High Impact Actions Research Articles

The potential of individuals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through their own actions: a case of a suburb in Finland

Household consumption accounts for 65–72% of total greenhouse gas emissions globally, and therefore, a change in current consumption patterns has the potential to mitigate climate change and provide emission reductions. There is knowledge on the consumption options with a high mitigation potential, but this information has not been combined with a consumer behavior information. This study examines the emission-reduction potential of suburban residents in Finland through a survey that assesses their willingness to adopt climate actions, and by calculating the potential impact of various actions. Finnish suburban households have already implemented low-impact climate actions (recycling, reducing food waste), but the implementation of high-impact actions in households could also be increased. Transitioning to a vegetarian diet, reducing air travel and limiting consumption are identified as the most effective mitigation actions when the potential increase in the implementation rate and impact on greenhouse gas emissions are considered. However, the results suggest that voluntary individual efforts alone are not sufficient to achieve the 1.5 °C carbon budget. Thus, alongside behavioural changes, strong policy measures and technological advancements are necessary. These findings emphasise the specific individual actions that should be prioritised when formulating climate policies at the national or city levels.

Concerned about Climate Change and Ready to Take Action? An Analysis of the Pro-Climate Actions Individuals Are Motivated to Take to Lower Their Carbon Footprints

Lifestyle changes are recognized as an important part of climate change mitigation. The influence of climate concern on taking individual actions for climate mitigation is well studied; however, the impact that climate concern has on consumption-based carbon footprints (CBCFs) is less studied. We aim to address this gap by examining the relationship of pro-climate actions, climate motivation, and CBCFs. We utilize data from a carbon footprint calculator with around 8000 responses from residents of the Nordic region. Respondents reported their personal consumption over the past year and answered questions about their participation in pro-climate actions and whether they were motivated by reducing their CBCF. We found that the high-impact actions of avoiding meat and flying had the most impact on CBCFs and had the highest correlation with climate motivation; however, the engagement levels were low. Conversely, the actions with the most participation had a lower impact on CBCFs and correlated less with climate motivation. Although respondents who reported a higher engagement with pro-climate actions and a higher climate motivation generally had lower CBCFs, their footprints were still not compatible with 1.5-degree limits. This study highlights the gap between climate motivation and the level of engagement in high-impact actions necessary for climate-sustainable lifestyles.

Enhancing the adaptive capacity of fisheries to climate change: Bridging academic theory and management practice through practitioner interviews

Climate change is dramatically altering the environmental context in which marine resources are harvested and managed. A growing field of academic literature has begun to explore the adaptive capacity of fishers and managers to respond to this change, but much of this field is abstract and theory-driven. Therefore, it is unclear whether this literature accurately reflects the adaptation priorities of fishery management practitioners, or whether there are gaps in the literature that these practitioners could fill with on-the-ground knowledge. Second, even if these principles of adaptive capacity are perfectly aligned with management practitioners’ priorities, it is unclear to what extent these principles are actively considered in the decision making process, and if not, why. This study seeks to address these questions by confronting fisheries professionals with academic ideas around adaptive capacity through a series of semi-structured interviews with federal fishery managers and scientists whose work informs decision making in the United States regional fishery management system. The study then uses these interviews to identify three low-cost, high-impact action items that could make concepts from the academic literature more accessible and useful to these practitioners and expand the literature by incorporating practitioners’ expertise. These action items are: 1) distinguish adaptive capacity from adaptive management, 2) use practitioner insights to contextualize the elements of adaptive capacity within the constraints and opportunities of governance systems, and 3) expand academic research to explicitly consider the capacity to adapt on appropriate timelines given the scale and pace of systemic change.

US Adults’ Perceptions, Beliefs, and Behaviors towards Plant-Rich Dietary Patterns and Practices: International Food Information Council Food and Health Survey Insights, 2012–2022

Expert groups recommend that populations adopt dietary patterns higher in whole, plant-based foods and lower in red and processed meat as a high-impact climate action. Yet, there is limited understanding of populations’ willingness to adopt plant-rich dietary patterns. This study examined United States (US) adults’ perceptions, beliefs, and behaviors towards plant-rich dietary patterns and practices over a decade. Fifteen questions from the International Food Information Council’s Food and Health Surveys (2012–2022) were analyzed across four sustainability domains (i.e., human health, environmental, social, and economic domains). Most respondents had favorable perceptions of environmentally sustainable food and beverages, but sustainability influenced less than half of consumers’ purchase decisions. Plant-rich dietary pattern adherence increased across survey years (12.1% [2019] to 25.8% [2022], p < 0.001). One-quarter (28.1%) of Americans reported reducing their red meat intake over 12 months (2020–2022). Yet, another 15.5% reported greater red meat intake, and 18.8% reported greater plant-based meat alternative (PBMA) intake over 12 months. The percentage of respondents who reported greater red meat and PBMA consumption in the previous 12 months significantly increased across the years surveyed (2020–2022, p < 0.05). IFIC Survey findings highlight growing US consumer awareness of health, environmental, and social sustainability but low adoption of plant-rich dietary patterns and practices. Government leadership and coordinated actions by health professionals, civil society, and businesses are needed to educate and incentivize Americans to adopt plant-rich dietary behaviors, and greater industry transparency is needed to show how food and beverage products support human and planetary health.

The complex relationship between carbon literacy and pro-environmental actions among engineering students

Lifestyle choices and consumption play a large role in contributing to per capita greenhouse gas emissions. Certain activities, like fossil fuel ground transportation, long-haul flights, diets with animal products and residential heating and cooling contribute significantly to per capita emissions. There is uncertainty around whether literacy about these actions encourages individuals to act pro-environmentally to reduce personal carbon footprints or to prioritize the most effective actions. This study investigated the relationship between carbon literacy and pro-environmental actions performed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions among undergraduate engineering students at the University of Toronto. The pro-environmental actions by the participants produced an average carbon footprint of 4.8 tCO2 (within the subset of actions included in the survey) which was lower than the average for residents each of Toronto, Ontario, and Canada overall but still higher than the global target of ∼2.8 tCO2e. The carbon literacy by participants was best for high impact actions like ground transportation and dietary choices but less so for air travel and there was mixed awareness for the moderate and low impact actions. For high impact actions and many moderate and low impact actions, participants who thought the action was high impact (even if incorrect) had lower carbon footprints related to the associated activity than those who thought the action was moderate or low impact. The overall relationship between pro-environmental action and carbon literacy was weak. It showed that for high impact actions, there is a slight negative correlation between carbon literacy and personal carbon footprint whereas for moderate and low impact actions, there is a positive correlation.

Detection of Tibiofemoral Joint Injury in High-Impact Motion Based on Neural Network Reconstruction Algorithm.

In order to reduce the damage degree of joint bones, ligaments, and soft tissues caused by the high impact on the tibiofemoral joint during landing, a method for detecting the damage of tibiofemoral joint under high-impact action based on neural network reconstruction algorithm is proposed. Two dimensional X-ray images of knee joints from straightening to bending in 10 healthy volunteers were selected. CT scans were performed on the knee joint on the same side, and the 3D model from the acquired images was reconstructed. The kinematics data of the femur relative to the tibia with full degree of freedom were measured by registering the 3D model with 2D images. The results showed that in the extended position, the femur was rotated inward (5.5° ± 6.3°) relative to the tibia. The range of femoral external rotation is (18.7° ± 5.9°) from flexion to 90° in straight position. However, from 90° to 120°, a small amount of internal rotation occurred (1.4° ± 1.9°), so during the whole flexion process, the femur rotated (17.3° ± 6.9°), among which, from the straight position to 15°, the femur rotated (10.0° ± 5.6°). Damage in different areas is determined by the size of the interlayer displacement sample size method of sample space reduction. It is proved that the detection method of tibiofemoral joint injury in high-impact motion based on neural network reconstruction algorithm has high accuracy and consistency.

Limits of caring: pre-service teachers’ reasons for not taking high-impact actions to mitigate climate change

In order to mitigate climate change, individuals need to make lifestyle changes that help reduce carbon emissions. As teachers play an important role in modeling pro-environmental behavior to their students, this study investigated whether there are some types of climate actions which pre-service teachers themselves are most reluctant to take. The findings show that the participants were especially reluctant to change their travel habits, car-use habits and dietary habits. The reasons for inaction were diverse, but in most of the categories, the predominant reasons were related to hedonic aspects, such as ease of actions, enjoyment of life and comfort. The domains in which pre-service teachers were most reluctant to make lifestyle changes make up a significant portion of their carbon emissions, begging the question of how action competent our future teachers are. Educational implications of the findings and suggestions for pre-service teacher training are discussed.

Lifestyle decisions and climate mitigation: current action and behavioural intent of youth

Youth carry the burden of a climate crisis not of their making, yet their accumulative lifestyle decisions will help determine the severity of future climate impacts. We surveyed 17–18 year old’s (N = 487) to establish their action stages for nine behaviours that vary in efficacy of greenhouse gas emission (GGE) reduction and the explanatory role of climate change (CC) knowledge, sociodemographic and belief factors. Acceptance of CC and its anthropogenic origins was high. However, the behaviours with the greatest potential for GGE savings (have no children/one less child, no car or first/next car will be electric, eat less meat) have the lowest uptake. Descriptive normative beliefs predicted intent to adopt all high-impact actions, while environmental locus of control, CC scepticism, knowledge of the relative efficacy of actions, religiosity and age were predictive of action stage for several mitigation behaviours (multinomial logistic regression). These findings inform policy and communication interventions that seek to mobilise youth in the global climate crisis response.

Climate action for health and wellbeing in cities: a protocol for the systematic development of a database of peer-reviewed studies using machine learning methods

Cities produce more than 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Action by cities is therefore crucial for climate change mitigation as well as for safeguarding the health and wellbeing of their populations under climate change. Many city governments have made ambitious commitments to climate change mitigation and adaptation and implemented a range of actions to address them. However, a systematic record and synthesis of the findings of evaluations of the effect of such actions on human health and wellbeing is currently lacking. This, in turn, impedes the development of robust knowledge on what constitutes high-impact climate actions of benefit to human health and wellbeing, which can inform future action plans, their implementation and scale-up. The development of a systematic record of studies reporting climate and health actions in cities is made challenging by the broad landscape of relevant literature scattered across many disciplines and sectors, which is challenging to effectively consolidate using traditional literature review methods. This protocol reports an innovative approach for the systematic development of a database of studies of climate change mitigation and adaptation actions implemented in cities, and their benefits (or disbenefits) for human health and wellbeing, derived from peer-reviewed academic literature. Our approach draws on extensive tailored search strategies and machine learning methods for article classification and tagging to generate a database for subsequent systematic reviews addressing questions of importance to urban decision-makers on climate actions in cities for human health and wellbeing.

Unsustainable plastic consumption associated with online food delivery services in the new normal

The restaurant industry is one of the hardest hit sectors of the COVID-19 pandemic. The prolonged closures and declining patrons brought about by community lockdowns have imposed financial struggles to numerous restaurants and food establishments. As people were forced to remain indoors in order to curb the spread of the virus, demand for online food delivery service has surged. The growing demand for this type of food service is predicted to significantly alter the consumption pattern of restaurant patrons, which may accelerate the consumption of single-use plastics. In this paper, sustainability challenges relating to plastic consumption associated with online food delivery services are presented together with recommendations on how to address them. From the proposed actions to be implemented, it appears that the online food delivery service providers are in a central position to implement potentially high-impact actions within a relatively shorter time horizon compared with different stakeholders, such as the consumers, restaurants, and governments. Thus, encouraging greater accountability and initiatives from online food delivery service providers will be crucial in the drive for cleaner and responsible consumption of plastics derived from food deliveries.

Climate action for health and wellbeing in cities: a protocol for the systematic development of a database of peer-reviewed studies using machine learning methods.

Cities produce more than 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Action by cities is therefore crucial for climate change mitigation as well as for safeguarding the health and wellbeing of their populations under climate change. Many city governments have made ambitious commitments to climate change mitigation and adaptation and implemented a range of actions to address them. However, a systematic record and synthesis of the findings of evaluations of the effect of such actions on human health and wellbeing is currently lacking. This, in turn, impedes the development of robust knowledge on what constitutes high-impact climate actions of benefit to human health and wellbeing, which can inform future action plans, their implementation and scale-up. The development of a systematic record of studies reporting climate and health actions in cities is made challenging by the broad landscape of relevant literature scattered across many disciplines and sectors, which is challenging to effectively consolidate using traditional literature review methods. This protocol reports an innovative approach for the systematic development of a database of studies of climate change mitigation and adaptation actions implemented in cities, and their benefits (or disbenefits) for human health and wellbeing, derived from peer-reviewed academic literature. Our approach draws on extensive tailored search strategies and machine learning methods for article classification and tagging to generate a database for subsequent systematic reviews addressing questions of importance to urban decision-makers on climate actions in cities for human health and wellbeing.

A combined physical and DEM modelling approach to investigate particle shape effects on load movement in tumbling mills

The discrete element method (DEM) which is used to simulate granular flows often assumes spherical shape for particles. This assumption is legitimized by the added complexity of non-spherical shape representation, contact detection and computational cost. In this work, the difference between the dynamics of non-spherical and spherical particles was studied in detail by a combined physical and DEM modeling approach. An in-house developed DEM software called KMPCDEM©, which was coded to handle non-spherical particles, was used to simulate the behavior of particles. To calibrate the model parameters, a model tumbling mill (100 cm diameter and 10.8 cm length) with one transparent end was used which made accurate photography possible. The tests were performed at filling of 20% and mill speed of 85% of critical speed with steel balls and wood cubes. In the simulation, each cubical particle was represented with clusters of spheres (with identical size) by particle packing algorithm for contact detection and contact-force calculation. Comparison of the simulation and experimental results showed that the difference between the measured and predicted impact toe, shoulder angle and bulk toe angle were 3, 4 and 5°, respectively. The significant change in the charge movement and structure on account of non-spherical particles was reflected in the amount of in-flight charge, and positions of shoulder, impact toe and bulk toe. It found that there was a 17% difference in the amount of in-flight of charge between cubical and spherical particles. The marked difference was attributed to higher interlocking of non-spherical particles in comparison to spherical balls. The results showed that cubical particles participated 5% more in the high energy impact action compared to that of the spherical particles. The simulation computation time increased by 35 times when the shape of particles changed from spherical to cubical.

Targeted anti-corruption in LMICs: developmental governance and health systems research

Abstract Traditional approaches to anti-corruption have relied upon broad-based legal change and the introduction transparency and accountability measures. The evidence to date shows that these have been unsuccessful in reducing corruption in health and other sectors in low and middle income countries. Traditional approaches often assume that corruption is driven by individual greed, immorality or opportunism caused by a lack of accountability measures and that once corruption is rendered visible that there will be a channel through which it can be acted upon. In many LMICs, however, corruption and rule breaking is widespread and much better understood as a systemic problem. In these settings, health workers often break rules to solve the problems of working in overstretched, underfunded health systems. In these settings, policy often does not match the realities of an underfunded health system, and so sticking to the rules can have harm career progression or the ability to care for ones family. New approaches to anti-corruption based on Mushtaq Khan's idea of developmental governance take these context specific factors into account and look for targeted, feasible and high impact action that can create improvements of rule abiding behaviour that benefit the health system and the delivery of care. This presentation examines how it can be applied to the health system and the adaptations that it makes in the ways that we work on anti-corruption in health. It examines the ways in which policy can be changed so that groups of actors in the system are be incentivised to engage in abiding behaviour as they recognize that it is in their interests to do so.

Love in the Time of Cholera

How does an organisation educate and train healthcare staff during such critical times? What may be negative impact of such lost opportunities? How do organisations take charge of educating the public they serve for high impact actions during such periods? This article explores the evidence from previous pandemics and draws on what methods might be suitable for organisations to adopt.

Pre-service Teachers\u2019 Knowledge and Perceptions of the Impact of Mitigative Climate Actions and Their Willingness to Act

A 44-item questionnaire was created to examine pre-service teachers’ knowledge and perceptions of the impact of mitigative climate change actions and how willing they are to undertake these actions. Responses (N = 224) were collected from pre-service teachers at the University of Eastern Finland. The findings show that pre-service teachers have a very low level of knowledge of the impact of different mitigative climate change actions. Furthermore, the students tend to overestimate the carbon footprint of low-impact actions and underestimate the carbon footprint of high-impact actions and they are unable to make a clear distinction between low- and high-impact actions, though the impact of the high-impact actions may be many times greater than those of low-impact actions. In general, pre-service teachers were willing to take low-impact actions, somewhat willing to take mid-impact actions, but reluctant to take the highest-impact actions. Knowledge of the impact of actions did not correlate with willingness to act, possibly due to low levels of knowledge. Some correlation between confidence in knowledge and willingness to act was found. This article discusses the importance of considering confidence in knowledge in future research examining the relationship between knowledge and action. The implications of the findings on teacher education and environmental education are also discussed.

Bouncing Back! Counteracting Muscle Aging With Plyometric Muscle Loading.

The preservation of muscle power is crucial in aging for maintaining mobility and performing daily tasks. Resistance training involving high movement velocities represents a valid strategy to slow down the rate of sarcopenia, counteracting the loss of muscle mass and muscle power. Plyometric exercise may represent an effective training modality for increasing muscle power; however, its application in older populations has been sparingly investigated, as the high impact actions involved may reduce its feasibility for older individuals. By adopting a safer modality of plyometric training, we investigated if a 6-week plyometric training intervention could increase knee extensor muscle size, architecture, force and power in 14 young (YM, age = 25.4 ± 3.5 y; means ± SD) and nine older males (OM, age = 69.7 ± 3.4 y). Volunteers trained 3 times/week using a device similar to a leg press machine where the user was required to bounce against his body mass on a trampoline. Pre-to-post training changes in isometric maximum voluntary torque (MVT), leg extension power and vastus lateralis (VL) architecture were assessed. Muscle power increased in both groups (+27% OM -P < 0.001, 20% YM -P < 0.001), although the total external work performed during the training period was significantly lower for OM (i.e., ~-47%). Both groups showed significant increases in muscle thickness (MT) (+5.8 OM -P < 0.01 vs. +3.8% YM -P < 0.01), fascicle length (Lf) (+8% OM -P < 0.001 vs. +6% YM -P < 0.001), and pennation angle (PA) (+7.5% OM -P < 0.001 vs. +4.1% YM -P < 0.001). The current study shows that trampoline-based plyometric training is an effective intervention producing a rapid increase in muscle mass and power in both young and older individuals. The training modality used in this study seems to particularly benefit the older population, targeting the morphological and functional effects of sarcopenia in human muscle.

A little less conversation, a little more high impact action

NHS Improvement's ‘ Eight high impact actions to improve the working environment for junior doctors’ 1 has provided a framework for the majority of the improvement initiatives we have implemented as chief registrars (CRs) at Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust. Additional projects have largely centred around improving patient safety and junior doctor (JD) morale. A survey was conducted in August 2017 to identify issues threatening doctors’ efficiency and enjoyment in their clinical roles. A monthly JD Forum was also initiated giving JDs a regular opportunity …

Improving junior doctor morale: what's the moral of the story?

In spring 2017 a morale survey was designed by clinical leadership fellows (CLFs) working at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (LTHT), and distributed to Leeds junior doctors. Over 200 responses were collected. The comments were grouped into themes, mapped onto ‘Maslow's hierarchy of needs’ (Fig 1)1 and related to the actions in the NHS improvement publication Eight high impact actions to improve the working environment for junior doctors .2 The CLFs and myself as chief registrar have implemented several interventions which we hope …

Structural response of cable-stayed bridge subjected to blast load

The recent increase number of terrorist attacks have accrued the vigilance from defense and securities organization of many countries. These entities collaborating with scientists allows providing a better insight into the structural performance of existing buildings subjected to pre-planned attacks. On the other hand, the explosive weapon is the most used methodology by the terrorists since they aimed to reach a consequent loss or damages. In this paper, the structural performance of a generic cable-stayed bridge under blast loading is assessed throughout an extensive numerical analysis. Firstly, a though non-linear analysis is performed to under the ultimate capacity of a generic cable-stayed bridge, then it was possible to simulate the damage induced by the dynamic effect of a high impact action and finally considering different magnitudes of impact load, the failure state of the bridge is highlighted.

Social prescribing: community-based referral in public health.

Social prescribing is a term used with increasing frequency to describe the process of enabling healthcare professionals to refer patients to a link worker, to co-design a non-clinical social prescription to improve their health and wellbeing.1 Original descriptions of social prescribing involved three components to a scheme: a referral from a healthcare professional, a consultation with a link worker and an agreed referral into the third sector.2–4 Social prescribing has developed to incorporate referrals into the arts, the natural environment, reading on prescription schemes and schemes to support health behaviour changes especially for long-term conditions. Other social prescribing schemes work to develop community cohesion such as time-banking, or address the social determinants of health by providing support for welfare, debt advice, housing and employment. In recent years, social prescribing has emerged as a strategy for tackling health inequities through partnerships between primary care and third sector organisations, and augmenting standard health and social care services. In practice, social prescribing provides an architecture to allow a person to move between professional sectors into their community; this was recently recognised in the General Practice Forward View which listed social prescribing as one of the 10 high-impact actions.5 Social prescribing is, therefore, able to address physiological, physical, psychological, psychosocial or socioeconomic issues, as well as enhancing community wellbeing and social inclusion.