COMMUNITY BASED PEACE PROGRAMS FOR ARMED CONFLICT RESOLUTION: A Guide to Program Development

People must protect themselves and their communities from structural violence by learning to address and resolve violent conflicts through nonviolent means. Peace programs in practice today do not equip communities to resolve ongoing conflicts of structural violence through nonviolent means. A critical gap exists between programs which try to build cultures of peace in development or recovery settings and programs which try to end ongoing armed conflict. A review of these programs and general peace research yields an understanding of best practices and ideas on how to create a community based program to resolve an ongoing armed conflict. Niger is used as a casestudy on how to incorporate the learned best practices into an actual program. Reflecting on the developed program for Niger offers the opportunity to discuss overall the best strategies and potential difficulties in creating peace programs to empower communities in times of armed conflict to prevent and address structural violence. This paper concludes that such programs are feasible and very much needed today

A comparison of cancer vaccine adjuvants in clinical trials

Cancer treatment has come a long way in increasing overall survival; however, evasion of the immune system continues to be a challenge in treating individuals with established disease burdens. Due to the difficulty in stimulating an immune response against cancer, approaches utilizing combination adjuvants with different mechanisms may be beneficial. A combination of these adjuvants with other adjuvants or other treatments has demonstrated synergistic effects in the form of a robust and sustained immune response, demonstrating the importance of further development. This review discusses the intricacies of immune evasion, applications of adjuvants with different mechanisms of action, and adjuvants used for cancer immunotherapy in clinical trials

Experience of stress in parents of children with ADHD: A qualitative study

Purpose: Qualitative research aimed at understanding the stress of parents of children with ADHD is limited and few interventions have been designed to directly target their stress. The study aim was to explore the stress of parents of children with ADHD using qualitative methodology.Methods: Thirteen parents of children with ADHD participated in two focus groups. Open-ended questions explored parents' experiences of stress. Focus groups were recorded, transcribed, and coded using thematic analysis. Parents also completed the Parenting Stress Index-Short Form.Results: Four primary themes were identified: The child's behaviour feels like a "wrecking ball"; Coping with the "war at home"; A divided family: "relationships don't survive"; and Craving support: "it's goddamn hard work". Five of eleven participants who completed the PSI-SF scored in the clinically significant range indicating levels of stress that require professional support.Conclusions: Parents attribute their high stress to their children's behaviour, unmet needs for support, and social stigma. Parents request support to enable them to cope and appear to represent a clinical population who require mental health care and support themselves. Future interventions directly targeting the stress of parents of children with ADHD may provide wide-ranging benefits for their children and families