scholarly journals Advancing Breast Cancer Advocacy in Eastern Europe and Central Asia: Findings From Women’s Empowerment Cancer Advocacy Network (WE CAN) Summits

2021 ◽  
pp. 585-592
Author(s):  
Nicoleta Antone ◽  
Darya Kizub ◽  
Julie Gralow ◽  
Jo Anne Zujewski ◽  
Allison Dvaladze

PURPOSE Breast cancer civil society organizations have emerged in Eastern Europe and Central Asia to raise awareness about cancer as a survivable disease and provide patient support. We explored the experiences and priorities of these organizations with the goal of making recommendations to advance cancer advocacy and improve cancer care. METHODS We conducted in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with representatives of civil society organizations attending the 7th Women’s Empowerment Cancer Advocacy Network Summit in Romania in 2015. Interviews were audiorecorded, transcribed, coded, and analyzed for key themes. Findings were discussed at the 8th Women’s Empowerment Cancer Advocacy Network Summit in Ukraine in 2017 to ensure accuracy. RESULTS We conducted nine in-depth interviews and three focus group discussions with a total of 36 participants. Survivor- and oncologist-led organizations played an important role in filling existing gaps in public health care systems through awareness raising, patient support, and advocacy to improve early detection and access to treatment. Barriers to these efforts included persistent stigma, mistrust of patients toward the public health care system, limited access to evidence-based guidelines, difficulty adapting existing best practices to their setting, and insufficient involvement of policymakers. Key facilitators of advocacy efforts included effective local and international partnerships with physicians, like-minded organizations, and policymakers to facilitate access to educational resources, improve breast cancer early detection and care, and catalyze meaningful policy change. CONCLUSION Our findings highlight the value of providing opportunities for advocates to connect and share experiences. To advance cancer advocacy and improve cancer care, the following needs were identified: dissemination of resource-adapted information for improving outcomes; needs assessments; improved program-monitoring practices; and fostering and promotion of collaboration between advocates, medical professionals, and local governments.

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 64-95
Author(s):  
Nsemba Edward Lenshie ◽  
Patience Kondu Jacob

The relationship between Fulani herdsmen and farmers has in recent years become hot-tempered motivated by competitive control of land resources, particularly in central and north-east Nigeria. In Taraba State, the ongoing nomadic migration pattern from the Sahel in quest of pastures has led to violent confrontation between Fulani herdsmen and farming indigenous natives. Using a descriptive approach consisting of documented evidence, in-depth interviews, and focus group discussions, the analysis revealed that conflicts between Fulani herdsmen and indigenous native farmers have culminated in population displacement and destruction of life and property in numerous rural enclaves in Taraba State. Despite the consequences of the conflicts, the Taraba State government was unable to act proactively because of the centralization of command over Nigerian security agencies. Accordingly, the study suggests decentralization of security agencies in Nigeria, especially the police, as the way forward for effective security governance in Nigeria.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. e000822
Author(s):  
Robert C Hughes ◽  
Patricia Kitsao-Wekulo ◽  
Sunil Bhopal ◽  
Elizabeth W Kimani-Murage ◽  
Zelee Hill ◽  
...  

IntroductionThe early years are critical. Early nurturing care can lay the foundation for human capital accumulation with lifelong benefits. Conversely, early adversity undermines brain development, learning and future earning.Slums are among the most challenging places to spend those early years and are difficult places to care for a child. Shifting family and work structures mean that paid, largely informal, childcare seems to be becoming the ‘new normal’ for many preschool children growing up in rapidly urbanising Africa. However, little is known about the quality of this childcare.AimsTo build a rigorous understanding what childcare strategies are used and why in a typical Nairobi slum, with a particular focus on provision and quality of paid childcare. Through this, to inform evaluation of quality and design and implementation of interventions with the potential to reach some of the most vulnerable children at the most critical time in the life course.Methods and analysisMixed methods will be employed. Qualitative research (in-depth interviews and focus group discussions) with parents/carers will explore need for and decision-making about childcare. A household survey (of 480 households) will estimate the use of different childcare strategies by parents/carers and associated parent/carer characteristics. Subsequently, childcare providers will be mapped and surveyed to document and assess quality of current paid childcare. Semistructured observations will augment self-reported quality with observable characteristics/practices. Finally, in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with childcare providers will explore their behaviours and motivations. Qualitative data will be analysed through thematic analysis and triangulation across methods. Quantitative and spatial data will be analysed through epidemiological methods (random effects regression modelling and spatial statistics).Ethics and disseminationEthical approval has been granted in the UK and Kenya. Findings will be disseminated through journal publications, community and government stakeholder workshops, policy briefs and social media content.


2020 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 321-338
Author(s):  
Justice Richard Kwabena Owusu Kyei ◽  
Lidewyde H. Berckmoes

Literature on political vigilante groups has centred on the violence and conflict that emanate from their activities. This article approaches political vigilante groups as political actors who engage in political mobilisation and participation and therewith also contribute to nation state building. It explores how such groups participate in Ghana’s democratic governance and asks whether violence is an inevitable characteristic. The article builds on individual in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with political vigilante group members in Kumasi and Tamale in 2019. Findings show that political vigilante “youth” appeared to refer primarily to the social position attributed to non-elite groups in the political field. Political vigilante groups are multi-faceted in their organisational structures, membership, and activities both during electoral campaigns and during governing periods. While some groups revert to violence occasionally, the study concludes that political vigilante groups, in enabling different voices to be heard, are also contributing to democratic governance.


2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 983-998
Author(s):  
L’Emira Lama El Ayoubi ◽  
Sawsan Abdulrahim ◽  
Maia Sieverding

Providing adolescent girls with sexual and reproductive health (SRH) information protects them from risks and improves their well-being. This qualitative study, conducted in Lebanon, examined Syrian refugee adolescent girls’ access to SRH information about and experiences with puberty and menarche, sex, marriage, contraception, and pregnancy. We gathered data through three focus group discussions (FGDs) with unmarried adolescent girls, 11 in-depth interviews with early-married adolescents, and two FGDs with mothers. Our findings highlighted that adolescent participants received inadequate SRH information shortly before or at the time of menarche and sexual initiation, resulting in experiences characterized by anxiety and fear. They also revealed discordance between girls’ views of mothers as a preferred source of information and mothers’ reluctance to communicate with their daughters about SRH. We advance that mothers are important entry points for future interventions in this refugee population and offer recommendations aimed to improve adolescent girls’ SRH and rights.


Human Affairs ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Olayinka Akanle ◽  
Olanrewau Olutayo

AbstractUnderstanding the selves, situations and actions of Africans can never be comprehended outside kinship. Local and foreign worldviews are first pigeonholed into culture and defined within kinship realities in Nigeria and Africa. There have been studies on kinship in Africa. However, the findings from such studies portrayed the immutability of African kinship. Thus, as an important contribution to the on-going engagement of kinship in the twenty-first century as an interface between the contemporary Diaspora, this article engaged kinship within international migration. This is a major behavioural and socio-economic force in Nigeria. Methodological triangulation was adopted as part of the research design and primary data were collected through in-depth interviews (IDIs), and life histories of international migrants were documented and focus group discussions (FGDs) were held with kin of returnees. The article found and concluded that while returnees continued to appreciate local kinship infrastructures, the infrastructures were liable to reconstruction primarily determined by dominant support situations in the traditional African kinship networks.


Author(s):  
Joyce Ayikoru Asiimwe

This paper communicates the results of a diagnostic evaluation of the performance of boys and girls in physical sciences at Ordinary level in Uganda after the adoption of the compulsory science policy. The objectives of the study were twofold: to examine the academic performance of boys and girls in the Uganda National Examinations from 2007 to 2010, and to highlight key factors that continue to influence the achievement of students, especially girls in sciences. Data was obtained from five co-educational secondary schools using documentary reviews, in-depth interviews and focus group discussions. The results revealed that the performance of both boys and girls have further declined after the implementation of the compulsory science policy. However, in comparison to the boys, girls in co-educational schools were still more likely to be among the poorest performers in sciences. This was attributed to a number of factors, key among them being girls' self-concept in sciences, and teachers' perception of girls' abilities in sciences. These findings reiterate the need to mainstream gender into both policy design and implementation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 80 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-60
Author(s):  
Justin Raycraft

This paper addresses how Makonde Muslim villagers living on the Swahili coast of southern Tanzania conceptualize and discuss environmental change. Through narratives elicited during in-depth interviews and focus group discussions, I show that respondents associate various forms of environmental change—ecological, climatic, political, and socioeconomic—with God’s plan. Respondents had a sound grasp of the material workings of their lived realities and evoked religious causality to fill in the residual explanatory gaps and find meaning in events that were otherwise difficult to explain. Such narratives reveal both a culturally engrained belief system that colors people’s understandings of change and uncertainty and a discursive idiom for making sense of social suffering. On an applied note, I submit that social science approaches to studying environmental change must take into account political and economic contexts relative to local cosmologies, worldviews, and religious faiths, which may not disaggregate the environment into distinct representational categories.


2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2_suppl) ◽  
pp. S25-S43
Author(s):  
Unnikrishnan K Nair ◽  
Keyoor Purani

Kalpak Healthcare Limited (KHL), a large pharmaceutical company in the southern part of India, once faced severe sales force turnover in its Life Branded Medications SBU, popularly called the Branded SBU (B-SBU). It became an issue of highest concern to the top management of KHL; so they appointed a team of consultants from a premier management school in the region to study the issue and recommend possible solutions and strategies. Over a period of 6 months, the consultants conducted extensive research—studying internal company records, analysing the industry and external environment, gathering qualitative data through in-depth interviews (DIs) and focus group discussions (FGDs) among KHL employees and executing a division-wide quantitative survey labelled as Manpower Mood Meter (M3) among the field executives—and finally came up with recommendations. The case is organized as two independent, successive ones—A and B. Case (A) describes the consultants’ engagement with KHL and ends with them pondering over the types of analyses to be done with the huge volume of data they had collected. Case (B) details the kinds of analyses they actually do and the inferences they draw. The set of recommendations the consultants finally make to the KHL top management is given in the epilogue of the teaching note. The critical value of this case lies in its ability to open up the students’ minds to the dynamic interplay of multiple factors—individual, managerial, organizational, industrial-contextual and historical—that holistically affect a phenomenon like ‘attrition’ in organizations. This could perhaps also be one of those rare cases that makes use of the principles of System Dynamics in a real, applied and combined context of marketing and human resource (HR) management.


2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Muslimah Muslimah ◽  
Dian Ayubi

Measles and Rubella (MR) is a disease that is highly contagious and usually occurs in children aged 9 months until the age of 15 years. One effort that can be done to reduce the incidence of the disease is through health promotion about the importance of immunization. Purpose the promotion was packaged in the form of advertisements on electronic media with the aim of building perceptions that the importance of immunization for public health. Methods this research was a qualitative study with a method of collecting in-depth interviews and focus group discussions. The number of informants in this study was 19 mothers who had children aged 0.9 to 15 years in one of the Puskesmas work areas in Merangin District, Jambi Province. Before the data collection process, all informants were asked to see two MR immunization advertisements. Results that immunization advertisements are interesting and contain humor. Meanwhile, informants who did not give MR immunization to their children tended to be negative towards MR immunization advertisements and tended to ignore the effects that arose if they did not give immunizations to their children. The recommendation that MR immunization advertisements should avoid using the fear arousal method and use the pay off idea method in those ads


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-80
Author(s):  
Cau Kim Jiu ◽  
Somporn Rungreangkulkij

The condition of families with autistic children raises many views and judgments both from family and society. This ethnographic study aimed to describe the meaning of families and communities towards families with autistic children. Data were collected through focus group discussions and in-depth interviews. Key informants come from families who have autistic children and community members recruited by purposive sampling, while the data were analyzed using thematic analysis. This study results generate  two categories of perception of the meaning of having autistic children.  The first category was made by the families which comprises four themes such as 1) A test from God, 2) Destiny of God, 3) Autistic children different with other children, and 4) Children who need intensive helping. The second category was the perception made by the community members which consists of two themes, such as 1) Test for family, and 2) An autistic child as a holy child. This study further shows that  culture is believed to determine how families and the members of the community perceive and interpret the existence of autistic children in the families so that it is very important for health workers to understand the culture that exists in the community.


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