scholarly journals Developing Information Technologies to Promote Dementia e-Friendly Communities for COVID-19 and Beyond

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 642-643
Author(s):  
Nicole Ruggiano ◽  
Yan Luo ◽  
Amy Hurd ◽  
Kristen Lawlor ◽  
Monica Anderson ◽  
...  

Abstract People living with dementia (PLWD) and their caregivers often face barriers to education, support, and services that can improve their health and quality of life. Information technology (IT) has been suggested as a solution to overcoming such barriers, though the development of evidence-based IT for dementia care is still developing. This project gathered stakeholder (e.g., providers, caregivers) perspectives on the development of a proposed IT solution to support community asset mapping that would allow families to self-assess their dementia-related service needs, educate them about available services, and link them with services they need in their community. This proposed IT would create a dementia resource database that relies on crowdsourced data from community stakeholders as well as relevant data mined from existing sources (e.g., CMS certified nursing home data). As part of the planning process, this project conducted qualitative interviews with providers and caregivers in four metro areas in Alabama and their surrounding rural communities to learn more about the content and features that stakeholders perceive as being most effective for the proposed technology. Stakeholders also discussed their experience of utilizing IT solutions during the COVID-19 pandemic to promote access and continuum of care when barriers to service intensified. Thematic findings provide detail on: 1) motivating factors among stakeholders to contribute crowdsourced data that support community members affected by dementia; 2) potential barriers to implementing IT for dementia support, based on experiences with IT use during COVID-19; and 3) how stakeholders envision IT to better connect community members with needed services.

Author(s):  
Catherine Hannula ◽  
Jennifer Barth

Despite the rich histories of rural communities in northern Wisconsin, accessibility to professional archivists is limited at best. The North Woods Tour project in Wisconsin focused on empowering local residents to preserve historical materials themselves, by teaching them basic archival methods relating to a variety of formats through personal archiving workshops. Led by Amy Sloper, head archivist at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, three Wisconsin archivists created and implemented the project, visiting three rural northern Wisconsin communities and working with 30 local community members. This report examines their planning process and attendee response. Additionally, it argues that, in some cases, materials might be best preserved within the context of their creation.


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Olayemi Bakre ◽  
Nirmala Dorasamy

Poor service delivery has always been considered a legacy of the apartheid era. However, 25 years into democracy, many local municipalities are still battling with service delivery backlogs. These backlogs are often attributed to, for example, dysfunctional ward committees, corruption amongst councillors, exclusion of community members in the planning process, failure to prioritise community needs, and institutional capacity issues. These challenges have undermined municipalities’ provision of quality service delivery and have precipitated service delivery protests. This article argues that community participation, which has been identified as a factor that can mitigate the aforementioned challenges, can be pivotal in the provision of effective and efficient services by municipalities. The relationship between community inclusion and service delivery outcomes is not simplistic, but depend upon a combination of proactive and highly skilled leaders and a cooperative and supportive populace. In this article, we identify the modes for successful participation and also the consequences of community exclusion through textual analysis of pertinent sources. We argue that such participation can only be successful and sustainable if it is reinforced by support from local government in the form of community training and capacity development workshops to exchange and instil new ideas as well as by resource allocation.


Author(s):  
Shilo St. Cyr ◽  
Elise Trott Jaramillo ◽  
Laura Garrison ◽  
Lorraine Halinka Malcoe ◽  
Stephen R. Shamblen ◽  
...  

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a common feature in the lives of incarcerated women returning to rural communities, enhancing their risk of mental ill-health, substance use, and recidivism. Women’s experiences of IPV intersect with challenges across multiple social–ecological levels, including risky or criminalizing interpersonal relationships, geographic isolation, and persistent gender, racial, and economic inequities. We conducted quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews with 99 incarcerated women in New Mexico who were scheduled to return to micropolitan or non-core areas within 6 months. Quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed separately and then triangulated to identify convergences and divergences in data. The findings underscore how individual and interpersonal experiences of IPV, substance use, and psychological distress intersect with broad social inequities, such as poverty, lack of supportive resources, and reluctance to seek help due to experiences of discrimination. These results point to the need for a more proactive response to the mutually constitutive cycle of IPV, mental distress, incarceration, and structures of violence to improve reentry for women returning to rural communities. Policy and treatment must prioritize socioeconomic marginalization and expand community resources with attention to the needs of rural women of color.


2020 ◽  
pp. 107780122095426
Author(s):  
Ijeoma Nwabuzor Ogbonnaya ◽  
Olufunmilayo Ibitola Fawole ◽  
Cynthia Fraga Rizo

We investigated 13 domestic violence (DV) and sexual assault agency directors’ perspectives regarding Nigerian immigrants’ experiences of violence, DV-related service needs, and best strategies for providing those needs. Directors across five U.S. states were surveyed. Descriptive analyses showed the most common DV types were controlling behavior and cultural/traditional. The most important DV support needs were informational, informal, and legal. Formal support from DV agencies, support groups, and law enforcement was rated the most helpful strategies. Participants wanted to learn more about Nigerian immigrants’ DV experiences. Findings highlight implications for the development of Nigerian-specific DV services.


2020 ◽  
pp. 146879412097888
Author(s):  
Rachel Creaney ◽  
Mags Currie ◽  
Paul Teedon ◽  
Karin Helwig

This project employed community researchers as a means of improving community engagement around their Private Water Supplies (PWS) in rural Scotland. In this paper, we reflect on working with community researchers in terms of the benefits and challenges of the approach for future rural research that seeks to improve community engagement. The paper (1) critiques the involvement of community researchers for rural community engagement, drawing on the experiences in this project and (2) provides suggestions for good practice for working with community researchers in rural communities’ research. We offer some context in terms of the role of community members in research, the importance of PWS, our approach to community researchers, followed by the methodological approach and findings and our conclusions to highlight that community researchers can be beneficial for enhancing community engagement, employability, and social capital. Future community researcher approaches need to be fully funded to ensure core researchers can fulfil their duty of care, which should not stop when data collection is finished. Community researchers need to be supported in two main ways: as continuing faces of the project after the official project end date and to transfer their newly acquired skills to future employment opportunities.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 102-102
Author(s):  
Alice Prendergast ◽  
Kristi Fuller

Abstract Efforts to include community voice in health policy and service planning are gaining recognition and support in the United States. Findings suggest community involvement can contribute to a better understanding of systems and factors that impact health, and, subsequently, more effective and sustainable policy and program design. Additionally, engagement can increase community buy-in, and community members can gain a greater awareness of services; increased confidence navigating systems; feelings of social connectedness; and capacity to advocate around issues through participation. Despite these findings, the extent to which community members are engaged in planning and decision-making varies considerably. Researchers from Georgia State University conducted a review of state plans on aging using the Person-Centered Outcomes Research Initiative (PCORI) Engagement Principles and the Health Research & Educational Trust’s Community and Patient Engagement Spectrum as frameworks to assess evidence of community engagement. The frameworks recognize engagement throughout the planning process, including design, data collection and interpretation, and dissemination. The review revealed that few planning processes described significant engagement, but rather met the minimal requirements established by federal policy. Federal guidance on community-informed planning practices is sparse, as are resources to support states in adopting these processes. To address this gap, the research team drew on the frameworks and other promising practices to design two community engagement projects, both in partnership with Georgia’s Division of Aging Services. Methods for participant engagement, data collection, interpretation and application of results, and lessons learned through both projects will be discussed, as well as potential implications.


2022 ◽  
pp. 088626052110675
Author(s):  
Alexa Sardina ◽  
Nicole Fox

Over the past two decades, America taken part of a broader global trend of “memorial mania” in which memorials dedicated to remembering injustice have exploded into public space. Memorials that facilitate the centering of marginalized narratives of violence hold significant power for social change. This article focuses on one such space: The Survivors Memorial in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Survivors Memorial opened in October 2020 and is the first public memorial honoring survivors of sexual violence. Despite the progress of the anti-rape and feminist movements as well as a variety of legal interventions designed to address sexual violence and empower, many survivors are left without a sense of justice or institutional or community recognition. Drawing on 21 in-depth, qualitative interviews with individuals involved in all aspects of the memorial project, this article documents how one community mobilized to create a space for survivors whose voices are often overlooked, disbelieved and silenced by the criminal justice system, practitioners, and communities. In focusing on how participants narrate the significance and meaning of the Survivors Memorial, this article uncovers how social, political, and local circumstances coalesced to make the Memorial possible. These factors include local leadership, the prevalence of sexual violence, the unique structure of the Minneapolis park structure, and the rise of the #MeToo movement. Interviews illuminate that participants worked to intentionally construct the Memorial as an accessible and visible space that centers on providing all sexual violence survivors with public acknowledgment of their experiences, while simultaneously engaging community members in dialogs about sexual violence, ultimately, laying the foundation for sexual violence prevention efforts.


2015 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 345-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Sunday Grove

In December 2010, HarassMap was launched as a Cairo-based interactive online mapping interface for reporting and mapping incidents of sexual harassment anonymously and in real time, in Egypt. The project’s use of spatial information technologies for crowdmapping sexual harassment raises important questions about the use of crowdsourced mapping as a technique of global human security governance, as well as the techno-politics of interpreting and representing spaces of gendered security and insecurity in Egypt’s urban streetscape. By recoding Egypt’s urban landscape into spaces subordinated to the visual cartography of the project’s crowdsourced data, HarassMap obscures the complex assemblage that it draws together as the differentially open space of the Egyptian street – spaces that are territorialized and deterritorialized for authoritarian control, state violence, revolt, rape, new solidarities, gender reversals, sectarian tensions, and class-based mobilization. What is at stake in my analysis is the plasticity of victimage: to what extent can attempts to ‘empower’ women be pursued at the microlevel without amplifying the similarly imperial techniques of objectifying them as resources used to justify other forms of state violence? The question requires taking seriously the practices of mapping and targeting as an interface for securing public space.


Author(s):  
Barano Siswa Sulistyawan ◽  
Budy P. Resosudarmo ◽  
Rene W. Verburg ◽  
Pita Verweij ◽  
Mia Amalia ◽  
...  

AbstractThe context of daily household needs of rural communities, particularly the needs for water, often remains insufficiently considered in tropical forest management as it is facing an important decision-making trade-off between profit and preservation. We conducted a choice experiment study to elicit preferences of the rural community members in Central Sumatra, Indonesia, who perpetually depend on the ecosystem services of tropical forests. To inform a spatial planning policy for the protected forest, we focus on the valuation of water services in the protected forest area of Bukit Batabuh where the surrounding communities living rely on upstream watershed and water storage management. We find that those communities have a strict preference for improving forest water provisioning services, compared to the current situation (status quo), with the estimated aggregate benefit of non-commercial use ranging between USD 2.71 million and USD 2.47 million per year for each of the options of (1) maintaining and enhancing water storage, (2) rehabilitating forest in the upper watershed or (3) restoring the riparian forest. This study also identifies preference attributes, such as water storage capacity, water scarcity and water turbidity which can be used in other tropical landscape contexts in Indonesia and beyond.


BMJ Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. e052545
Author(s):  
Michelle Kennedy ◽  
Ratika Kumar ◽  
Nicole M Ryan ◽  
Jessica Bennett ◽  
Gina La Hera Fuentes ◽  
...  

ObjectiveDescribe the development and pretest of a prototype multibehavioural change app MAMA-EMPOWER.DesignMixed-methods study reporting three phases: (1) contextual enquiry included stakeholder engagement and qualitative interviews with Aboriginal women, (2) value specification included user-workshop with an Aboriginal researcher, community members and experts, (3) codesign with Aboriginal researchers and community members, followed by a pretest of the app with Aboriginal women, and feedback from qualitative interviews and the user-Mobile Application Rating Scale (U-MARS) survey tool.SettingsAboriginal women and communities in urban and regional New South Wales, Australia.ParticipantsPhase 1: interviews, 8 Aboriginal women. Phase 2: workshop, 6 Aboriginal women. Phase 3: app trial, 16 Aboriginal women. U-MARS, 5 Aboriginal women.ResultsPhase 1 interviews revealed three themes: current app use, desired app characteristics and implementation. Phase 2 workshop provided guidance for the user experience. Phase 3 app trial assessed all content areas. The highest ratings were for information (mean score of 3.80 out of 5, SD=0.77) and aesthetics (mean score of 3.87 with SD of 0.74), while functionality, engagement and subjective quality had lower scores. Qualitative interviews revealed the acceptability of the app, however, functionality was problematic.ConclusionsDeveloping a mobile phone app, particularly in an Aboriginal community setting, requires extensive consultation, negotiation and design work. Using a strong theoretical foundation of behavioural change technique’s coupled with the consultative approach has added rigour to this process. Using phone apps to implement behavioural interventions in Aboriginal community settings remains a new area for investigation. In the next iteration of the app, we aim to find better ways to personalise the content to women’s needs, then ensure full functionality before conducting a larger trial. We predict the process of development will be of interest to other health researchers and practitioners.


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