Important Services Research Articles

Expectations of i-Tree Eco as a tool for urban tree management in Nordic cities

While urban forests are recognized as imperative toward climate adaptation in cities and provide health and recreational benefits to citizens, municipal tree officers often struggle to find successful governance arrangements and budget support toward long-lasting investment and implementation in new planting schemes and protection of existing trees. Since its release in 2006, i-Tree Eco has helped urban tree officers worldwide to find tangible leverage in the means of quantitative mapping, numeric measures, and economic values of ecosystem services. This may in turn help ease gridlocks and potentially support constructive dialogues across sectors, with decision-makers and public engagement. With the release of i-Tree Eco v. 6 in Europe 2018, 13 Nordic cities were engaged in a larger research project with ambitions to use i-Tree Eco for the purpose of retrieving numeric and monetary data of the biophysical structures and ecosystem services of the urban forest. Based on questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, we present the results from the Nordic i-Tree project with a focus on expectations, opportunities, and potential barriers experienced in using i-Tree Eco in urban forest management. The most prominent expectation and foreseeing opportunities were recognized toward using numeric information on trees to change policies and support cross-sectoral collaboration while reaching politicians and the public. Identified barriers involved how limited resources are spent on public outreach and how information about the project to relevant stakeholders were not distributed from the beginning which may have implications on the dissemination of results. As some important ecosystem services, e.g., cultural services, are not captured by i-Tree Eco, presenting the partial value of urban trees may pose also potential risks to cross-sectoral collaboration. Other findings conclude that although numeric information on ecosystem services is seen as beneficial in terms of communicating with different stakeholders, a deeper understanding toward the criteria used in the valuation process and the potential risks of numeric approaches may provide more context-specific applications.

Connecting competitor, stress-tolerator and ruderal (CSR) theory and Lund Potsdam Jena managed Land 5 (LPJmL 5) to assess the role of environmental conditions, management and functional diversity for grassland ecosystem functions

Abstract. Forage offtake, leaf biomass and soil organic carbon storage are important ecosystem services of permanent grasslands, which are determined by climatic conditions, management and functional diversity. However, functional diversity is not independent of climate and management, and it is important to understand the role of functional diversity and these dependencies for ecosystem services of permanent grasslands, since functional diversity may play a key role in mediating impacts of changing conditions. Large-scale ecosystem models are used to assess ecosystem functions within a consistent framework for multiple climate and management scenarios. However, large-scale models of permanent grasslands rarely consider functional diversity. We implemented a representation of functional diversity based on the competitor, stress-tolerator and ruderal (CSR) theory and the global spectrum of plant form and function into the Lund Potsdam Jena managed Land (LPJmL) dynamic global vegetation model (DGVM) forming LPJmL-CSR. Using a Bayesian calibration method, we parameterised new plant functional types (PFTs) and used these to assess forage offtake, leaf biomass, soil organic carbon storage and community composition of three permanent grassland sites. These are a temperate grassland and a hot and a cold steppe for which we simulated several management scenarios with different defoliation intensities and resource limitations. LPJmL-CSR captured the grassland dynamics well under observed conditions and showed improved results for forage offtake, leaf biomass and/or soil organic carbon (SOC) compared to the original LPJmL 5 version at the three grassland sites. Furthermore, LPJmL-CSR was able to reproduce the trade-offs associated with the global spectrum of plant form and function, and similar strategies emerged independent of the site-specific conditions (e.g. the C and R PFTs were more resource exploitative than the S PFT). Under different resource limitations, we observed a shift in the community composition. At the hot steppe, for example, irrigation led to a more balanced community composition with similar C, S and R PFT shares of aboveground biomass. Our results show that LPJmL-CSR allows for explicit analysis of the adaptation of grassland vegetation to changing conditions while explicitly considering functional diversity. The implemented mechanisms and trade-offs are universally applicable, paving the way for large-scale application. Applying LPJmL-CSR for different climate change and functional diversity scenarios may generate a range of future grassland productivities.

Response of hydrological ecosystem services to land-use change and risk assessment in Jiangxi Province, China

Water bodies provide humans with important hydrological ecosystem services (HESs), directly or indirectly. Water yield, water conservation, and soil conservation are essential to HESs. Since China's reform and opening up, and with its rapid socio-economic development, land use in Jiangxi Province has undergone drastic change, resulting in threats to the ecological environment. This paper evaluates three HESs, water yield, water conservation, and soil conservation, in Jiangxi Province based on land use and rainfall data, quantifies the impacts of different land classes on each ecosystem, predicts future land use using the patch-generating land use simulation (PLUS) model, and finally, discusses the ecological risks in the study area. The following results were obtained: (1) The HESs in the basin increased and then decreased from 2000 to 2020, and the spatial distribution of water yield and water conservation was greatly influenced by rainfall. Soil conservation was mostly consistent with the elevation distribution. (2) Over time, the overall aggregation of HESs in the study area increased. There were small differences in the effects of various land uses on water yield and water conservation, and large differences in the effects on soil conservation. (3) The distribution of ecological risks was not affected by different land use strategies, with the lower ecological risk level 1 dominating. Most risk areas were present in Ganzhou, Ji'an, Shangrao, and Jiujiang. The ecological risk from urban sprawl (US) accounted for the most significant proportion, and that from the ecological protection (EP) strategy accounted for the lowest proportion. This study provides reference for sustainable land use development and ecological risk prevention in the study area.

Research on Power Service Route Planning Scheme Based on SDN Architecture and Reinforcement Learning Algorithm

The power communication network carries various power services to ensure the safe operation of the power network, among which, the relay protection service is the most important service. Reasonable planning of the service route can improve the effectiveness and reliability of data transmission in the power communication network, thereby ensuring the reliable operation of the power grid. This paper constructs a route planning architecture for the power communication network based on a software-defined network. On this basis, parameters such as the power service and network-carrying service status are defined. With the goal of minimizing network risk variance and considering link bandwidth utilization and overload constraints of relay protection services, a service route allocation problem has been raised. To solve this problem, a power service route planning scheme based on a reinforcement learning algorithm is proposed. This algorithm uses the state–action–reward–state–action (SARSA) algorithm to complete service route planning. The simulation results show that using the route planning scheme proposed in this paper can avoid the overload of relay protection services, reduce network risk variance, and effectively balance network risk.

Soil meso- and microfauna community acts as an environmental bioindicator in urban greenway landscapes

Urbanization accelerates habitat fragmentation and leads to the decline of biodiversity in cities. Urban greenway landscapes provide not only social functions but also important ecological services. In this study, taxonomic richness, abundance, diversity, and the distribution of soil meso- and microfauna were investigated in three different urban greenway landscapes to assess their environmental quality. Urban greenway landscapes that had a richer tree species composition, higher deciduous tree ratios, wider ecological greenspace, moderate soil temperature and moisture, and lower soil bulk density and less lead were conducive to the survival and development of the soil meso- and microfauna community. Different soil fauna groups had varied responses to different environmental conditions in urban greenway landscapes. Microarthropods were more sensitive to plant communities; in contrast, soil moisture was the most important abiotic driver for hygrophilous meso-micro fauna. Our study highlights the importance of deciduous trees for their rich litter input, and the wide ecological greenspace for its buffering effect on various disturbances, which promote the conservation of biodiversity in urban greenway landscapes.

Soil macrofauna communities in Brazilian land-use systems.

Soil animal communities include more than 40 higher-order taxa, representing over 23% of all described species. These animals have a wide range of feeding sources and contribute to several important soil functions and ecosystem services. Although many studies have assessed macroinvertebrate communities in Brazil, few of them have been published in journals and even fewer have made the data openly available for consultation and further use. As part of ongoing efforts to synthesise the global soil macrofauna communities and to increase the amount of openly-accessible data in GBIF and other repositories related to soil biodiversity, the present paper provides links to 29 soil macroinvertebrate datasets covering 42 soil fauna taxa, collected in various land-use systems in Brazil. A total of 83,085 georeferenced occurrences of these taxa are presented, based on quantitative estimates performed using a standardised sampling method commonly adopted worldwide to collect soil macrofauna populations, i.e. the TSBF (Tropical Soil Biology and Fertility Programme) protocol. This consists of digging soil monoliths of 25 x 25 cm area, with handsorting of the macroinvertebrates visible to the naked eye from the surface litter and from within the soil, typically in the upper 0-20 cm layer (but sometimes shallower, i.e. top 0-10 cm or deeper to 0-40 cm, depending on the site). The land-use systems included anthropogenic sites managed with agricultural systems (e.g. pastures, annual and perennial crops, agroforestry), as well as planted forests and native vegetation located mostly in the southern Brazilian State of Paraná (96 sites), with a few additional sites in the neighbouring states of São Paulo (21 sites) and Santa Catarina (five sites). Important metadata on soil properties, particularly soil chemical parameters (mainly pH, C, P, Ca, K, Mg, Al contents, exchangeable acidity, Cation Exchange Capacity, Base Saturation and, infrequently, total N), particle size distribution (mainly % sand, silt and clay) and, infrequently, soil moisture and bulk density, as well as on human management practices (land use and vegetation cover) are provided. These data will be particularly useful for those interested in estimating land-use change impacts on soil biodiversity and its implications for below-ground foodwebs, ecosystem functioning and ecosystem service delivery. Quantitative estimates are provided for 42 soil animal taxa, for two biodiversity hotspots: the Brazilian Atlantic Forest and Cerrado biomes. Data are provided at the individual monolith level, representing sampling events ranging from February 2001 up to September 2016 in 122 sampling sites and over 1800 samples, for a total of 83,085 ocurrences.

Ideas of well-being economy in the theories of local self-government

Mostly center–periphery model of territorial development, long-standing domination of transfers in the structure of municipal budget revenues have formed the protracted, chronic nature of the socioeconomic problems. This necessitates refining goals, principles and content of municipal government, especially in the economic sphere. The paper aims to revise the propositions of the theories of local self-government against the backdrop of the emerging concept of well-being economy, which together constitute the methodological basis of the research. The study applies a suite of general scientific methods, including retrospective analysis and systematisation. Based on the review of pre-revolutionary works of Russian scientists and essayists for 1870–1917 devoted to zemstvo and town and city self-government, the paper deduces an image of well-being of a territory under local government. In particular, its well-being presupposes providing local internal and external amenities, care for food security, health, education, safety from various threats (fires, diseases, crime); organising the economic life of a territory through the municipalisation of socially important industries and services, generation of employment, as well as stimulation of economic activity through cooperation and issuing loans. Having compared the narratives of the well-being economy concept and the propositions of the theories of local self-government, the paper demonstrates that this concept can be implemented by means of local self-government, since their theoretical bases correspond to each other. The study concludes that there is a need to realise the potential of the local government system laid down by Alexander II, emperor of Russia. This requires making the interaction between residents and local government closer, disseminating knowledge about municipal government, and providing greater financial opportunities to local authorities so that they could concentrate on addressing local problems and expressing residents’ interests.

Digital Listener as a tool to enhance Customer Experience in projects

The present study focused on assessing whether customer service enhancement via digital listening leads to customer satisfaction and loyalty. To achieve this objective, the study employed a descriptive research and used survey as the main data collection method. Notably, the findings clearly indicate that the customers are highly aware of the concept of customer service enhancement and that they expect businesses to offer them competent and high-quality services.
 Further, the findings indicate that failing to use up-to-date digital listening technologies, difficulty in accessing the call centres, the call centre employees’ inability to understand the specific service needs required by the consumers and inability of the employees to provide customizable customer engagement services are some of the main issues associated with digital listening strategies. This research also focuses on the implementation of Digital Listener technology with the understanding towards how it may improve the professional attitudes between customers and employees. In addition, the findings indicate that providing relevant training to all employees on a regular basis, using up-to-date technologies and facilities, and employing big data analytic technologies are some of the specific strategies that can be employed by companies in order to effectively enhance the customer care services.
 Digital technology has been improving over the past 10 years as organization seek for fundamental ways through which they can adopt and implement digital listeners efficiently. This research aims at communicating the practical theory and the importance of customer care services being emphasized by different organizations. The research examines the effects of Digital Listeners in organizations and how this technology is of importance to companies, which aim at providing effective services and product delivery to their customers. The research also demonstrates how important customer service is to organizations as it measures the successfulness of their performance. The research upholds digital listeners as one of the tools being utilized by companies to enhance communication with their customers while enhancing their reach to more consumers. This research aims at studying and analyzing the idea of implementing Digital Listening to the new world while revealing how important this concept is towards earning more competitive advantage for organizations. The rareness of research in this field accounts for the importance of this research as it will help IT consultants and customer service advisers in the GCC region towards understanding concepts of digital listening in their region.
 Based on the research findings, therefore, the study approves the research hypothesis that customer service when enhanced properly leads to customer satisfaction and loyalty. Thus, the study concludes that maintaining customers and their loyalty require careful attention to the customer’s needs, strategically investigating what they seek and being able to provide the same in an enhanced manner.

Evolutionary Characteristics and Driving Forces of Green Space in Guangzhou from a Zoning Perspective

Urban green spaces provide very important environmental and social services. Their dynamic changes are driven by a combination of natural and socioeconomic factors. However, the coupling mechanism of these factors has not been systematically studied. In this study, we examined dynamic characteristics of green space in Guangzhou from different zoning perspectives and explored the regional heterogeneity of the individual and interactive effects of driving factors using the geographic detector. The results showed that (1) from 2000 to 2020, the annual change rate of green space area in the central area was more apparent than that in the suburban areas. The fragmentation of green space in the near suburbs had increased. (2) Changes in green space were influenced by the combination of topography, climate, and socioeconomic development. From 2010 to 2020, the expansion of built-up land and GDP growth gradually had a substantial effect on the change in green space in the central area and the near suburbs. (3) The q-values of the interaction detections of the geodetector showed that the explanatory power of most factor interactions exceeded that of individual factors. Green space in the central area was primarily influenced by the interaction of economic and built-up land expansion. In contrast, green space in the near suburbs was mainly influenced by the interaction of urban expansion and topography and climate. Green space in the far suburbs was mainly affected by climate factors and human activity intensity. The results and methods of this study can provide decision support for the zoning planning of urban green space system in other cities or regions.

A simple approach to estimating the nutrient and carbon storage benefits of restoring submerged aquatic vegetation, applied to Vallisneria americana in the Caloosahatchee Estuary, Florida, USA

Carbon and nutrient storage are important ecosystem services of submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) and may be enhanced by SAV restoration. This study demonstrates an approach to quantifying the nutrient and carbon storage potential of SAV restoration, focusing on the SAV Vallisneria americana in the oligohaline reaches of Florida's Caloosahatchee River Estuary (CRE). The variables of habitat area, plant size, plant density, and tissue nutrient stoichiometry are considered, and estimates are made both for storage in living tissue and for deposition in sediments. System-specific parameter values are obtained from a combination of abundance surveys, historical accounts of abundance and distribution, and field and mesocosm studies of tissue stoichiometry responses to nutrient addition. These are integrated with literature values for sediment deposition rates of C, N, and P in other SAV systems to estimate carbon and nutrient storage for current conditions and various restoration scenarios. Calculations indicate that under a restoration scenario assuming a return to the abundance documented in 1998–1999, V. americana tissues could act as a substantial sink for macro-elements in the CRE, representing 28.4 mt-C, 2.6 mt-N, and 0.16 mt-P, and depositing 897 mt-C y−1, 68.5 mt-N y−1, and 3.87 mt-P y−1 in meadow sediments. However, at current low shoot densities and small shoot sizes, these benefits are two to three orders of magnitude less. In addition to the large difference between the restoration and current-conditions scenarios, propagation of uncertainty around parameter estimates within each scenario leads to wide ranges of uncertainty around model outputs. More system-specific empirical studies would help constrain parameter estimates and improve the model. Overall, these findings emphasize the sensitivity of C, N, and P storage and deposition rates to SAV habitat conditions, and the importance of reversing declines in SAV density through restoration, and other conservation measures.

A Location-Privacy-Aware Taxi-Hailing System: Adaptive Differential Privacy-Based Dynamic Incentive Method

Nowadays location-based service (LBS) has become an important service in people’s daily life. Online taxi-hailing system (DiDi, Uber, etc.) is one of the most common LBS system. As the scale of online taxi services continues to expand, some problems have gradually emerged. Specifically, the uncertainty of taxis and passengers makes it difficult to match them effectively, and the passengers’ location privacy will be threatened from both internal and external of the system. In this paper, we first proposed a Bayesian-based location privacy inference attack method from external adversary’s point of view. After that, an adaptive differential privacy-based dynamic incentive method was proposed. Firstly, an adaptivity clocking area division method was proposed to resist the internal privacy threat. Secondly, a dynamic incentive bidding method was proposed to deal with the trading issue. Thirdly, an exponential-based matching method was proposed to resist the external inference privacy threat. Further, theoretical proofs show that the proposed method satisfy the privacy properties of k-anonymity, 2μ1ε-differential privacy, and the economic properties of incentive compatibility, individual rationality. Finally, the experimental results show that the inference attack would achieve a maximum attack success rate of 95% while ensuring the accuracy within 150 meters, and the proposed adaptive differential privacy-based dynamic incentive method can not only provide a good economic performance in terms of satisfaction ratio, social welfare and travel distance, but also can resist internal privacy threat with less than 1% of privacy leakage probability and reduce the success rate of external privacy inference attacks to 25%.

Probabilistic Forecasting-Based Reserve Determination Considering Multi-Temporal Uncertainty of Renewable Energy Generation

Operating reserve, among the most important ancillary services, is a powerful prescription for mitigating increasing uncertainty of renewable generation. Traditional reserve determination neglects uncertainty of renewable generation variations within the dispatch interval, which cannot gurantee sufficient reserve deliverability in real-time operation. This paper proposes a probabilistic forecasting-based reserve determination method to efficiently deal with multi-temporal uncertainty of renewable energy in power systems. A novel probabilistic forecasting approach is proposed by integrating Dirichlet process Gaussian mixture model into bootstrap-based extreme learning machine. A unified uncertainty model is constructed for depicting both interval-averaged uncertainty and intra-interval uncertainty by combing the probabilistic forecasts and linearized Itô-process model. In current business practices of many independent system operators, the coordinated determination of two well-designed reserve products, including regulating reserve and ramp capability reserve, is formulated in a two-stage robust optimization framework. A Bernstein polynomial-based model reformulation approach is then employed to handle the existing heterogeneity in the sub-models of each stage. Consequently, the integrated reserve determination is embedded in a generic two-stage robust optimization problem, which can be efficiently solved by the adopted modified column-and-constraint generation method. Finally, numerical simulations are implemented to validate the effectiveness and profitability of the proposed approach.

Exploiting User Mobility for Time-aware POI Recommendation in Social Networks

Location-Based Social Networks (LBSNs) have recently gained increasing popularity. Timeaware Point-of-Interest(POI) recommendation is one of the most important location-aware services, which can recommend locations to a target user at the specific time based on check-in history. However, current techniques ignore user’s mobility within a region, which plays a vital role in the POI chosen decision. Most of existing algorithms fail to capture the latent relations behind the temporal factors and geographical influence. In this paper, we propose a novel hybrid Time-aware POI Recommendation model based on User Mobility: TPR-UM, which improves the POI recommendation accuracy greatly. More specifically, by introducing the implicit region factor, we capture users’ mobility through collective user actions and geographical properties of locations. We generate the check-in patterns based on different time intervals and different regions to exploit the latent relations between temporal factors and geographical influence. Finally, we conduct comprehensive experiments on two real-world datasets, Gowalla and Foursquare. The experimental results demonstrate that our hybrid method is effective and outperforms other state-of-the-art algorithms in terms of precision, recall and Fβ measurement.

Confidentiality and privacy considerations for adolescents receiving contraceptive health services via telemedicine: A narrative review.

Confidential medical care for adolescent patients is essential as they are likely to forgo needed care if privacy cannot be maintained. The use of telemedicine for adolescent health has rapidly expanded due to the COVID-19 pandemic and can increase access to important services like reproductive care; however, it has raised challenges for providers, patients, and their parents/guardians related to confidentiality and privacy. Health care providers are often uncertain about the laws and regulations that govern confidential services including the 21st Century Cures Act. Through a narrative review of studies on confidentiality and telemedicine, this article seeks to summarize the available evidence and provide recommendations on maintaining privacy during virtual encounters and identify current best practices for prescribing contraception via telemedicine.

Exploring important service characteristics of telephone cancer information and support services for callers: protocol for a systematic review of qualitative research

IntroductionAs cancer incidence continues to rise, challenges remain in how to communicate accurate, timely information to people with cancer, their families and healthcare professionals. One option is to provide support...

Toward Higher Levels of Assurance in Remote Identity Proofing

Identity proofing is often a prerequisite for accessing important services (e.g., opening a bank account). The current pandemic has highlighted the need for Remote Identity Proofing (RIDP) that can enable applicants to prove their identity from anywhere, without the need for a special facility. However, the requirements set out by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for the highest level of assurance in RIDP systems currently rule out fully automated and remote solutions, as they are not yet foolproof. This article aims to propose a way forward for pervasive RIDP solutions and highlights the requirements for accomplishing the highest level of assurance in verifying identity. We pinpoint relevant issues and threats along with the current state-of-the-art countermeasures and discuss what else needs to be done to enable ubiquitous remote identity-proofing systems.

The Impact of Applying Sustainable Leadership Principles on Achieving the Characteristics of a Smart Organisation: A Field Study

The importance of sustainability and environmental protection are among the most important pillars of contemporary business organisations that are described as intelligent. We attribute the first responsibility for this to the organisation’s leadership because it is the one that can support sustainability issues and considers them as part of its work ethics. Therefore, the objective of our study is to identify the most important principles of sustainable leadership that can contribute to achieving the characteristics of a smart organisation. Especially in Algerian public hospitals, because they are the most important service institutions in the country. In addition, the intelligence of business organisations does not mean the acceleration in acquiring and developing information and communication technology. However, it has also included environmental, social, and economic standards. In order to achieve the objective of the study, we reviewed the most important intellectual literature that dealt with the two variables (sustainable leadership and intelligent organisation), in addition to designing a questionnaire to collect information divided into three main axes. It was distributed to a sample of employees in public hospitals in Djelfa (Algeria. We used statistical programs (SPSS, smart pls) to process the data from the questionnaire. The tests showed several important results, including that the principle of conservation and social justice has an important impact on achieving the characteristics of smart organisations in public hospitals in Djelfa. This indicates that the leadership of hospitals attaches great importance to these two principles. It seeks to conserve the resources used through prudent use. It also considers that social justice among members of society is one of its priorities, especially since we know that these hospitals are public and accessible, aimed at all citizens without exception. Several important recommendations, among them the need to support the efforts of conservation and social justice for hospitals to ensure the continuation of adopting the characteristics of smart organisations. They should also reconsider the embodiment of the principles of sustainable leadership by working to deepen sustainability and consolidate it among its leaders and then exporting their ideas inside and outside the organisation.

ANALISIS MODEL KEPUASAAN CIVITAS AKADEMIKA TERHADAP PELAYANAN PERPUSTAKAAN DI FAKULTAS SAINS DAN TEKNOLOGI UNIVERSITAS JAMBI DENGAN METODE STRUCTURAL EQUATION MODELING (SEM)

Service quality comes from a comparison between customer expectations about the service they should receive with the service they actually get. An important service unit in state universities such as the University of Jambi is the library service. The library is a service unit that provides services in the field of literature. The needs of library users, especially students, for science and other educational media are difficult to separate. Therefore, the library is one of the academic support facilities needed by library users such as students and lecturers. Based on the results of observations, various efforts have been made by the FST UNJA’s Library to improve services, but these improvements are still not optimal. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the factors that influence service quality to assist the FST UNJA’s Library in reviewing the factors that affect service quality. The Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) method is a multivariate statistical method that can be used to look at the factors that influence the quality of the service. SEM is an appropriate analysis used in social research. In this study, there are two exogenous variables used, the first is employee competency which has manifest variables to measure it, such as knowledge, understanding, ability and attitude. The second is library facilities that have manifest variables to measure them, namely library space, library equipment and reading book collections. As well as the endogenous variables used in this study is the quality of service which has five manifest variables of reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy and tangible. The research data is primary data obtained by researchers by distributing questionnaires to visitors to the FST UNJA’s library

Towards More Appropriate Care for Low Back Pain: Understanding Primary Care Factors that Increase Best Practices and Collaborative Approaches to Care

Moving towards more appropriate care for low back pain is an important health services research issue in Ontario, Canada especially as evidence suggests there is overuse of health care resources for this problem. Low back pain involves excessive imaging, over-referrals for specialist care, and overuse of drug therapy. At the present time, there is also poor uptake of best practices, an evidence to practice gap, and low back pain management and outcomes have changed little over the past 35 years. 
 The emerging field of implementation science will be useful to address the central research question which asks “What factors amongst primary care physicians that manage low back pain, enable or constrain their ability to implement best practices in their care?“ Implementation science (IS) is drawn upon to help advance the uptake of research findings into practice and provide understanding as to why the implementation of evidence into practice may be successful or not. 
 Using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR) model helps to identify barriers and facilitators to the uptake of best practices. Older frameworks have focused narrowly on physician behavior change, but CFIR recognizes that implementation must also consider features of context and setting to have a greater chance of success. As such, CFIR informs the study by using a meta-analytic framework, and focuses on elements of intervention characteristics, outer setting, inner setting, individual characteristics and process, which have been found to influence uptake of interventions. 
 The study uses a mixed methods approach which is appropriate when attempting to understand the social and practice environment involved in providing primary care. In this multi-phase study, a literature review was first conducted to provide a current understanding of what is currently known on the topic. This informed Phase 2, which involved sending quantitative surveys to a sample of Ontario primary care providers, mainly including family physicians. A final Phase 3 involved qualitative in-depth interviews with a subset of those providers to provide context and help explain patterns in the research findings.
 Results from 240 surveys will be presented, including a discussion of descriptive statistics, inferential statistics, hypothesis testing and a principal components analysis (PCA). Findings from 21 interviews will also be discussed, where 7 themes and multiple subthemes were found, with a particular emphasis on: the usage of evidence, inter-professional practice, changing practice patterns, expanding virtual care, and centering patient preferences. Overall, multiple barriers and facilitators for the adoption of best practices including the use of clinical practice guidelines will be discussed. 
 The research committee, engaged in the project co-design, is made up of an interdisciplinary team of health service researchers, clinicians and academics with diverse expertise and experience. The study aims to address gaps in the application of best practices for providers delivering low back pain care and recommends more integrated models of care. An overall goal is to help improve low back pain management at the primary care level, as this remains a prevalent and costly issue for the Canadian province of Ontario. 

The public health insurance funds as drivers for integrated care

The public health insurance funds are a unique player in the healthcare landscape. Belgium has seven public health insurance funds that operate the reimbursement system of health care services covered by the compulsory health insurance for their members and the payment of a replacement income in case of long-term illness. Public health insurance funds are present throughout the lifespan of their members, from birth to death, they are companion and point of contact for crucial moments in life at all ages.They play a key role in the rollout and implementation of key aspects of integrated care. 
 Not only are they responsible for the health care reimbursement, they are the guardians of the health insurance finance as well as the administrator. They are in control of the recognition and follow up of patients in incapacity for work and guide those patient in return to work and rehabilitation and reintegration. They have lots of experience in finance mechanisms and regulation within health care. 
 Next to their responsibilities in reimbursement, there’s also an important social service. The social workers are there to familiarize people with care, the organization of home care and to facilitate all preconditions to make this possible, but also to determine the severity of care and to open up as many social benefits as possible for those who are entitled to it. The public health insurance funds also generate data which they can use to evaluate the health system, provide for scientific research but also use to enhance population management and to weigh on decision- or policy makers. 
 After a short, interactive part, we will explore these different roles and demonstrate how they contribute to integrated care. Not only from the perspective of the public health care insurance institutions, but also from the perspective of collaboration amongst formal care givers surrounding one patient and from the perspective of several informal care givers. By using various testimonials, we let informal care givers share their experience and needs about integrated care.
 Despite the long history, many actors in Belgium are insufficiently aware of what exactly these different roles are. It is the task of the public health insurance funds to continue to fully focus on this and to participate in initiatives that can realize integrated care. Therefore, at least one good practice will be discussed from one of the 12 integrated care pilot projects in which the funds, together with the other care actors and the government, are looking for innovative actions to make integrated care possible.