WASH coalition building guidelines

The Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) is an international membership organisation that has worked, since 1990, to achieve sustainable water supply and sanitation for all people, through enhancing collaboration among sector agencies and professionals. As part of its activities within two of its programme areas – Networking & Knowledge Management, and Advocacy & Communications – WSSCC encourages the development of national water supply, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) Coalitions. The role of WASH Coalitions ranges from information sharing to the advocacy of specific policy changes, but they universally address a felt need for improved systematic communication, collaboration and joint action among the sector players in a certain country. As a vehicle for awareness raising and advocacy, most national WASH Coalitions have developed national WASH Campaigns. A special role is given to the National Coordinators, who are expected to maintain the links with the WSSCC Secretariat, exercise quality control and practise a degree of coordination and facilitation of the coalition. However, coalitions, like partnerships, are complicated organisms and some of the existing WASH Coalitions have had only limited impact and varying degrees of success. This is partly due to the complexity of building a successful coalition that responds to the specific needs of the country in which it is created, and partly due to the undefined or open mandate of the WASH Coalitions, resulting in a lack of clarity about what they are intended to do

Hygiene and Sanitation Software: An Overview of Approaches

A review of the state of the art in methods and techniques for sanitation and hygiene behaviour change, and other non-hardware aspects of sanitation programming. Includes introductory text and detailed entries on more than 20 approaches and techniques, with key references, summary information on effectiveness and implementation and an assessment of when different approaches should be used

Investigating the Effects of a Persuasive Digital Game on Immersion, Identification, and Willingness to Help

Recent years have seen a tremendous rise in the development and distribution of persuasive games: digital games that are used to influence players’ attitudes and/or behavior. Three studies (NStudy 1 = 134; NStudy 2 = 94; NStudy 3 = 161) tested the effects of a persuasive game on immersion, identification, and willingness to help. The results showed that playing the persuasive game did not result in substantially stronger willingness to help, relative to the control conditions. Video and printed text resulted in more immersion than the digital game, but playing the game resulted in substantially higher perceptions of embodied presence

A cluster-randomised trial to evaluate an intervention to promote handwashing in rural Nigeria.

Handwashing with soap at critical times helps prevent diarrhoeal diseases. Changing handwashing practices through behaviour change communication remains a challenge. This study designed and tested a scalable intervention to promote handwashing with soap. A cluster-randomised, controlled trial compared our intervention against standard practice. Subjects were men, women and children in 14 villages in Cross-River state, Nigeria. The primary outcome was the proportion of observed key events on which hands were washed with soap. Binomial regression analysis calculated prevalence differences between study arms. The intervention had minimal effect on the primary outcome (+2.4%, p = 0.096). The intervention was associated with increased frequency of handwashes without soap before food contact (+13%, p = 0.017). The intervention failed to produce significant changes in handwashing with soap at key times. The low dose delivered (two contact points) may have increased scalability at the cost of effectiveness, particularly in the challenging context of inconvenient water access

Dutch Prospective Observational Study on Prehospital Treatment of Severe Traumatic Brain Injury: The BRAIN-PROTECT Study Protocol

Background: Severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) is associated with a high mortality rate and those that survive commonly have permanent disability. While there is a broad consensus that appropriate prehospital treatment is crucial for a favorable neurological outcome, evidence to support currently applied treatment strategies is scarce. In particular, the relationship between prehospital treatments and patient outcomes is unclear. The BRAIN-PROTECT study therefore aims to identify prehospital treatment strategies associated with beneficial or detrimental outcomes. Here, we present the study protocol. Study Protocol: BRAIN-PROTECT is the acronym for BRAin INjury: Prehospital Registry of Outcome, Treatments and Epidemiology of Cerebral Trauma. It is a prospective observational study on the prehospital treatment of patients with suspected severe TBI in the Netherlands. Prehospital epidemiology, interventions, medication strategies, and nonmedical factors that may affect outcome are studied. Multivariable regression based modeling will be used to identify confounder-adjusted relationships between these factors and patient outcomes, including mortality at 30 days (primary outcome) or mortality and functional neurological outcome at 1 year (secondary outcomes). Patients in whom severe TBI is suspected during prehospital treatment (Glasgow Coma Scale score 8 in combination with a trauma mechanism or clinical findings suggestive of head injury) are identified by all four helicopter emergency medical services (HEMS) in the Netherlands. Patients are prospectively followed up in 9 participating trauma centers for up to one year. The manuscript reports in detail the objectives, setting, study design, patient inclusion, and data collection process. Ethical and juridical aspects, statistical considerations, as well as limitations of the study design are discussed. Discussion: Current prehospital treatment of patients with suspected severe TBI is based on marginal evidence, and optimal treatment is basically unknown. The BRAINPROTECT study provides an opportunity to evaluate and compare different treatment strategies with respect to patient outcomes. To our knowledge, this study project is the first large-scale prospective prehospital registry of patients with severe TBI that also collects long-term follow-up data and ma

WASH Coalition Building Guidelines: An Introductory Guide for National Coordinators and Coalition Members

This handbook for WSSCC field coordinators is of interest to all those who are involved in building coalitions of interest at the local level. The report examines the optimum approach to building coalitions and partnerships, explores what level of formality is appropriate in any given situation, how such arrangements can most effectively be planned and organised and what are the best strategies for sustaining and re-invigorating coalitions

Prevention of the spread of infection: the need for a family-centered approach to hygiene promotion

will be added ASA

Psychological determinants of pregnancy-related lumbopelvic pain: a prospective cohort study

OBJECTIVE: To study whether pregnancy-related lumbopelvic pain outcomes at 36 weeks of gestation can be predicted by psychological determinants earlier in pregnancy. DESIGN: Prospective cohort study. SETTING: Nine midwifery practices in different regions of the Netherlands. POPULATION: A cohort of 223 low-risk pregnant women in the Netherlands was followed from week 12 of gestation until 36 weeks of gestation. METHODS: Both psychological determinants and lumbopelvic pain symptoms were investigated with a set of questionnaires at 12, 24 and 36 weeks of gestation. Psychological determinants were measured with the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90), the Pregnancy-related Anxiety Questionnaire (PRAQ), and the Utrecht Coping List (UCL). Lumbopelvic pain outcomes were measured with the Pregnancy Mobility Index (PMI) and the Overall Complaints Index (OCI). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Lumbopelvic pain symptoms and their impact at 36 weeks of gestation. RESULTS: There was a significant increase in scores on both the PMI and OCI across the three sampling occasions in pregnancy. Lumbopelvic pain outcomes showed significant associations with the psychological determinants perceived stress and recently perceived psychological and physical distress at all three times during pregnancy. Pregnancy-related anxiety was not a significant predictor of lumbopelvic pain outcomes, neither was coping. CONCLUSIONS: Lumbopelvic pain symptoms and their impact on daily activities at 36 weeks of gestation can be predicted by psychological determinants earlier in pregnancy; the combination of perceived stress and physical disability at 24 weeks of pregnancy seems to be the best predictor of disability in later pregnancy

Analogieen met verkeersmanagement

TrafficQuest ziet het als een van haar opgaven om het verkeersmanagementproces zo goed mogelijk te doorgronden en op basis van het begrip van het proces sturingsprincipes te traceren en uit te werken die toegepast kunnen worden bij het (beter) managen van verkeer in een wegennetwerk”. Eén van de manieren om meer inzicht in de processen te krijgen is een vergelijking met andere domeinen waarin zich soortgelijke processen afspelen. We doen dit in de vorm van een workshop “Analogieën voor Verkeersmanagement”. De gekozen aanpak houdt in dat het domein verkeersmanagement wordt vergeleken met een aantal andere domeinen waarin zich vergelijkbare processen afspelen. We zijn hier op zoek naar analogieën met het verkeersmanagement proces. De gevonden analogieën worden vervolgens gebruikt om: • Processen te analyseren en onderling te vergelijken • Mogelijkheden om processen aan te sturen te inventariseren en te beoordelen • Op basis daarvan het inzicht in het verkeersmanagement proces te vergroten Door het onderling vergelijken van de wijze waarop systemen functioneren en ook door te kijken en te vergelijken hoe het functioneren van deze systemen extern en intern wordt beïnvloed, kunnen interessante parallellen worden getrokken in het functioneren van systemen. In deze studie staat verkeersmanagement/netwerkmanagement centraal (het focus systeem). Verkeersmanagement (ook wel DVM genoemd) heeft als doel verkeersstromen zo te beïnvloeden dat de kwaliteit van de verkeersafwikkeling – gegeven een aantal doelstellingen en randvoorwaarden – optimaal is. Bij verkeersmanagement zijn het de voertuigen en in het bijzonder de bestuurders van die voertuigen die via een reeks van maatregelen geïnformeerd, geadviseerd en gestuurd worden. In andere systemen is vaak ook sprake van stromen die (extern en intern) beïnvloed worden. De wijze waarop deze stromen worden afgewikkeld kan interessante ideeën opleveren voor het management van verkeer en omgekeerd. Kortom analogieën met andere disciplines kunnen helpen om problemen in het eigen vakgebied beter te duiden en processen beter te begrijpen en aan te sturen