Community in Tension (CiT)

The development and availability of Information Communication Technology (ICT) impacts many sectors yet a digital divide is still present amongst citizens in communities. Not only is there a digital divide evident but also many other factors that causes tension in communities. This paper defines a Community in Tension (CiT) as a community where the wellbeing of its citizens is being threatened. This provides an opportunity to use these available ICTs in communities and have it locally appropriated to empower the citizens and stabilise these communities

Reflective evaluation of civil society development: a case study of RLabs Cape Town, South Africa

Civil society is a defining feature in development theory and practice. This article using ethnographical methodology; reflective analysis of narratives from the community to aggregate qualitative factors identified by fifteen community participants, that were important in the development of grassroots, IT4D development project. The question we were asking of the actors was: “How did they achieve the formation of a civil community?” Factors include extended time period, a developed community, dedicated leadership, group ethos and dynamic sociological model of flows of information and people across group formation. A key feature is compassionate capitalism as a foundation of localised economic growth

Socio-technical approach to community health: designing and developing a mobile care data application for home-based healthcare, in South Africa

The aim of this report is to describe the design and development considerations related to a mobile home-based healthcare application for care givers in a community in the Western Cape, South Africa. In order to do this we first describe current practices of health care givers in the Western Cape in capturing and reporting the data of their patients in practice. Although the overall aims of home-based healthcare are the same everywhere in the world, the context of a particular country is important because it determines how home-based healthcare is implemented in practice. In this instance the design and development of the mobile care data application were undertaken by a local university as part of a funded project to stimulate innovation by using informatics to address real needs in communities.International Bibliography of Social Science

Remote delivery of alcohol and/or substance misuse interventions for adults: A systematic review protocol

© 2021 Howlett et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Introduction: Alcohol and substance misuse are a public health priority. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that harmful alcohol use accounts for 5.1% of the global burden of disease and that 35.6 million people worldwide are affected by substance misuse. The Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has disrupted delivery of face-to-face alcohol and substance misuse interventions and has forced the development of alternative remote interventions or adaptation to existing ones. Although existing research on remote interventions suggests they might be as effective as face-to-face delivery, there has been a lack of systematic exploration of their content, the experience of service users, and their effectiveness for behavioural outcomes. This review will provide a narrative synthesis of the behaviour change techniques (BCT) contained in interventions for alcohol and/or substance misuse and their association with effectiveness. Methods and analysis: Systematic searches will be conducted in MEDLINE, Scopus, PsycINFO (ProQuest), and the Cochrane Library. Included studies will be those reporting remote interventions focusing on alcohol and/or substance misuse among adults living in the community and which have a primary behaviour change outcome (i.e., alcohol levels consumed). Data extraction will be conducted by one author and moderated by a second, and risk of bias and behaviour change technique (BCT) coding will be conducted by two authors independently. A narrative synthesis will be undertaken focussing upon the association of BCTs with intervention effectiveness using promise ratios. Patient and Public Involvement (PPI): The Public Involvement in Research Group (PIRG), part of the NIHR-funded PHIRST, will be involved in refining the review questions, eligibility criteria, data synthesis and dissemination. Dissemination: Dissemination will be through an academic peer reviewed publication, alongside other outputs to be shared with non-academic policy, professional, and public audiences, including local authorities, service users and community organisations.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Immediate early protein of equid herpesvirus type 1 as a target for cytotoxic T-lymphocytes in the thoroughbred horse

Cytotoxic T-lymphocytes (CTLs) are associated with protective immunity against disease caused by equid herpesvirus type 1 (EHV-1). However, the EHV-1 target proteins for CTLs are poorly defined. This limits the development of vaccine candidates designed to stimulate strong CTL immunity. Here, classical CTL assays using lymphocytes from horses of three defined MHC class I types that experienced natural infection with EHV-1 and a modified vaccinia virus construct containing an EHV-1 gene encoding the immediate-early (IE) protein are reported. Horses homozygous for the equine leukocyte antigen (ELA)-A2 haplotype, but not the ELA-A5 haplotype, produced MHC-restricted CTL responses against the IE protein. Previously, horses homozygous for the ELA-A3 haplotype also mounted CTL responses against the IE protein. Both haplotypes are common in major horse breeds, including the Thoroughbred. Thus, the IE protein is an attractive candidate molecule for future studies of T-cell immunity to EHV-1 in the horse

A systematic review and behaviour change technique analysis of remotely delivered alcohol and/or substance misuse interventions for adults

© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)Background: There has been a lack of systematic exploration of remotely delivered intervention content and their effectiveness for behaviour change outcomes. This review provides a synthesis of the behaviour change techniques (BCT) contained in remotely delivered alcohol and/or substance misuse approaches and their association with intervention promise. Methods: Searches in MEDLINE, Scopus, PsycINFO (ProQuest), and the Cochrane Library, included studies reporting remote interventions focusing on alcohol and/or substance misuse among adults, with a primary behaviour change outcome (e.g., alcohol levels consumed). Assessment of risk of bias, study promise, and BCT coding was conducted. Synthesis focussed on the association of BCTs with intervention effectiveness using promise ratios. Results: Studies targeted alcohol misuse (52 studies) or substance misuse (10 studies), with predominantly randomised controlled trial designs and asynchronous digital approaches. For alcohol misuse studies, 16 were very promising, 17 were quite promising, and 13 were not promising. Of the 36 eligible BCTs, 28 showed potential promise, with seven of these only appearing in very or quite promising studies. Particularly promising BCTs were ‘Avoidance/reducing exposure to cues for behaviour’, ‘Pros and cons’ and ‘Self-monitoring of behaviour’. For substance misuse studies, three were very promising and six were quite promising, with all 12 BCTs showing potential promise. Conclusions: This review showed remotely delivered alcohol and substance misuse interventions can be effective and highlighted a range of BCTs that showed promise for improving services. However, concerns with risk of bias and the potential of promise ratios to inflate effectiveness warrant caution in interpreting the evidence.Peer reviewe