Early public participation and support for a brownfields redevelopment project : a study on Perth Amboy

Public participation is an important aspect of brownfields redevelopment. Because brownfields are a localized issue, those most affected by a site should have a say in its redevelopment. Both the process of redevelopment and the final outcome must measure the success of a brownfields project. Perth Amboy, New Jersey, in conjunction with the Middlesex County Vocational School System, is in the process of preparing former brownfields land into a new vocational -technical high school. Residents were notified after the decision had been made, rather than be included from the start of the decision-making process. Residents within a 500-foot radius were sent a survey to measure their satisfaction with the redevelopment of the high school. Spearman rho correlations were used to determine relationships between thirty-two variables. Analysis revealed that there is an overall satisfaction with the construction of the vocationaltechnical high school, but not with the means by which the process was undertaken. Though residents feel it is their responsibility to be active participants, they also hold the city and the county responsible for fostering public participation early in the process. Support for the vocational -technical high school diminishes if local taxes had been applied to the redevelopment project. Recommendations for better inclusion of the public are offered to enhance future participation efforts

International Nosocomial Infection Control Consortiu (INICC) report, data summary of 43 countries for 2007-2012. Device-associated module

We report the results of an International Nosocomial Infection Control Consortium (INICC) surveillance study from January 2007-December 2012 in 503 intensive care units (ICUs) in Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Europe. During the 6-year study using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) U.S. National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) definitions for device-associated health care–associated infection (DA-HAI), we collected prospective data from 605,310 patients hospitalized in the INICC's ICUs for an aggregate of 3,338,396 days. Although device utilization in the INICC's ICUs was similar to that reported from ICUs in the U.S. in the CDC's NHSN, rates of device-associated nosocomial infection were higher in the ICUs of the INICC hospitals: the pooled rate of central line–associated bloodstream infection in the INICC's ICUs, 4.9 per 1,000 central line days, is nearly 5-fold higher than the 0.9 per 1,000 central line days reported from comparable U.S. ICUs. The overall rate of ventilator-associated pneumonia was also higher (16.8 vs 1.1 per 1,000 ventilator days) as was the rate of catheter-associated urinary tract infection (5.5 vs 1.3 per 1,000 catheter days). Frequencies of resistance of Pseudomonas isolates to amikacin (42.8% vs 10%) and imipenem (42.4% vs 26.1%) and Klebsiella pneumoniae isolates to ceftazidime (71.2% vs 28.8%) and imipenem (19.6% vs 12.8%) were also higher in the INICC's ICUs compared with the ICUs of the CDC's NHSN