Enhancing Australian Mortality Data to Meet Future Health Information Demands

The Australian mortality data are a foundational health dataset which supports research, policy and planning. The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated the need for more timely mortality data that could assist in monitoring direct mortality from the virus as well as indirect mortality due to social and economic societal change. This paper discusses the evolution of mortality data in Australia during the pandemic and looks at emerging opportunities associated with electronic infrastructure such as electronic Medical Certificates of Cause of Death (eMCCDs), ICD-11 and automated coding tools that will form the foundations of a more responsive and comprehensive future mortality dataset.

City Vertical Gardening

The countermeasures taken during the COVID-19 pandemic opened discussions regarding their status as temporal or ephemeral as they designated the positive environmental effects of the COVID-19 anthropause. The necessity to think about city transformation in times of environmental and health crises has revealed a number of digital tools and greening practices that might shape new policy and planning models to affront global challenges. Among these tools, a number of ‘urban acupuncture' activities have revealed the role of greening and gardening in urban spaces and how they assist in tackling challenges of environmental sustainability and city resilience. The authors investigate the contribution of vertical gardening (VG) as urban health enhancer and its prospects within smart city. They select and assess two case studies that integrate synergies between VG and machine learning (ML) approaches in an effort to showcase the tools' combined effect in realizing environmental control. These experiments imply hints for potential future research and implementation to broaden environments.

A Relational Approach to Transforming Power in a Community-University Partnership

We use a relational understanding of power to analyze power dynamics at the institutional and interpersonal levels in our multi-year Co-Education/Co-Research (CORE) partnership between Tufts University Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning (UEP) and Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI). Power in community-university partnerships is often examined only at the institutional level, conceiving of power as a resource to be balanced and shared. Indeed, CORE has advanced institutional shifts through co-governance, equitable funding, co-production of curriculum and cross-flow of people. While institutional policies and practices are critical, they alone do not transform deep-seated hierarchies that value university knowledge, practices and people over community. To understand how intertwined interpersonal and institutional practices can reproduce or transform these cultural and ideological dynamics, we use a relational approach, understanding that power flows in and through all relations. As community members, students and faculty, we reflect on the contradictions we have encountered in CORE. We examine how we reinforce the dominance of academic over community knowledge, even as we leverage institutional power to further community goals. These tensions can be opportunities for shifting, disrupting and transforming towards more equitable relations, but they can also reproduce and reinforce the status quo. Through reflective practice and a relational ethic of care, we can try to recognize when we might be shifting power relations and when we might be reproducing them. This is messy work that requires a lot of communication, trust, reflection and time. A relational approach to power provides hope that we can be part of the change we seek in all of our relations, every day. And it reminds us that no matter what we have institutionalised or encoded, our individual beings, organizations and communities are always in a process of becoming.

Critical Holism as Public Health Theory: Towards A Unifying Framework for Research, Policy and Planning

The wide range of subject matter Public Health (PH) incorporates makes it a synthesizing science that draws upon very many disciplines of the natural, applied and social sciences. The sub-fields of research and application PH, epidemiology, health systems research, policy studies, health education and further sub-fields within each of these, draw from the theories of relevant base disciplines and thereby tend to think in silos rather than make the interlinkages between them. This paper argues for Critical Holism (CH) as an overarching theoretical framework that can provide PH and its sub-fields a unifying structure within which they can locate themselves in relation to each other. Thereby CH would remind PH researchers about attending to interlinkages between elements of a health problem and across problems, their multi-level and multi-dimensional complexity. Policy, planning and implementation require such unifying thought processes in order to ensure coherence between the various elements of PH action for a common objective such as policy formulation for improving the health of populations, health system strengthening, designing of programmes, pandemic response strategies and so on. PH research that generates knowledge to inform these politico-administrative processes, has also to provide them with the comprehensive lens with which to perceive the complexity of health problems, assess the resources at hand and design interventions. The paper presents an outline of what PH research adopting the Critical Holism theoretical frame would look like, as an invitation to further developments of the theoretical frame and its application.

Accessibility in Aotearoa: A Mixed-Methods Study of Low-Emissions Transport Demand in the Greater Wellington Region

<p>Like many nations, Aotearoa New Zealand’s land-use and transport development has prioritised planning for mobility, movement, over accessibility, access. This has contributed to an auto-centric transportation system and a high national road emissions profile. In light of the imminent threat of catastrophic climate change, a low-emissions transport sector transition is needed. Understanding how and why people travel is a critical prerequisite for achieving this shift. Planners and policymakers increasingly recognise that transport demand is fundamentally influenced by the desire for access over movement. An accessibility-based framework aligns with this interpretation and supports analysing personal and contextual drivers of transport demand. Policymakers tasked with promoting a low-emissions transport sector transition are seeking to identify existing low-emissions transport uptake constraints and potential avenues for their improvement. Using a mixed-methods approach, this thesis addresses an existing gap in the literature by analysing low-emissions transport demand in the Greater Wellington Region (GWR), informed by an accessibility-based framework. Survey responses supplied quantitative data on user-based needs, abilities, and attitudes towards GWR low-emissions transport options. Practicality – the degree to which a transport option facilitates access in reasonable time, at reasonable cost, and with reasonable ease – was found to be the strongest predictor of ability to use low-emissions transport. Qualitative data was also collated from stakeholders knowledgeable of transport policy and planning at the local, regional, and central government level. This provided insight into GWR low-emissions transport supply and oversight, as well as the impact of land-use policies, transport policy and funding structures, and governance agendas and capabilities. These findings support augmenting low-emissions transport with an accessibility orientation, but also reveal the challenges of doing so within current governance structures.</p>

Accessibility in Aotearoa: A Mixed-Methods Study of Low-Emissions Transport Demand in the Greater Wellington Region

<p>Like many nations, Aotearoa New Zealand’s land-use and transport development has prioritised planning for mobility, movement, over accessibility, access. This has contributed to an auto-centric transportation system and a high national road emissions profile. In light of the imminent threat of catastrophic climate change, a low-emissions transport sector transition is needed. Understanding how and why people travel is a critical prerequisite for achieving this shift. Planners and policymakers increasingly recognise that transport demand is fundamentally influenced by the desire for access over movement. An accessibility-based framework aligns with this interpretation and supports analysing personal and contextual drivers of transport demand. Policymakers tasked with promoting a low-emissions transport sector transition are seeking to identify existing low-emissions transport uptake constraints and potential avenues for their improvement. Using a mixed-methods approach, this thesis addresses an existing gap in the literature by analysing low-emissions transport demand in the Greater Wellington Region (GWR), informed by an accessibility-based framework. Survey responses supplied quantitative data on user-based needs, abilities, and attitudes towards GWR low-emissions transport options. Practicality – the degree to which a transport option facilitates access in reasonable time, at reasonable cost, and with reasonable ease – was found to be the strongest predictor of ability to use low-emissions transport. Qualitative data was also collated from stakeholders knowledgeable of transport policy and planning at the local, regional, and central government level. This provided insight into GWR low-emissions transport supply and oversight, as well as the impact of land-use policies, transport policy and funding structures, and governance agendas and capabilities. These findings support augmenting low-emissions transport with an accessibility orientation, but also reveal the challenges of doing so within current governance structures.</p>

Language Policy, Language Practices and Language Shift in Tabriz

<p>This thesis examines how Azeri, a minority language with the largest number of speakers in Iran, is marginalized by de facto monolingual language policies of the state favoring Farsi, the only official language, over Azeri in the three selected domains. The research provides insights into how family language policies, i.e. attitudes, ideologies and practices in the home, are influenced by macro policies of multilingual nation-states, leading to language maintenance/shift among minority groups. The investigation adopted and integrated a number of complementary theoretical frameworks and paradigms. An ecology of language paradigm (Haugen, 1972; Hornberger & Hult, 2008; Mühlhäusler, 1996) was used to situate the research within a broader sociopolitical, historical and economic context. The ethnolinguistic vitality model (Giles, Bourhis, & Taylor, 1977), and language policy and planning (LPP) frameworks proposed by Shohamy (2006) and Lo Bianco (2005, 2008c, 2012a; 2013) were utilized to explore the complex interaction between macro level LPP activities and micro level attitudes and practices. The integrated model demonstrates how language policies implemented within state-run domains and institutions produce particular Discourses. The proposed framework further illustrates how such Discourses may influence people at the grass roots level which in turn could lead to language maintenance/shift in different communities and groups. The data base for the study comprised two phases: the first phase involved ethnographic observations of the public sphere (linguistic landscape data), language use in the home (three case studies), and the local channel for Azeris (media data), interviews with fifty children, and authorities of ten kindergartens and preschools. A focus-group interview was also conducted in this phase to assist with designing an attitude questionnaire which was administered in the second phase to 150 parents of young children. The empirical data suggests that family language policies among Azeris in Tabriz are constantly and increasingly influenced by monolingual policies of the state. The institutionalization and legitimization of Farsi through de facto LPP activities has resulted in formation of uncommitted, if not negative, attitudes among Azeri parents regarding their ethnic language. The analysis shows how a Farsi-only education system cajoles kindergarten principals into favoring Farsi over Azeri, leading them to suggest that parents and children speak Farsi in the home to ease their integration into the education system. The linguistic landscape data demonstrates the absence of Azeri both in top-down governmental and private individual signage indicating its low status compared to Farsi and English, the two prevalent languages in public signage in Tabriz. Exploring the broadcasting media suggests Azeris' inclination towards Farsi, and then in a second place, Turkish channels. As a result, having attracted only one percent of Azeri audience, the only available channel provided by the government for Azeris, Sahand TV, provides arguably no institutional support for Azeri. The findings suggest that although family members may be viewed as free agents to choose a particular language to speak in the home, in reality such choices are highly constrained by the ecology surrounding the home which is shaped by LPP decisions and activities. Overall, this thesis sheds light on the complex nature of language policy and planning in multilingual nation-states, and how they impact on language maintenance/shift processes among minority groups, whilst also illuminating how language ecologies are manipulated by nation-states to achieve particular non-linguistic goals.</p>

Language Policy, Language Practices and Language Shift in Tabriz

<p>This thesis examines how Azeri, a minority language with the largest number of speakers in Iran, is marginalized by de facto monolingual language policies of the state favoring Farsi, the only official language, over Azeri in the three selected domains. The research provides insights into how family language policies, i.e. attitudes, ideologies and practices in the home, are influenced by macro policies of multilingual nation-states, leading to language maintenance/shift among minority groups. The investigation adopted and integrated a number of complementary theoretical frameworks and paradigms. An ecology of language paradigm (Haugen, 1972; Hornberger & Hult, 2008; Mühlhäusler, 1996) was used to situate the research within a broader sociopolitical, historical and economic context. The ethnolinguistic vitality model (Giles, Bourhis, & Taylor, 1977), and language policy and planning (LPP) frameworks proposed by Shohamy (2006) and Lo Bianco (2005, 2008c, 2012a; 2013) were utilized to explore the complex interaction between macro level LPP activities and micro level attitudes and practices. The integrated model demonstrates how language policies implemented within state-run domains and institutions produce particular Discourses. The proposed framework further illustrates how such Discourses may influence people at the grass roots level which in turn could lead to language maintenance/shift in different communities and groups. The data base for the study comprised two phases: the first phase involved ethnographic observations of the public sphere (linguistic landscape data), language use in the home (three case studies), and the local channel for Azeris (media data), interviews with fifty children, and authorities of ten kindergartens and preschools. A focus-group interview was also conducted in this phase to assist with designing an attitude questionnaire which was administered in the second phase to 150 parents of young children. The empirical data suggests that family language policies among Azeris in Tabriz are constantly and increasingly influenced by monolingual policies of the state. The institutionalization and legitimization of Farsi through de facto LPP activities has resulted in formation of uncommitted, if not negative, attitudes among Azeri parents regarding their ethnic language. The analysis shows how a Farsi-only education system cajoles kindergarten principals into favoring Farsi over Azeri, leading them to suggest that parents and children speak Farsi in the home to ease their integration into the education system. The linguistic landscape data demonstrates the absence of Azeri both in top-down governmental and private individual signage indicating its low status compared to Farsi and English, the two prevalent languages in public signage in Tabriz. Exploring the broadcasting media suggests Azeris' inclination towards Farsi, and then in a second place, Turkish channels. As a result, having attracted only one percent of Azeri audience, the only available channel provided by the government for Azeris, Sahand TV, provides arguably no institutional support for Azeri. The findings suggest that although family members may be viewed as free agents to choose a particular language to speak in the home, in reality such choices are highly constrained by the ecology surrounding the home which is shaped by LPP decisions and activities. Overall, this thesis sheds light on the complex nature of language policy and planning in multilingual nation-states, and how they impact on language maintenance/shift processes among minority groups, whilst also illuminating how language ecologies are manipulated by nation-states to achieve particular non-linguistic goals.</p>