"You Can't Meet Everyone's Needs After-Hours": After-Hours Domestic and Family Violence Services in Rural and Remote Areas

Domestic and family violence is a significant issue in the Murrumbidgee region of New South Wales, Australia, mirroring national and international concerns about gender-based violence. Generally, there are known barriers associated with providing domestic and family violence (DFV) services in rural and remote communities; however, little research has considered the specific service needs and service barriers in the after-hours period. This is crucial. The already limited rural and remote services available during business hours are further constricted in the after-hours period. This article reports on research about after-hours service need and service challenges in six target communities in the Murrumbidgee region.

Engaging young people and their caregivers in support services following harmful sexual behaviors: Qualitative analysis

BACKGROUND

Harmful sexual behavior (HSB) displayed by children and young people under the age of 18 has been described as developmentally inappropriate, may be harmful towards self or others, or be abusive towards another child, young person, or adult. Early intervention and treatment completion are crucial to cease HSB, reduce impacts and address underlying issues for the child who has displayed HSB. Considerable shame attaches to seeking help for this stigmatized behavior which may result in dropout from support services. Understanding young people and caregivers' experiences of what facilitates or hinders their engagement with support services is therefore critical to preventing re-occurrence of HSB and keeping children safe.

OBJECTIVE

This article draws on the first-hand experience of young people and caregivers to address the question: What have they found helpful and unhelpful when engaging with services for harmful sexual behavior?

PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING

Participants were recruited from public health and youth justice services in the state of New South Wales, Australia. The 31 participants included 11 young people (aged 14 to 17) and 20 caregivers (parents, foster or kinship carers).

METHODS

Qualitative data were collected through individual semi-structured interviews, following which thematic analysis was conducted.

RESULTS

Data analysis identified three helpful responses: (1) non-judgmental recognition of crisis; (2) child-centred and family-focused orientation; and (3) multi-dimensional interventions. Unhelpful responses included: (1) closed doors (an inability to access a service) (2) stigmatization of HSB; and (3) reduced caregivers' autonomy.

CONCLUSIONS

Greater involvement of caregivers, non-stigmatizing language and coordinated responses between generalist and specialist services are needed to facilitate service engagement.

Youth Attitudes to Domestic and Family Violence: A Scoping Review of Young People's Attitudes and Perceptions in Australia

Domestic and family violence (DFV) has been described as a "national emergency" in Australia, with a suite of policies and interventions introduced over the past decade to better support women and their children. Within these frameworks, young people have been identified as agents of change for primary prevention; however, little is known about their attitudes and knowledge of DFV. This scoping review thus sought to establish the attitudes and knowledge of DFV held by young people (under 25 years old) in Australia. Nine international databases were searched, yielding 11 studies that met the inclusion criteria. The studies were quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods in design, with the findings demonstrating that young Australians have good knowledge about DFV. However, the review also indicates problematic areas around young people's understanding of the harms of DFV with many continuing to hold victim-blaming attitudes. In addition, much of the existing research is survey-based in nature, there is no strong uniformity across the studies, nor is there an engaged approach to research design. Moreover, the current measures used in research are not sufficient to gauge where young people gain knowledge about DFV, nor do they explain under what conditions attitudes change or what are the medium- and long-term effects of DFV prevention work. We therefore contend that future research ought to be interdisciplinary and intersectional in nature and collaborate with a range of young people in order to understand their full potential as agents of social change and primary prevention.

The impact of leadership on the psychosocial safety climate of organizations: A scoping review of the international literature

Growing evidence suggests that work-related psychological injuries are a concern worldwide. While previous efforts to address psychological injuries mainly focused on the individual level of analysis, psychosocial safety climate (PSC) theory emphasizes the analysis and prevention of psychological injuries at the organizational level. While there is abundant evidence of the impact of leadership on other climate constructs, scant attention has been paid to the impact of leadership on PSC. This study is a scoping review of the extant literature to determine the state of the discipline in relation to the impact of leadership on the psychosocial safety climate of organizations. Three databases were searched, supplemented by a pearling exercise and Google Scholar searches, which yielded 14 studies that met selection criteria. Our study shows that while much work has been done in relation to the behavior of managers and organizational infrastructure to yield high levels of PSC, there is a dearth of studies on the impact of specific leadership styles on the PSC of organizations. We recommend further studies of leadership, especially the impact of post-heroic leadership styles, on the psychosocial safety climate of workplaces.

Protecting Victims or Protecting the Brand? Secondary Victimization and Cruise Ship Crime

It is now widely recognized that victims of crime in general, and victims of sexual offences in particular, commonly experience secondary victimization resulting from dismissive, poor, and sometimes retraumatizing treatment when they encounter the formal criminal justice system. However, little is known about victims' experiences when initially reporting crime outside of the formal justice system, for example crime that occurs during cruise ship holidays. The cruise industry is the fastest growing tourism sector. The total number of passengers onboard cruise ships internationally was expected to reach 30 million in 2019. There is limited reliable data about how many people experience crime onboard cruise ships, though crime victimization does occur. While victimization onboard cruise ships has received some attention, there is a dearth of evidence about when and how victims report crime, how victims are treated when they report their experience of crime to cruise ship companies, or the justice outcomes. Nor does the available data address whether victims of crime from diverse social groups are treated differently by cruise companies. Drawing on qualitative accounts produced by primary and secondary victims of crime onboard cruise ships, it is argued that as well as the known challenges that victims face, the addition of brand protection can compound cruise ship victims' experiences of secondary victimization. Secondary victimization refers to additional, or compounded harms experienced because of social or systemic responses to their experience of crime. There are three key implications of these findings: greater understanding of crime victims' experiences should be developed via refined, mandatory reporting of crime onboard cruise ships, and robust qualitative research; cruise ship staff need improved specialized training in responding to victims of crime, and legislation should be considered mandating an independent authority onboard cruise ships to receive, investigate and monitor victimization reports and responses.

Wildlife crime in Croatia

This paper presents data about wildlife crime in Croatia. The data were gathered from qualitative interviews and personal communications with individuals involved in wildlife crime-related research, and/or prevention and detection work or recreation. The results show that poaching is a recognized problem. There is a variety of commonly poached mammals, fish and bird species. We conclude that evidence about wildlife crime should be collated drawing on forensic techniques.

Longitudinal changes in EEG power, sleep cycles and behaviour in a tau model of neurodegeneration

Background

Disturbed sleep is associated with cognitive decline in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD). The progressive sequence of how neurodegeneration affects aspects of sleep architecture in conjunction with behavioural changes is not well understood.

Methods

We investigated changes in sleep architecture, spectral power and circadian rhythmicity in the tet-off rTg4510 mouse overexpressing human P301L tau within the same subjects over time. Doxycycline-induced transgene-suppressed rTg4510 mice, tTa carriers and wild-type mice were used as comparators. Spectral power and sleep stages were measured from within the home cage environment using EEG electrodes. In addition, locomotor activity and performance during a T-maze task were measured.

Results

Spectral power in the delta and theta bands showed a time-dependent decrease in rTg4510 mice compared to all other groups. After the initial changes in spectral power, wake during the dark period increased whereas NREM and number of REM sleep bouts decreased in rTg4510 compared to wild-type mice. Home cage locomotor activity in the dark phase significantly increased in rTg4510 compared to wild-type mice by 40 weeks of age. Peak-to-peak circadian rhythm amplitude and performance in the T-maze was impaired throughout the experiment independent of time. At 46 weeks, rTG4510 mice had significant degeneration in the hippocampus and cortex whereas doxycycline-treated rTG4510 mice were protected. Pathology significantly correlated with sleep and EEG outcomes, in addition to locomotor and cognitive measures.

Conclusions

We show that reduced EEG spectral power precedes reductions in sleep and home cage locomotor activity in a mouse model of tauopathy. The data shows increasing mutant tau changes sleep architecture, EEG properties, behaviour and cognition, which suggest tau-related effects on sleep architecture in patients with neurodegenerative diseases.

Willingness to pay for policies to reduce future deaths from climate change: evidence from a British survey

OBJECTIVES

Without urgent action, climate change will put the health of future populations at risk. Policies to reduce these risks require support from today's populations; however, there are few studies assessing public support for such policies. Willingness to pay (WtP), a measure of the maximum a person is prepared to pay for a defined benefit, is widely used to assess public support for policies. We used WtP to investigate whether there is public support to reduce future health risks from climate change and if individual and contextual factors affect WtP, including perceptions of the seriousness of the impacts of climate change.

STUDY DESIGN

A cross-sectional British survey.

METHODS

Questions about people's WtP for policies to reduce future climate change-related deaths and their perceptions of the seriousness of climate change impacts were included in a British survey of adults aged 16 years and over (n=1859). We used contingent valuation, a survey-based method for eliciting WtP for outcomes like health which do not have a direct market value.

RESULTS

The majority (61%) were willing to pay to reduce future increases in climate change-related deaths in Britain. Those regarding climate change impacts as not at all serious were less willing to pay than those regarding the impacts as extremely serious (OR 0.04, 95% CI 0.02-0.09). Income was also related to WtP; the highest-income group were twice as likely to be willing to pay as the lowest-income group (OR 2.14, 95% CI 1.40-3.29).

CONCLUSIONS

There was public support for policies to address future health impacts of climate change; the level of support varied with people's perceptions of the seriousness of these impacts and their financial circumstances. Our study adds to evidence that health, including the health of future populations, is an outcome that people value and suggests that framing climate change around such values may help to accelerate action.

What a Difference a Stochastic Process Makes: Epidemiological-Based Real Options Models of Optimal Treatment of Disease

The real options approach has been used within environmental economics to investigate the impact of uncertainty on the optimal timing of control measures to minimise the impacts of invasive species, including pests and diseases. Previous studies typically model the growth in infected area using geometric Brownian motion (GBM). The advantage of this simple approach is that it allows for closed form solutions. However, such a process does not capture the mechanisms underlying the spread of infection. In particular the GBM assumption does not respect the natural upper boundary of the system, which is determined by the maximum size of the host species, nor the deceleration in the rate of infection as this boundary is approached. We show how the stochastic process describing the growth in infected area can be derived from the characteristics of the spread of infection. If the model used does not appropriately capture uncertainty in infection dynamics, then the excessive delay before treatment implies that the full value of the option to treat is not realised. Indeed, when uncertainty is high or the disease is fast spreading, ignoring the mechanisms of infection spread can lead to control never being deployed. Thus the results presented here have important implications for the way in which the real options approach is applied to determine optimal timing of disease control given uncertainty in future disease progression.

Human pluripotent stem cells for modeling toxicity

The development of xenobiotics, driven by the demand for therapeutic, domestic and industrial uses continues to grow. However, along with this increasing demand is the risk of xenobiotic-induced toxicity. Currently, safety screening of xenobiotics uses a plethora of animal and in vitro model systems which have over the decades proven useful during compound development and for application in mechanistic studies of xenobiotic-induced toxicity. However, these assessments have proven to be animal-intensive and costly. More importantly, the prevalence of xenobiotic-induced toxicity is still significantly high, causing patient morbidity and mortality, and a costly impediment during drug development. This suggests that the current models for drug safety screening are not reliable in toxicity prediction, and the results not easily translatable to the clinic due to insensitive assays that do not recapitulate fully the complex phenotype of a functional cell type in vivo. Recent advances in the field of stem cell research have potentially allowed for a readily available source of metabolically competent cells for toxicity studies, derived using human pluripotent stem cells harnessed from embryos or reprogrammed from mature somatic cells. Pluripotent stem cell-derived cell types also allow for potential disease modeling in vitro for the purposes of drug toxicology and safety pharmacology, making this model possibly more predictive of drug toxicity compared with existing models. This article will review the advances and challenges of using human pluripotent stem cells for modeling metabolism and toxicity, and offer some perspectives as to where its future may lie.

Chemical nature and immunotoxicological properties of arachidonic acid degradation products formed by exposure to ozone

Ozone (O3) exposure in vivo has been reported to degrade arachidonic acid (AA) in the lungs of rodents. The O3-degraded AA products may play a role in the responses to this toxicant. To study the chemical nature and biological activity of O3-exposed AA, we exposed AA in a cell-free, aqueous environment to air, 0.1 ppm O3, or 1.0 ppm O3 for 30-120 min. AA exposed to air was not degraded. All O3 exposures degraded > 98% of the AA to more polar products, which were predominantly aldehydic substances (as determined by reactivity with 2,4-dinitrophenylhydrazine and subsequent separation by HPLC) and hydrogen peroxide. The type and amount of aldehydic substances formed depended on the O3 concentration and exposure duration. A human bronchial epithelial cell line (BEAS-2B, S6 subclone) exposed in vitro to either 0.1 ppm or 1.0 ppm O3 for 1 hr produced AA-derived aldehydic substances, some of which eluted with similar retention times as the aldehydic substances derived from O3 degradation of AA in the cell-free system. In vitro, O3-degraded AA induced an increase in human peripheral blood polymorphonuclear leukocyte (PMN) polarization, decreased human peripheral blood T-lymphocyte proliferation in response to mitogens, and decreased human peripheral blood natural killer cell lysis of K562 target cells. The aldehydic substances, but not hydrogen peroxide, appeared to be the principal active agents responsible for the observed effects. O3-degraded AA may play a role in the PMN influx into lungs and in decreased T-lymphocyte mitogenesis and natural killer cell activity observed in humans and rodents exposed to O3.

Interleukin-1 beta stimulates growth of adrenocortical cells in primary culture

Using tritiated-thymidine incorporation as a measure of cell growth, interleukin-1 beta stimulated the growth of bovine zona fasciculata/reticularis adrenocortical cells after 72 h in primary culture. Within the range of 10-1000 pg/ml, interleukin-1 beta produced over 40% of angiotensin II-stimulated [3H]thymidine incorporation (P less than 0.005 compared with basal for 10 pg/ml and 1000 pg/ml; P less than 0.05 for 100 pg/ml; two-tailed unpaired Student's t-test). Interleukin-1 beta did not directly stimulate cortisol secretion. By stimulating adrenocortical growth, the increase in interleukin-1 during fever provides a potential mechanism for chronically raising glucocorticoid output. This study is the first demonstration of a long-term effect involving interleukin-1 beta on the adrenal cortex.