SHARE IT: Co-designing a sustainability impact assessment framework for urban food sharing initiatives

Urban food systems must undergo a significant transformation if they are to avoid impeding the achievement of UN Sustainable Development Goals. One reconfiguration with claimed sustainability benefits is ICT-mediated food sharing - an umbrella term used to refer to technologically-augmented collective or collaborative practices around growing, cooking, eating and redistributing food - which some argue improves environmental efficiencies by reducing waste, providing opportunities to make or save money, building social networks and generally enhancing well-being. However, most sustainability claims for food sharing have not been evidenced by systematically collected and presented data. In this paper we document our response to this mismatch between claims and evidence through the development of the SHARECITY sustainability Impact assessment Toolkit (SHARE IT); a novel Sustainability Impact Assessment (SIA) framework which has been co-designed with food sharing initiatives to better indicate the impact of food-sharing initiatives in urban food systems. We demonstrate that while several SIA frameworks have been developed to evaluate food systems at the urban scale, they contain few measures that specifically account for impacts of the sharing that initiatives undertake. The main body of the paper focuses on the co-design process undertaken with food sharing initiatives based in Dublin and London. Attention is paid to how two core goals were achieved: 1) the identification of a coherent SIA framework containing appropriate indicators for the activities of food sharing initiatives; and 2) the development of an open access online toolkit for in order to make SIA reporting accessible for food sharing initiatives. In conclusion, the co-design process revealed a number of technical and conceptual challenges, but it also stimulated creative responses to these challenges.

Accounting for uncertainty in the quantification of the environmental impacts of Canadian pig farming systems

The objective of the study was to develop a life cycle assessment (LCA) for pig farming systems that would account for uncertainty and variability in input data and allow systematic environmental impact comparisons between production systems. The environmental impacts of commercial pig production for 2 regions in Canada (Eastern and Western) were compared using a cradle-to-farm gate LCA. These systems had important contrasting characteristics such as typical feed ingredients used, herd performance, and expected emission factors from manure management. The study used detailed production data supplied by the industry and incorporated uncertainty/variation in all major aspects of the system including life cycle inventory data for feed ingredients, animal performance, energy inputs, and emission factors. The impacts were defined using 5 metrics-global warming potential, acidification potential, eutrophication potential (EP), abiotic resource use, and nonrenewable energy use-and were expressed per kilogram carcass weight at farm gate. Eutrophication potential was further separated into marine EP (MEP) and freshwater EP (FEP). Uncertainties in the model inputs were separated into 2 types: uncertainty in the data used to describe the system (α uncertainties) and uncertainty in impact calculations or background data that affects all systems equally (β uncertainties). The impacts of pig production in the 2 regions were systematically compared based on the differences in the systems (α uncertainties). The method of ascribing uncertainty influenced the outcomes. In eastern systems, EP, MEP, and FEP were lower (P < 0.05) when assuming that all uncertainty in the emission factors for leaching from manure application was β. This was mainly due to increased EP resulting from field emissions for typical ingredients in western diets. When uncertainty in these emission factors was assumed to be α, only FEP was lower in eastern systems (P < 0.05). The environmental impacts for the other impact categories were not significantly different between the 2 systems, despite their aforementioned differences. In conclusion, a probabilistic approach was used to develop an LCA that systematically dealt with uncertainty in the data when comparing multiple environmental impacts measures in pig farming systems for the first time. The method was used to identify differences between Canadian pig production systems but can also be applied for comparisons between other agricultural systems that include inherent variation.

Community-acquired needle stick injuries in Canadian children: Review of Canadian Hospitals Injury Reporting and Prevention Program data from 1991 to 1996

OBJECTIVE

To review community-acquired needle stick injuries (CANSIs) in children reported to a Canadian emergency room-based injury surveillance program.

DESIGN

Analysis of 1991 to 1996 CANSI records followed by chart review to determine use of prophylactic interventions and outcome information.

SETTING

The Canadian Hospitals Injury Reporting and Prevention Program network of 10 paediatric and six general hospitals.

PATIENTS

Nonoccupational injuries to patients younger than age 20 years involving used needles were reviewed.

MAIN RESULTS

Of 116 children injured, most were male (74%); the median age was 6.6 years. Needles were picked up before injury in 77% of the cases. Most injuries (78%) were from needles presumed to have been discarded by an injection drug user. Parks were the most common site of injury (21%). Six per cent of injuries occurred in medical settings. Treatment information was obtained for 71 (61%) patients. Only 1.7% had been immunized against hepatitis B virus before injury. Hepatitis B immune globulin and hepatitis B virus vaccine were given to 78% and 76% of children, respectively. None received human immunodeficiency virus prophylaxis.

CONCLUSIONS

Programs teaching needle avoidance may help prevent many CANSIs. The safety of outdoor, home and medical environments also needs to be ensured. Treatment guidelines for CANSIs will help ensure appropriate postinjury management.

Injury outcome indicators: the development of a validation tool

BACKGROUND

Researchers have previously expressed concern about some national indicators of injury incidence and have argued that indicators should be validated before their introduction.

AIMS

To develop a tool to assess the validity of indicators of injury incidence and to carry out initial testing of the tool to explore consistency on application.

METHODS

Previously proposed criteria were shared for comment with members of the International Collaborative Effort on Injury Statistics (ICE) Injury Indicators Group over a period of six months. Immediately after, at a meeting of Injury ICE in Washington, DC in April 2001, revised criteria were agreed over two days of meetings. The criteria were applied, by three raters, to six non-fatal indicators that underpin the national road safety targets for Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Consistency of ratings were judged. CONSENSUS OUTCOME: The development process resulted in a validation tool that comprised criteria relating to: (1) case definition, (2) a focus on serious injury, (3) unbiased case ascertainment, (4) source data for the indicator being representative of the target population, (5) availability of data to generate the indicator, and (6) the existence of a full written specification for the indicator. On application of these criteria to the six road safety indicators, some problems of agreement between raters were identified.

CONCLUSION

This paper has presented an early step in the development of a tool for validating injury indicators, as well as some directions that can be taken in its further development.

Youth injury data in the Canadian Hospitals Injury Reporting and Prevention Program: do they represent the Canadian experience?

OBJECTIVE

Injuries to Canadian youth (11-15 years) identified from a population based health survey (World Health Organization-Health Behaviour in School-Aged Children Survey, or WHO-HBSC) were compared with youth injuries from a national, emergency department based surveillance system. Comparisons focused on external causes of injury, and examined whether similar rankings of injury patterns and hence priorities for intervention were identified by the different systems.

SETTING

The Canadian version of the WHO-HBSC was conducted in 1998. The Canadian Hospitals Injury Reporting and Prevention Program (CHIRPP) is the national, emergency room based, surveillance program. Two hospitals involved in CHIRPP collectively provide population based data for Kingston, Ontario.

METHOD

Numbers of injuries selected for study varied by data source: WHO-HBSC (n=3673); CHIRPP (n=20,133); Kingston CHIRPP (n=1944). WHO-HBSC and Kingston CHIRPP records were coded according to four variables in the draft International Classification of External Causes of Injury. Existing CHIRPP codes were available to compare Kingston and other CHIRPP data by five variables. Males and females in the three datasets were ranked according to the external causes. Data classified by source and sex were compared using Spearman's rank correlation statistic.

RESULTS

Rank orders of four variables describing external causes were remarkably similar between the WHO-HBSC and Kingston CHIRPP (p>0.78; p<0.004) for mechanism, object, location, and activity). The Kingston and other CHIRPP data were also similar (p>0.87; p<0.001) for the variables available to describe external causes of injury (including intent).

CONCLUSION

The two subsets of the CHIRPP data and the WHO-HBSC data identified similar priorities for injury prevention among young people. These findings indicate that CHIRPP may be representative of general youth injury patterns in Canada. Our study provides a novel and practical model for the validation of injury surveillance programs.

Air guns: the main cause of enucleation secondary to trauma in children and young adults in the greater Ottawa area in 1974-93

OBJECTIVES

To determine the proportion of enucleation procedures attributable to injuries from air guns in people aged 18 years or less and to identify the associated pathological findings.

DESIGN

Case series.

SETTING

Ophthalmic Pathology Registry, University of Ottawa, and affiliated Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario (Ottawa), Ottawa General Hospital and Ottawa Civic Hospital. In addition, information on air gun injuries from April 1990 to December 1993 was obtained from the Canadian Hospitals Injury Reporting and Prevention Program (CHIRPP) database, with data from 10 pediatric and 5 general hospitals across Canada.

PATIENTS

All patients aged 18 years or less who underwent enucleation between Jan. 1, 1974, and Dec. 31, 1993.

RESULTS

Eighty-five patients were identified as having undergone enucleation. Trauma accounted for 51 cases (60%), of which 13 (25%) were caused by air guns, the largest single cause of enucleation secondary to trauma. Overall, air gun injuries accounted for 15% of enucleation procedures, whereas retinoblastoma accounted for 21%. All air gun injuries were in boys (median age 14 years, range 9 to 16 years). Of the 13 eyes with air gun injuries 7 had ocular perforation and 6 had ocular penetration. In all cases the intraocular structures were severely disrupted. The CHIRPP database included 165 air gun injuries; 32 were to the eye or ocular adnexa, resulting in 26 hospital admissions.

CONCLUSIONS

Air guns were the largest single cause of enucleation secondary to trauma in our study. These guns are widely available in Canada and are unrestricted at muzzle velocities capable of causing death or serious injury, especially to the eye. We feel that air guns should be licensed only to people aged 16 to 18 years or older and that education in their use should be mandatory.

An investigation of report bias in a case-control study of pregnancy outcome

The role of report (recall) bias in case-control studies of possible reproductive hazards was investigated in a study of women who gave birth at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Montreal from September 1983 to May 1985. Women were questioned twice (early in pregnancy; after delivery) about exposures that might influence pregnancy outcome. The two sets of responses of case mothers, control mothers, and mothers of infants of intermediate health status were then compared. Similar inconsistencies in the reporting of 39 exposure variables were common in all three groups, with postdelivery deletion of previous reports more frequent than addition of new information. Changes in reporting were not associated with pregnancy outcome, maternal concern about the baby or maternal sociodemographic characteristics. Odds ratios of exposure estimated from the two sets of data did not differ importantly. Moreover, there was no postdelivery trend to increases, or decreases, in the estimates of the odds ratios. The data do not provide evidence of biased reporting of exposures.