Retrospective analysis of attitudes to ageing in the Economist: apocalyptic demography for opinion formers

Objective To investigate the description of older people and ageing in a major weekly newspaper, influential in political and financial circles, to see whether it reflected ageing in a balanced manner, and to what extent it indulged in apocalyptic demography—the portrayal of population ageing as a financial burden rather than a scientific advance

Professional Dispositions and Perceptions of Principals About Inclusion in Senior Secondary Schools

AbstractProviding inclusive education for children with special educational needs and disabilities entails educating these students in general education classrooms. There are no consistent practices or regulations for administering programs for such students in general education classrooms in Sierra Leone. This problem is supported by the lack of literature about administrative inclusive education practices. This basic qualitative study was conducted to explore the professional dispositions, perceptions, and rules or regulations that school principals hold for administering programs for students with special educational needs and disabilities in general education classrooms. The conceptual framework of the study was based on moral leadership and transformational leadership theories. The study fills a research gap, in that no study has been done in Sierra Leone about school leadership and inclusive education for students with special educational needs and disabilities. Research questions centered on the professional dispositions, perceptions, and practices or regulations that school principals hold about including students with special educational needs and disabilities in general education classrooms. Twelve principals of senior secondary schools in Sierra Leone were interviewed in person. Thematic analysis was applied to the data. Findings showed an absence of expert knowledge and the need for professional development training for school principals, which informed the recommendation for a policy on professional development training for principals. The study’s results have social change implications, in that they may help in addressing the need to provide proper, high-quality education for students with special educational needs and disabilities

Thriving Communities: A Model for Community-Engaged Grantmaking

Interact for Health is a health conversion foundation serving the three-state region of Greater Cincinnati, Ohio. Its current community change initiative, Thriving Communities, is a community-learning model that helps embed health promotion and advocacy work in communities while those communities build an equitable infrastructure with stakeholders to more rapidly spread evidence-based practices. This article explores the three tools developed for the Thriving Communities initiative: Success Markers, the Developmental Pathway, and Relationship Mapping. Interact for Health has found that these tools build core competencies and confidence among grantees as well as a process for community engagement that produces results at the local level. Thriving Communities grantees are eligible for up to $50,000 in funding over five years. In addition to the general operating grants, Interact provides training, tools, and structured- learning collaboratives where grantees can network and share best practices. With five years invested in this work, Interact has found that these small, flexible grants are succeeding in developing infrastructure to continue health promotion after funding from the foundation ends

Report On OUSD Board Community Engagement Convenings

In the fall of 2008, the Oakland Unified School District's Board of Education members undertook a process to have conversations about academic performance improvement with the school communities at each high school within their district and at all elementary and middle schools classified as "red" schools (the "red" classification indicates a low level of academic performance). As indicated in the design materials, the objectives of the convenings were to:1. Identify school-level strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that are shared by schools across the city or within a region of the city that affect a school's capacity to improve student academic achievement.2. Develop Board-level policies that effectively increase the capacity of schools to improve student academic achievement.3. Establish supportive and accountable working relationships between the Board of Education, Superintendent, and school leaders.Prior to the convenings, the Board Members agreed on four basic questions that they would seekto answer through the convening process with each Board Member prioritizing the question(s) onwhich they would focus.1. What are we doing to increase the number of students who:a. High School: stay in school and graduate?b. Middle School: are proficient in Algebra?c. Elementary School: are proficient in Reading?2. What's working?3. What needs to be done?4. What should the Board of Education do to help the school?At their December retreat, the Board Members considered recommendations from the convenings in order to develop the district's Strategic Priority to Accelerate Student Learning & Achievement

Growing Up in Ireland. National Longitudinal Study of Children. Report 6 2018

This report provides a descriptive analysis of the findings from detailed interviews with 13-year-olds and their parents in the Growing Up in Ireland study. The purpose of the report is to present a broad, comprehensive overview of the lives of the Child Cohort at age 13 and to describe how they are faring in important areas of their lives. Preliminary key findings from data collected at age 13 were published in November 2012. This report explores data from this wave of data collection in more detail and expands on the issues covered in those key findings. In the current report, findings are explored on a longitudinal basis, allowing insights into developmental trajectories for the cohort since the age of nine years. Exploration into interactions between multiple factors on the lives of young people are also presented, a type of analysis that was not possible in previous cross-sectional reports

The Effects of Pregabalin and the Glial Attenuator Minocycline on the Response to Intradermal Capsaicin in Patients with Unilateral Sciatica

BACKGROUND: Patients with unilateral sciatica have heightened responses to intradermal capsaicin compared to pain-free volunteers. No studies have investigated whether this pain model can screen for novel anti-neuropathic agents in patients with pre-existing neuropathic pain syndromes. AIM: This study compared the effects of pregabalin (300 mg) and the tetracycline antibiotic and glial attenuator minocycline (400 mg) on capsaicin-induced spontaneous pain, flare, allodynia and hyperalgesia in patients with unilateral sciatica on both their affected and unaffected leg. METHODS/RESULTS: Eighteen patients with unilateral sciatica completed this randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, three-way cross-over study. Participants received a 10 mg dose of capsaicin into the middle section of their calf on both their affected and unaffected leg, separated by an interval of 75 min. Capsaicin-induced spontaneous pain, flare, allodynia and hyperalgesia were recorded pre-injection and at 5, 20, 40, 60 and 90 min post-injection. Minocycline tended to reduce precapsaicin injection values of hyperalgesia in the affected leg by 28% (95% CI 0% to 56%). The area under the effect time curves for capsaicin-induced spontaneous pain, flare, allodynia and hyperalgesia were not affected by either treatment compared to placebo. Significant limb differences were observed for flare (AUC) (-38% in affected leg, 95% CI for difference -19% to -52%). Both hand dominance and sex were significant covariates of response to capsaicin. CONCLUSIONS: It cannot be concluded that minocycline is unsuitable for further evaluation as an anti-neuropathic pain drug as pregabalin, our positive control, failed to reduce capsaicin-induced neuropathic pain. However, the anti-hyperalgesic effect of minocycline observed pre-capsaicin injection is promising pilot information to support ongoing research into glialmediated treatments for neuropathic pain. The differences in flare response between limbs may represent a useful biomarker to further investigate neuropathic pain. Inclusion of a positive control is imperative for the assessment of novel therapies for neuropathic pain.Nicole M. Sumracki, Mark R. Hutchinson, Melanie Gentgall, Nancy Briggs, Desmond B. Williams and Paul Rola

Ischemic Stroke and Depression

Previous studies of depression after stroke have reported widely variable findings, possibly due to differences between studies in patient characteristics and methods for the assessment of depression, small sample sizes, and the failure to examine stroke-free reference groups to determine the base rate of depression in the general population. In an effort to address certain of those methodologic issues and further investigate the frequency and clinical determinants of depression after stroke, we administered the Structured Interview Guide for the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (SIGH–D) and neurological, neuropsychological, and functional assessments to 421 patients (age = 71.5 ± 8.0 years) 3 months after ischemic stroke and 249 stroke-free control subjects (age = 70.8 ± 6.7 years). We required a SIGH–D total score > 11 for the identification of depression. We found that depression was less frequent (47/421 patients, or 11.2%, and 13/249 control subjects, or 5.2%), less severe, and less persistent in our stroke cohort than previously reported, possibly due to the underrepresentation of patients with a premorbid history of affective illness. Depression was associated with more severe stroke, particularly in vascular territories that supply limbic structures; dementia; and female sex. SIGH–D item analyses suggested that a reliance on nonsomatic rather than somatic symptoms would result in the most accurate diagnoses of depression after ischemic stroke

GROWING UP IN IRELAND. COHORT ’08 (Infant Cohort). Report on the Pilot for Wave Five of the Cohort ’08 Survey (at 9 Years of Age)

This report summarises the experience of the pilot fieldwork with the Growing Up in Ireland Cohort ’08 (formerly the Infant Cohort) at 9 years of age. This wave represents the fifth survey for this cohort who were first interviewed at age 9 months – and subsequently surveyed at 3, 5 and 7/8 years. It is also the first time that the younger cohort has reached an age where there was also data collection for Cohort ’98 (formerly the Child Cohort). The report is intended to inform data-users of the role played by the pilot process in informing the final instrumentation and procedures for the main phase of data collection