Drowning risk and climate change: a state-of-the-art review

Drowning and climate change are both significant global health threats, yet little research links climate change to drowning risk. Research into the epidemiology, risk factors and preventive strategies for unintentional drowning in high-income and in low-income and middle-income countries has expanded understanding, but understanding of disaster and extreme weather-related drowning needs research focus. As nation states and researchers call for action on climate change, its impact on drowning has been largely ignored. This state-of-the-art review considers existing literature on climate change as a contributor to changes in drowning risks globally. Using selected climate change-related risks identified by the World Meteorological Organization and key risks to the Sustainable Development Goals as a framework, we consider the drowning risks associated with heat waves, hydrometeorological hazards, drought and water scarcity, damaged infrastructure, marine ecosystem collapse, displacement, and rising poverty and inequality. Although the degree of atmospheric warming remains uncertain, the impact of climate change on drowning risk is already taking place and can no longer be ignored. Greater evidence characterising the links between drowning and climate change across both high-income and low-income and middle-income contexts is required, and the implementation and evaluation of drowning interventions must reflect climate change risks at a local level, accounting for both geographical variation and the consequences of inequality. Furthermore, collaboration between the injury prevention, disaster risk reduction and climate change mitigation sectors is crucial to both prevent climate change from stalling progress on preventing drowning and further advocate for climate change mitigation as a drowning risk reduction mechanism

Lessons learned from operating a pre-commercialisation field-testing platform for innovative non-sewered sanitation in Durban, South Africa

The Engineering Field Testing Platform (EFTP) was designed to provide an opportunity for technology  developers (TDs) to test non-sewered sanitation prototypes in the eThekwini Municipal Area (Durban), South Africa. Between 2017 and 2020, 15 sanitation systems were tested in informal settlements, peri-urban households, and other ‘real world’ settings. This paper illustrates the lessons learned from establishing and managing this testing platform. Costs and timelines for testing are dependent on several factors, including the aims of testing, the development stage of the prototype, whether testing takes place in a community or household setting and if a testing site is shared between prototypes. Timelines were routinely underestimated, particularly for community engagement and commissioning of prototypes to reach steady-state operation. Personnel accounted for more than half of the EFTP’s costs. The presence of the municipality as a platform partner was vital to the success of testing, both for gaining political support and for enabling access to testing sites. It is noted that working in communities, with test sites in public spaces, requires technical and social sensitivity to context. It was important to ensure testing supported future municipal decision-making on service provision, as well as longer-term development within communities. The high number of stakeholders, locally and internationally, raised management challenges common to any large project. However, the EFTP added value to TDs, the eThekwini Municipality, and communities requiring improved sanitation services; this was amplified through the platform approach

Research brief : amplifying local voices to reduce failure in the water, sanitation and hygiene sector

There needs to be a culture shift towards greater responsibility, and particularly shared accountability, for water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) failures and challenges

An overview of ethical frameworks in public health: can they be supportive in the evaluation of programs to prevent overweight?

Background. The prevention of overweight sometimes raises complex ethical questions. Ethical public health frameworks may be helpful in evaluating programs or policy for overweight prevention. We give an overview of the purpose, form and contents of such public health frameworks and investigate to which extent they are useful for evaluating programs to prevent overweight and/or obesity. Methods. Our search for frameworks consisted of three steps. Firstly, we asked experts in the field of ethics and public health for the frameworks they were aware of. Secondly, we performed a search in Pubmed. Thirdly, we checked literature references in the articles on frameworks we found. In total, we thus found six ethical frameworks. We assessed the area on which the available ethical frameworks focus, the users they target at, the type of policy or intervention they propose to address, and their aim. Further, we looked at their structure and content, that is, tools for guiding the analytic process, the main ethical principles or values, possible criteria for dealing with ethical conflicts, and the concrete policy issues they are applied to. Results. All frameworks aim to support public health professionals or policymakers. Most of them provide a set of values or principles that serve as a standard for evaluating policy. Most frameworks articulate both the positive ethical foundations for public health and ethical constraints or concerns. Some frameworks offer analytic tools for guiding the evaluative process. Procedural guidelines and concrete criteria for solving important ethical conflicts in the particular area of the prevention of overweight or obesity are mostly lacking. Conclusions. Public health ethical frameworks may be supportive in the evaluation of overweight prevention programs or policy, but seem to lack practical guidance to address ethical conflicts in this particular area

The ‘Great Decarceration’: Historical Trends and Future Possibilities

During the 19th Century, hundreds of thousands of people were caught up in what Foucault famously referred to as the ‘great confinement’, or ‘great incarceration’, spanning reformatories, prisons, asylums, and more. Levels of institutional incarceration increased dramatically across many parts of Europe and the wider world through the expansion of provision for those defined as socially marginal, deviant, or destitute. While this trend has been the focus of many historical studies, much less attention has been paid to the dynamics of ‘the great decarceration’ that followed for much of the early‐ to mid‐20th Century. This article opens with an overview of these early decarceration trends in the English adult and youth justice systems and suggests why these came to an end from the 1940s onwards. It then explores parallels with marked decarceration trends today, notably in youth justice, and suggests how these might be expedited, extended, and protected

Street violence in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Abstract not available

Paper technology, an elementary manual on the manufacture, physical qualities and chemical constituents of paper and of paper-making fibres,

"A glossary of various papers": p. [227]-238."A dictionary of chemical terms": p. [216]-226."Lectures on 'The manufacture and uses of paper' given in 1904-5 at the central Y.M.C.A., Exeter Hall, Strand, London."--Pref.Mode of access: Internet