Controlling Land Use and Population Growth Near Nuclear Power Plants

It is the purpose of this Article to examine the relationship of land use control techniques to nuclear power plants

Topographically generated internal waves and boundary layer instabilities

Copyright (2015) AIP Publishing. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and AIP Publishing. The following article appeared in Soontiens, N., Stastna, M. & Waite, M.L. Topographically generated internal waves and boundary layer instabilities. Phys. Fluids 27, 086602 (2015), and may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4929344.Flow over topography has been shown to generate finite amplitude internal waves upstream, over the topography and downstream. Such waves can interact with the viscous bottom boundary layer to produce vigorous instabilities. However, the strength and size of such instabilities depends on whether viscosity significantly modifies the wave generation process, which is usually treated using inviscid theory in the literature. In this work, we contrast cases in which boundary layer separation profoundly alters the wave generation process and cases for which the generated internal waves largely match inviscid theory. All results are generated using a numerical model that simulates stratified flow over topography. Several issues with using a wave-based Reynolds number to describe boundary layer properties are discussed by comparing simulations with modifications to the domain depth, background velocity, and viscosity. For hill-like topography, three-dimensional aspects of the instabilities are also discussed. Decreasing the Reynolds number by a factor of four (by increasing the viscosity), while leaving the primary two-dimensional instabilities largely unchanged, drastically affects their three-dimensionalization. Several cases at the laboratory scale with a depth of 1 m are examined in both two and three dimensions and a subset of the cases is scaled up to a field scale 10-m deep fluid while maintaining similar values for the background current and viscosity. At this scale, increasing the viscosity by an order of magnitude does not significantly change the wave properties but does alter the wave’s interaction with the bottom boundary layer through the bottom shear stress. Finally, two subcritical cases for which disturbances are able to propagate upstream showcase a set of instabilities forming on the upstream slope of the elevated topography. The time scale over which these instabilities develop is related to but distinct from the advective time scale of the waves. At a non-dimensional time when instabilities have formed in the field scale case, no instabilities have yet formed in the lab scale case.Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council || RGPIN/386456-201

Supporting student development through a cooperative education coaching program

First published by International Journal of Work-Integrated Learning, https://www.ijwil.org/. This article may not be used for commercial gain unless by permission of the editor-in-chief.Uptake of new scopes of practice by pharmacists has been slow and inconsistent, which the literature suggests may be related to disconnects between pharmacists' established professional identities and the identities needed to adopt these new practices. This study evaluated the use of coaches to help pharmacy students during their cooperative education work terms develop professional identities more aligned with the new scopes of practice. In this longitudinal cross-sectional survey, trained pharmacist coaches met individually and in groups with students in the intervention arm of the study. Students and coaches in the intervention arm completed reflective questions and student intervention and control groups completed a self-assessment survey. Reflective comments indicated that both students and coaches identified student gains in career and professional planning, workplace navigation skills, ability to reflect on professional development topics, and contextualizing classroom learning within practice. Work-integrated learning combined with coaching can contribute to students' career and professional identity development.University of Waterloo Centre for Advancement of Cooperative Education (WatCACE

Incorporating sex, gender and vulnerable populations in a large multisite health research programme: The Ontario Pharmacy Evidence Network as a case study

Background: Funders now frequently require that sex and gender be considered in research programmes, but provide little guidance about how this can be accomplished, especially in large research programmes. The purpose of this study is to present and evaluate a model for promoting sex-and gender-based analysis (SGBA) in a large health service research programme, the Ontario Pharmacy Evidence Network (OPEN). Methods: A mixed method study incorporating (1) team members' critical reflection, (2) surveys (n = 37) and interviews (n = 23) at programme midpoint, and (3) an end-of-study survey in 2016 with OPEN research project teams (n = 6). Results: Incorporating gender and vulnerable populations (GVP) as a cross-cutting theme, with a dedicated team and resources to promote GVP research across the programme, was effective and well received. Team members felt their knowledge was improved, and the programme produced several sex-and gender-related research outputs. Not all resources were well used, however, and better communication of the purposes and roles of the team could increase effectiveness. Conclusions: The experience of OPEN suggests that dedicating resources for sex and gender research can be effective in promoting SGBA research, but that research programmes should also focus on communicating the importance of SGBA to their members.Ontario Pharmacy Evidence Network (OPEN)Government of Ontario (Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care Health Systems Research Fund Grant) [06674

Pharmacy patron perspectives of community pharmacist administered influenza vaccinations

The final publication is available at Elsevier via https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sapharm.2018.04.015. © 2018. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/One approach to boost influenza vaccination coverage has been to expand immunization authority. In 2012, the province of Ontario gave community pharmacists the authority to administer the influenza vaccine.This study was conducted as part of the Ontario Pharmacy Evidence Network (OPEN) and funded by the Government of Ontario

“I gained a skill and a change in attitude”: A Case Study Describing How an Online Continuing Professional Education Course for Pharmacists Supported Achievement of Its Transfer-to-Practice Outcomes

The convenience and flexibility of online learning clearly make it an attractive option for learners in professional development contexts. There is less clarity, however, about how it fares as a vehicle for enabling the applied, practice-oriented outcomes typically associated with professional development learning.This paper presents a case study describing how transfer-of-learning strategies were employed in a continuing professional education (CPE) course developed for practicing pharmacists, called ADAPT (ADapting pharmacists’ skills and Approaches to maximize Patients’ drug Therapy effectiveness).To gain insight into the extent to which learning was transferred to practice as a result of participation in the course, qualitative data were collected over a 12-month period from participants of the 2010 pilot offering of ADAPT. Participants reported making changes to their practice as a result of participating in the course, and they identi- fied three course features as being particu- larly useful in facilitating practice transfer: providing learners with (i) a vision of targeted outcomes and skills, (ii) support to enable them to attain targeted outcomes and skills, and (iii) explicit preparation for action

Unintended consequences of communicating rapid COVID-19 vaccine policy changes– a qualitative study of health policy communication in Ontario, Canada

Background The success of the COVID-19 vaccination roll-out depended on clear policy communication and guidance to promote and facilitate vaccine uptake. The rapidly evolving pandemic circumstances led to many vaccine policy amendments. The impact of changing policy on effective vaccine communication and its influence in terms of societal response to vaccine promotion are underexplored; this qualitative research addresses that gap within the extant literature. Methods Policy communicators and community leaders from urban and rural Ontario participated in semi-structured interviews (N = 29) to explore their experiences of COVID-19 vaccine policy communication. Thematic analysis was used to produce representative themes. Results Analysis showed rapidly changing policy was a barrier to smooth communication and COVID-19 vaccine roll-out. Continual amendments had unintended consequences, stimulating confusion, disrupting community outreach efforts and interrupting vaccine implementation. Policy changes were most disruptive to logistical planning and community engagement work, including community outreach, communicating eligibility criteria, and providing translated vaccine information to diverse communities. Conclusions Vaccine policy changes that allow for prioritized access can have the unintended consequence of limiting communities’ access to information that supports decision making. Rapidly evolving circumstances require a balance between adjusting policy and maintaining simple, consistent public health messages that can readily be translated into action. Information access is a factor in health inequality that needs addressing alongside access to vaccines

A Matter of Trust: Building COVID-19 Vaccine Confidence among Diverse Communities in Canada and the United Kingdom - Final Full Report to The British Academy

Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, the virus has undergone many mutations. Governments must continually update their health policies – often in seemingly contradictory terms – to protect the public from illness and death, and health systems from collapsing. This means persuading millions of people, not just once, but twice and three times each, to be vaccinated, while the virus and the messaging about it are in flux. The purpose of our ongoing research, in Canada and the United Kingdom (UK), is to learn what methods to date have worked to improve COVID-19 vaccine confidence among the public throughout the pandemic and to share this information with policymakers, public health officials, community decision-makers and contributors to public discourse. Our goal is to better understand how policy changes and mis/disinformation are experienced in communities with low vaccine confidence and to identify community level interventions that can be used to develop vaccine confidence. For this multiple methods study, our teams analysed and compared societal reception to COVID-19 vaccination policies, in particular the communication of those policies, across two distinct areas and populations, one in the UK and the other in Canada. Both areas studied had areas with lower vaccination rates and similar kinds of demographic subpopulations. We have characterized the evolution of relevant public health policies in terms of their content, context, actors and processes, seeking to learn more about how people understood and acted – or not – on COVID-19 health policy changes over time. We wanted to study which communication channels were used and how various populations responded to public health information and regulations; what other “unofficial” channels they may have used, for better or worse; and what community efforts might have built vaccine confidence among rural and urban communities. We, firstly, examined the policy evolution through a desk review. Our data sources included government websites and official social media, which were used to identify operational COVID-19 policy documents, guidelines, laws and regulations. Search results were indexed, extracted and inserted into a spreadsheet for each country, then policy categories were devised based on how the policies were framed. Secondly, we characterised response to these policies through a series of individual interviews conducted in the East Midlands region of England and in Waterloo, a small, southern-Ontario city in central Canada. Finally, we compared our policy review to our qualitative analysis to gain insights into the influence of policy on vaccine programme equity and coordination. Findings from the desk review indicated that Canada and the UK were able withstand uncertainty and fluctuations created by the global COVID-19 pandemic through adopting a proactive stance. They ensured that their respective populations were able to access vaccines through creating actors dedicated to overseeing vaccine specific policy, such as the vaccine task forces, and by adopting a multisectoral response with targeted funding. However, our findings also indicate that both Canada and the UK would have benefitted from more co-ordinated, consistent, and clear vaccine communications. When health policy makers tried to find the “perfect” way to communicate complex, changing information to the public, they tended to sow confusion and mistrust, creating vaccine hesitancy. Communicating evidence and data in widely accessible ways was important for engendering trust in the policies and processes. The believability of vaccine messages depended on the level of trust in who the messenger was. This varied between Canada and the UK and among different population groups, depending on the level of trust that was shown for politicians vs scientists vs public health doctors. Messaging had to be adapted and targeted for different communities, considering cultural and language differences. While community understanding mattered, approaches that explained the evidence and adopted a compassionate approach that emphasized individual benefits, as well as benefits for those close to an individual, were perceived as being more effective over the longer term than emphasizing community benefits to vaccination. In both countries, adopting an approach that was open, responsive, shared information and created autonomy was seen as more effective than handing policies down from a traditional, rigid hierarchy. In the UK, the framing of vaccination policy as “protect the NHS” had the unintended consequence of worsening access to health care in already deprived communities; doctors abandoned routine activities to prioritise the vaccination programme. Funding of “community championship” schemes in the UK was not proactive, undermining the effort needed to keep vaccine acceptance levels high. At the same time, the UK commissioned key studies that were very valuable in informing vaccine schedules, booster programmes and vaccination of pregnant people, among others, including in other countries such as Canada. With trust for the source and spokesperson at the centre of whether an individual would accept vaccine advice, we see a need for investment in public health outreach work that promotes good relationships with, and among, communities that may have low engagement with vaccination and other health care opportunities. Governments need to have transparent policies on vaccine approval processes that lay people can access and understand. Authentic, ethical statements about what vaccines can and cannot deliver need to be conceived and delivered in good faith. Transparency and open dialogue between the government and historically excluded groups must also be ongoing, as the sudden prioritizing of vaccination raised worries and mistrust in some. We suggest that further study is needed to interrogate the role of trust, especially trust in policy actors. Specifically, how can we expand our understanding of who is a trustworthy leader, especially if they are not in health care, the civil service or elected government? Which potentially important community actors are missing from the COVID-19 story? We have seen in this study that religious leaders can be trusted by many, for example, but what about the influence of women on health care action in communities? And at what point do people switch from wanting to do their duty as citizens of a country, to making a vaccine decision about themselves as individuals? We also suggest that health policy makers prioritise the widest possible global sharing of the best, clearest and most up-to-date scientific information about COVID-19 – and whatever virus comes next – to help reduce the mis/disinformation that spreads like wildfire on social media, creates mistrust and limits vaccine uptake. COVID-19 continues to show us that no individual is immune, even if they are vaccinated

A Matter of Trust: Building COVID-19 Vaccine Confidence Among Diverse Communities in Canada and the United Kingdom

COVID-19 infections are over-represented in ethnic minority groups and other deprived communities while low uptake levels for COVID-19 vaccines are observed in the same groups. The uptake of a vaccine depends not only on its perceived safety and effectiveness profile but also on how well vaccination policies are communicated by policy makers and subsequently implemented by practitioners. Scarcity of what was known about COVID-19 and its novel vaccines meant COVID-19 vaccination policies evolved quickly. We analysed how changes in government policies on COVID-19 vaccination in the UK (England) and Canada (Ontario) were communicated and experienced by diverse communities