Perspectives from those involved in healthy stadia

Healthy stadia is a growing agenda across industry and in turn academia. In this era of growth, much of the research literature is primarily sourced from academics with little contribution from applied and industry stakeholders. As such, the editors have sought to offer practitioners a platform to share novel projects, perspectives and preliminary intervention evaluation findings. This applied article intends to share evaluation and insight from applied practice, to encourage closer debate between the academic community and applied industry

Master of Pharmacy students’ knowledge and awareness of antibiotic use, resistance and stewardship

Background. Antibiotic resistance has become a global public health concern. In this study we investigated the knowledge and awareness of antibiotic use, resistance and stewardship, held by the pharmacy students currently studying at the University of Brighton.Study design. This was a cross-sectional, online survey, and email invitations to participate were sent to all students attending our Master of Pharmacy (MPharm) course (n = 583). Students’ knowledge was assessed with 29 items; responses for these were totaled before comparison among students.Comparison of scores between groups of students was performed using the Kruskal-Wallis or the MannWhitney test, as appropriate.Results. The response rate was 32%. The overall median knowledge score was 7.9. There was a statistically significant difference in knowledge scores between years of study (p = 0.02), particularly between year of study 1 (7.6) and 4 (8.3). A statistically significant difference was found between the knowledge scores of male (8.4) and female (7.9) students (p = 0.03). Most students believed a strong knowledge of antibiotics, and microbiology and infection control is important for their pharmacy careers and more than 90% agreed that antibiotic resistance will be a greater clinical problem in thefuture.Conclusions. Although the MPharm students studied achieved good overall knowledge scores, a significant proportion showed a lack of understanding with regards to some important aspects of antibiotic resistance mechanisms, factors promoting the emergence and spread of antibioticresistance, and antibiotic stewardship policies

Football and Health: Getting Strategic

Community foundations and charities operating within professional football clubs are being championed as a vehicle to deliver on the Public Health agenda. This personal commentary from the authors offers insight into the context of football for health drawing on the relevant research literature and their experiences working within the football industry in England. The football and health examples highlight under-resourced and under-evaluated interventions, whilst highlighting the importance of partnership working. The authors hope to support those in football and health in getting strategic through their interventions, evaluations and partnerships, in order to capitalize the potential of football in supporting the objectives of Public Health England

The policy work of piloting: mobilising and managing conflict and ambiguity in the English NHS

In spite of their widespread use in policy making in the UK and elsewhere, there is a relatively sparse literature specifically devoted to policy pilots. Recent research on policy piloting has focused on the role of pilots in making policy work in accordance with national agendas. Taking this as a point of departure, the present paper develops the notion of pilots doing policy work. It does this by situating piloting within established theories of policy formulation and implementation, and illustrating using an empirical case. Our case is drawn from a qualitative policy ethnography of a local government pilot programme aiming to extend access to healthcare services. Our case explores the collective entrepreneurship of regional policy makers together with local pilot volunteers. We argue that pilots work to mobilise and manage the ambiguity and conflict associated with particular policy goals, and in their structure and design, shape action towards particular outcomes. We conclude with a discussion of the generative but managed role which piloting affords to local implementers