Catalysing scale-up of maternal and newborn health innovations in Ethiopia

Scaling-up the innovation across a large geographical area as part of the Community Based Newborn Care package produced challenges, yet there have also been positive and enabling factors in Ethiopia. IDEAS wanted to understand what helps and what hinders the scale-up of community-based maternal and newborn health (MNH) innovations, both within and beyond implementation partner areas, and how scale-up can be catalysed. IDEAS and its partners carried out a case study of an MNH innovation in Ethiopia with its roots in the Community Based Interventions for Newborns in Ethiopia (COMBINE) project which enables Health Extension Workers (HEWs) to administer antibiotics to manage neonatal sepsis at community level. This was evaluated through a randomised controlled trial. The innovation was facilitated by Save the Children USA, through Saving Newborn Lives (SNL), and was initially implemented by HEWs and the Health Development Army in 19 districts ('woredas') of Ethiopia. From late 2013, the innovation was being scaled-up to 92 woredas as one of nine components of Phase One of the Ethiopian Government’s Community Based Newborn Care (CBNC) package. This summary presents evidence from the study and identifies both enablers and barriers to scale up and key actions needed to catalyse scale up

Developing children and young people’s participation in strategic processes: the experience of the Children’s Fund Initiative

The extent of children’s and young people’s participation activities has increased considerably among statutory, voluntary and community sector organisations across the UK in recent years. The Children’s Fund, a major government initiative launched in 2000, represents a systematic drive towards promoting children and young people’s participation in planning, implementing and evaluating preventative services within all 149 local authority areas in England. Based on research carried out by the National Evaluation of the Children’s Fund, this paper explores the experience of Children’s Fund partnerships of engaging children and young people in strategic processes

Is participation prevention? A blurring of discourses in children's preventative initiatives in the UK

This article explores the relationships between two key concepts that have defined recent social policy initiatives for children in the UK: participation and prevention from social exclusion. Drawing on the Children's Fund initiative as an example, the article traces the diverse and sometimes contradictory discourses of childhood and social inclusion/ exclusion in stakeholders' differing rationales for supporting children's participation and prevention. The authors argue that the blurring of the rationales for participation and prevention has implications for the strategies and practices that agencies adopt and raises questions about which groups benefit and whose agendas are served by participation and prevention activities

Eocene–early Oligocene climate and vegetation change in southern China: Evidence from the Maoming Basin

Although the Eocene-Oligocene climate transition marks a critical point in the development of the ‘icehouse’ global climate of the present little is known about this important change in the terrestrial realm at low latitudes. Our palynological study of the Shangcun Formation shows it to be early Oligocene in age: palyno-assemblages in the lower part of the formation indicate a cool interval dominated by conifer pollen in the earliest Oligocene followed by a warmer regime in the second half of the early Oligocene. To quantify middle Eocene to late early Oligocene climate conditions at low (~ 20°N) palaeolatitudes in southern Asia several thousand leaf fossil specimens from the Maoming Basin, southern China, were subjected to a multivariate (CLAMP) analysis of leaf form. For terrestrial palaeoclimate comparisons to be valid the palaeoaltitude at which the proxy data are obtained must be known. We find that leaves preserved in the Youganwo (middle Eocene), Huangniuling (late Eocene) and Shangcun (early Oligocene) formations were likely to have been deposited well above sea level at different palaeoelevations. In the Youganwo Formation fine-grained sediments were deposited at an altitude of ~ 1.5 km, after which the basin dropped to ~ 0.5 km by the time the upper Huangniuling sediments were deposited. The basin floor then rose again by 0.5 km reaching an altitude of approximately 1 km in which the Shangcun Formation fine-grained sediments were accumulated. Within the context of these elevation changes the prevailing climates experienced by the Youganwo, Lower Huangniuling, Upper Huangniuling and Shangcun fossil floras were humid subtropical with hot summers and warm winters, but witnessed a progressive increase in rainfall seasonality. By the early Oligocene rainfall seasonality was similar to that of the modern monsoonal climate of Guangdong Province, southern China. All floras show leaf physiognomic spectra most similar to those growing under the influence of the modern Indonesia-Australia Monsoon, but with no evidence of any adaptation to today's South or East Asia Monsoon regimes. The Upper Huangniuling Flora, rich in dipterocarp plant megafossils, grew in the warmest conditions with the highest cold month mean temperature and at the lowest altitude

What does the mind learn? A comparison of human and machine learning representations

We present a brief review of modern machine learning techniques and their use in models of human mental representations, detailing three notable branches: spatial methods, logical methods and artificial neural networks. Each of these branches contain an extensive set of systems, and demonstrate accurate emulations of human learning of categories, concepts and language, despite substantial differences in operation. We suggest that continued applications will allow cognitive researchers the ability to model the complex real-world problems where machine learning has recently been successful, providing more complete behavioural descriptions. This will however also require careful consideration of appropriate algorithmic constraints alongside these methods in order to find a combination which captures both the strengths and weaknesses of human cognition

Gender and Inclusion Toolbox: Participatory Research in Climate Change and Agriculture

This manual is a resource and toolbox for NGO practitioners and programme designers interested in diagnostic and action research for gender sensitive and socially inclusive climate change programmes in the rural development context. It is meant to be an easy to use manual, increasing the research capacity, skills and knowledge of its users. Integrating gender and social differentiation frameworks should ideally begin from the start of the programme cycle and be coordinated throughout research, design, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation phases. The data gathered using this toolbox supports this programme work. While the manual emphasizes participatory and qualitative approaches, many of the activities and tools can produce quantitative data. Each chapter features a bundle of research tools intended to be used sequentially. However, we know that each organization has its diverse needs. The chapters are in modular format so that teams can assemble their own research toolbox specific to their needs

[Accepted Manuscript] Sexual rights but not the right to health? Lesbian and bisexual women in South Africa's National Strategic Plans on HIV and STIs

Synergies between securing sexual rights and the right to health have been pursued where there are clear public health gains to be made, such as lowering incidence of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STI). South Africa?s 1996 Constitution outlawed discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and promoted the right to health. This qualitative health policy analysis sought to understand why and how interventions to improve sexual health of lesbian and bisexual women and address sexual violence were initially proposed in the HIV & AIDS and STI Strategic Plan for South Africa 2007?2011 and why and how these concerns were deprioritised in the National Strategic Plan (NSP) on HIV, STIs and TB 2012?2016. A conceptual framework considered several determinants of political priority for the inclusion in NSP development in 2007 and 2011 around sexual health concerns of women who have sex with women. This article presents findings from 25 in?depth key informant interviews and document review and highlights results of application of categories for a framework on determinants of political priority for lesbian and bisexual women?s issues to be included in South Africa?s NSP including: actor power, ideas, political context and issue characteristics. The article demonstrates how the epidemiological and structural drivers of lesbian and bisexual women?s vulnerability to HIV and STIs, including sexual violence and other violations of their sexual rights, have been expressed in policy forums and whether this has made an impact on lesbian and bisexual women?s ability to claim the right to health

Where there’s ‘willingness’ there’s a way: barriers and facilitators to maternal, newborn and child health data sharing by the private health sector in Uttar Pradesh, India

In India and Uttar Pradesh (UP), the private health sector plays an important role in health care services, including institutional deliveries, but there is limited information on the availability of maternal, newborn and child health (MNCH) data that private facilities maintain and share with the public health information system. Sharing data could help the public sector plan their resources more efficiently. Aim of the study: To explore current practices of MNCH data availability and sharing/reporting by private health facilities and the barriers and facilitators to data sharing

Probabilistic biases meet the Bayesian brain

Bayesian cognitive science sees the mind as a spectacular probabilistic inference machine. But Judgment and Decision Making research has spent half a century uncovering how dramatically and systematically people depart from rational norms. This paper outlines recent research that opens up the possibility of an unexpected reconciliation. The key hypothesis is that the brain neither represents nor calculates with probabilities; but approximates probabilistic calculations through drawing samples from memory or mental simulation. Sampling models diverge from perfect probabilistic calculations in ways that capture many classic JDM findings, and offers the hope of an integrated explanation of classic heuristics and biases, including availability, representativeness, and anchoring and adjustment

A rational approach to stereotype change

Existing theories of stereotype change have often made use of categorisation principles in order to provide qualitative explanations for both the revision and maintenance of stereotypical beliefs. The present paper examines the quantitative methods underlying these explanations, contrasting both rational and heuristic models of stereotype change using participant data and model fits. In a comparison of three models each simulating existing descriptions of stereotype change, both empirical data and model fits suggest that stereotypes are updated using rational categorisation processes. This presents stereotype use as a more rational behaviour than may commonly be assumed, and provides new avenues of encouraging stereotype change according to rational principles