Challenging the dominant path of forest policy? Bottom-up, citizen forest management initiatives in a top-down governance context in Poland

Forest governance in Poland is characterised by the dominance of public forest ownership and hierarchical, top-down policy-making. These governance arrangements, characteristic of post-socialist countries, have traditionally been challenged by environmental NGOs, advocating stronger protection of old-growths. Recently, institutional stability of the forest policy field has been increasingly influenced by numerous citizen initiatives responding to technocratic local forest management decisions. These initiatives, so far not analysed scientifically, vary in terms of the issues addressed, actions employed, and the local actors involved. In the paper we use a data base of 274 such initiatives to explore their manifestation, actors involved, main postulates, and the responses of forest managers. Based on this, we explored whether these initiatives pose challenges to the traditional forest management and, if so, what kind. We imply that the growth of bottom-up initiatives indicates a growing diversity of beliefs and values regarding forests and the increasing determination of local people to impact local environmental decisions. Furthermore, informed by the institutional theory, we argue that the growth of local initiatives, particularly during and after Covid-19 pandemics, suggests the eroding legitimacy of dominant rules and discourses. This process is particularly visible in sub-urban forests, which are increasingly seen through a ‘well-being discourse' that highlights cultural, regulative and supportive functions of forests, while putting less emphasis on provisioning functions. We also identify a networking trend among the initiatives that unifies their discursive background and enhances their influence at the national level. Therefore, local activists can be seen as a new advocacy group in the Polish forest policy subsystem. In response to local demands public forest administration has introduced institutional changes enhancing participation but their impact is still to be assessed. We recommend establishing a monitoring programme to track new participatory practices and to identify and promote best practices.

A cautionary tale: Pandemic survival lessons to sustain teen substance use prevention coalitions

Community coalitions have the potential to improve teen health outcomes by reducing risk and reinforcing protective factors across multiple community systems to mitigate teen pregnancy, violence, suicide, and teen substance use. This prevention work is achieved by developing multipronged action plans and employing community-level interventions to influence policies, systems, and environments in which youth live, learn, and play. In Washington State, nearly 100 coalitions target the complex issue of teen substance use prevention. These coalitions are representative of the diversity of community stakeholders for the prevention of teen substance use. An essential partnership and contractual requirement is a school-coalition agreement to address teen substance use. Working cooperatively, coalitions leverage resources and efforts to affect teen behavioral health by planning, implementing, and evaluating prevention efforts across multiple community systems. Every sector of the community has been disrupted by COVID-19, which has implications for teen substance use prevention. This explanatory mixed-methods phenomenological study explored how the pandemic affected community sectors, what barriers or challenges COVID-19 presented, and what adaptations to programs and service delivery were made to continue teen substance use prevention work. Comprehensive effects across 11 of 12 community sectors were reported, triggering shifts in priorities and negatively affecting morale. Transportation was an identified geographical barrier, while workforce issues were universally challenging regardless of location in the state. Technological infrastructure and digital literacy were highlighted as critical barriers to the successful implementation of coalition prevention interventions and detracted from the day-to-day functioning of coalitions. Deteriorating psychosocial health resulting from sustained uncertainty about the pandemic was compounded by contentious political discourse and division about infection mitigation requirements. Increased use of virtual platforms, new and diversified stakeholder relationships, and innovative community action methods advanced the work of teen substance use prevention despite the challenges posed by the pandemic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Governing during the COVID-19 pandemic

We present a new perspective on government reactions to COVID-19 in terms of the stringency of their regulations to control it. Using the Government Stringency Index from the University of Oxford's Coronavirus Government Response Tracker (OxCGRT) with a sample of 36 democracies, we determined that the governments' regulations were less stringent when a woman was the head of the country, an oversized coalition was in office, and the country was not an island. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Security and Protection in Terms of the Assumption of the Coalition Agreement for the election period 2021-2025

The period in which countries around the world, including the Czech Republic, found themselves at the end of 2021 was characterized by a number of very significant political and security threats and risks. It was a period in which the next wave of the pandemic situation associated with the COVID-19 disease was manifesting itself. Even though the Czech Republic was already much better prepared for the problems associated with the outbreak of this disease, it could not be said that it was managing everything well, without problems and within the political consensus of all ruling and opposition parties. Based on results achieved in the elections to the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic, which took place in October 2021, the priorities of the winning parties grouped into one government coalition were set. These priorities were presented in the form of a coalition agreement to the public. A paper deals with the anticipated intentions of the Government of the Czech Republic in its implementation for the 2021-2025 electoral period in the issues of safety and security in all aspects of their perception. Among the aspects examined were the areas of security policy implementation and the broader concept of population protection. In the paper, the terms "security” and "protection” are frequented in the number and form in which they appear in the text of the coalition agreement. The paper presents the occurrence of these terms in the documents that became the basic and initial documents for establishing mutual pre-election cooperation between political parties and movements. Last but not least, it also presents changes in the approach to these concepts in relation to coalition agreements concluded in 2013 and 2017. Other aspects of coalition agreements are deliberately not mentioned. © 2022 Challenges to National Defence in Contemporary Geopolitical Situation. All rights reserved.

SPAIN AND ITS RELATIONS WITH THE UNITED STATES: IN BRIEF *

The United States and Spain have extensive cultural ties and a mutually beneficial economic relationship, and the two countries cooperate closely on numerous diplomatic and security issues. Spain has been a member of NATO since 1982 and a member of the European Union (EU) since 1986. Given its role as a close U.S. ally and partner, Spain's internal situation and relations with the United States are of continuing interest to the U.S. Congress.

New (types of) parties and government: the Danish general election 2022

During the Covid-19 crisis, there was a high level of rallying around the flag for the Social Democratic government. However, support waned with the sense of crisis, and some ‘scandals' surfaced. The ‘mink scandal' caused an early election to be called. A high number of parties, 14, competed in the election, and after the election 12 parties are now represented in parliament–a new record number. When comparing the election results of 2019 and 2022, two overall results stand out. First, only one of the two traditional large parties has maintained this status and fragmentation is increased. Second, two new parties made it into the ‘top-5' in 2022, both formed by former prominent Liberals. The election yielded a narrow victory to the red bloc. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen was able to stay in office after the election but exchanged her red bloc parliamentary majority for a coalition government with the Liberals and Moderates. Thus, a new type of coalition has emerged: a majority government spanning the usual two blocs, but challenged by opposition from both the right and left. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Tactical risk communication: Observations from teaching and learning about crisis communication during COVID-19

In a Spring 2020 Technical and Professional Communication (TPC) course on risk communication, we watched the COVID-19 pandemic unfold and discussed how technical communicators can foreground vulnerable and marginalized populations who are often excluded from official communication channels. The article below offers perspectives on tactical communication and/or coalition building during a pandemic, coining the term tactical risk communication (TRC) and examining how TRC functions in the face of a global health crisis. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Advocating for individuals and communities

The role of advocating for individuals and communities not only includes advocating for the basic needs and resources of communities and entails conducting policy advocacy. This chapter provides two accounts of how CHWs provide advocacy and advocate for their profession. CHWs in Arizona advocated for their communities and their workforce on the state, local, and federal level to address the social determinants of health and structural issues such as poverty, unemployment, the built environment, and discrimination. The first team explores stories of CHWs who have advocated on multiple levels, including organizational and policy levels, and discusses the factors that support and hinder CHW advocacy efforts. The team describes how local and grassroots advocacy efforts ultimately helped to create a CHW workforce sustainability movement and support the statewide CHW professional association, Arizona Community Health Workers Association (AzCHOW), in advocating for voluntary certification on the state level. The second team provides timely information on how CHWs with Enlace Chicago advocated for their communities during COVID-19 to address social determinants of health, including poverty, unemployment, discrimination, and exploitation of worker rights, and provide basic needs. The CHW stories describe how advocacy efforts were instrumental in directing community members to food banks, personal protection equipment, sources of employment and workers' rights, and emergency rental assistance programs. These stories underscore how CHWs were often the only links connecting their community members to what they needed while facilitating the community's understanding to public health guidelines during COVID-19 and addressing mental health needs. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021.

A two-tier feature selection method using Coalition game and Nystrom sampling for screening COVID-19 from chest X-Ray images.

The world is still under the threat of different strains of the coronavirus and the pandemic situation is far from over. The method, that is widely used for the detection of COVID-19 is Reverse Transcription Polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), which is a time-consuming method and is prone to manual errors, and has poor precision. Although many nations across the globe have begun the mass immunization procedure, the COVID-19 vaccine will take a long time to reach everyone. The application of artificial intelligence (AI) and computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) has been used in the domain of medical imaging for a long period. It is quite evident that the use of CAD in the detection of COVID-19 is inevitable. The main objective of this paper is to use convolutional neural network (CNN) and a novel feature selection technique to analyze Chest X-Ray (CXR) images for the detection of COVID-19. We propose a novel two-tier feature selection method, which increases the accuracy of the overall classification model used for screening COVID-19 CXRs. Filter feature selection models are often more effective than wrapper methods as wrapper methods tend to be computationally more expensive and are not useful for large datasets dealing with a large number of features. However, most filter methods do not take into consideration how a group of features would work together, rather they just look at the features individually and decide on a score. We have used approximate Shapley value, a concept of Coalition game theory, to deal with this problem. Further, in the case of a large dataset, it is important to work with shorter embeddings of the features. We have used CUR decomposition and Nystrom sampling to further reduce the feature space. To check the efficacy of this two-tier feature selection method, we have applied it to the features extracted by three standard deep learning models, namely VGG16, Xception and InceptionV3, where the features have been extracted from the CXR images of COVID-19 datasets and we have found that the selection procedure works quite well for the features extracted by Xception and InceptionV3. The source code of this work is available at https://github.com/subhankar01/covidfs-aihc.

Turning on a Dime during COVID: A Canadian healthcare coalition's process of integrating e-Learning into leadership development

This research examined the function and value of a coalition in identifying and mobilizing novel solutions to health organizations across Canada in an environment of forced disruption (i.e., COVID-19). More specifically, the study used a naturalistic inquiry methodology to understand the process of how the Canadian Health Leadership Network (CHLNet) coalition responded to the need to integrate e-Learning-an unfamiliar delivery practice for leadership development-into leadership development for its member partners and was hastened by the pandemic. The CHLNet case study results suggested that the coalition was a valuable setting upon which to identify and mobilize knowledge across Canada, despite the many challenges the pandemic brought. Further, the findings suggested that for CHLNet, key process elements contributed to their success that included using an adaptive leadership approach, taking advantage of an opportunity, selecting the right people to work on the project, actively managing the project, and allowing iterative journey processes that mirrored those of design thinking to emerge. Out of this study came three recommendations that address gaps in knowledge and suggest new lines of inquiry, namely: to look for patterns of successful project initiatives in coalitions;to explore a possible correlation between design thinking and coalition project initiatives;and to study the mindset, motivation, and empowerment of coalition project members. Overall, this study illustrated the significant value a coalition could have on identifying and mobilizing divergent practice knowledge on a national scale during a chaotic time of forced disruption across health organizations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

An Antiracism Community-Based Participatory Research With Organizations Serving Immigrant and Marginalized Communities, Including Asian Americans and Native Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders in the United States Pacific Northwest: Qualitative Description Study With Key Informants.

BACKGROUND: Asian American (AA) community leaders, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander (NH/PI) community leaders, and allies in the United States Pacific Northwest expressed concern that there are families and children from AA communities and NH/PI communities who experience and witness acts of xenophobia and racism. This can cause racial trauma. The long-time practice of aggregating AA and NH/PI data contributes to erasure and makes it challenging to advance health equity, such as allocating resources. According to AAPI Data's long-awaited report in June 2022, there are over 24 million AAs and 1.6 million NHs/PIs in the United States, growing by 40% and 30%, respectively, between 2010 and 2020. Philanthropic investments have not kept up with this substantive increase. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine emphasized the need for effective partnerships to advance the health and well-being of individuals and communities in antiracism and system-level research. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this community-based participatory research qualitative description study was to identify perceptions and experiences regarding racial discrimination, race-based stress, and racial trauma; intergenerational healing and resiliency; and sharing the body with science from key informants of an academic and community partnership to inform antiracism coalition work. This partnership includes academic researchers and community leaders from community-based organizations and a health care organization serving immigrant and marginalized communities, including AAs and NHs/PIs in the United States Pacific Northwest. METHODS: In total, 10 key informants joined 1 of 2 participatory group discussions via videoconference for 2 hours in 2022. We used a semistructured and open-ended group interview guide. A qualitative participatory group-level assessment was conducted with the key informants and transcribed. Interpretations and meanings of the main points and the main themes were reflected upon, clarified, and verified with the key informants in real time. The field note-based data transcripts were manually coded using conventional content analysis. Reflexivity was used. RESULTS: There were 6 main themes: prejudice plus power in racism definition and working in solidarity to counter lateral oppression/false sense of security, microaggression as multilayers, "not assimilationist by nature" and responding differently to white superiority, intergenerational- and identity-related trauma, what is healing among People of Color and through a lens of resiliency and intergenerational connection and knowledge, and mistrust and fear in the research and health care systems surrounding intentions of the body. CONCLUSIONS: The themes highlight the importance of internal and intergenerational healing from racial trauma and the need for solidarity among communities of color to combat white supremacy and colonization. This work was foundational in an ongoing effort to dismantle racism and uplift the community voice through a cross-sector academic and community partnership to inform antiracism coalition work.

Care coalitions in times of health crisis: moral and political empowerment in working-class neighborhoods

This article explores the processes of politicization of care brought about by mutual aid initiatives that emerged in working-class neighborhoods during the Covid-19 crisis. The concept of « care coalition» is used to designate the networking of agents who provide care in vulnerable urban communities in a situation of emergency. The health crisis provides these coalitions with the opportunity to advocate for a revaluation and redistribution of care among political authorities, both through direct confrontation with institutions, and by making care visible in the press and on social media. Such politicization « from below» questions the articulation between private initiatives and public policies, and opens up avenues for a right to the city that takes into account care-related dimensions. © Association Féminin Masculin Recherches. Tous droits réservés pour tous pays.

Community Coalition Action Theory: Introducing an Interventional Application to Confronting Covid-19

It's less possible to promote health behaviors without theory-based studies and it's better to use health education and promotion theories for more effective health education and promotion interventions. Theories are able to change the behavior of individuals at the personal, interpersonal, organizational, social, and policymaking levels. Organizations play an important role in the daily life of people, and any changes in these organizations can affect people's health. The Community Coalition Action Theory (CCAT) is a form of theories for the change across organizations. A community coalition is a structured arrangement where all members can work together on a common goal and objective. The current article focuses on applications of the CCAT to provide a framework for the development of activities and interventions related to confronting Covid-19. Forming a coalition is very significant and can increase the effectiveness of interventional programs. CCAT is one of the best practices that can be achieved through joint activities of multiple organizations that lead to improved health behaviors

A Study of Party-Government Relations at Federal and State Levels During Merkel's Third Grand Coalition (2018-2021)

This article discusses party-government relationships between the CDU, CSU and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) during Merkel's third grand coalition between March 2018 and 2021, through the lenses of theories of competitive party behavior and of the party system. During this period, the three ruling parties experienced numerous changes in party leadership, which reflect the strength of party leadership and recruitment structure. For the actors involved, obtaining official posts in state government remained the most important goal, so political parties sought to maximize the votes received in state parliamentary elections. An analysis of the composition of the two levels of governments after state and federal parliamentary elections reveals the number of parties, and fragmentation, increased in the years 2018-2021. Segmentation decreased and coalition building between left and the right increased. After the federal election in the September 2021, the SPD, the Green and the FDP established the first "traffic light" coalition cabinet, while the CDU/CSU failed to hold onto power following Merkel's 16 years in office. To understand these developments, it is necessary to evaluate Merkel's governance and the competition and cooperation between parties in the 2021 federal election.

Turning on a Dime during COVID: A Canadian healthcare coalition's process of integrating e-Learning into leadership development

This research examined the function and value of a coalition in identifying and mobilizing novel solutions to health organizations across Canada in an environment of forced disruption (i.e., COVID-19). More specifically, the study used a naturalistic inquiry methodology to understand the process of how the Canadian Health Leadership Network (CHLNet) coalition responded to the need to integrate e-Learning-an unfamiliar delivery practice for leadership development-into leadership development for its member partners and was hastened by the pandemic. The CHLNet case study results suggested that the coalition was a valuable setting upon which to identify and mobilize knowledge across Canada, despite the many challenges the pandemic brought. Further, the findings suggested that for CHLNet, key process elements contributed to their success that included using an adaptive leadership approach, taking advantage of an opportunity, selecting the right people to work on the project, actively managing the project, and allowing iterative journey processes that mirrored those of design thinking to emerge. Out of this study came three recommendations that address gaps in knowledge and suggest new lines of inquiry, namely: to look for patterns of successful project initiatives in coalitions;to explore a possible correlation between design thinking and coalition project initiatives;and to study the mindset, motivation, and empowerment of coalition project members. Overall, this study illustrated the significant value a coalition could have on identifying and mobilizing divergent practice knowledge on a national scale during a chaotic time of forced disruption across health organizations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Coalition Building and Food Insecurity: How an Equity and Justice Framework Guided a Viable Food Assistance Network.

Food insecurity is widespread in the United States. The COVID-19 pandemic intensified the need for food assistance and created opportunities for collaboration among historically-siloed organizations. Research has demonstrated the importance of coalition building and community organizing in Policy, Systems, and Environmental (PSE) change and its potential to address equitable access to food, ultimately improving population health outcomes. In New Haven, community partners formed a coalition to address systems-level issues in the local food assistance system through the Greater New Haven Coordinated Food Assistance Network (CFAN). Organizing the development of CFAN within the framework of Collaborating for Equity and Justice (CEJ) reveals a new way of collaborating with communities for social change with an explicit focus on equity and justice. A document review exploring the initiation and growth of the network found that 165 individuals, representing 63 organizations, participated in CFAN since its inception and collaborated on 50 actions that promote food access and overall health. Eighty-one percent of these actions advanced equitable resource distribution across the food system, with forty-five percent focused on coordinating food programs to meet the needs of underserved communities. With the goal of improving access to food while addressing overall equity within the system, the authors describe CFAN as a potential community organizing model in food assistance systems.

The California battle for health and safety for domestic workers

This article reflects on the legislative campaign of the California Domestic Worker Coalition, including Hand in Hand: The Domestic Employers Network, to end the exclusion of household workers (nannies, personal attendants and cleaners) from occupational health-and-safety requirements. It discusses the strategies and arguments deployed, and analyses the rationale of the governor, who vetoed the bill in 2020 in the name of the home as a private space impossible to regulate. Foregrounding the voices of domestic workers, it highlights their understanding of caring labour and determination to organise for change, seen in the winning of an amended bill in 2021.

Digitalisation of birth registration system in Malaysia: Boon or bane for the hard-to-reach and marginalised?

Access to birth registration among the refugees, migrants, and undocumented or stateless individuals in Sabah and Peninsular Malaysia remains hindered largely due to their lack of legal status. This study identifies the barriers to birth registration faced by these communities, including during the COVID-19 pandemic, and explores the extent to which digital technologies may overcome or amplify these barriers. Findings are reported from a review of literature, websites, and media articles and semi-structured interviews with community-based organisations and community leaders representing the communities. The themes for the questions were structured based on Plan International's (2015) Step-by-step Guide for Identifying and Addressing the Risks to Children in Digitised birth registration systems. We identified that the digitalisation of birth registration poses more risks of exclusion than benefits to the marginalised communities without a secure and inclusive operating environment. Subject to an inequality assessment to evaluate and address the existing inequalities, a hybrid system that factors in the role of citizen facilitation hubs would be ideal for ensuring no one gets "left behind".

The COVID-19 Healthcare Coalition Telehealth Impact Study Keynote: Keynote

Obtain a detailed perspective from the principal investigator of this landmark telehealth study paving the way for understanding gaps and to allow telehealth best practices to emerge, creating a more effective and resilient system of care delivery in the U.S. The COVID-19 Telehealth Impact Study was designed to describe the natural experiment of telehealth adoption during the pandemic. Using a large claims data stream and surveys of providers and patients, studying all 50 states to inform healthcare leaders. Biography Francis “FX” Campion serves as Principal Lead for Digital Health at MITRE with work focused on AI for healthcare, FHIR interoperability and the use of synthetic data for clinical modelling. He is a co-principal investigator for the COVID-19 Telehealth Impact Study. He serves as clinical consultant to the U.S. Government for the Federal COVID Response for Therapeutics. He is a practicing internal medicine physician at Atrius Health in Boston. Prior to work at MITRE he served as Senior Clinical Informaticist at IBM Watson Health where his team built machine learning and natural language processing applications for care of patients with diabetes and heart failure. Prior to that he served as the Chief Medical Officer for Ayasdi providing AI solutions for providers and payers. There he co-authored the book, “Machine Intelligence for Healthcare.”

Affective polarization and coalition preferences in times of pandemic

Using the RepResent Voter Panel Survey conducted in Belgium since the 2019 Federal elections, we investigate the relationship between affective polarization and voters' coalition preferences, in the first phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Results confirm a strict negative link between affective polarization and preferences for coalitions in general. Such result is robust to different types of coalitions, in terms of number and size of parties, as well as the ideological position of voters. However, we also show how the negative effect of affective polarization can be moderated if the coalition includes the voter's in-party. Overall, our results help better understanding the political consequences of affective polarization in a multiparty setting. Copyright © 2022 Bettarelli and Van Haute.