ABSTRACT
As with many other male-dominated sports, for over a century of its history, Australian Rules Football organizations resisted and undermined women's participation in the game. The first league for women footballers commenced in Victoria in 1981. Since then, the growth in women's participation has been substantial, and in 2017, a professional women's Australian Football League (AFLW) commenced. The next phase of the participation of women in football is approaching, and heralds an opportunity for women to (re)gain power within the sport. In October 2019, thirty percent of women players rejected the proposed Collective Bargaining Agreement from the Australian Football League (AFL), with the underlying sentiment of wanting a stronger voice in the vision for the future of their game. This paper examines how changing participation rates in community football can transform the narrative of women's football from one of subsidized welfare to women players being necessary for the survival of football.
ABSTRACT
Background and Aims: Medical management alone is insufficient to reduce secondary stroke risk. Supervised exercise combined with behaviour change support may facilitate increased physical activity and help adequately address stroke recurrence risk. This early analysis of the ENAbLE Pilot Trial aimed to test the feasibility of a supervised aerobic exercise package delivered via telehealth. Method(s): A 4-arm, assessor blinded RCT was piloted during the COVID-19 Pandemic. The remotely delivered trial included people 3 months to 10 years post stroke or TIA. The intervention involved 12 weeks of twice weekly telehealth-supervised aerobic exercise and support sessions. Feasibility data including recruitment, adherence, adverse events and ability to collect clinical outcomes to support a Phase III trial (blood pressure [primary outcome], physical activity, fatigue, and quality of life) was collected and analysed. Result(s): Thirty people participated (exercise intervention n=14, control n=16) between April 2020 and July 2021. Session attendance was 80%. Three participants (10%) withdrew or were lost to follow-up, all in the experimental group. Mean exercise intensity during supervised sessions was in the target range (moderate to vigorous). Mean number of systolic BP measures recorded over 7 days was 27 (SD 2.2) of a maximum of 28, at baseline. One non-serious adverse event occurred during supervised exercise sessions. However, outside exercise sessions adverse events were higher in the experimental group who were more frequently monitored. Conclusion(s): A remotely delivered program of supervised aerobic exercise delivered via telehealth was feasible. Learnings from the remote delivery of an exercise pilot trial will be shared. Acknowledgements: Stroke Foundation Australia.
ABSTRACT
This chapter focusses on the use of immobility policies and practices in the Asia-Pacific nations of East and South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand to respond to COVID-19 across 2020–2021. Concepts from the field of mobilities studies are adopted for analysis. Transport system managers in the region have increasingly played roles either limiting movement, adjusting transport supply, creating proscribed ‘mobilities passageways’ for travellers that present COVID-risk, and encouraging or mandating passenger compliance with other pandemic measures. The series of immobility policies and practices used at the international, intra-national and local scales are analysed. Transport agency responses differed greatly including whether to retain levels of public transport supply or reduce them in line with falling patronage. A summary of known travel behaviour impacts is then discussed, using available data from government travel portals, and, for Shanghai, Brisbane and Hong Kong, a range of road volumes, public transport boardings, micro-mobility, bicycle and pedestrian counts. There are indications that a series of socio-technical transitions have occurred, such as increased work-from-home, new social practices around walking, increased demands for roads to provide place functions (as opposed to movement functions) and the role of cycling and micro-mobility as liberating technologies in a world of increased control and fear of contagion. Transport agencies have harnessed some of these changes in attitudes and societal needs, using radical institutional responses such as pop-up bike lane trials and other ‘tactical urbanism’ approaches, to adapt their cities to life during and after the pandemic. © 2022 by Emerald Publishing Limited.
ABSTRACT
Introduction/Aim: Harnessing Youth Voice is one of the most effective strategies for communicating with young people. In September 2021, the Youth Voices COVID-19 video competition was created following a need for innovative strategies to disseminate COVID-19 health and wellbeing information to adolescents. The aims were to (1) reach and engage young people to improve COVID-19 health literacy and vaccine uptake among high school students (aged 12- 18 years) and (2) provide an opportunity for adolescent leadership, advocacy and skills development. Methods: The competition was held over 1 month. High school students across NSW were invited to submit a 45 second video addressing (1) COVID-19 vaccinations, (2) looking after your wellbeing during the pandemic, or (3) tackling COVID-19 misinformation. Videos were judged by a panel of health, education and industry experts and prizes awarded to the top three videos within and outside of western Sydney. An evaluation survey was distributed to participants post-competition. Results: The competition engaged 92 students (from 43 high schools), with 84 video entries submitted. The winning videos were uploaded online and to date have been viewed >4000 times. Participants (n = 58) agreed that the competition improved their understanding of COVID-19 (84% agreement) and increased their confidence to receive the vaccine (88% agreement). Participants reported gaining technology skills (71%), confidence (62%) and communication skills (57%) from taking part. Conclusion: The video competition was an innovative and effective strategy for improving the COVID-19 health literacy and vaccine confidence of high school students. Moreover students developed a broad range of translatable skills for real world learning. Youth involvement enables young people to influence practices and decisions that affect them.
ABSTRACT
As with many other male-dominated sports, for over a century of its history, Australian Rules Football organizations resisted and undermined women's participation in the game. The first league for women footballers commenced in Victoria in 1981. Since then, the growth in women's participation has been substantial, and in 2017, a professional women's Australian Football League (AFLW) commenced. The next phase of the participation of women in football is approaching, and heralds an opportunity for women to (re)gain power within the sport. In October 2019, thirty percent of women players rejected the proposed Collective Bargaining Agreement from the Australian Football League (AFL), with the underlying sentiment of wanting a stronger voice in the vision for the future of their game. This paper examines how changing participation rates in community football can transform the narrative of women's football from one of subsidized welfare to women players being necessary for the survival of football.
ABSTRACT
AIM: To validate a reverse transcriptase-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) assay to detect SARS-CoV-2 in saliva in two independent Aotearoa New Zealand laboratories. METHODS: An RT-qPCR assay developed at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA, was validated in two New Zealand laboratories. Analytical measures, such as limit of detection (LOD) and cross-reactivity, were performed. One hundred and forty-seven saliva samples, each paired with a contemporaneously collected nasal swab, mainly of nasopharyngeal origin, were received. Positive (N=33) and negative (N=114) samples were tested blindly in each laboratory. Diagnostic sensitivity and specificity were then calculated. RESULTS: The LOD was <0.75 copy per mu L and no cross-reactivity with MERS-CoV was detected. There was complete concordance between laboratories for all saliva samples with the quantification cycle values for all three genes in close agreement. Saliva had 98.7% concordance with paired nasal samples: and a sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of 97.0%, 99.1% and 99.1%, respectively. CONCLUSION: This saliva RT-qPCR assay produces reproducible results with a low LOD. High sensitivity and specificity make it a reliable option for SARS-CoV-2 testing, including for asymptomatic people requiring regular screening.
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused substantial global impact. This Perspective provides insight into the environmental effects of the pandemic, documenting how it offers an opportunity to better understand the Earth System. Restrictions to reduce human interaction have helped to avoid greater suffering and death from the COVID-19 pandemic, but have also created socioeconomic hardship. This disruption is unprecedented in the modern era of global observing networks, pervasive sensing and large-scale tracking of human mobility and behaviour, creating a unique test bed for understanding the Earth System. In this Perspective, we hypothesize the immediate and long-term Earth System responses to COVID-19 along two multidisciplinary cascades: energy, emissions, climate and air quality;and poverty, globalization, food and biodiversity. While short-term impacts are dominated by direct effects arising from reduced human activity, longer-lasting impacts are likely to result from cascading effects of the economic recession on global poverty, green investment and human behaviour. These impacts offer the opportunity for novel insight, particularly with the careful deployment of targeted data collection, coordinated model experiments and solution-oriented randomized controlled trials, during and after the pandemic.