciting leads in the development of novel biocidal agents at a time when classical antibiotics are under intense pressure from emerging resistance, and the global industry in antibiotic research and development stagnates. This review will examine the potential of antimicrobial peptides, both natural and synthetic, as novel biocidal agents in the battle against multi-drug resistant pathogen infections

Structural studies on peptides by mass spectrometry

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:D61365 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Early Childhood Education and Care: An Introduction

'The book gives excellent insight of current Early Years topics by covering international educational approaches and discussing the need to professionalise the sector. It is suitable for students on Early Childhood Studies programme, EYPS, and Early Years Foundation Degrees.' ..

The anchoring effect of climate change acts: a policy streams analysis of Ireland’s climate act reform

The number of political jurisdictions introducing climate change acts (CCAs) has grown in recent years. As framework legislation, CCAs seek to exert anchoring effects on climate policy development by establishing general goals, principles and obligations that subsequent policies to reduce emissions must uphold. Despite expansive research on the negotiation of CCAs, limited analysis exists of factors shaping their anchoring effect or how tensions aligning other climate policies with CCA requirements are managed. This article addresses this by utilizing Kingdon’s multiple streams framework to analyze the negotiation of the Irish Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (Amendment) Act 2021, a CCA with contentious provisions for sectoral emissions ceilings. It examines how political agreement was secured on the need for stronger climate action (problem stream), the concept of the Act (policy stream), and individual provisions (political stream). The analysis nevertheless indicates that different interpretations of ‘the problem’ emerged in discussions on the impacts of sector emissions ceilings and carbon taxation. Consensus in the political stream equally proved challenging where representatives used the Act’s provisions to question other parties’ commitments to climate action, just transition and procedural fairness. The article highlights two broader considerations for the anchoring effect of CCAs: the importance of maintaining a consistent focus on climate change to prevent problems with policies to address climate change from dominating CCA debates; and whether to restrict CCAs to general principles that diminish their anchoring effect compared with incorporating detailed obligations that may increase political tensions over the CCA and future policies