Community Oversight Research Articles

Reflecting Pancasila in Environmental Crimes Enforcement: Diffusing Values to Indonesia’s Laws

Pancasila and the 1945 Constitution play crucial roles in shaping Indonesia's governance, societal values, and legal framework, particularly in safeguarding the right to a clean and healthy environment. However, environmental destruction persists due to inadequate corporate accountability enforcement and systemic flaws. Hence, the article examines Indonesia's regulatory approach to holding corporations accountable for environmental crimes through the lens of Pancasila. It explores how Pancasila's principles influence environmental regulations, emphasizing nature harmony, fair treatment, and social justice. Effective enforcement aligned with these principles can promote sustainable development and environmental protection. Challenges like regulatory gaps and corruption need addressing. Building an optimal framework entails integrating Pancasila values into preventive and punitive measures, ensuring transparency, community participation, and fair enforcement. Success hinges on robust legal structures and public involvement, with initiatives like corporate collaboration, transparency, and strict liability enforcement. Implementation requires the establishment of mechanisms such as an Environmental Court and community oversight for victim recovery. This article uses a normative approach elaborated through a conceptual and statute approach.

Why We Should Reexamine the "Golden Age" of Antibiotics in Social Context.

Economics is the primary discipline used to understand supply chain design, scale-up, and management. For example, antibiotics can be compared to other forms of "tragedy of the commons," whereby a common good (effective treatment of infections) is jeopardized by individual consumption and lack of community oversight and stewardship. While economic analysis can explain innovation decline in terms of market failure, one pitfall of an early-stage focus on research and development is a failure to challenge the discovery narrative. Ethics also has a distinct place in helping us envision alternatives to what markets can produce. This article advances a more contextualized view of how science and technology policy has shaped antibiotic supply chains over many years, emphasizing how shifting the story we tell about past successes is central to securing a reliable antibiotic supply chain in the future.

Reflections on AI in Humanities

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues advancing rapidly, there is growing potential for its application in the humanities to uncover new insights and perspectives from the historical archives. However, it is also important to consider how AI tools themselves may unintentionally perpetuate existing biases if not developed conscientiously. This critical reflection reflects on the opportunities and challenges of utilising AI to amplify marginalised voices that have been traditionally excluded or underrepresented in mainstream historical narratives, with a focus on women. Through natural language processing and computer vision techniques, AI shows promise in automating the analysis of large volumes of text, image, and multimedia sources to bring to the surface female narratives previously overlooked due to limitations of manual research methods. However, issues such as training data bias, problematic stereotypes learned from legacy sources, and a lack of diversity among AI researchers threaten to replicate the very inequities they are seeking to overcome if not addressed proactively. Collaborative frameworks and design principles centred on representation, accountability and community oversight are needed. By critically examining its social responsibilities and impacts, this reflection argues that AI possesses great potential in the service of feminist and intersectional scholarship when guided appropriately. It calls for continued multidisciplinary dialogue to help ensure technologies amplify marginalised voices rather than risk their further marginalisation.

Kepemimpinan Kepala Desa dan Pengawasan Masyarakat dalam Mewujudkan Akuntabilitas Pengelolaan Dana Desa

Purpose: The leadership of the village head is a major part of managing village funds, but there are still many cases of misuse of village funds by village government officials, especially the village head, besides that the lack of oversight from the community has led to rampant cases of corruption in village funds within the village administration. The patriarchal culture places men as the main power holders who are still dominant in Indonesia. Not many women are currently leaders. This study aims to determine the influence of the village head's leadership and community supervision on the accountability of managing village funds with masculinity as a moderating variable. Methodology/Approach: This research is a quantitative research with primary data sources in the form of questionnaires distributed to the people of Batangsaren Village, Tulungagung Regency. Data analysis technique using multiple linear regression through the SPSS program. Findings: Based on the research results, researchers can conclude that the village head's leadership and community oversight have an effect on the accountability of managing village funds. Practical and Theoretical contribution/Originality: Masculinity does not moderate the influence of village head leadership on village fund management accountability and masculinity moderates the influence of community oversight on village fund management accountability.

Local, democratic community justice in the Mental Health Act 1983

AbstractAssociate Hospital Managers (AHMs) are members of the local community with a power under section 23 of the Mental Health Act 1983 to discharge people from compulsory mental health care against medical advice. They provide scrutiny of professional decisions and, in so doing, protect patient liberty by providing review of compulsory care. Abolition of the AHMs has been contemplated on numerous occasions, most recently by the Independent Review of the Mental Health Act 1983 (December 2018), the White Paper on ‘Reforming the Mental Health Act’ (January 2021) and the Government's response (July 2021). Through an historical and contemporary consideration of the section 23 power spanning 1808–2022, this paper argues that removal of the AHMs would be detrimental to the legitimacy of the 1983 Act. This is because the abolition of the AHMs would undermine the principles of local, democratic, community oversight entailed by section 23, and found nowhere else in the Act. The Draft Mental Health Bill (June 2022) does not address these concerns.

Connecting the Person by Removing the Stigma: Why Ireland Should Follow the Portuguese Model of Drug Decriminalisation

The decriminalisation of drugs and how it can impact addiction, crime and mental health is a subject that inspires global interest and debate. Much has been written about the positive outcomes of decriminalisation from a public health perspective, including the elimination of aggressive policing and community oversight and the shift to offering treatment and social supports for those affected by addiction. Ireland has yet to move to a model of decriminalisation, although a system similar to the one employed in Portugal has been suggested. This article briefly outlines reasons why a paradigm shift is vital if progress is to be made in reducing addiction in contemporary Ireland. The potential benefits could include a reduction in the pervasive social stigma connected with substance abuse, leading to less social exclusion within the Irish population.

Community health workers' experiences of supervision in maternal and child health programmes in low- and middle-income countries: A qualitative evidence synthesis.

Maternal and child health programmes often use Community Health Workers (CHWs) to help address poor access to health care, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). Supervision has long been recognised as a critical ingredient of successful CHW programmes, yet it is often reported as either of poor quality or absent. There is little research on CHWs' own perception of supervision and to the best of our knowledge, there are no reviews synthesising the evidence of CHWs' experiences of supervision. This review identified and synthesised qualitative research evidence about the experiences and perceptions of supervision by CHWs in programmes targeting maternal and child health (MCH) in LMIC. Electronic searches were performed in the following databases: EMBASE, Medline, PsycINFO, ASSIA, ERIC and CINAHL. This review included studies during the period from 2000 to 2021. In total, 10,505 titles were screened for inclusion, of which 177 full-text articles were retrieved and assessed. Ultimately, 19 articles were included in this review. Data extraction was based on the thematic synthesis approach: coding the text of included studies line-by-line; developing descriptive themes; and generating analytical themes. Four themes emerged: (1) frequency of supervision, (2) type of supervision, (3) supervision and motivation and (4) supportive supervision. Careful consideration needs to be taken of the model of supervision used, as primary care facility-based supervisors (usually nurses), although skilled, may not have sufficient time to supervise. Employing supervisors whose sole responsibility is to supervise CHWs may be a good strategy to alleviate these issues. Sufficient time and resources need to be allocated to supervisors and they should be expected to perform regular in-the-field supervision. Involving some aspects of community oversight should also be considered. Supervisor skills and training and the long-term retention of trained supervisors also need to be an important area of focus.

From Parental Control to Joint Family Oversight

Our research aims to highlight and alleviate the complex tensions around online safety, privacy, and smartphone usage in families so that parents and teens can work together to better manage mobile privacy and security-related risks. We developed a mobile application ("app") for Community Oversight of Privacy and Security ("CO-oPS") and had parents and teens assess whether it would be applicable for use with their families. CO-oPS is an Android app that allows a group of users to co-monitor the apps installed on one another's devices and the privacy permissions granted to those apps. We conducted a study with 19 parent-teen (ages 13-17) pairs to understand how they currently managed mobile safety and app privacy within their family and then had them install, use, and evaluate the CO-oPS app. We found that both parents and teens gave little consideration to online safety and privacy before installing new apps or granting privacy permissions. When using CO-oPS, participants liked how the app increased transparency into one another's devices in a way that facilitated communication, but were less inclined to use features for in-app messaging or to hide apps from one another. Key themes related to power imbalances between parents and teens surfaced that made co-management challenging. Parents were more open to collaborative oversight than teens, who felt that it was not their place to monitor their parents, even though both often believed parents lacked the technological expertise to monitor themselves. Our study sheds light on why collaborative practices for managing online safety and privacy within families may be beneficial but also quite difficult to implement in practice. We provide recommendations for overcoming these challenges based on the insights gained from our study.

Back in on the Outside: Racialized Exclusion at Chicago's School/Prison Nexus and the Promise of Student Voice

Most students released from detention never return to school. This study uses youth participatory action research and Social Justice Youth Development Theory to explore the experiences of those who do. Findings demonstrate that formerly incarcerated students want to return to school but face institutionalized resistance that amounts to racialized exclusion, violence, and state-sanctioned neglect at Chicago's school/prison nexus. We offer recommendations on how to “reverse” the school-to-prison pipeline by shifting educational and youth policies from surveillance and control to care, harm reduction, and greater youth and community oversight; shifts already arising out of student and educator activism, including through YPAR.

Engagement of ethics and regulatory authorities on human infection studies: Proceedings of an engagement workshop in Zambia.

Human infection studies (HIS) have generally been used as a tool in the pathway for vaccine development in high income settings. Over the last decade, this model has been implemented in LMICs with the aim of accelerating development of next generation vaccines that would perform better in these settings. However, in most LMICs, the ethics and regulatory framework for the conduct of these studies are not in place. In Zambia, these studies are yet to be conducted and thus we conducted a stakeholder engagement workshop in October 2019. We engaged with bioethicists, regulatory authority officials, and scientists from within Zambia and other African countries to anticipate and address foreseeable ethical and regulatory issues when conducting HIS in Zambia for the first time. The workshop largely focused on sensitizing the stakeholders on the benefits of these studies with the following main points for consideration on the implementation of these studies in Zambia: need for in-country legal framework and guidelines; need for adequate informed consent based on comprehensive understanding of the concept of HIS and study requirements; and requirements for heightened vigilance to assure participant safety including good ethical and clinical practice with regulatory, ethical, data safety, and community oversight. Additionally, the workshop emphasized the need for rigorous health screening prior to enrolment; suitable infrastructure for containment; and personnel to provide appropriate treatment including emergency resuscitation and evacuation if indicated. Specific recommendations included compensation for burden of participation; access to care and provision for study related injury (e.g. no-fault insurance); and withdrawal and exit procedures to preserve individual and community safety. Finally, the meeting concluded that researchers should actively engage key gate keepers including civic leaders such as parliamentarians, universities, researchers, potential participants and laypersons to avoid circulation of misinformation.

Best Practices for Conducting Clinical Trials With Indigenous Children in the United States.

We provide guidance for conducting clinical trials with Indigenous children in the United States. We drew on extant literature and our experience to describe 3 best practices for the ethical and effective conduct of clinical trials with Indigenous children. Case examples of pediatric research conducted with American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian communities are provided to illustrate these practices. Ethical and effective clinical trials with Indigenous children require early and sustained community engagement, building capacity for Indigenous research, and supporting community oversight and ownership of research. Effective engagement requires equity, trust, shared interests, and mutual benefit among partners over time. Capacity building should prioritize developing Indigenous researchers. Supporting community oversight and ownership of research means that investigators should plan for data-sharing agreements, return or destruction of data, and multiple regulatory approvals. Indigenous children must be included in clinical trials to reduce health disparities and improve health outcomes in these pediatric populations. Establishment of the Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes Institutional Development Award States Pediatric Clinical Trials Network (ECHO ISPCTN) in 2016 creates a unique and timely opportunity to increase Indigenous children's participation in state-of-the-art clinical trials.

Disclosure of Information on Environmental Documents in Supporting the Role of Public Monitoring

The role of the community is very important in realizing the fulfillment of the right to a good and healthy environment for everyone as part of human rights. The lack of awareness of the disclosure of information on environmental documents to the public in conducting surveillance of activities or businesses that have an important impact on the environment is one of the many violations of environmental law that results in environmental damage and pollution. This paper seeks to examine the importance of information disclosure on environmental documents in supporting the role of community oversight of activities that have an important impact on the environment. The research method used is a normative legal research method with the statutory approach and conceptual approach. The conclusion of this paper discovered that disclosure of information on environmental documents is important as an effort to optimize the role of public monitoring. Environmental documents are used as a guide for detailed information related to compliance with the implementation of activity on its terms and obligations. This disclosure information must be seen as the implementation of the right to access information in support of the implementation of community responsibility for guaranteeing and fulfilling the rights of everyone to a good and healthy environment as a human right so that environmental damage and pollution from activities that are illegal and/or violate their environmental permits can be controlled and prevented.

Radical Democracy and Sacred Values: John Dewey's Ethical Democracy, Sheldon Wolin's Fugitive Democracy and Politics of Tending, and Cornel West's Revolutionary Christianity

Radical Democracy and Sacred Values: John Dewey's Ethical Democracy, Sheldon Wolin's Fugitive Democracy and Politics of Tending, and Cornel West's Revolutionary Christianity

Engagement of ethics and regulatory authorities on human infection studies: Proceedings of an engagement workshop in Zambia.

Human infection studies (HIS) have generally been used as a tool in the pathway for vaccine development in high income settings. Over the last decade, this model has been implemented in LMICs with the aim of accelerating development of next generation vaccines that would perform better in these settings. However, in most LMICs, the ethics and regulatory framework for the conduct of these studies are not in place. In Zambia, these studies are yet to be conducted and thus we conducted a stakeholder engagement workshop in October 2019. We engaged with bioethicists, regulatory authority, and scientists from within Zambia and other African countries to anticipate and address foreseeable ethical and regulatory issues when conducting HIS in Zambia for the first time. The workshop largely focused on sensitizing the stakeholders on the benefits of these studies with the following main points for consideration on the implementation of these studies in Zambia: need for in-country legal framework and guidelines; need for adequate informed consent based on comprehensive understanding of the concept of HIS and study requirements; and requirements for heightened vigilance to assure participant safety including good ethical and clinical practice with regulatory, ethical, data safety, and community oversight. Additionally, the workshop emphasized the need for rigorous health screening prior to enrolment; suitable infrastructure for containment; and personnel to provide appropriate treatment including emergency resuscitation and evacuation if indicated. Specific recommendations included compensation for burden of participation; access to care and provision for study related injury (e.g. no-fault insurance); and withdrawal and exit procedures to preserve individual and community safety. Finally, the meeting concluded that researchers should actively engage key gate keepers including civic leaders such as parliamentarians, universities, researchers, potential participants and laypersons to avoid circulation of misinformation.

Co-designing for Community Oversight

Collective feedback can support an individual's decision-making process. For instance, individuals often seek the advice of friends, family, and co-workers to help them make privacy decisions. However, current technologies often do not provide mechanisms for this type of collaborative interaction. To address this gap, we propose a novel model of Community Oversight for Privacy and Security ("CO-oPS"), which identifies mechanisms for users to interact with people they trust to help one another make digital privacy and security decisions. We apply our CO-oPS model in the context of mobile applications ("apps"). To interrogate and refine this model, we conducted participatory design sessions with 32 participants in small groups of 2-4 people who know one another, with the goal of designing a mobile app that facilitates collaborative privacy and security decision-making. We describe and reflect on the opportunities and challenges that arise from the unequal motivation and trust in seeking support and giving support within and beyond a community. Through this research, we contribute a novel framework for collaborative digital privacy and security decision-making and provide empirical evidence towards how researchers and designers might translate this framework into design-based features.

Building financial management capacity for community ownership of development initiatives in rural Zambia.

SummaryBackgroundBuilding financial management capacity is increasingly important in low‐ and middle‐income countries to help communities take ownership of development activities. Yet, many community members lack financial knowledge and skills.MethodsWe designed and conducted financial management trainings for 83 members from 10 community groups in rural Zambia. We conducted pre‐training and post‐training tests and elicited participant feedback. We conducted 28 in‐depth interviews over 18 months and reviewed financial records to assess practical application of skills.ResultsThe training significantly improved knowledge of financial concepts, especially among participants with secondary education. Participants appreciated exercises to contextualize financial concepts within daily life and liked opportunities to learn from peers in small groups. Language barriers were a particular challenge. After trainings, sites successfully adhered to the principles of financial management, discussing the benefits they experienced from practicing accountability, transparency, and accurate recordkeeping.ConclusionFinancial management trainings need to be tailored to the background and education level of participants. Trainings should relate financial concepts to more tangible applications and provide time for active learning. On‐site mentorship should be considered for a considerable time. This training approach could be used in similar settings to improve community oversight of resources intended to strengthen developmental initiatives.

Self-Determination in Health Research: An Alaska Native Example of Tribal Ownership and Research Regulation.

Alaska Native (AN) and American Indian (AI) people are underrepresented in health research, yet many decline to participate in studies due to past researcher misconduct. Southcentral Foundation (SCF), an Alaska Native-owned and operated health care organization, is transforming the relationship between researchers and the tribal community by making trust and accountability required features of health research in AN/AI communities. In 1998, SCF assumed ownership from the federal government of health services for AN/AI people in south central Alaska and transformed the health system into a relationship-based model of care. This change reimagines how researchers interact with tribal communities and established community oversight of all health research conducted with AN/AI people in the region. We describe the SCF research review process, which requires tribal approval of the research concept, full proposal, and dissemination products, as well as local institutional review board approval, and a researcher-signed contract. This review evaluates research through the lens of tribal principles, practices, and priorities. The SCF example provides a framework for other tribes and organizations seeking to reshape the future of health research in AN/AI communities.

Terms of reference

Reputation is often seen as central to the coordination of transactions in sharing economy platforms. Participants perform a double role regarding reputation management: while engaging in exchanges with other peers, they build their individual ‘reputation capital’ and simultaneously execute community oversight. In Couchsurfing (CS), a network often cited as paradigmatic of the sharing economy, there is, however, a clear bias for positive references. In the digital economy literature, participants’ friendly behaviour is understood as motivated by self-interest and an incentive to maintain a positive reputation. Social research on reputation in CS attributes the bias to fear of retaliation, but also hints at norms of reciprocity leading travellers to require positive feedback for hospitality. This article analyses the lived experience of reputation management in CS and argues that participants seek to reconcile direct and general reciprocity. It proposes breaking these practices down into boundary-work and creative avoidance and argues these result in insufficient protection of inexperienced participants against problematic members.

Service user involvement in mental health system strengthening in a rural African setting: qualitative study

BackgroundIt is essential to involve service users in efforts to expand access to mental health care in integrated primary care settings in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). However, there is little evidence from LMICs to guide this process. The aim of this study was to explore barriers to, and facilitators of, service user/caregiver involvement in rural Ethiopia to inform the development of a scalable approach.MethodsThirty nine semi-structured interviews were carried out with purposively selected mental health service users (n = 13), caregivers (n = 10), heads of primary care facilities (n = 8) and policy makers/planners/service developers (n = 8). The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed in Amharic, and translated into English. Thematic analysis was applied.ResultsAll groups of participants supported service user and caregiver involvement in mental health system strengthening. Potential benefits were identified as (i) improved appropriateness and quality of services, and (ii) greater protection against mistreatment and promotion of respect for service users. However, hardly any respondents had prior experience of service user involvement. Stigma was considered to be a pervasive barrier, operating within the health system, the local community and individuals. Competing priorities of service users included the need to obtain adequate individual care and to work for survival. Low recognition of the potential contribution of service users seemed linked to limited empowerment and mobilization of service users. Potential health system facilitators included a culture of community oversight of primary care services. All groups of respondents identified a need for awareness-raising and training to equip service users, caregivers, service providers and local community for involvement. Empowerment at the level of individual service users (information about mental health conditions, care and rights) and the group level (for advocacy and representation) were considered essential, alongside improved, accessible mental health care and livelihood interventions.ConclusionAs Ethiopia increases access to mental health care, a fundamental barrier to service user involvement is beginning to be addressed. Our study identified further barriers that need to be tackled, including a supportive political climate, and receptiveness amongst stakeholders. The findings will inform the development of a model of service user involvement, which will be piloted and evaluated.

Halfway there – The evolution of local alcohol control in California. Part I: The system as it has developed

Wittman, F. (2016). Halfway there – The evolution of local alcohol control in California. Part I: The system as it has developed. The International Journal Of Alcohol And Drug Research, 5(3), 101-107. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.7895/ijadr.v5i3.228Local control over retail alcohol sales in California cities provides substantial capacity to reduce and prevent alcohol-related harm. This paper shows how local control works in California to prevent harm at retail alcohol outlets. Prior to issuing a retail license to an outlet operator, the state Alcoholic Beverage Control Department (ABC) waits until the local jurisdiction (city or county) issues a land-use permit (also called a zoning permit or use permit). Localities have discretionary authority to impose preventive “conditions” on the use permit to protect public health and safety by imposing restrictions on setting design, operation, and hours of operation for the retail alcohol outlet. Within the state/local control system, city options include Level 1 permissive zoning (no restrictions), Level 2 problem-solving zoning (restrictions on new/expanded outlets), and Level 3 community oversight (restrictions on existing and new outlets). Since 1980 the scope of local control has progressed from nil (Level 1 permissive zoning) to Level 3 preventive surveillance for all outlets. Higher-level zoning requires local politics in which the ABC is not involved. A companion article (Wittman, 2016) describes the evolution of local control for retail alcohol availability in California’s local jurisdictions from 1980 to 2015.