| 1. |
- Adamatzky, Andrew, et al.
(författare)
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East-West paths to unconventional computing
- 2017
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Ingår i: Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology. - : Elsevier BV. - 0079-6107 .- 1873-1732. ; 131, s. 469-493
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- Unconventional computing is about breaking boundaries in thinking, acting and computing. Typical topics of this non-typical field include, but are not limited to physics of computation, non-classical logics, new complexity measures, novel hardware, mechanical, chemical and quantum computing. Unconventional computing encourages a new style of thinking while practical applications are obtained from uncovering and exploiting principles and mechanisms of information processing in and functional properties of, physical, chemical and living systems; in particular, efficient algorithms are developed, (almost) optimal architectures are designed and working prototypes of future computing devices are manufactured. This article includes idiosyncratic accounts of ‘unconventional computing’ scientists reflecting on their personal experiences, what attracted them to the field, their inspirations and discoveries.
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| 2. |
- Byskov, Jens, et al.
(författare)
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A systems perspective on the importance of global health strategy developments for accomplishing today’s Sustainable Development Goals
- 2019
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Ingår i: Health Policy and Planning. - : Oxford University Press. - 0268-1080 .- 1460-2237. ; 34:9, s. 635-645
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Priority setting within health systems has not led to accountable, fair and sustainable solutions to improving population health. Providers, users and other stakeholders each have their own health and service priorities based on selected evidence, own values, expertise and preferences. Based on a historical account, this article analyses if contemporary health systems are appropriate to optimize population health within the framework of cross cutting targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We applied a scoping review approach to identify and review literature of scientific databases and other programmatic web and library-based documents on historical and contemporary health systems policies and strategies at the global level. Early literature supported the 1977 launching of the global target of Health for All by the year 2000. Reviewed literature was used to provide a historical overview of systems components of global health strategies through describing the conceptualizations of health determinants, user involvement and mechanisms of priority setting over time, and analysing the importance of historical developments on barriers and opportunities to accomplish the SDGs. Definitions, scope and application of health systems-associated priority setting fluctuated and main health determinants and user influence on global health systems and priority setting remained limited. In exploring reasons for the identified lack of SDG-associated health systems and priority setting processes, we discuss issues of accountability, vested interests, ethics and democratic legitimacy as conditional for future sustainability of population health. To accomplish the SDGs health systems must engage beyond their own sector boundary. New approaches to Health in All Policies and One Health may be conducive for scaling up more democratic and inclusive priority setting processes based on proper process guidelines from successful pilots. Sustainable development depends on population preferences supported by technical and managerial expertise.
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| 3. |
- Byskov, Jens, et al.
(författare)
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Accountable priority setting for trust in health systems : the need for research into a new approach for strengthening sustainable health action in developing countries
- 2009
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Ingår i: Health Research Policy and Systems. - : BioMed Central. - 1478-4505. ; 7, s. 23-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Despite multiple efforts to strengthen health systems in low and middle income countries, intended sustainable improvements in health outcomes have not been shown. To date most priority setting initiatives in health systems have mainly focused on technical approaches involving information derived from burden of disease statistics, cost effectiveness analysis, and published clinical trials. However, priority setting involves value-laden choices and these technical approaches do not equip decision-makers to address a broader range of relevant values - such as trust, equity, accountability and fairness - that are of concern to other partners and, not least, the populations concerned. A new focus for priority setting is needed. Accountability for Reasonableness (AFR) is an explicit ethical framework for legitimate and fair priority setting that provides guidance for decision-makers who must identify and consider the full range of relevant values. AFR consists of four conditions: i) relevance to the local setting, decided by agreed criteria; ii) publicizing priority-setting decisions and the reasons behind them; iii) the establishment of revisions/appeal mechanisms for challenging and revising decisions; iv) the provision of leadership to ensure that the first three conditions are met. REACT - "REsponse to ACcountable priority setting for Trust in health systems" is an EU-funded five-year intervention study started in 2006, which is testing the application and effects of the AFR approach in one district each in Kenya, Tanzania and Zambia. The objectives of REACT are to describe and evaluate district-level priority setting, to develop and implement improvement strategies guided by AFR and to measure their effect on quality, equity and trust indicators. Effects are monitored within selected disease and programme interventions and services and within human resources and health systems management. Qualitative and quantitative methods are being applied in an action research framework to examine the potential of AFR to support sustainable improvements to health systems performance. This paper reports on the project design and progress and argues that there is a high need for research into legitimate and fair priority setting to improve the knowledge base for achieving sustainable improvements in health outcomes.
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| 4. |
- Byskov, Jens, et al.
(författare)
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The accountability for reasonableness approach to guide priority setting in health systems within limited resources : findings from action research at district level in Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia
- 2014
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Ingår i: Health Research Policy and Systems. - : BioMed Central. - 1478-4505. ; 12
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Priority-setting decisions are based on an important, but not sufficient set of values and thus lead to disagreement on priorities. Accountability for Reasonableness (AFR) is an ethics-based approach to a legitimate and fair priority-setting process that builds upon four conditions: relevance, publicity, appeals, and enforcement, which facilitate agreement on priority-setting decisions and gain support for their implementation. This paper focuses on the assessment of AFR within the project REsponse to ACcountable priority setting for Trust in health systems (REACT). Methods: This intervention study applied an action research methodology to assess implementation of AFR in one district in Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia, respectively. The assessments focused on selected disease, program, and managerial areas. An implementing action research team of core health team members and supporting researchers was formed to implement, and continually assess and improve the application of the four conditions. Researchers evaluated the intervention using qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis methods. Results: The values underlying the AFR approach were in all three districts well-aligned with general values expressed by both service providers and community representatives. There was some variation in the interpretations and actual use of the AFR in the decision-making processes in the three districts, and its effect ranged from an increase in awareness of the importance of fairness to a broadened engagement of health team members and other stakeholders in priority setting and other decision-making processes. Conclusions: District stakeholders were able to take greater charge of closing the gap between nationally set planning and the local realities and demands of the served communities within the limited resources at hand. This study thus indicates that the operationalization of the four broadly defined and linked conditions is both possible and seems to be responding to an actual demand. This provides arguments for the continued application and further assessment of the potential of AFR in supporting priority-setting and other decision-making processes in health systems to achieve better agreed and more sustainable health improvements linked to a mutual democratic learning with potential wider implications.
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| 5. |
- Byskov, Jens, et al.
(författare)
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The Need for Global Application of the Accountability for Reasonableness Approach to Support Sustainable Outcomes Comment on "Expanded HTA Enhancing Fairness and Legitimacy"
- 2017
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Ingår i: International Journal of Health Policy and Management. - : Kerman University of Medical Sciences. - 2322-5939. ; 6:2, s. 115-118
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The accountability for reasonableness (AFR) concept has been developed and discussed for over two decades. Its interpretation has been studied in several ways partly guided by the specific settings and the researchers involved. This has again influenced the development of the concept, but not led to universal application. The potential use in health technology assessments (HTAs) has recently been identified by Daniels et al as yet another excellent justification for AFR-based process guidance that refers to both qualitative and a broader participatory input for HTA, but it has raised concerns from those who primarily support the consistency and objectivity of more quantitative and reproducible evidence. With reference to studies of AFR-based interventions and the through these repeatedly documented motivation for their consolidation, we argue that it can even be unethical not to take AFR conditions beyond their still mainly formative stage and test their application within routine health systems management for their expected support to more sustainable health improvements. The ever increasing evidence and technical expertise are necessary but at times contradictory and do not in isolation lead to optimally accountable, fair and sustainable solutions. Technical experts, politicians, managers, service providers, community members, and beneficiaries each have their own values, expertise and preferences, to be considered for necessary buy in and sustainability. Legitimacy, accountability and fairness do not come about without an inclusive and agreed process guidance that can reconcile differences of opinion and indeed differences in evidence to arrive at a by all understood, accepted, but not necessarily agreed compromise in a current context -until major premises for the decision change. AFR should be widely adopted in projects and services under close monitoring and frequent reviews.
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| 6. |
- Goicolea, Isabel, et al.
(författare)
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Accessibility and factors associated with utilization of mental health services in youth health centers : a qualitative comparative analysis in northern Sweden
- 2018
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Ingår i: International Journal of Mental Health Systems. - : BioMed Central (BMC). - 1752-4458. ; 12
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Youth-friendly health care services can facilitate young people's access to health care services and promote their health, including their mental health. In Sweden, a network of youth health centers exist since the 1970s, incorporated within the public health system. Even if such centers take a holistic approach to youth health, the focus has been in sexual and reproductive health care, and the extent of integrating mental health care services is less developed though it varies notably between different centers. This study aims to analyse the various conditions that are sufficient and/or necessary to make Swedish youth health centers accessible for mental and psychosocial health.Methods: Multiple case study design, using qualitative comparative analysis to assess the various conditions that makes a youth health center accessible for mental and psychosocial issues and mental health. The cases included 18 youth health centers (from a total of 22) in the four northern counties of Sweden.Results: In order to enhance accessibility for mental health services, youth health centers need to be trusted by young people. Trust was necessary but not sufficient, meaning that it had to be combined with other conditions: either having a team with a variety of professions represented in the youth health center, or being a youth health center that is both easy to contact and well-staffed with mental health professionals.Conclusions: Differentiated, first-line services for youth can play an important role in promoting youth mental health if certain conditions are fulfilled. Trust is necessary, but has to be combined with either multidisciplinary teams, or expertise on mental health and easy accessibility.
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| 7. |
- Goicolea, Isabel, et al.
(författare)
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Developing a programme theory to explain how primary health care teams learn to respond to intimate partner violence : a realist case-study
- 2015
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Ingår i: BMC Health Services Research. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1472-6963. ; 15
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Despite the progress made on policies and programmes to strengthen primary health care teams' response to Intimate Partner Violence, the literature shows that encounters between women exposed to IPV and health-care providers are not always satisfactory, and a number of barriers that prevent individual health-care providers from responding to IPV have been identified. We carried out a realist case study, for which we developed and tested a programme theory that seeks to explain how, why and under which circumstances a primary health care team in Spain learned to respond to IPV. Methods: A realist case study design was chosen to allow for an in-depth exploration of the linkages between context, intervention, mechanisms and outcomes as they happen in their natural setting. The first author collected data at the primary health care center La Virgen (pseudonym) through the review of documents, observation and interviews with health systems' managers, team members, women patients, and members of external services. The quality of the IPV case management was assessed with the PREMIS tool. Results: This study found that the health care team at La Virgen has managed 1) to engage a number of staff members in actively responding to IPV, 2) to establish good coordination, mutual support and continuous learning processes related to IPV, 3) to establish adequate internal referrals within La Virgen, and 4) to establish good coordination and referral systems with other services. Team and individual level factors have triggered the capacity and interest in creating spaces for team leaning, team work and therapeutic responses to IPV in La Virgen, although individual motivation strongly affected this mechanism. Regional interventions did not trigger individual and/ or team responses but legitimated the workings of motivated professionals. Conclusions: The primary health care team of La Virgen is involved in a continuous learning process, even as participation in the process varies between professionals. This process has been supported, but not caused, by a favourable policy for integration of a health care response to IPV. Specific contextual factors of La Virgen facilitated the uptake of the policy. To some extent, the performance of La Virgen has the potential to shape the IPV learning processes of other primary health care teams in Murcia.
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| 8. |
- Goicolea, Isabel, et al.
(författare)
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How do primary health care teams learn to integrate intimate partner violence (IPV) management? A realist evaluation protocol
- 2013
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Ingår i: Implementation Science. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1748-5908. ; 8, s. 36-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- BACKGROUND: Despite the existence of ample literature dealing, on the one hand, with the integration of innovations within health systems and team learning, and, on the other hand, with different aspects of the detection and management of intimate partner violence (IPV) within healthcare facilities, research that explores how health innovations that go beyond biomedical issues-such as IPV management-get integrated into health systems, and that focuses on healthcare teams' learning processes is, to the best of our knowledge, very scarce if not absent. This realist evaluation protocol aims to ascertain: why, how, and under what circumstances primary healthcare teams engage (if at all) in a learning process to integrate IPV management in their practices; and why, how, and under what circumstances team learning processes lead to the development of organizational culture and values regarding IPV management, and the delivery of IPV management services.METHODS: This study will be conducted in Spain using a multiple-case study design. Data will be collected from selected cases (primary healthcare teams) through different methods: individual and group interviews, routinely collected statistical data, documentary review, and observation. Cases will be purposively selected in order to enable testing the initial middle-range theory (MRT). After in-depth exploration of a limited number of cases, additional cases will be chosen for their ability to contribute to refining the emerging MRT to explain how primary healthcare learn to integrate intimate partner violence management.DISCUSSION: Evaluations of health sector responses to IPV are scarce, and even fewer focus on why, how, and when the healthcare services integrate IPV management. There is a consensus that healthcare professionals and healthcare teams play a key role in this integration, and that training is important in order to realize changes. However, little is known about team learning of IPV management, both in terms of how to trigger such learning and how team learning is connected with changes in organizational culture and values, and in service delivery. This realist evaluation protocol aims to contribute to this knowledge by conducting this project in a country, Spain, where great endeavours have been made towards the integration of IPV management within the health system.
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| 9. |
- Goicolea, Isabel, et al.
(författare)
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Mechanisms that Trigger a Good Health-Care Response to Intimate Partner Violence in Spain. Combining Realist Evaluation and Qualitative Comparative Analysis Approaches
- 2015
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Ingår i: PLOS ONE. - : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1932-6203. ; 10:8
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- BackgroundHealth care professionals, especially those working in primary health-care services, can play a key role in preventing and responding to intimate partner violence. However, there are huge variations in the way health care professionals and primary health care teams respond to intimate partner violence. In this study we tested a previously developed programme theory on 15 primary health care center teams located in four different Spanish regions: Murcia, C Valenciana, Castilla-León and Cantabria. The aim was to identify the key combinations of contextual factors and mechanisms that trigger a good primary health care center team response to intimate partner violence.MethodsA multiple case-study design was used. Qualitative and quantitative information was collected from each of the 15 centers (cases). In order to handle the large amount of information without losing familiarity with each case, qualitative comparative analysis was undertaken. Conditions (context and mechanisms) and outcomes, were identified and assessed for each of the 15 cases, and solution formulae were calculated using qualitative comparative analysis software.ResultsThe emerging programme theory highlighted the importance of the combination of each team’s self-efficacy, perceived preparation and women-centredness in generating a good team response to intimate partner violence. The use of the protocol and accumulated experience in primary health care were the most relevant contextual/intervention conditions to trigger a good response. However in order to achieve this, they must be combined with other conditions, such as an enabling team climate, having a champion social worker and having staff with training in intimate partner violence.ConclusionsInterventions to improve primary health care teams’ response to intimate partner violence should focus on strengthening team’s self-efficacy, perceived preparation and the implementation of a woman-centred approach. The use of the protocol combined with a large working experience in primary health care, and other factors such as training, a good team climate, and having a champion social worker on the team, also played a key role. Measures to sustain such interventions and promote these contextual factors should be encouraged.
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| 10. |
- Goicolea, Isabel, et al.
(författare)
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Searching for best practices of youth friendly services - a study protocol using qualitative comparative analysis in Sweden
- 2016
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Ingår i: BMC Health Services Research. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 1472-6963. ; 16
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Background: Swedish youth clinics constitute one of the most comprehensive and consolidated examples of a nationwide network of health care services for young people. However, studies evaluating their 'youth-friendliness' and the combination of factors that makes them more or less 'youth-friendly' have not been conducted. This protocol will scrutinise the current youth-friendliness of youth clinics in northern Sweden and identify the best combination of conditions needed in order to implement the criteria of youth-friendliness within Swedish youth clinics and elsewhere.Methods/design: In this study, we will use qualitative comparative analysis to analyse the conditions that are sufficient and/or necessary to implement Youth Friendly Health Services in 20 selected youth-clinics (cases). In order to conduct Qualitative Comparative Analysis, we will first identify the outcomes and the conditions to be assessed. The overall outcome - youth-friendliness - will be assessed together with specific outcomes for each of the five domains - accessible, acceptable, equitable, appropriate and effective. This will be done using a questionnaire to be applied to a sample of young people coming to the youth clinics. In terms of conditions, we will first identify what might be the key conditions, to ensure the youth friendliness of health care services, through literature review, interviews with professionals working at youth clinics, and with young people. The combination of conditions and outcomes will form the hypothesis to be further tested later on in the qualitative comparative analysis of the 20 cases. Once information on outcomes and conditions is gathered from each of the 20 clinics, it will be analysed using Qualitative Comparative Analysis.Discussion: The added value of this study in relation to the findings is twofold: on the one hand it will allow a thorough assessment of the youth-friendliness of northern Swedish youth clinics. On the other hand, it will extract lessons from one of the most consolidated examples of differentiated services for young people. Methodologically, this study can contribute to expanding the use of Qualitative Comparative Analysis in health systems research.
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