scholarly journals Promoting health equity through the built environment in Duluth, MN: External Resources and Local Evolution Toward Health in All Policies

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Katrina Korfmacher

Communities, professionals, and researchers recognize that environmental factors contribute to the health inequities experienced by vulnerable populations in the U.S.  These environmental health injustices persist despite well-developed systems for both public health and environmental protection. The root cause of these issues is often “siloed” decision-making by separate health and environmental institutions. Health Impact Assessment (HIA) can be an important tool for bridging these silos to promote health equity at the local level. This raises the question: how can external resources best support local initiatives? This paper examines the interaction between national, state, and non-governmental efforts to promote HIA and local actions to promote healthy and equitable built environment in Duluth, MN. A wide range of local activities in Duluth aimed to alter the long term trends, decision processes, and institutions shaping its built environment. These included integrating health in brownfield redevelopment, local land use plans, food access, and transportation decisions. Technical and financial support from external groups played a key role in developing the community’s capacity to promote health equity across public, private, and non-profit organizations. These multiple streams of action culminated in the mayor’s declaration in 2016 that health and fairness would be adopted as key goals of the city’s new Comprehensive Plan. How did such innovative efforts thrive in a small, post-industrial city with limited resources?  Duluth’s experiences provide insight into how external governmental, funding, academic, and non-profit entities can more effectively, efficiently, and equitably support the evolution of local initiatives

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  

Abstract The effects of health inequalities within and between European countries are widely recognized, and reducing health inequalities is on the agenda of many countries. Despite an increasing concern and awareness on health inequalities, a wide gap exists in Europe in terms of political response. Health is created and lived by people within the settings of their everyday life; where they learn, work, play and love. Healthy urban development has a great potential to reduce health inequalities. Healthy living environments can only be created if sectors other than the health sector are involved. Health in all policies (HiAP) is an approach promoted by WHO since the Ottawa Charta (1986). It acknowledges the need for an integrated approach to health involving different policy fields. The reduction of health inequalities is one core aim. Including HiAP is a smart - and feasible - policy choice and one concrete measure it to use prospective Health Impact Assessment focusing on equity. Working with other government sectors requires an understanding of different mandates and goals, and may involve crossing administrative and budgetary barriers between sectors. Different policy actors and professional disciplines have their own languages and approaches to the problems and opportunities in societal development. For this reason, HiAP needs to promote an understanding of the language, goals and working methods across government sectors. Municipal governments need to build trusting and collaborative relationships both between internal sector silos, and across stakeholders within society. The municipal context offers comprehensive entry points for action. Municipalities seek to provide education throughout the life course, create appropriate conditions for housing as well as for physical activity and healthy eating. Municipalities can also promote the creation of a stable ecosystem. Moreover, a focus on municipalities addresses the local political context, local political regulations and urban or rural planning and development, which are important contributions to improving living conditions. There is valid information on health, health inequalities and its determinants available, but the information is not automatically transformed to concrete policy actions and measures. Besides knowledge, policy implementation requires many other elements to be effective: political will and commitment, collaboration, resources and governance. This session presents current findings and actions in the frame of the EU Joint Action Health Equity Europe (JAHEE). The first contribution includes an analysis of specific governance aspects for healthy living environments that are being addressed in JAHEE: How is the process from needs to decision-making to actions done by the participating 13 countries? After that, 4 examples from the Netherlands, Italy and Spain will describe their needs, governance and tools while implementing local health equity policies in their own context. Key messages The local level is the place where many determinants of health can be shaped and where Health and Equity in all Policies can be realized in an innovative way. There are many existing examples for tools and governance for local health equity policies that can be transferred to other places.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. 3670
Author(s):  
Suraj Lamichhane ◽  
Komal Raj Aryal ◽  
Rocky Talchabhadel ◽  
Bhesh Raj Thapa ◽  
Rabindra Adhikari ◽  
...  

The impacts of multihazards have become more pronounced over the past few decades globally. Multiple hazards and their cascading impacts claim enormous losses of lives, livelihoods, and built environment. This paradigm prompts integrated and multidisciplinary perspectives to identify, characterize, and assess the occurrence of multihazards and subsequently design countermeasures considering impending multihazard scenarios at the local level. To this end, we considered one of the most egregious transboundary watersheds, which is regarded as a multihazard hotspot of Nepal, to analyze the underlying causes and cascade scenarios of multihazards, and their associated impacts. In this paper, geophysical, hydrometeorological, and socioeconomic perspectives are formulated to characterize the watershed from the dimension of susceptibility to multihazard occurrence. To characterize the complex dynamics of transboundary multihazard occurrence, insights have been presented from both the Nepali and the Chinese sides. Individual case studies and the interrelation matrix between various natural hazards are also presented so as to depict multihazard consequences in the transboundary region. The sum of the observations highlights that the watershed is highly vulnerable to a single as well as multiple natural hazards that often switch to disasters.


2014 ◽  
Vol 660 ◽  
pp. 971-975 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohd Norzaim bin Che Ani ◽  
Siti Aisyah Binti Abdul Hamid

Time study is the process of observation which concerned with the determination of the amount of time required to perform a unit of work involves of internal, external and machine time elements. Originally, time study was first starting to be used in Europe since 1760s in manufacturing fields. It is the flexible technique in lean manufacturing and suitable for a wide range of situations. Time study approach that enable of reducing or minimizing ‘non-value added activities’ in the process cycle time which contribute to bottleneck time. The impact on improving process cycle time for organization that it was increasing the productivity and reduce cost. This project paper focusing on time study at selected processes with bottleneck time and identify the possible root cause which was contribute to high time required to perform a unit of work.


2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kareen Nour ◽  
Sarah Dutilly-Simard ◽  
Astrid Brousselle ◽  
Pernelle Smits ◽  
Jean-Marie Buregeya ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Saltus ◽  
Arnaud Chulliat ◽  
Brian Meyer ◽  
Christopher Amante

<p>Magnetic maps depict spatial variations in the Earth’s magnetic field.  These variations occur at a wide range of scales and are produced via a variety of physical processes related to factors including structure and evolution of the Earth’s core field and the geologic distribution of magnetic minerals in the lithosphere.  Mankind has produced magnetic maps for 100’s of years with increasing fidelity and accuracy and there is a general understanding (particularly among the geophysicists who produce and use these maps) of the approximate level of resolution and accuracy of these maps.  However, few magnetic maps, or the digital grids that typically underpin these maps, have been produced with accompanying uncertainty quantification.  When uncertainty is addressed, it is typically a statistical representation at the grid or survey level (e.g., +- 10 nT overall uncertainty based on line crossings for a modern airborne survey) and not at the cell by cell local level.</p><p>As magnetic map data are increasingly used in complex inversions and in combination with other data or constraints (including in machine learning applications), it is increasingly important to have a handle on the uncertainties in these data.  An example of an application with need for detailed uncertainty estimation is the use of magnetic map information for alternative navigation.  In this application data from an onboard magnetometer is compared with previously mapped (or modeled) magnetic variations.  The uncertainty of this previously mapped information has immediate implications for the potential accuracy of navigation.</p><p>We are exploring the factors contributing to magnetic map uncertainty and producing uncertainty estimates for testing using new data collection in previously mapped (or modeled) map areas.  These factors include (but are likely not limited to) vintage and type of measured data, spatial distribution of measured data, expectation of magnetic variability (e.g., geologic or geochemical environment), statistics of redundant measurement, and spatial scale/resolution of the magnetic map or model.  The purpose of this talk is to discuss the overall issue and our initial results and solicit feedback and ideas from the interpretation community.</p>


2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 171-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vojtěch Máca ◽  
Jan Melichar ◽  
Milan Ščasný ◽  
Markéta Braun Kohlová

Abstract Background: Monetized environmental health impact assessments help to better evaluate the environmental burden of a wide range of economic activities. Apart from the limitations and uncertainties in physical and biological science used in such assessments, assumptions taken from economic valuation may also substantially influence subsequent policy-making considerations. Aim: This study attempts to demonstrate the impact of normative policy assumptions on quantified external costs using a case study of recently discussed variants of future coal mining and use of extracted coal in electricity and heat generation in the Czech Republic. Methods: A bottom-up impact-pathway approach is used for quantification of external costs. Several policy perspectives are elaborated for aggregating impacts that differ in geographic coverage and in how valuation of quantified impacts is adjusted in a particular perspective. Results: We find that the fraction of monetized external impacts taken into policy-making considerations may vary according to choice of decision perspective up to a factor of 10. Conclusion: At present there are virtually no hard rules for defining geographical boundaries or adjusting values for a summation of monetized environmental impacts. We, however, stress that any rigorous external cost assessment should, for instance in a separate calculation, take account of impacts occurring beyond country borders.


2021 ◽  
pp. 80-100
Author(s):  
V. M. NOVIKOV

There is a steady trend in the wide range of literature on the study of institutions: the definition of theoretical judgments often does not coincide and is not combined with the definition of general connections and patterns, which leads to ignoring the principle of systematic analysis of socio-economic processes. Indirectly, this means the priority of the random (individual) over the whole and general. Meanwhile, the concept of an institution correlates with the specific content of a phenomenon or process and is supplemented by a generalized and systematic approach. The study of such an urgent problem of the market economy as institutional choice through non-profit organizations requires the extension of the analysis not only to governmental but also to non-governmental structures, which are an element of the whole. In this regard, the article provides a historical overview of the development of nonprofit organizations and charitable activities as a large-scale social phenomenon, which made it possible to draw attention to the possibility of using the experience of past years for the purposeful organization of non-state institutions of charity, including by improving social partnerships. Analysis of the current state of non-profit organizations in Ukraine, despite the growth in their number, shows a decrease in the volume of charitable activities. In recent years, the country has taken certain steps to improve charity. However, this is not enough. The institutional environment for philanthropy needs to be improved. The solution to this problem is possible with the active influence of the state on the management of non-commercial activities. Improving the tools of functioning, financing, as well as increasing attention to the development of statistics in this area of activity is considered relevant. In this regard, the purpose of the article is to identify pressing issues and ways to improve charitable organizations. The solution to this problem is possible with the active influence of the state on the management of non-profit activities. The development of the institutional framework of the nonprofit sector of the economy means the improvement of financial reporting, greater openness of charitable organizations, streamlining of their legal relations, liberalized taxation and strengthened control over the activities of non-profit organizations. The article pays special attention to the problem of accumulation and distribution of charitable funds. The potential of charitable organizations can be expanded by shifting the focus of their regulation away from predominantly corporate to regional administration, which increases the importance of the institution of partnership in the development of charity. The article uses historical and logical methods, which allowed to study the formation and development of non-profit organizations in the evolutionary aspect.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document