Public Relations and Religious Diversity: A Conceptual Framework for Fostering a Spirit of Communitas

Changes in immigration law, globalization and increased ease of transportation have transformed modern societies into culturally diverse landscapes with religious diversity, in particular, presenting both opportunities and challenges. The author proposes a conceptual framework that embraces an interpretation of public relations as a social function, a covenantal model as a theoretical ground, an expanded worldview to include tolerance as an essential defining presupposition, and expanded communicative conceptual parameters that include religion in definitions of diversity and generic principles of excellent practice. An anecdotal review of faith communities in the U.S. reveals that public relations professionals and other communicators model the conceptual framework in interfaith initiatives and that the framework would serve as a helpful foundation for guiding communication professionals toward such behaviour. The study also illustrates that socially-responsible behaviour often has a foundation of faith common across various faith traditions

The Z/2\mathbb{Z}/2-equivariant cohomology of complex projective spaces

In this article we compute the cohomology of complex projective spaces associated to finite dimensional representations of $\mathbb{Z}/2$ graded on virtual representations of its fundamental groupoid. This fully graded theory, unlike the classical $RO(G)$-graded theory, allows for the definition of push-forward maps between projective spaces, which we also compute. In the computation we use relations and generators coming from the fully graded cohomology of the projective space of $\mathscr {U}$, the complete complex $\mathbb{Z}/2$-universe, as carried out by the first author. This work is the first step in a program for developing $\mathbb{Z}/2$-equivariant Schubert calculus.Comment: 42 pages, this is a minor update. The proof of the multiplicative additive structure has been uniformized with the rest of the paper. Typos have been correcte

Promoting physical therapists’ of research evidence to inform clinical practice: part 1 - theoretical foundation, evidence, and description of the PEAK program

Background: There is a need for theoretically grounded and evidence-based interventions that enhance the use of research evidence in physical therapist practice. This paper and its companion paper introduce the Physical therapist-driven Education for Actionable Knowledge translation (PEAK) program, an educational program designed to promote physical therapists’ integration of research evidence into clinical decision-making. The pedagogical foundations for the PEAK educational program include Albert Bandura’s social cognitive theory and Malcolm Knowles’s adult learning theory. Additionally, two complementary frameworks of knowledge translation, the Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services (PARiHS) and Knowledge to Action (KTA) Cycle, were used to inform the organizational elements of the program. Finally, the program design was influenced by evidence from previous attempts to facilitate the use of research in practice at the individual and organizational levels. Discussion: The 6-month PEAK program consisted of four consecutive and interdependent components. First, leadership support was secured and electronic resources were acquired and distributed to participants. Next, a two-day training workshop consisting of didactic and small group activities was conducted that addressed the five steps of evidence based practice. For five months following the workshop, participants worked in small groups to review and synthesize literature around a group-selected area of common clinical interest. Each group contributed to the generation of a “Best Practices List” - a list of locally generated, evidence-based, actionable behaviors relevant to the groups’ clinical practice. Ultimately, participants agreed to implement the Best Practices List in their clinical practice. Summary: This, first of two companion papers, describes the underlying pedagogical theories, knowledge translation frameworks, and research evidence used to derive the PEAK program – an educational program designed to promote the use of research evidence to inform physical therapist practice. The four components of the program are described in detail. The companion paper reports the results of a mixed methods feasibility analysis of this complex educational intervention

Development and validation of the ACE tool: Assessing medical trainees' competency in evidence based medicine

BACKGROUND: While a variety of instruments have been developed to assess knowledge and skills in evidence based medicine (EBM), few assess all aspects of EBM - including knowledge, skills attitudes and behaviour - or have been psychometrically evaluated. The aim of this study was to develop and validate an instrument that evaluates medical trainees’ competency in EBM across knowledge, skills and attitude. METHODS: The ‘Assessing Competency in EBM’ (ACE) tool was developed by the authors, with content and face validity assessed by expert opinion. A cross-sectional sample of 342 medical trainees representing ‘novice’, ‘intermediate’ and ‘advanced’ EBM trainees were recruited to complete the ACE tool. Construct validity, item difficulty, internal reliability and item discrimination were analysed. RESULTS: We recruited 98 EBM-novice, 108 EBM-intermediate and 136 EBM-advanced participants. A statistically significant difference in the total ACE score was observed and corresponded to the level of training: on a 0-15-point test, the mean ACE scores were 8.6 for EBM-novice; 9.5 for EBM-intermediate; and 10.4 for EBM-advanced (p < 0.0001). Individual item discrimination was excellent (Item Discrimination Index ranging from 0.37 to 0.84), with internal reliability consistent across all but three items (Item Total Correlations were all positive ranging from 0.14 to 0.20). CONCLUSION: The 15-item ACE tool is a reliable and valid instrument to assess medical trainees’ competency in EBM. The ACE tool provides a novel assessment that measures user performance across the four main steps of EBM. To provide a complete suite of instruments to assess EBM competency across various patient scenarios, future refinement of the ACE instrument should include further scenarios across harm, diagnosis and prognosis

A Delphi survey to determine how educational interventions for evidence-based practice should be reported:Stage 2 of the development of a reporting guideline

BACKGROUND: Undertaking a Delphi exercise is recommended during the second stage in the development process for a reporting guideline. To continue the development for the Guideline for Reporting Evidence-based practice Educational interventions and Teaching (GREET) a Delphi survey was undertaken to determine the consensus opinion of researchers, journal editors and educators in evidence-based practice (EBP) regarding the information items that should be reported when describing an educational intervention for EBP. METHODS: A four round online Delphi survey was conducted from October 2012 to March 2013. The Delphi panel comprised international researchers, educators and journal editors in EBP. Commencing with an open-ended question, participants were invited to volunteer information considered important when reporting educational interventions for EBP. Over three subsequent rounds participants were invited to rate the importance of each of the Delphi items using an 11 point Likert rating scale (low 0 to 4, moderate 5 to 6, high 7 to 8 and very high >8). Consensus agreement was set a priori as at least 80 per cent participant agreement. Consensus agreement was initially calculated within the four categories of importance (low to very high), prior to these four categories being merged into two (<7 and ≥7). Descriptive statistics for each item were computed including the mean Likert scores, standard deviation (SD), range and median participant scores. Mean absolute deviation from the median (MAD-M) was also calculated as a measure of participant disagreement. RESULTS: Thirty-six experts agreed to participate and 27 (79%) participants completed all four rounds. A total of 76 information items were generated across the four survey rounds. Thirty-nine items (51%) were specific to describing the intervention (as opposed to other elements of study design) and consensus agreement was achieved for two of these items (5%). When the four rating categories were merged into two (<7 and ≥7), 18 intervention items achieved consensus agreement. CONCLUSION: This Delphi survey has identified 39 items for describing an educational intervention for EBP. These Delphi intervention items will provide the groundwork for the subsequent consensus discussion to determine the final inclusion of items in the GREET, the first reporting guideline for educational interventions in EBP

A systematic review of how studies describe educational interventions for evidence-based practice:Stage 1 of the development of a reporting guideline

Abstract Background The aim of this systematic review was to identify which information is included when reporting educational interventions used to facilitate foundational skills and knowledge of evidence-based practice (EBP) training for health professionals. This systematic review comprised the first stage in the three stage development process for a reporting guideline for educational interventions for EBP. Methods The review question was ‘What information has been reported when describing educational interventions targeting foundational evidence-based practice knowledge and skills?’ MEDLINE, Academic Search Premier, ERIC, CINAHL, Scopus, Embase, Informit health, Cochrane Library and Web of Science databases were searched from inception until October - December 2011. Randomised and non-randomised controlled trials reporting original data on educational interventions specific to developing foundational knowledge and skills of evidence-based practice were included. Studies were not appraised for methodological bias, however, reporting frequency and item commonality were compared between a random selection of studies included in the systematic review and a random selection of studies excluded as they were not controlled trials. Twenty-five data items were extracted by two independent reviewers (consistency > 90%). Results Sixty-one studies met the inclusion criteria (n = 29 randomised, n = 32 non-randomised). The most consistently reported items were the learner’s stage of training, professional discipline and the evaluation methods used (100%). The least consistently reported items were the instructor(s) previous teaching experience (n = 8, 13%), and student effort outside face to face contact (n = 1, 2%). Conclusion This systematic review demonstrates inconsistencies in describing educational interventions for EBP in randomised and non-randomised trials. To enable educational interventions to be replicable and comparable, improvements in the reporting for educational interventions for EBP are required. In the absence of a specific reporting guideline, there are a range of items which are reported with variable frequency. Identifying the important items for describing educational interventions for facilitating foundational knowledge and skills in EBP remains to be determined. The findings of this systematic review will be used to inform the next stage in the development of a reporting guideline for educational interventions for EBP

Means and ENDS – e-cigarettes, the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, and global health diplomacy in action.

E-cigarettes are a new and disruptive element in global health diplomacy (GHD) and policy-making. This is an ethnographic account of how e-cigarettes and other Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems (ENDS) were tackled at the 6th Conference of the Parties to the World Health Organization's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. It demonstrates how uncertainty about ENDS and differences of opinion are currently so great that ‘agreeing to disagree’ as a consensus position and ‘strategic use of time’ were the principles that ensured effective GHD in this case. Observers representing accredited non-governmental organisations were active in briefing and lobbying country delegates not to spend too much time debating an issue for which insufficient evidence exists, and for which countries were unlikely to reach a consensus on a specific regulatory approach or universally applicable regulatory measures. Equally, the work of Costa Rica in preparing and re-negotiating the draft decision, and the work of the relevant Committee Chair in managing the discussion, contributed to effectively reining in lengthy statements from Parties and focusing on points of consensus. As well as summarising the debate itself and analysing the issues surrounding it, this account offers an example of GHD working effectively in a situation of epistemic uncertainty