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Public Hearing (public + hearing)
Selected AbstractsPSYCHOSOCIAL INVESTIGATION OF INDIVIDUAL AND COMMUNITY RESPONSES TO THE EXPERIENCE OF OVINE JOHNE'S DISEASE IN RURAL VICTORIAAUSTRALIAN JOURNAL OF RURAL HEALTH, Issue 2 2004Bernadette Hood Objective: This paper explores the psychosocial outcomes for individuals and communities in rural Victoria who experienced the outbreak of Ovine Johne's Disease (OJD). Design: The study uses a qualitative methodology to analyse the minutes of evidence provided by the inquiry into the control of OJD to identify the psychosocial events, experiences and outcomes associated with the control of this outbreak. The inquiry was undertaken by the Environment and Natural Resources Committee of the Victorian State Government. Setting: Public hearings were undertaken by the committee across several rural Victorian communities and the state capital, Melbourne. Subjects: The transcripts detail 136 submissions from 98 individuals and 23 organisations. Outcome measures: The analysis aimed to provide insight into the impact of the disease on individuals and communities and also to explore the factors individuals perceived as associated with these outcomes. Results: While the paper identifies that aspects of stock loss associated with the outbreak caused substantial emotional and economic distress, for farmers the most significant finding was the impact of the government control program on individuals, families and rural communities. The control program was perceived as having very limited scientific credibility and its implementation was described as heartless, inflexible and authoritarian. Involvement with the program resulted in farmers reporting emotions, such as, trauma, shame, guilt and stigma. Families became discordant and the sense of community within rural townships fragmented. Psychological outcomes of grief, depression and anxiety emerged as prevalent themes within families and communities. Conclusions: These data highlight the need for significant attention to the management of rural disasters, such as, the OJD program. [source] Winning back more than words?THE CANADIAN GEOGRAPHER/LE GEOGRAPHE CANADIEN, Issue 1 2005Power, discourse, quarrying on the Niagara Escarpment This paper explores the controversy and public hearing on the proposed extension of the largest limestone quarry in Canada, operated by Dufferin Aggregates at Milton, Ontario. The quarry constitutes an important source of construction material for the nearby Greater Toronto Area. However, the quarry is protected by the provincial Niagara Escarpment Planning and Development Act and located inside the UNESCO-designated Niagara Escarpment Biosphere Reserve. The proposal has therefore attracted considerable opposition from the public institution charged with its protection, the Niagara Escarpment Commission, as well as environmental groups and local residents. To make sense of the tensions, conflicts and outcome of the Dufferin case, we consult and apply several critical literatures. We see the conflict as part of a transformation of the countryside from a space of production to a space of consumption, where there is a shift in emphasis from resource extractive to scenic and ecological landscape values, and the displacement of productive classes, farmers and workers, in favour of a service class of professionals and retirees. Within this transformation, we identify a ,power geometry' of actor networks of different coalition groups that form allegiances and engage in struggles at different geographic scales. These actor networks operate within the set frames of a dominant development discourse and a popular environmentalist discourse that both include and exclude other ways of seeing and managing the escarpment. Cet article examine la controverse et l'audience publique sur l'aggrandissement projetée de la plus vaste carrière de calcaire au Canada, operée par Dufferin Aggregates à Milton, Ontario. La carrière constitue une source importante de matériaux de construction pour la région métropolitaine de Toronto. Toutefois, cette carrière est non seulement protégée par la loi du développement et de l'aménagment de l'Escarpement du Niagara, mais elle est également située dans la Réserve Biosphère désignée par l'UNESCO. Cette proposition d'aggrandissement de la carrière a donc suscité l'opposition de la Commission de l'Escarpement du Niagara, institution publique désignée pour la protection, ainsi que de certains groupes environnementaux et résidents locaux. Afin d'examiner les tensions, conflits et résultat du cas de la carrière Dufferin, nous avons consulté et appliqué plusieurs littératures critiques. Nous considérons d'abord ce conflit comme faisant partie de la transformation de la campagne d'un site de production en un site de consommation, où l'emphase passe de l'extraction d'une resource à la revalorisation aesthétique et écologique du paysage, accompagnée par le déplacement des classes productives, agriculteurs et ouvriers, en faveur de la classe de services professionnels et retraités. Émergeant de cette transformation, nous identifions une ,géométrie de pouvoir , des réseaux d'acteurs issus de différentes coalitions formant des allégeances et s'engageant dans des formes de résistances à différentes échelles géographiques. Ces réseaux d'acteurs opèrent dans les paramètres d'un discours dominant de développement et d'un discours populaire d'environnementalisme qui tout à la fois inclus et exclus d'autres façons de voir et de gérer l'escarpement. [source] Defining Systems Expertise: Effective Simulation at the Organizational Level,Implications for Patient Safety, Disaster Surge Capacity, and Facilitating the Systems InterfaceACADEMIC EMERGENCY MEDICINE, Issue 11 2008Amy H. Kaji MD Abstract The Institute of Medicine's report "To Err is Human" identified simulation as a means to enhance safety in the medical field, just as flight simulation is used to improve the aviation industry. Yet, while there is evidence that simulation may improve task performance, there is little evidence that simulation actually improves patient outcome. Similarly, simulation is currently used to model teamwork-communication skills for disaster management and critical events, but little research or evidence exists to show that simulation improves disaster response or facilitates intersystem or interagency communication. Simulation ranges from the use of standardized patient encounters to robot-mannequins to computerized virtual environments. As such, the field of simulation covers a broad range of interactions, from patient,physician encounters to that of the interfaces between larger systems and agencies. As part of the 2008 Academic Emergency Medicine Consensus Conference on the Science of Simulation, our group sought to identify key research questions that would inform our understanding of simulation's impact at the organizational level. We combined an online discussion group of emergency physicians, an extensive review of the literature, and a "public hearing" of the questions at the Consensus Conference to establish recommendations. The authors identified the following six research questions: 1) what objective methods and measures may be used to demonstrate that simulator training actually improves patient safety? 2) How can we effectively feedback information from error reporting systems into simulation training and thereby improve patient safety? 3) How can simulator training be used to identify disaster risk and improve disaster response? 4) How can simulation be used to assess and enhance hospital surge capacity? 5) What methods and outcome measures should be used to demonstrate that teamwork simulation training improves disaster response? and 6) How can the interface of systems be simulated? We believe that exploring these key research questions will improve our understanding of how simulation affects patient safety, disaster surge capacity, and intersystem and interagency communication. [source] Cognitive and Social Issues in Emergency Medicine Knowledge Translation: A Research AgendaACADEMIC EMERGENCY MEDICINE, Issue 11 2007Jamie C. Brehaut PhD The individual practitioner is a linchpin in the process of translating new knowledge into practice, particularly in the emergency department, where physician autonomy is high, resources are limited, and decision-making situations are complex. An understanding of the cognitive and social processes that affect knowledge translation (KT) in emergency medicine (EM) is crucial and at present understudied. As part of the 2007 Academic Emergency Medicine Consensus Conference on KT in EM, our group sought to identify key research areas that would inform our understanding of these cognitive and social processes. We combined an online discussion group of interdisciplinary stakeholders, an extensive review of the existing literature, and a "public hearing" of the recommendations at the Consensus Conference to establish relative preference for the recommendations, as well as their relevance and clarity to attendees. We identified five key research areas as follows. 1) What provider-specific barriers/facilitators to the use of new knowledge are relevant in the EM setting? 2) Can social psychological theories of behavior change be used to develop better KT interventions for EM? 3) Can the study of "distributed cognition" suggest new vehicles for KT in the emergency department? 4) Can the concept of dual-process reasoning inform our understanding of the KT process? 5) Can patient-specific, immediate feedback serve as a vehicle for KT in EM? We believe that exploring these key research questions will directly lead to improved KT interventions and to further discussion of the cognitive and social factors impacting KT in EM. [source] Congress, Kissinger, and the Origins of Human Rights DiplomacyDIPLOMATIC HISTORY, Issue 5 2010Barbara Keys The Congressional "human rights insurgency" of 1973,1977 centered on the holding of public hearings to shame countries engaging in human rights abuses and on legislation cutting off aid and trade to violators. Drawing on recently declassified documents, this article shows that the State Department's thoroughly intransigent response to Congressional human rights legislation, particularly Section 502B, was driven by Kissinger alone, against the advice of his closest advisers. Many State Department officials, usually from a mixture of pragmatism and conviction, argued for cooperation with Congress or for taking the initiative on human rights issues. Kissinger's adamant refusal to cooperate left Congress to implement a reactive, punitive, and unilateral approach that would set the human rights agenda long after the Ford administration left office. [source] Monitoring and regulation of marine aquaculture in DenmarkJOURNAL OF APPLIED ICHTHYOLOGY, Issue 4-5 2000P. B. Pedersen Summary Marine fish farming in Denmark is completely dominated by the farming of large rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) of 2,5 kg/piece in net cages or land-based flow-through systems, even though more species are being farmed on a small scale. The Danish production of rainbow trout in sea water reached some 8500 tonnes in 1998, and is unlikely to increase due to new restrictions imposed by the Ministry of Environment and Energy, including a provisional stop for extensions and new establishments. This prohibition was put in force in spite the fact that overall outlets are well below the frame allocated for marine fish farming. Generally, the procedures for obtaining allowances are complicated, involving regional and national institutions as well as public hearings. The procedures are described in this article. [source] On the Tasks of a Population Commission: A 1971 Statement by Donald RumsfeldPOPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 3 2003Article first published online: 20 APR 200 In its most familiar form, analytic assessment of the impact of demographic change on human affairs is the product of a decentralized cottage industry: individual scholars collecting information, thinking about its meaning, testing hypotheses, and publishing their findings. Guidance through the power of the purse and through institutional design that creates and sustains cooperating groups of researchers can impose some order and coherence on such spontaneous activity. But the sum total of the result may lack balance and leave important aspects of relevant issues inadequately explored. Even when research findings are picked up by the media and reach a broader public, the haphazardness of that process helps further to explain why the salience of population change to human welfare and its importance in public policymaking are poorly understood. The syndrome is not unique to the field of population, but the typically long time-lags with which aggregate population change affects economic and social phenomena make it particularly difficult for the topic to claim public attention. A time-tested, if less than fool-proof remedy is the periodic effort to orchestrate a systematic and thorough examination of the causes, consequences, and policy implications of demographic processes. Because the most potent frame for policymaking is the state, the logical primary locus for such stocktaking is at the country level. The Commission on Population Growth and the American Future was a uniquely ambitious enterprise of this sort. The Commission was established by the US Congress in 1970 as a result of a presidential initiative. Along with the work of two earlier British Royal Commissions on population, this US effort, mutatis mutandis, can serve as a model for in-depth examinations conducted at the national level anywhere. Chaired by John D. Rockefeller 3rd, the Commission submitted its final report to President Richard M. Nixon in March 1972. The background studies to the report were published in seven hefty volumes; an index to these volumes was published in 1975. Reproduced below is a statement to the Commission delivered on April 14, 1971 by Donald Rumsfeld, then Counsellor to President Nixon and in charge of the Office of Economic Opportunity. (Currently, Mr. Rumsfeld serves as US Secretary of Defense.) The brief statement articulates with great clarity the objectives of the Commission and the considerations that prompted them. The text originally appeared in Vol. 7 (pp. 1-3) of the Commission's background reports, which contains the statements at public hearings conducted by the Commission. National efforts toward comprehensive scientific reviews of population issues have their analogs at the international level. Especially notable on that score were the preparatory studies presented at the 1954 Rome and 1965 Belgrade world population conferences. The world population conferences that took place in Bucharest in 1974, in Mexico City in 1984, and in Cairo in 1994 were intergovernmental and political rather than scientific and technical meetings, but they also generated a fair amount of prior research. The year 2004 will break the decadal sequence of large-scale international meetings on population, and apart from the quadrennial congresses of the IUSSP, which showcase the voluntary research offerings of its members, none is being planned for the coming years. A partial substitute will be meetings organized by the UN's regional economic and social commissions. The first of these took place in 2002 for the Asia-Pacific region; the meetings for the other regions will be held in 2003-04. The analytic and technical contribution of these meetings, however, is expected to be at best modest. National efforts of the type carried out 30 years ago by the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future would be all the more salutary. [source] | |||||||||||||