Suchergebnisse

Background:
Academic researchers are occupying more varied roles as both knowledge producers and knowledge brokers in policymaking spaces beyond the national level. As the local arena presents different dimensions to the knowledge-policy-practice nexus, an assessment of the interaction of evidence and policy at this scale is warranted.
Aims and objectives:
This paper considers how two early career researchers acted within two different policymaking spaces at the local level to: bring new and synthesised evidence to decisionmakers; respond to evidence and research requests from a diverse group of local actors; and serve as a critical friend.
Methods:
Autoethnography.
Findings:
We find that early career positionality presents common issues for policy engagement across the cases, however, the contexts necessarily differ due to the power of specific actors, the internal and external interests at play, and the varied relationships confronting the academics. Deploying Smith's four 'idea types' as a framework, we draw attention to the shifting roles academics need to play given the churn between institutionalised ideas, critical ideas, charismatic ideas and chameleonic ideas.
Discussion and conclusion:
Agency, triggers and structural rigidities are key to the movement between idea types. Future research based on interviews with local policymakers may help to further reveal how shifts between idea types come about.

This research note highlights the need to engage the voluntary sector in strategic emergency response and resilience planning with the local state. It draws on qualitative fieldwork in two Scottish local authorities, which explored service responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in high-poverty neighbourhoods. The data comprised 25 interviews with front-line workers and senior managers in voluntary sector and public sector organisations. Interviews were conducted during the spring 2020 lockdown and subsequent easing of restrictions. The article employs Young's (2000) models of government to analyse the relationship between voluntary organisations and the state. The findings indicate that this iterative crisis requires the relational skills of the voluntary sector to supplement the local state and provide a sustainable response to the needs of vulnerable populations. There is a need for a new strategic and complementary relationship, one that fully engages locally embedded voluntary organisations at all stages of emergency response and resilience planning.

A substantial body of research describes the distribution, causes and potential reduction of health inequalities, yet little scholarship examines public understandings of these inequalities. Existing work is dominated by small-scale, qualitative studies of the experiences of specific communities. As a result, we know very little about what broader publics think about health inequalities; and even less about public views of potential policy responses. This is an important gap since previous research shows many researchers and policymakers believe proposals for 'upstream' policies are unlikely to attract sufficient public support to be viable. This mixed methods study combined a nationally representative survey with three two-day citizens' juries exploring public views of health inequalities and potential policy responses in three UK cities (Glasgow, Manchester and Liverpool) in July 2016. Comparing public opinion elicited via a survey to public reasoning generated through deliberative processes offers insight into the formation of public views. The results challenge perceptions that there is a lack of public support for upstream, macro-level policy proposals and instead demonstrate support for proposals aiming to tackle health inequalities via improvements to living and working conditions, with more limited support for proposals targeting individual behavioural change. At the same time, some macro-economic proposals, notably those involving tax increases, proved controversial among study participants and results varied markedly by data source. Our analysis suggests that this results from three intersecting factors: a resistance to ideas viewed as disempowering (which include, fundamentally, the idea that health inequalities exist); the prevalence of individualising and fatalistic discourses, which inform resistance to diverse policy proposals (but especially those that are more 'upstream', macro-level proposals); and a lack of trust in (local and national) government. This suggests that efforts to enhance public support for evidence-informed policy responses to health inequalities may struggle unless these broader challenges are also addressed.

A substantial body of research describes the distribution, causes and potential reduction of health inequalities, yet little scholarship examines public understandings of these inequalities. Existing work is dominated by small-scale, qualitative studies of the experiences of specific communities. As a result, we know very little about what broader publics think about health inequalities; and even less about public views of potential policy responses. This is an important gap since previous research shows many researchers and policymakers believe proposals for 'upstream' policies are unlikely to attract sufficient public support to be viable. This mixed methods study combined a nationally representative survey with three two-day citizens' juries exploring public views of health inequalities and potential policy responses in three UK cities (Glasgow, Manchester and Liverpool) in July 2016. Comparing public opinion elicited via a survey to public reasoning generated through deliberative processes offers insight into the formation of public views. The results challenge perceptions that there is a lack of public support for upstream, macro-level policy proposals and instead demonstrate support for proposals aiming to tackle health inequalities via improvements to living and working conditions, with more limited support for proposals targeting individual behavioural change. At the same time, some macro-economic proposals, notably those involving tax increases, proved controversial among study participants and results varied markedly by data source. Our analysis suggests that this results from three intersecting factors: a resistance to ideas viewed as disempowering (which include, fundamentally, the idea that health inequalities exist); the prevalence of individualising and fatalistic discourses, which inform resistance to diverse policy proposals (but especially those that are more 'upstream', macro-level proposals); and a lack of trust in (local and national) government. This suggests that efforts to enhance public ...

A substantial body of research describes the distribution, causes and potential reduction of health inequalities, yet little scholarship examines public understandings of these inequalities. Existing work is dominated by small-scale, qualitative studies of the experiences of specific communities. As a result, we know very little about what broader publics think about health inequalities; and even less about public views of potential policy responses. This is an important gap since previous research shows many researchers and policymakers believe proposals for 'upstream' policies are unlikely to attract sufficient public support to be viable. This mixed methods study combined a nationally representative survey with three two-day citizens' juries exploring public views of health inequalities and potential policy responses in three UK cities (Glasgow, Manchester and Liverpool) in July 2016. Comparing public opinion elicited via a survey to public reasoning generated through deliberative processes offers insight into the formation of public views. The results challenge perceptions that there is a lack of public support for upstream, macro-level policy proposals and instead demonstrate support for proposals aiming to tackle health inequalities via improvements to living and working conditions, with more limited support for proposals targeting individual behavioural change. At the same time, some macro-economic proposals, notably those involving tax increases, proved controversial among study participants and results varied markedly by data source. Our analysis suggests that this results from three intersecting factors: a resistance to ideas viewed as disempowering (which include, fundamentally, the idea that health inequalities exist); the prevalence of individualising and fatalistic discourses, which inform resistance to diverse policy proposals (but especially those that are more 'upstream', macro-level proposals); and a lack of trust in (local and national) government. This suggests that efforts to enhance public ...

Leading experts in the field present an up-to-date and diverse review of the best in social policy scholarship over the past year. This volume considers current issues and critical debates in the UK and the international social policy field. It contains vital research on race in social policy higher education and analyses how welfare states and policies address the economic and social hardship of young people. The contributors also consider the impacts of austerity on the welfare state, homelessness, libraries and other social policy areas. Published in association with the Social Policy Association, this comprehensive volume will be of interest to students and academics in social policy, social welfare and related disciplines

Female Aedes aegypti mosquitoes infect more than 400 million people each year with dangerous viral pathogens including dengue, yellow fever, Zika and chikungunya. Progress in understanding the biology of mosquitoes and developing the tools to fight them has been slowed by the lack of a high-quality genome assembly. Here we combine diverse technologies to produce the markedly improved, fully re-annotated AaegL5 genome assembly, and demonstrate how it accelerates mosquito science. We anchored physical and cytogenetic maps, doubled the number of known chemosensory ionotropic receptors that guide mosquitoes to human hosts and egg-laying sites, provided further insight into the size and composition of the sex-determining M locus, and revealed copy-number variation among glutathione S-transferase genes that are important for insecticide resistance. Using high-resolution quantitative trait locus and population genomic analyses, we mapped new candidates for dengue vector competence and insecticide resistance. AaegL5 will catalyse new biological insights and intervention strategies to fight this deadly disease vector. ; National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services [U19AI110818]; USDA [2017-05741]; NIH Intramural Research Program; National Library of Medicine; National Human Genome Research Institute; NSF [PHY-1427654]; NIH [R01AI101112, R35GM118336, R21AI121853, R01AI123338, T32GM007739, NIH/NCATS UL1TR000043, DP2OD008540, U01AI088647, 1R01AI121211, D43TW001130-08, U01HL130010, UM1HG009375, 5K22AI113060, 1R21AI123937, R00DC012069]; Defence Advanced Research Project Agency [HR0011-17-2-0047]; Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund; Center for Theoretical Biological Physics postdoctoral fellowship; Robertson Foundation; McNair Foundation; Welch Foundation [Q-1866]; French Government's Investissement d'Avenir program, Laboratoire d'Excellence Integrative Biology of Emerging Infectious Diseases [ANR-10-LABX-62-IBEID]; Agence Nationale de la Recherche [ANR-17-ERC2-0016-01]; European Union [734584]; Pew and Searle Scholars Programs; Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship in the Neurosciences; Verily Life Sciences ; We thank R. Andino; S. Emrich and D. Lawson (Vectorbase); A. A. James, M. Kunitomi, C. Nusbaum, D. Severson, N. Whiteman; T. Dickinson, M. Hartley and B. Rice (Dovetail Genomics) for early participation in the AGWG; C. Bargmann, D. Botstein, E. Jarvis and E. Lander for encouragement and facilitation. N. Keivanfar, D. Jaffe and D. M. Church (10X Genomics) prepared DNA for structural-variant analysis. We thank A. Harmon of the New York Times and acknowledge generous pro bono data and analysis from our corporate collaborators. This research was supported in part by federal funds from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, under grant number U19AI110818 to the Broad Institute (S.N.R. and D.E.N.); USDA 2017-05741 (E.L.A.); NSF PHY-1427654 Center for Theoretical Biological Physics (E.L.A.); NIH Intramural Research Program, National Library of Medicine and National Human Genome Research Institute (A.M.P. and S.K.) and the following extramural NIH grants: R01AI101112 (J.R.P.), R35GM118336 (R.S.M. and W.J.G.), R21AI121853 (M.V.S., I.V.S. and A. S.), R01AI123338 (Z.T.), T32GM007739 (M.H.), NIH/NCATS UL1TR000043 (Rockefeller University), DP2OD008540 (E.L.A.), U01AI088647, 1R01AI121211 (W.C.B. IV), Fogarty Training Grant D43TW001130-08, U01HL130010 (E.L.A.), UM1HG009375 (E.L.A), 5K22AI113060 (O.S.A.), 1R21AI123937 (O.S.A.), and R00DC012069 (C.S.M.); Defence Advanced Research Project Agency: HR0011-17-2-0047 (O.S.A.). Other support was provided by Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund (B.J.M.), Center for Theoretical Biological Physics postdoctoral fellowship (O.D.), Robertson Foundation (L.Z.), and McNair & Welch (Q-1866) Foundations (E.L.A.), French Government's Investissement d'Avenir program, Laboratoire d'Excellence Integrative Biology of Emerging Infectious Diseases (grant ANR-10-LABX-62-IBEID to L.L.), Agence Nationale de la Recherche grant ANR-17-ERC2-0016-01 (L.L.), European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under ZikaPLAN grant agreement no. 734584 (L.L.), Pew and Searle Scholars Programs (C.S.M.), Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship in the Neurosciences (C.S.M.). A.M.W., B.J.W., J.E.C. and S.N.M. were supported by Verily Life Sciences. L.B.V. is an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.