Emergency centers in Israel: A small community organizes to cope with war related crises*

This paper focuses on community-wide emergencies caused by war-related events in Lebanon at the beginning of June 1982. Mobilization for the "Peace for Galilee" campaign began on Friday, 4th June. Overnight, families were disrupted, husbands and sons were in danger, and within 24 hours there were notifications of casualities and deaths. Families in crisis became a widespread phenomenon. In Herzlia, as in many other communities, a new service - the Emergency Center - emerged under the auspices of the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs and the Municipality. The authors describe this process of getting organized, the populations served, how the Center was staffed, the role of citizen volunteers, and the types of interventions used to help vulnerable families as well as soldiers home on leave. Stress is placed on the unique type of short-term co-operation achieved between social workers of the local Department of Social Welfare, the staff of the Department of Community Services (especially its Volunteer Bureau), the local liason officer of the Israel Defence Force, the municipal government, and public-spirited volunteers. Mention is made of conditions which made possible the activation of such a service within hours, of the Center's capacity to serve all segments of the population, and of how it was deactivated within a few weeks when the emergency ended. On the basis of lessons learned from this experience, the paper ends with a number of specific recommendations. The authors hope that such innovative forms of crisis-intervention will become part of the helping technology widely available at the community level in future years.     

When workplace safety depends on behavior change: Topics for behavioral safety research

Introduction

Comprehensive interventions that address public-health concerns invariably include behavior-change strategies. In occupational safety and health, behavioral safety is an approach designed to improve safety performance directly through peer observations of safe behaviors, goal setting, performance feedback, and celebrations or incentives for reaching safety goals. Although the basic components of behavioral safety processes have been studied and widely documented, the current safety literature reveals several gaps in knowledge. These gaps are associated mostly with wide practice variations among the common process elements and uncertainty about the influence of organizational and other external factors.

Impact to Industry

A major objective of this paper was to highlight not only key topic areas that warrant further research, but also to propose a list of research questions that are tied to uncertainties about various intervention practices. If only a portion of these topic areas and research questions are addressed through systematic reviews, field interventions, surveys, and laboratory-based studies, then the knowledge gained will significantly improve the delivery and effectiveness of behavioral safety interventions and thus their impact on worker health and safety.     

Teaching adolescents safe driving and passenger behaviors: effectiveness of the You Hold the Key Teen Driving Countermeasure

PROBLEM: Unsafe driving and passenger behaviors place teens at increased risk for fatal and nonfatal crashes. This study evaluated the short-and long-term efficacy of the You Hold the Key (YHTK) Teen Driving Countermeasure. METHOD: A two-page survey was completed by high school students at pretest, posttest, and long-term (6-month) posttest. RESULTS: YHTK was associated with significant immediate and long-term improvements in teen seatbelt use, safe driving, and perceived confidence in preventing drunk driving. Compared to pretests, students at immediate and long-term posttest more frequently wore seatbelts when driving or riding, required passengers to wear seatbelts, and limited the number of passengers to the number of seatbelts in the vehicle. Students were more likely at both posttests to avoid drinking and driving and to say no to riding with a friend who had been drinking. SUMMARY: YHTK was associated with increases in safe teen driving and passenger behaviors. IMPACT ON INDUSTRY: Success of YHTK is most notably due to its comprehensive nature. Future programs should consider comprehensive strategies when attempting to modify teen behaviors.     

Enterprise boards: evolution and critique

There has been a marked proliferation of local economic development initiatives in recent years. Enterprise Boards have proved one of the most successful of these innovations. In the early 1980s five were established. Two, the Greater London and the West Midlands Enterprise Boards, were initially designed to intervene radically within their local economies, although subsequent events moderated their activities. The remaining three in Lancashire, West Yorkshire and Merseyside, have successfully widened their operations to embrace collaborate projects with the private sector, training, boosting co‐operatives, and research. By many economic evaluations, for example, jobs supported, leverage ratios and investment per job, Enterprise Boards have performed better than other instruments of urban and regional development. Wider socio‐political objectives have proved more difficult to achieve.     

The Impact-Likelihood Matrix: A policy tool for behaviour prioritisation

The proliferation of applied behaviour change science over the past decade has provided new ways of thinking about policy making. Policy makers now have a range of frameworks and methods to assist in formulating change for social and environmental benefits. However, the development of strategies for the identification and prioritisation of target behaviours has been less forthcoming. This paper outlines a tool to assist in behaviour selection. Behaviours are assessed for their potential impact on addressing a specific issue, the likelihood of adoption by the target audience and existing participation levels within the target audience. Each of these characteristics is scored, allowing behaviours to be mapped onto a meaningful, visual, matrix for prioritisation. Additional data on behaviour type and the key perceived barriers to participation in each behaviour are layered onto the matrix to provide direction for intervention design. An application of the prioritisation matrix is presented within an environmental context through a case study of water demand management behaviours for domestic consumers in Australia. The prioritisation matrix could provide a decision-making tool for policy makers to assist in the selection of target behaviours to address complex issues.     

Realistic evaluation as a new way to design and evaluate occupational safety interventions

Recent debates regarding the criteria for evaluating occupational health and safety interventions have focused on the need for incorporating qualitative elements and process evaluation, in addition to attempting to live up to the Cochrane criteria. Reflecting fundamental epistemological conflicts and shortcomings of the Cochrane criteria in evaluating intervention studies, the debate challenges the traditional (quasi-) experimental design and methodology, which are often used within safety research. This article discusses a revised ‘realistic evaluation’ approach as a way to meet these challenges.Evidence from the literature as well as examples from an integrated (leader-based/worker-based) safety intervention study (2008-2010) in a large wood manufacturing company are presented, with focus on the pros and cons of using randomised-controlled-trials and a revised realistic evaluation model.A revised realistic evaluation model is provided which includes factors such as role behaviour, leader and worker motivation, underreporting of accidents/injuries, production pressure, unplanned organisational change and accounting for multilayer effects. These can be attained through qualitative and/or quantitative methods, allowing for the use of realistic evaluation in both large and small scale studies, as well as in systematic reviews. The revised realistic evaluation model offers a promising new way of designing and evaluating occupational safety research. This model can help safety science move forward in setting qualitative and/or quantitative criteria regarding context, mechanisms and processes for single studies and for reviews. Focus is not limited to whether the expected results appear or not, but include suggestions for what works for whom, under what circumstances, in what respects and how.     

A rationale for recycling

The decision as to whether to recycle discarded objects or not has traditionally been made on a simple financial basis. However, over the last few years a popular movement has sprung up which regards recycling as a good in itself, and this movement finds itself at odds with the present financial basis for recycling. In this paper a rationale for recycling is worked out in an attempt to resolve this conflict. It is concluded that the normal market signals do not provide a proper basis for recycling decisions and that this market failure must be corrected by government intervention. However, this intervention should not take the form of uncritical support for recycling. Rather the societal objectives of individual recycling proposals should be identified and the proposal should then be evaluated in terms of whether it would achieve these objectives more effectively than some alternative action.     

A comparison of employment growth and stability before and after the Fort Worth tornado

This study examined the time series pattern of employment growth and stability in Fort Worth, Texas taking into account the March 28, 2000 tornado. The tornado is treated econometrically as an intervention and both the mean and conditional variance of employment growth were estimated. Overall, this regional labor market experienced a decline in the employment growth rate following the tornado. Among the sectors that exhibited differences in employment dynamics between the pre- and post-tornado periods, the mining sector experienced a significant increase in employment growth following the tornado while the service andwholesale, retail trade sectors experienced significant declines in employment growth in the post-tornado period. The manufacturing, service, and wholesale, retail trade sectors were characterized by greater stability (i.e., a lower level of employment growth volatility) in the post-tornado period than in the pre-tornado period. Interestingly, in several sectors, no differences in the time series dynamics of employment growth were detected between the pre- and post-tornado periods. These sectors included construction, finance, insurance, real estate, government, and transportation and public utilities.     

Laying a solid foundation for sustainable development in Bolivian mountain villages

In Bolivia, recent decentralisation policies have broadened the participation of local actors in development processes. However, development is far from sustainable, and poverty and natural resources degradation still increase. The challenge is to develop strategies that achieve the genuine participation of poor farmers in natural resources management and sustainable development. The logical strategy, which was developed and validated in five Bolivian mountain villages, is an example. In this strategy, first a solid foundation for sustainable development is laid, with activities focussing on five basic conditions for sustainable development in rural villages: leadership and organisation, responsible participation, effective collaboration, mutual trust and environmental awareness. The results show that the existence of a solid foundation is crucial for the success of other development activities, such as soil and water conservation activities. However, given that 2 years after the project’s withdrawal the firmness of the foundation had slightly weakened, it was concluded that a better integration of these villages in local development processes is essential to profit from the new dynamics. This is especially true for soil and water conservation. To achieve this integration, municipalities—with the support of international development agencies—must be encouraged to invest in laying this solid foundation in rural villages and in facilitating follow-up activities to keep the dynamic process going. This study shows that such investments result in better organised villages, more equality, and the genuine participation of more people in sustainable village development. Effective collaboration and accountability at institutional level are, however, required.     

Assessment of environmental impacts part two: Data collection

Intervention analysis is a relatively new branch of time series analysis. The power of this technique, which gives the probability that changes in mean level can be distinguished from natural data variability, is quite sensitive to the way the data are collected. The principal independent variables influenced by the data collection design are overall sample size, sampling frequency, and the relative length of record before the occurrence of the event (intervention) that is postulated to have caused a change in mean process level.For three of the four models investigated, data should be collected so that the post-intervention record is substantially longer than the pre-intervention record. This is in conflict with the intuitive approach, which would be to collect equal amounts of data before and after the intervention. The threshold (minimum) level of change that can be detected is quite high unless sample sizes of at least 50 and preferably 100 are available; this minimum level is dependent on the complexity of the model required to describe the response of the process mean to the intervention. More complex models tend to require larger sample sizes for the same threshold detectable change level.Uniformity of sampling frequency is a key consideration. Environmental data collection programs have not historically been oriented toward data analysis using time series techniques, thus eliminating a potentially powerful tool from use in many environmental assessment applications.