Environmental (waste) compliance control systems for UK SMEs

While the ‘environment’ is often perceived as a heavily regulated area of business, in reality, directly-regulated businesses represent a small proportion of the business community. This study aimed to evaluate and outline potential improvements to compliance controls for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), particularly those involved in the waste sector. Forty-four SMEs from England were interviewed/audited between April-September 2008. Using a UK-based system as a case-in-point, the Environment Agency’s (EA) Operational Risk Appraisal (‘Opra’)/Compliance Assessment Report (CAR) system was analysed. Environmental compliance performance indicators and an initial assessment methodology for SMEs were developed. The study showed:• Compliance with permitting legislation was poor in many areas.• Regulatory authorities are either unable/failing to implement their enforcement policies or unable/failing to identify non-compliances due to the infrequency or limited nature of their inspections.• Improvements are needed to the EA Opra/CAR system – control measures are not fully taken into account when calculating risk.Recommendations to improve SME compliance controls include using internationally applicable general and specific compliance and non-compliance performance indicators, re-designing the Opra system and using an initial assessment methodology based on understanding the hazardousness of SME categories, compliance levels and operator competency.<br/

Diverse Aging and Health Inequality by Race and Ethnicity

Although gerontologists have long embraced the concept of heterogeneity in theories and models of aging, recent research reveals the importance of racial and ethnic diversity on life course processes leading to health inequality. This article examines research on health inequality by race and ethnicity and identifies theoretical and methodological innovations that are transforming the study of health disparities. Drawing from cumulative inequality theory, we propose greater use of life course analysis, more attention to variability within racial and ethnic groups, and better integration of environmental context into the study of accumulation processes leading to health disparities

The Human Affectome

Over the last decades, theoretical perspectives in the interdisciplinary field of the affective sciences have proliferated rather than converged due to differing assumptions about what human affective phenomena are and how they work. These metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions, shaped by academic context and values, have dictated affective constructs and operationalizations. However, an assumption about the purpose of affective phenomena can guide us to a common set of metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions. In this capstone paper, we home in on a nested teleological principle for human affective phenomena in order to synthesize metaphysical and mechanistic assumptions. Under this framework, human affective phenomena can collectively be considered algorithms that either adjust based on the human comfort zone (affective concerns) or monitor those adaptive processes (affective features). This teleologically-grounded framework offers a principled agenda and launchpad for both organizing existing perspectives and generating new ones. Ultimately, we hope the Human Affectome brings us a step closer to not only an integrated understanding of human affective phenomena, but an integrated field for affective research

Perspectives on subnational carbon and climate footprints: A case study of Southampton, UK

Sub-national governments are increasingly interested in local-level climate change management. Carbon- (CO2 and CH4) and climate-footprints—(Kyoto Basket GHGs) (effectively single impact category LCA metrics, for global warming potential) provide an opportunity to develop models to facilitate effective mitigation. Three approaches are available for the footprinting of sub-national communities. Territorial-based approaches, which focus on production emissions within the geo-political boundaries, are useful for highlighting local emission sources but do not reflect the transboundary nature of sub-national community infrastructures. Transboundary approaches, which extend territorial footprints through the inclusion of key cross boundary flows of materials and energy, are more representative of community structures and processes but there are concerns regarding comparability between studies. The third option, consumption-based, considers global GHG emissions that result from final consumption (households, governments, and investment). Using a case study of Southampton, UK, this chapter develops the data and methods required for a sub-national territorial, transboundary, and consumption-based carbon and climate footprints. The results and implication of each footprinting perspective are discussed in the context of emerging international standards. The study clearly shows that the carbon footprint (CO2 and CH4 only) offers a low-cost, low-data, universal metric of anthropogenic GHG emission and subsequent management

Security Specialists are from Mars; Healthcare Practitioners are from Venus: The Case for a Community-of-Practice Approach to Security Architectures for Healthcare

Information security is a necessary requirement of information sharing in the healthcare environment. Research shows that the application of security in this setting is sometimes subject to work-arounds where healthcare practitioners feel forced to incorporate practices that they have not had an input into and with which they have not engaged with. This can result in a sense of security practitioners and healthcare practitioners being culturally very different in their approach to information systems. As a result such practices do not constitute part of their community of practice nor their identity. In order to respond to this, systems designers typically deploy user-centred, participatory approaches to design using various forms of consultation and engagement in order to ensure that the needs of users are responded to within the design. Learning from international implementations of e-health, the development of the Australian electronic health records (EHR) system has been a participatory process. However, the more participatory approach has not been used as part of the technical security design of the e-health system and the functionality of the security governance architecture was not included in the process of consultation. Such exclusions result in a design-reality gap in so far as the healthcare systems as envisioned by designers are not easily related to by “front-line” clinical staff. Despite repeated design-reality issues in healthcare systems design, there is no fundamental change in the development paradigm to address the socio-technical security aspects of such systems. Indeed, the security perspective of system designers seems to originate from a very different perspective to that of front-line clinical staff. This discussion paper characterises the problem, uses examples from both the UK and Australian EHR experience, and proposes an alternative start-point to healthcare systems design

Security Specialists are from Mars; Healthcare Practitioners are from Venus: The Case for a Community-of-Practice Approach to Security Architectures for Healthcare

Information security is a necessary requirement of information sharing in the healthcare environment. Research shows that the application of security in this setting is sometimes subject to work-arounds where healthcare practitioners feel forced to incorporate practices that they have not had an input into and with which they have not engaged with. This can result in a sense of security practitioners and healthcare practitioners being culturally very different in their approach to information systems. As a result such practices do not constitute part of their community of practice nor their identity. In order to respond to this, systems designers typically deploy user-centred, participatory approaches to design using various forms of consultation and engagement in order to ensure that the needs of users are responded to within the design. Learning from international implementations of e-health, the development of the Australian electronic health records (EHR) system has been a participatory process. However, the more participatory approach has not been used as part of the technical security design of the e-health system and the functionality of the security governance architecture was not included in the process of consultation. Such exclusions result in a design-reality gap in so far as the healthcare systems as envisioned by designers are not easily related to by “front-line” clinical staff. Despite repeated design-reality issues in healthcare systems design, there is no fundamental change in the development paradigm to address the socio-technical security aspects of such systems. Indeed, the security perspective of system designers seems to originate from a very different perspective to that of front-line clinical staff. This discussion paper characterises the problem, uses examples from both the UK and Australian EHR experience, and proposes an alternative start-point to healthcare systems design

Changing Places: The Need to Alter the Start Point for Information Security Design

Information security is a necessary requirement of information sharing within an electronic health system because without it confidentiality, availability, or integrity controls are absent. Research shows that the application of security in this setting is subject to workarounds partly because of resistance to security controls from clinicians who feel that their voice is excluded from the security design process. Heeks\u27 explored the nature of health system design and referred to the distance between system designer and practitioner as the \u27design-reality gap\u27. To reduce this gap, systems designers typically deploy usercentred, participatory approaches to design. They use various forms of consultation and engagement to ensure that the needs of users are responded to within the design and that users understand the design process and constraints. Whilst there is evidence to suggest that the overall electronic health records (EHR) system design has increasingly used elements of a participatory, human-centred design approach, the security elements of design are still technology-focused. This discussion paper characterises the problem, outlines the principles of Heeks\u27 Information, Technology, Processes, Objectives, Skills, Management Systems, Other Resources (ITPOSMO) framework, and then uses this framework to evaluate security dimensions of both the UK and Australian EHR programmes. The resulting proposal for a \u27communities of practice\u27 approach as an alternative start-point to healthcare systems security design, provides a basis for reconceptualising the integration of security practices into EHR systems. In the increasingly distributed and complex environment of healthcare delivery, this new approach can help to address the fundamental challenges experienced in healthcare security practice today