The Reordering of Everyday Life through Digital technologies During the Covid-19 Pandemic

This paper offers an exploration of everyday life during the Covid-19 pandemic in Bangladesh with a focus on how it has been reordered through commonplace digital technologies and services. We present findings from a qualitative field study. Themes emerging from the findings suggest that digital technologies have been important to the reordering of everyday life during the pandemic: videoconferencing have been instrumental in allowing urban residents to work from home, digital money has enabled workers in rural areas to continue financial transactions, and social media has been a source of news and rumours during the pandemic. However, the benefits of the digital reordering of everyday life are unevenly distributed. The themes emerging are used to frame a discussion of the notion of reordering compared to the concept of resilience within ICTD. © 2022 ACM.

Community centres in increasingly diverse neighbourhoods: policies and practices of community building in post-war housing estates in Switzerland

This paper uses research conducted in Swiss post-war high-rise estates to focus on policies and practices of community building in neighbourhoods with an increasingly diverse population. Initially, the estates were mainly populated by Swiss and Southern European lower to middle income families, but latterly the household structures have become very heterogeneous with residents coming from all over the world. The planning and development policies of the estates are based on specific ideas about creating a community, which are still evident in the building and management of community centres but also in various facilities for common use (playgrounds, football and sport fields, community rooms and kitchens, libraries, petting zoos, cafés, crafts rooms, etc.). The community centres, along with community work, are key to encouraging encounters, connecting people and activating cultural life in the neighbourhoods and have played a pioneering role far beyond the boundaries of their respective estates. However, individualisation and pluralisation processes, the aging of the facilities and built structures, and economic pressures pose challenges for the community centres. The current Covid-19 crisis reinforces these challenges by limiting and impeding cultural activities and direct (physical) social encounters. The paper analyses the potential and the challenges of community building in the context of growing diversity among residents, and acknowledges what we can learn from these experiences when thinking about creating and strengthening communities in a multi-faceted world today. Copyright © 2022 (Althaus, E., Christensen, L.)

A public turn in the governance of infrastructure

This chapter argues that we are witnessing a public turn in the governance of infrastructure which is reinforced by the recent focus on a renewed and more central role for the state e.g. as with the response to COVID-19. This also means a renewed interest in state-owned enterprises. The public turn takes place in the public administration literature via growing recognition of the inherently public nature of much infrastructure in terms of financing, ownership and maintenance. We suggest that this public turn calls for a move from dominant performance studies of public-private partnerships as an organizational form to a broader research focus based on an institutional theoretical perspective on infrastructure governance. This transition has happened through a gradual institutionalized process during the last decade. The OECD's change in policy approach from partnerships to infrastructure governance is used an illustration. This policy change matters because there is now room for governments to adopt a more pragmatic interest in finding solutions to governing infrastructure rather than debates about what is public and what is private. © Graeme A. Hodge and Carsten Greve 2022. All rights reserved.

Micro-eliminating hepatitis C in a network of 47 English Prisons through an industry, prison healthcare and patient organisation partnership

Background and aims: National Health Service England (NHSE) plans to eliminate Hepatitis C (HCV) in England by 2025, five years earlier than World Health Organisation goals. With a reported HCV prevalence of ∼6% in male prisons, and ∼12% in female prisons, secure environments are an essential component of this elimination plan. In 2020, NHSE defined HCV micro-elimination as ³95% of prison residents tested within the previous 12 months, ³90% of RNA positive patients treated or initiated on treatment and presence of a robust system to review ongoing testing and treatment performance to ensure these targets are maintained. Method: To support NHSE in their HCV Elimination Program, a partnership between Gilead Sciences, Practice Plus Group (PPG) and the Hepatitis C Trust (HCT)was formed in 2019. PPG is the provider of healthcare to 47 English prisons with approximately 30, 000 residents. PPG Regional BBV Lead Nurses, and Gilead Medical Scientists worked with prison and HCV stakeholders to optimise test and treat pathways for new prison admissions. Whole prison HCV Intensive Test and Treat events (HITTs) were also run in targeted prisons to ensure testing of residents who were incarcerated before these optimisations were implemented. Results: Following pathway optimisation across the PPG network of 47 prisons, the HCV screening within 7 days of prison entry increased from 41% in May 2019 to 84% in October 2021. This increase was achieved despite there being significant restrictions to reduce the transmission of COVID-19 being in place across all English prisons. HITTs have been performed in 15 PPG prisons to-date. 1, 909 new RNA+ diagnoses were made during this time with 1, 848 patients started on direct-acting antiviral treatments. By November 2021, 16 out of the 47 prisons have been given micro-elimination status by NHSE with 4 more having submitted data demonstrating achievement of this target and awaiting decision. A further 4 more prisons are on track to achieve micro-elimination by April 2022. Conclusion: This partnership has demonstrated that, even during a global pandemic, it is possible to achieve the micro-elimination of HCV in a defined setting. Maintenance of micro-elimination status is essential if we are to achieve the WHO HCV targets, requiring robust pathways that are regularly adapted to the changing environment, and systems for tracking performance, both of which have been put in place by this partnership.