In this article, we provide a description of the good in health promotion based on an empirical study of health promotion practices in New South Wales, the most populous state in Australia. We found that practitioners were unified by a vision of the good in health promotion that had substantive and procedural dimensions. Substantively, the good in health promotion was teleological: it inhered in meliorism, an intention to promote health, which was understood holistically and situated in places and environments, a (...) commitment to primary rather than secondary prevention and engagement with communities more than individuals. Procedurally, the good in health promotion arose from qualities of practices that they developed over time in respectful relationships, were flexible and responsive to communities, built capabilities in communities and were sustainable. We discuss our findings with reference to Martha Nussbaum’s normative list of functional capabilities for a good human life, David Buchanan’s vision for health promotion ethics and common concerns in health promotion ethics regarding the relationship between paternalism and freedom. Our thick, vague conception of the good in health promotion, founded in the values and practical reason of people engaged daily in health promotion work, contributes to the development of a more complete theory of health promotion ethics. (shrink)

Biotechnology increases commercialization of food production, which competes with food for home use. Most people in the world grow their own food, and are more secure without the mediation of the market. To the extent that biotechnology enhances market competitiveness, world food security will decrease. This instability will result in a greater gap between rich and poor, increasing poverty of women and children, less ability and incentive to protect the environment, and greater need for militarization to maintain order. Therefore, biotechnology (...) should be discouraged. An active program to protect and strengthen local food production and to decrease reliance on industrial agriculture should be promoted. (shrink)

Franck L. B. Meijboom: Problems of Trust: A Question of Trustworthiness Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s10806-010-9300-4 Authors Martha L. Henderson, Master of Environmental Studies Program, The Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA 98505, USA Journal Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics Online ISSN 1573-322X Print ISSN 1187-7863.

Our goal in this article is to provide research-based strategies for embedding Nature of Science into science instruction at the elementary level. We thus intend to aid researchers, professional developers, and teachers in noting that not only is it important and possible to teach NOS at the elementary levels, but also that elementary students can learn ideas about NOS. The manuscript reviews research from the past two decades on what students of ages 5 to 12 understand about NOS after appropriate (...) instruction. Research-based teaching strategies are then shared to provide methods for researchers, professional developers, and teachers to improve students’ NOS understandings. These strategies include embedding NOS into existing curricula, using classroom interactions, using visual representations, and using students’ written work. (shrink)

The Healer's Art curriculum is one of the best-known educational strategies to support medical student professional identity formation. HART has been widely used as an elective curriculum. We evaluated students’ experience with HART when the curriculum was required. All one hundred eleven members of the class of 2019 University of New Mexico School of Medicine students were required to enroll in HART. We surveyed the students before and after the course to assess its self-reported impact on key elements of professional (...) identity formation such as empathy towards patients and peers, commitment to service, and burnout. A majority of students reported positive effects of the course on their empathy towards other students. This finding was significantly associated with self-reported willingness to have elected the course had it not been required. One-half of respondents reported positive effects on their empathy towards future patients. At least one-quarter to one-third of respondents reported positive influences on commitment to service, conceptions about being a physician, and self-perceived burnout. Students report benefits on their professional identity formation after participating in a required course on humanism. Empathy-building among peers is one valuable outcome of such curricula. (shrink)

Although the use of arbitration has become commonplace in the organizational world, the ethical issues surrounding arbitration have never been fully explored. The paper reviews ethical issues in arbitration, particularly in terms of forensic bias parallels, that may affect decision-making and make the arbitrator''s decision questionable. Finally, the maintenance of fairness in the arbitration process, and the importance of an ethically acceptable system of organizational justice are also discussed.

Background: The factors influencing parents’ willingness to enroll their children in biobanks are poorly understood. This study sought to assess parents’ willingness to enroll their children, and their perceived benefits, concerns, and information needs under different consent and data-sharing scenarios, and to identify factors associated with willingness. Methods: This large, experimental survey of patients at the 11 eMERGE Network sites used a disproportionate stratified sampling scheme to enrich the sample with historically underrepresented groups. Participants were randomized to receive one of (...) three consent and data-sharing scenarios. Results: In total, 90,000 surveys were mailed and 13,000 individuals responded (15.8% response rate). 5737 respondents were parents of minor children. Overall, 55% (95% confidence interval 50–59%) of parents were willing to enroll their youngest minor child in a hypothetical biobank; willingness did not differ between consent and data-sharing scenarios. Lower educational attainment, higher religiosity, lower trust, worries about privacy, and attitudes about benefits, concerns, and information needs were independently associated with less willingness to allow their child to participate. Of parents who were willing to participate themselves, 25% were not willing to allow their child to participate. Being willing to participate but not willing to allow one’s child to participate was independently associated with multiple factors, including race, lower educational attainment, lower annual household income, public health care insurance, and higher religiosity. Conclusions: Fifty-five percent of parents were willing to allow their youngest minor child to participate in a hypothetical biobank. Building trust, protecting privacy, and addressing attitudes may increase enrollment and diversity in pediatric biobanks. (shrink)

Current treatments for chronic pain have limited benefit. We describe a resilience intervention for individuals with chronic pain which is based on a model of viewing chronic pain as dysregulated homeostasis and which seeks to restore homeostatic self-regulation using strategies exemplified by survivors of extreme environments. The intervention is expected to have broad effects on well-being and positive emotional health, to improve cognitive functions, and to reduce pain symptoms thus helping to transform the suffering of pain into self-growth. A total (...) of 88 Veterans completed the pre-assessment and were randomly assigned to either the treatment intervention or control. Fifty-eight Veterans completed pre- and post-testing. The intervention covered resilience strengths organized into four modules: engagement, social relatedness, transformation of pain and building a good life. A broad set of standardized, well validated measures were used to assess three domains of functioning: health and well-being, symptoms, and cognitive functions. Two-way Analysis of Variance was used to detect group and time differences. Broadly, results indicated significant intervention and time effects across multiple domains: Pain decreased in present severity [F = 5.02, p < 0.05, η2p = 0.08], total pain over six domains [F = 14.52, p < 0.01, η2p = 0.21], and pain interference [F = 6.82, p < 0.05, η2p = 0.11]; Affect improved in pain-related negative affect [F = 7.44, p < 0.01, η2p = 0.12], fear [F = 7.70, p < 0.01, η2p = 0.12], and distress [F = 10.87, p < 0.01, η2p = 0.16]; Well-being increased in pain mobility [F = 5.45, p < 0.05, η2p = 0.09], vitality [F = 4.54, p < 0.05, η2p = 0.07], and emotional well-being [F = 5.53, p < 0.05, η2p = 0.09] Mental health symptoms and the cognitive functioning domain did not reveal significant effects. This resilience intervention based on homeostatic self-regulation and survival strategies of survivors of extreme external environments may provide additional sociopsychobiological tools for treating individuals with chronic pain that may extend beyond treating pain symptoms to improving emotional well-being and self-growth.Clinical Trial Registration: Registered with ClinicalTrials.gov. (shrink)

Background Outbreaks of infectious disease cause serious and costly health and social problems. Two new technologies – pathogen whole genome sequencing and Big Data analytics – promise to improve our capacity to detect and control outbreaks earlier, saving lives and resources. However, routinely using these technologies to capture more detailed and specific personal information could be perceived as intrusive and a threat to privacy. Method Four community juries were convened in two demographically different Sydney municipalities and two regional cities in (...) New South Wales, Australia to elicit the views of well-informed community members on the acceptability and legitimacy of: making pathogen WGS and linked administrative data available for public health researchusing this information in concert with data linkage and machine learning to enhance communicable disease surveillance systems Fifty participants of diverse backgrounds, mixed genders and ages were recruited by random-digit-dialling and topic-blinded social-media advertising. Each jury was presented with balanced factual evidence supporting different expert perspectives on the potential benefits and costs of technologically enhanced public health research and communicable disease surveillance and given the opportunity to question experts. Results Almost all jurors supported data linkage and WGS on routinely collected patient isolates for the purposes of public health research, provided standard de-identification practices were applied. However, allowing this information to be operationalised as a syndromic surveillance system was highly contentious with three juries voting in favour, and one against by narrow margins. For those in favour, support depended on several conditions related to system oversight and security being met. Those against were concerned about loss of privacy and did not trust Australian governments to run secure and effective systems. Conclusions Participants across all four events strongly supported the introduction of data linkage and pathogenomics to public health research under current research governance structures. Combining pathogen WGS with event-based data surveillance systems, however, is likely to be controversial because of a lack of public trust, even when the potential public health benefits are clear. Any suggestion of private sector involvement or commercialisation of WGS or surveillance data was unanimously rejected. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary volume of contributed essays focuses on issues of gender in the British novel of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly Hardy and Trollope. Approaching the topic from a variety of backgrounds the contributors reinvigorate the law-and-literature movement by displaying a range of ways in which literature and law can illuminate one another, and in which the conversation between them can illuminate deeper human issues with which both disciplines are concerned.