Best Practices of Advisory Councils for School-Based Agricultural Education Programs

An advisory council is an organized group of selected business representatives, community members, and school stakeholders who provide input in the planning, development, implementation and evaluation of a school-based agricultural education program. Recommendations and best practices are provided for implementing advisory councils. Written by R. G. Easterly III, D. M. Barry, B. E. Myers, and E. W. Osborne; published by the UF/IFAS Department of Agricultural Education and Communication; 7 pp.

INFORMATION OPENNESS OF PUBLIC ADVISORY COUNCILS IN ST. PETERSBURG: COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF CONDITIONS

Information openness of public advisory councils is an important but underexplored indicator of their role in public policy. It reflects their activities, as well as the feedback mechanisms between citizens and councils. Scholars point out low information quality on federal and regional levels, but the reasons behind that rarely studied, especially from a comparative perspective. This paper attempts to fill in this gap by revealing the conditions leading to greater information openness. The authors choose St. Petersburg as a case and gather a dataset on 46 public councils. The key research method is the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. The framework is built on two expectations: the impact of councils’ autonomy (in website management and general organization) and the role of councils (“intermediary” or “expert”) on information openness.Due to several limitations, the results have not revealed any conditions which can be considered a guarantee for better openness. However, the preliminary conclusion is that the differences in autonomy and roles are important conditions. The autonomy of councils seems to be the most crucial factor. A valuable contribution of this paper is the framework of analysis that can be used for other cases and research strategies.

Demographic Characteristics Among Members of Patient Family Advisory Councils at a Pediatric Health System

Patient Family Advisory Councils (PFACs) are groups of patients, families, and clinical health system leaders collaborating to improve the quality, safety, and experience of care. Best practices encourage PFAC membership to reflect the diversity of the communities served. A cross-sectional survey was conducted from September 2019 to January 2020 collecting demographic characteristics of the members of a pediatric health system's 17 PFACs. Of the 93 respondents (71.5%), notable inequities were racial (4.8% adult PFAC members vs. 17.4% patients were Black) and financial (adult PFAC median annual income was >$100,000 compared to the community median $77,589). The governing family advisory board used this information to codesign interventions to achieve the ideal state of inclusive excellence by identifying barriers for participation for the Black community, recruiting and retaining diverse board members, and continuous monitoring to maintain a diverse board representation.

Federal Advisory Councils Established to Assist Working Caregiving Families

This presentation will describe the legislative charge of two advisory councils established in 2018 through the Recognize, Assist, Include, Support and Engage Family Caregivers Act and the Supporting Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Act to support working family caregivers. The advisory councils are charged with 1) providing recommendations on effective models of family caregiving 2) improving coordination across federal government programs; and 3) identifying, coordinating, and promoting information, resources, and 4) best practices for working grandparents raising grandchildren, while maintaining their own physical, mental, and emotional well-being. The experiences of working family caregivers will be the foundation for these recommendations that are being developed over the next two years to present to Congress. These recommendations will support the development and execution of a national family caregiving strategy.

The Closer, the Better? Comparing Advisory Councils at Different Government Levels

Advisory councils exist at diverse government levels, making them especially appropriate to address the discussion about scaling up participatory institutions, by comparing their differences across different government levels. We analyze the characteristics of advisory councils in Spain, where they are quite similar at the national, regional, and local levels, allowing a controlled comparison of their functioning and results. Results show similarities across territorial levels and also signs of a better performance of the local and regional ones, especially regarding the satisfaction of participants. Relational goods and different understandings of what policy influence means are crucial explanations of these patterns.

“They heard our voice!” patient engagement councils in community-based primary care practices: a participatory action research pilot study

Background Patient engagement could improve the quality of primary care practices. However, we know little about effective patient engagement strategies. We aimed to assess the acceptability and feasibility of embedding advisory councils of clinicians, managers, patients and caregivers to conduct patient-oriented quality improvement projects in primary care practices. Methods Using a participatory action research approach, we conducted our study in two non-academic primary care practices in Quebec City (Canada). Patient-experts (patients trained in research) were involved in study design, council recruitment and meeting facilitation. Advisory councils were each to include patients and/or caregivers, clinicians and managers. Over six meetings, councils would identify quality improvement priorities and plan projects accordingly. We assessed acceptability and feasibility of the councils using non-participant observations, audio-recordings and self-administered questionnaires. We used descriptive analyses, triangulated qualitative data and performed inductive thematic analysis. Results Between December 2017 and June 2018, two advisory councils were formed, each with 11 patients (36% male, mean age 53.8 years), a nurse and a manager practising as a family physician (25% male, mean age 45 years). The six meetings per practice occurred within the study period with a mean of eight patients per meeting. Councils worked on two projects each: the first council on a new information leaflet about clinic organization and operation, and on communications about local public health programs; the second on methods to further engage patients in the practice, and on improving the appointment scheduling system. Median patient satisfaction was 8/10, and 66.7% perceived councils had an impact on practice operations. They considered involvement of a manager, facilitation by patient-experts, and the fostering of mutual respect as key to this impact. Clinicians and managers liked having patients as facilitators and the respect among members. Limiting factors were difficulty focusing on a single feasible project and time constraints. Managers in both practices were committed to pursuing the councils post-study. Conclusion Our results indicated that embedding advisory councils of clinicians, managers, patients and caregivers to conduct patient-oriented quality improvement projects in primary care practices is both acceptable and feasible. Future research should assess its transferability to other clinical contexts.