Description:
A partial latent structural regression analysis was used to evaluate the role of coping resources, depression, diet and exercise on mental and physical health status. The sample consisted of 113 participants (59 females and 54 males) with a mean age of 59.38 years (SD = 10.52). Coping resources, depression and exercise explained 52 and 26% of the variance in mental and physical health status, respectively. Fewer coping resources predicted higher levels of depression and both predicted worse mental health. Only higher levels of depression predicted worse physical health status. There were also significant indirect effects of coping on mental and physical health status through depression. The development of cognitive, social and emotional coping strategies is important for managing depression and supporting positive mental health. These results highlight the important role of health psychologists in the care of individuals with chronic illness. Additionally, the management of depression is important in maintaining positive physical health.
Description:
Among the many changes occurring across Chinese society in the early phase of Y2K is the construction and implementation of a new physical education (PE) curriculum. Not unlike recent changes in Australia, New Zealand and the UK, this process has seen a heightening of the profile of health. Presented within a wider framework for making the school curriculum more relevant, PE is more closely aligned with China's emerging health concerns around young people. Foremost here are burgeoning social anxieties about decreased levels of physical activity, dietary practices, risk-taking tendencies, and a general decline of social cohesion/connection across the profile of contemporary youth. This paper reports on a study undertaken to explore the experiences of Chinese PE teachers as they engage with the new curriculum.The data reveals a number of structural, personal and cultural factors that work against teachers taking up the opportunities presented in the new curriculum. Prominent here are; low professional status, an expanding generation gap, lack of training and the grip of deeply rooted cultural values. Juxtaposed against the like experiences of PE teachers in Australia and the UK the paper concludes with practical recommendations for nurturing curriculum change in China.
Description:
Among the many changes occurring across Chinese society in the early phase of Y2K is the construction and implementation of a new physical education (PE) curriculum. Not unlike recent changes in Australia, New Zealand and the UK, this process has seen a heightening of the profile of health. Presented within a wider framework for making the school curriculum more relevant, PE is more closely aligned with China's emerging health concerns around young people. Foremost here are burgeoning social anxieties about decreased levels of physical activity, dietary practices, risk-taking tendencies, and a general decline of social cohesion/connection across the profile of contemporary youth. This paper reports on a study undertaken to explore the experiences of Chinese PE teachers as they engage with the new curriculum.The data reveals a number of structural, personal and cultural factors that work against teachers taking up the opportunities presented in the new curriculum. Prominent here are; low professional status, an expanding generation gap, lack of training and the grip of deeply rooted cultural values. Juxtaposed against the like experiences of PE teachers in Australia and the UK the paper concludes with practical recommendations for nurturing curriculum change in China.
Description:
Animals Australia focuses on making animal welfare issues visible to consumers so as to direct consumer behaviour and invoke everyday activism, an objective integral to their Make it Possible' campaign. In this paper, we primarily explore the claimed and practised identity of everyday or mainstream animal activists. This is an identity that, whilst partially and communally elaborated and affirmed online (in the online Animals Australia community), is enacted more commonly through personal and familial everyday actions such as shopping, cooking and eating than it is through such public actions as explicitly advocating or demonstrating for better welfare standards for animals involved in factory farming. A discourse analysis was conducted of 2198 posts from October 2013 to January 2014 to analyse contributors' accounts of their feelings (notably their gut reactions) and reasons for pledging, as well as to examine how contributors' accounts of their everyday practices might be understood as the development of a voice for these voiceless animals'. Overall, then, our analysis has shown supporters, participants and/or consumers who support the Make it Possible' campaign self-select into and identify themselves in terms of four overlapping frames: being vegan or vegetarian, shopping for change, personal activism and public activism and advocacy. This paper contributes to the debate concerning intersectional activism within the food activism movement.
Description:
Animals Australia focuses on making animal welfare issues visible to consumers so as to direct consumer behaviour and invoke everyday activism, an objective integral to their Make it Possible' campaign. In this paper, we primarily explore the claimed and practised identity of everyday or mainstream animal activists. This is an identity that, whilst partially and communally elaborated and affirmed online (in the online Animals Australia community), is enacted more commonly through personal and familial everyday actions such as shopping, cooking and eating than it is through such public actions as explicitly advocating or demonstrating for better welfare standards for animals involved in factory farming. A discourse analysis was conducted of 2198 posts from October 2013 to January 2014 to analyse contributors' accounts of their feelings (notably their gut reactions) and reasons for pledging, as well as to examine how contributors' accounts of their everyday practices might be understood as the development of a voice for these voiceless animals'. Overall, then, our analysis has shown supporters, participants and/or consumers who support the Make it Possible' campaign self-select into and identify themselves in terms of four overlapping frames: being vegan or vegetarian, shopping for change, personal activism and public activism and advocacy. This paper contributes to the debate concerning intersectional activism within the food activism movement.
Description:
Objective: To model the population level impact of tai-chi on future rates of falls and fall-related injury in older people as a tool for policy development. Design: An epidemiological and economic model for estimating population-level effectiveness of tai-chi. Setting: Australia, 2009. Patients or subjects: Australian community-dwelling population aged 70+ years, ambulatory and without debilitating conditions or profound visual defects. Intervention: Group-based tai-chi, for 1 h twice weekly for 26 weeks, assuming no sustained effect beyond the intervention period. Main outcome measure: Total falls and fall-related hospitalisation prevented in 2009. Results: Population-wide tai-chi delivery would prevent an estimated 5440 falls and 109 fall-related hospitalisations, resulting in a 0.18% reduction in the fall related hospital admission rate for community-dwelling older people. The gross costs per fall and per fall-related hospital admission prevented were $ A4414 ((sic)3013) and $A220 712 ((sic)150 684), respectively. A total investment of $A24.01 million ((sic)16.39 million), equivalent to 4.2% of the cost of fall-related episodes of hospital care in 2003/4, would be required to provide tai-chi for 31 998 people and achieve this effect. Conclusions: Substantial investment in, and high population uptake of, tai-chi would be required to have a large effect on falls and fall-related hospitalisation rates. Although not accounted for in this study, investment in tai-chi is likely to be associated with additional significant health benefits beyond falls prevention. This approach could be applied to other interventions to assist selection of the most cost effective falls-prevention portfolio for Australia and other countries.
Description:
As Australia heads into a new era of implementing a National Curriculum, the place of Outdoor Education in Australianschools is under question. In the initial drafts of the National Curriculum, Outdoor Education has been marginalised. Theauthors propose that Outdoor Education should maintain a strong role, especially as processes of experiential learning are applied across the curriculum. Moreover, Outdoor Education oers distinctive content and learning experiences that would be lost in the current draft framework. This paper considers the role and place of Outdoor Education in the NationalCurriculum and frames possible considerations, challenges and risks
Description:
Objectives: Living alone is a risk factor for depressive symptoms among older men, and is likely to occur due to belongingness needs being unmet. It is proposed the living alone-sense of belonging and living alone-depressive symptoms relations are stronger for gay men than heterosexual men, due to different family circumstances. This research tested a moderated mediation model, specifically whether the relationship between living alone and depressive symptoms is mediated by sense of belonging, and whether the living alone-sense of belonging and living alone-depressive symptoms relationships are moderated by sexual orientation. Method: A community sample of 169 Australian gay men aged 65 to 93 years and 187 Australian heterosexual men aged 65 to 94 years completed the Psychological subscale of the Sense of Belonging Instrument and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale. Results: Results supported the simple mediation model, with living alone being associated directly and indirectly with depressive symptoms via sense of belonging. The conditional indirect effect of living alone on depressive symptoms via sense of belonging was not significant, and therefore the moderated mediation model was not supported. Conclusion: Results imply that older men who live alone are at increased risk of depressive symptoms directly and indirectly via lower levels of sense of belonging.
Description:
Partnerships between the health sector and various organizations in the community have been encouraged as a new strategy to develop sports and recreation programs, and achieve public health objectives related to obesity prevention. The purpose of this study was to investigate the partnership-related processes and capacity-building strategies associated with the successful implementation of sports and recreation programs. The research design was a multiple-case study with cross-case comparisons. Eight sports and recreation programs funded by the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation were investigated. Data collection included: semi-structured interviews with grant recipients and key partnership members (n=22); and document analysis. A capacity-building framework was used to guide data analysis. The findings showed that partnerships without the engagement of key stakeholders and a diversity of skills, resources, and approaches were limited to 'come and try' events rather than structured sports and recreation programs in the short term. Addressing the development of partnerships, by implementing a phased approach to program development and implementation may assist the sports and recreation sector build capacity to participate in partnership approaches to health promotion.
Description:
In Victoria, Maternal and Child Health (MCH) service is currently located within the State Government’s Department of Education and EarlyChildhood Development (DEECD) portfolio. This department is accountable for the planning and provision of early childhood services in partnership with local government. The MCH service has experienced many changes in State Government departmental portfolios over the years.It was therefore considered relevant to explore the knowledge, attitudes and beliefs held by the MCH workforce in regards to the portfolio that they considered should manage the MCH service.A qualitative exploratory descriptive approach was used to explore the Knowledge, attitudes and beliefs of the Victorian MCH nurses regarding the positioning portfolio for the service. The involved interviewing 12 key stakeholders and 36 MCH nurses until data saturation was reached. Presented are the findings that indicated that the majority of the participants believed that the service did not belong well currently in either Victorian Government Education or Health portfolio. The strength of this opinion, however, highlights the need for some collaborative discussion with all concerned parties in order to appropriately position the MCH service in order to achieve optimum outcomes for children in Victoria.
Description:
In Victoria, Maternal and Child Health (MCH) service is currently located within the State Government’s Department of Education and EarlyChildhood Development (DEECD) portfolio. This department is accountable for the planning and provision of early childhood services in partnership with local government. The MCH service has experienced many changes in State Government departmental portfolios over the years.It was therefore considered relevant to explore the knowledge, attitudes and beliefs held by the MCH workforce in regards to the portfolio that they considered should manage the MCH service.A qualitative exploratory descriptive approach was used to explore the Knowledge, attitudes and beliefs of the Victorian MCH nurses regarding the positioning portfolio for the service. The involved interviewing 12 key stakeholders and 36 MCH nurses until data saturation was reached. Presented are the findings that indicated that the majority of the participants believed that the service did not belong well currently in either Victorian Government Education or Health portfolio. The strength of this opinion, however, highlights the need for some collaborative discussion with all concerned parties in order to appropriately position the MCH service in order to achieve optimum outcomes for children in Victoria.
Description:
China has attracted a huge amount of interest from around the world over the last two decades because of its rapid and vigorous development. Rapid economic growth has brought with it significant structural reforms in all trades and professions across China. Within this context of rapid social change, the Chinese basic education system has been subject to considerable reforms. Foremost has been the introduction of a new National Curriculum Standard comprising 18 learning areas in which Physical Education and Health was included in order to better accommodate the contemporary needs of (post)modern China. This study focuses upon the ways physical education teachers interpret and engage with the curriculum reforms advanced in the new National Physical Education and Health Curriculum. Through interviews with 18 practicing physical education teachers, the paper seeks to address some challenge issues facing Chinese physical education reform, especially the factors resisting implementation of the new curriculum. Among the core themes to be discussed in this paper will be the personal, structural and cultural factors that work against teachers taking up the change opportunities.
Description:
China has attracted a huge amount of interest from around the world over the last two decades because of its rapid and vigorous development. Rapid economic growth has brought with it significant structural reforms in all trades and professions across China. Within this context of rapid social change, the Chinese basic education system has been subject to considerable reforms. Foremost has been the introduction of a new National Curriculum Standard comprising 18 learning areas in which Physical Education and Health was included in order to better accommodate the contemporary needs of (post)modern China. This study focuses upon the ways physical education teachers interpret and engage with the curriculum reforms advanced in the new National Physical Education and Health Curriculum. Through interviews with 18 practicing physical education teachers, the paper seeks to address some challenge issues facing Chinese physical education reform, especially the factors resisting implementation of the new curriculum. Among the core themes to be discussed in this paper will be the personal, structural and cultural factors that work against teachers taking up the change opportunities.
Description:
In this chapter, we highlight the central role that healthy, vibrant, and functioning “everyday, local, and nearby” childhoodnature ecosystems can play in both keeping children healthy and in helping them to understand the relationship between ecosystem health and their own health. By understanding these interconnections, children can learn that they are not separate from or superior to nature. Rather, these settings become sites where children can refresh and reimagine understandings of nature and their relationships as, within, of, and to nature. Healthy settings are, we believe, a foundation for healthy children. A focus on health is particularly timely for two reasons. First, there are mounting international concerns about children’ health – be it around issues of physical activity, mental illness, social resiliency and belonging, overweight and obesity, and spiritual grounding. But it is not only children’s health that is of concern: there are deep and mounting international concerns about the health of ecological systems, be it around issues of global warming, acid rain, species loss, air pollution, urban sprawl, waste disposal, ozone layer depletion, and water pollution. This Chapter is framed around the World Health Organization’s definition of health and explores the ways in which local nearby natural childhoodnature settings can promote physical, mental, social, and spiritual health and well-being of children. To illustrate these concepts in action, we profile a case study from our research in Australia. This chapter concludes with a discussion on the ways that healthy childhoodnature settings can unite, inform, and support the interests of educators, environmentalists, and children’s health advocates who have an interest in the health of children and ecosystems.
Description:
The problem of cluster analysis is formulated as a problem of nonsmooth, nonconvex optimization, and an algorithm for solving the cluster analysis problem based on the nonsmooth optimization techniques is developed. The issues of applying this algorithm to large data sets are discussed and a feature selection procedure is demonstrated. The algorithm is then applied to a hospital data set to generate new knowledge about different patterns of patients resource consumption.
Description:
Background: Electronic methods are increasingly being used to manage health-related data among sporting populations. Collection of such data permits the analysis of injury and illness trends, improves early detection of injuries and illnesses, collectively referred to as health problems, and provides evidence to inform prevention strategies. The Athlete Management System (AMS) has been employed across a range of sports to monitor health. Australian combat athletes train across the country without dedicated national medical or sports science teams to monitor and advocate for their health. Employing a Web-based system, such as the AMS, May provide an avenue to increase the visibility of health problems experienced by combat athletes and deliver key information to stakeholders detailing where prevention programs May be targeted. Objective: The objectives of this paper are to (1) report on the feasibility of utilizing the AMS to collect longitudinal injury and illness data of combat sports athletes and (2) describe the type, location, severity, and recurrence of injuries and illnesses that the cohort of athletes experience across a 12-week period. Methods: We invited 26 elite and developing athletes from 4 Olympic combat sports (boxing, judo, taekwondo, and wrestling) to participate in this study. Engagement with the AMS was measured, and collected health problems (injuries or illnesses) were coded using the Orchard Sports Injury Classification System (version 10.1) and International Classification of Primary Care (version 2). Results: Despite >160 contacts, athlete engagement with online tools was poor, with only 13% compliance across the 12-week period. No taekwondo or wrestling athletes were compliant. Despite low overall engagement, a large number of injuries or illness were recorded across 11 athletes who entered data—22 unique injuries, 8 unique illnesses, 30 recurrent injuries, and 2 recurrent illnesses. The most frequent injuries were to the knee in boxing (n=41) and thigh in judo (n=9). In this cohort, judo players experienced more severe, but less frequent, injuries than boxers, yet judo players sustained more illnesses than boxers. In 97.0% (126/130) of cases, athletes in this cohort continued to train irrespective of their health problems. Conclusions: Among athletes who reported injuries, many reported multiple conditions, indicating a need for health monitoring in Australian combat sports. A number of factors May have influenced engagement with the AMS, including access to the internet, the design of the system, coach views on the system, previous experiences with the system, and the existing culture within Australian combat sports. To increase engagement, there May be a requirement for sports staff to provide relevant feedback on data entered into the system. Until the Barriers are addressed, it is not feasible to implement the system in its current form across a larger cohort of combat athletes.
Description:
Background: Electronic methods are increasingly being used to manage health-related data among sporting populations. Collection of such data permits the analysis of injury and illness trends, improves early detection of injuries and illnesses, collectively referred to as health problems, and provides evidence to inform prevention strategies. The Athlete Management System (AMS) has been employed across a range of sports to monitor health. Australian combat athletes train across the country without dedicated national medical or sports science teams to monitor and advocate for their health. Employing a Web-based system, such as the AMS, May provide an avenue to increase the visibility of health problems experienced by combat athletes and deliver key information to stakeholders detailing where prevention programs May be targeted. Objective: The objectives of this paper are to (1) report on the feasibility of utilizing the AMS to collect longitudinal injury and illness data of combat sports athletes and (2) describe the type, location, severity, and recurrence of injuries and illnesses that the cohort of athletes experience across a 12-week period. Methods: We invited 26 elite and developing athletes from 4 Olympic combat sports (boxing, judo, taekwondo, and wrestling) to participate in this study. Engagement with the AMS was measured, and collected health problems (injuries or illnesses) were coded using the Orchard Sports Injury Classification System (version 10.1) and International Classification of Primary Care (version 2). Results: Despite >160 contacts, athlete engagement with online tools was poor, with only 13% compliance across the 12-week period. No taekwondo or wrestling athletes were compliant. Despite low overall engagement, a large number of injuries or illness were recorded across 11 athletes who entered data—22 unique injuries, 8 unique illnesses, 30 recurrent injuries, and 2 recurrent illnesses. The most frequent injuries were to the knee in boxing (n=41) and thigh in judo (n=9). In this cohort, judo players experienced more severe, but less frequent, injuries than boxers, yet judo players sustained more illnesses than boxers. In 97.0% (126/130) of cases, athletes in this cohort continued to train irrespective of their health problems. Conclusions: Among athletes who reported injuries, many reported multiple conditions, indicating a need for health monitoring in Australian combat sports. A number of factors May have influenced engagement with the AMS, including access to the internet, the design of the system, coach views on the system, previous experiences with the system, and the existing culture within Australian combat sports. To increase engagement, there May be a requirement for sports staff to provide relevant feedback on data entered into the system. Until the Barriers are addressed, it is not feasible to implement the system in its current form across a larger cohort of combat athletes.
Description:
We wrote this book as a compilation of many years of research and pedagogical experiences around cross-cultural and multidisciplinary design for healthy ageing. In it, we combine different voices and perspectives, including descriptions of several cross-cultural design for healthy ageing workshops conducted with students from design and nursing disciplines in different Australasian locations. These experiences are described in detail, offering a roadmap and many ideas for readers to build upon. Literature reviews and background research inform these practical experiences, which were then used to develop new theory and insights around the topics, mainly from academic and pedagogic points of view. The multiplicity of voices of student participants in the workshops provides a more personalised account of these experiences, while our reflections highlight the pedagogic and life-changing value of these experiences. We are a multidisciplinary team of researchers based mainly in Australia. Initially, a majority of the team members met while working at the University of Canberra (UC), with specialties in nursing, graphic design, industrial design, and fashion design, all from different cultural backgrounds and with interests in health and healthy ageing. Building on research undertaken with several study tours of Australian students from design and nursing to various Asian countries, mainly China and Singapore, and through collaborations with numerous partners including higher education institutions in Singapore, China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, the research team explored the multi-layered relationships between design and healthy ageing. "From Introduction"