Local Campaigns Research Articles

Evaluation of a community-based food waste campaign using a national control group.

Communities are increasingly interested in bolstering sustainability by implementing local campaigns to reduce wasted food and divert it from landfills. Evaluation can be challenging, however, as community-engaged interventions may reach all community members, making it difficult to find an appropriate control group. We leverage a recently validated online survey instrument with samples from both the treated community of Upper Arlington, Ohio, USA, and from the United States at large to provide an additional mode for assessing community-based campaign efficacy. We find that the amount of wasted food reported by Upper Arlington households declined by 23% after a multi-modal local implementation of the 'Save More Than Food' campaign while the national sample reported a 29% increase in wasted food over the same period with the 52% net difference between these trends being statistically significant. A contemporaneous curbside audit of Upper Arlington households revealed a 17% reduction in wasted food and a 30% reduction in inedible food scraps where only the latter pre/post campaign reduction was statistically significant and no parallel national curbside audit data was available. There were few significant differences across neighborhoods that received differential intensities of campaign elements, which emphasizes the importance of identifying and conducting parallel measurement in a control group. The inclusion of the parallel national control group survey provided a cost-effective means to improve the accuracy and robustness of local campaign evaluation. We also discuss the campaign's effects on awareness, attitudes, composting behaviors, and non-organic waste rates.

Relationship Between Widowhood and Psychological Health of Widows in Kisumu East Sub County, Kisumu County, Kenya

Despite the inevitability of death, the loss of a spouse comes with diverse psychological burden ranging from intense anguish, helplessness, deep pain, mourning and anxiety. Worldwide and even in Kenya, widowhood; the loss of a spouse through death is on the rise. The heightened stress that comes with death may be detrimental to psychological wellbeing of the remaining spouse. The objective of the current study is to assess the relationship between widowhood and psychological health of widows in Kisumu East Sub County, Kisumu County, Kenya. The sampling technique used was purposive in nature. This enabled the researcher to sample 50 widows in Kisumu East Sub County. The study used mixed method research design, which includes quantitative and qualitative approaches. Questionnaires and scheduled interviews were used to gather information from the respondents. The researcher conducted a one-on-one session with the widows to be able to get further information on their psychological health. The study findings show that widowhood is correlated to psychological health as it leads to poor psychological health of widows. The study recommends that widows should be sensitized on the need to strive for good psychological health either by seeking counseling or joining widows support programs in the community to help them cope with psychological health challenges that comes with the death of a spouse. It is also recommended that counselors and non-governmental organization should aid in establishing widow support networks in Kisumu East Sub County. Through local campaigns, widows should be encouraged to share their experiences and speak with one voice in regard to their psychological health.

Rough Tactics: Black Performance in Political Spectacles, 1877–1932 by Mark A. Johnson

Reviewed by: Rough Tactics: Black Performance in Political Spectacles, 1877–1932 by Mark A. Johnson H. Paul Thompson Jr. (bio) Rough Tactics: Black Performance in Political Spectacles, 1877–1932. By Mark A. Johnson. ( Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2021. Pp. 235. Cloth, $99.00; paper, $30.00.) In Rough Tactics, Mark A. Johnson brilliantly and painstakingly uncovers and interprets the nonintuitive intersections of popular music, popular politics, and Black-white relations during the rise and height of the Jim Crow South. His argument focuses on political spectacles—such events as conventions, political rallies, and parades for various causes—and the presence and function of Black musicians at these events. Johnson's time frame covers both pre- and postdisfranchisement, but his argument is that, regardless of African Americans' voting rights, they were active participants in political spaces in ways that we might not expect. African Americans' behavior in those spaces, while at times genuinely supportive of the white agenda, often was meant to challenge or undermine the racism of that space through what is called "rough music." The story weaves through a multitude of state and local political campaigns and takes a deep dive into the southern prohibition movement, the 1903 United Confederate Veterans (UCV) reunion in New Orleans, and the 1909 Memphis mayoral election. Johnson's narrative is contextualized within the national campaign against political spectacles in general and the rise of Jim Crow. The first chapter focuses on African American bands in political spectacles through 1899, which Johnson uses as the approximate beginning of Black voter disfranchisement. Black bands were such a draw that both [End Page 139] Republicans and Democrats frequently employed them, whether for local contests or for functions, such as the celebration of the nomination of James Garfield. They were also found in local prohibition campaigns, labor movement events, and Virginia's Readjuster movement, usually to attract Black support to their cause. Chapter 2 reviews the role of musicians in Atlanta's local-option prohibition campaigns of 1885 and 1887 and Macon's in 1898. The "bridge" chapter focuses on the failed effort of New Orleans's American Federation of Musicians to require the UCV to include Black bands in its 1903 reunion. This dispute highlighted changing southern race relations, because, Johnson points out, the UCV had employed Black bands for earlier reunions and Black bands even participated in Lost Cause celebrations, such as the dedication of Richmond's Robert E. Lee statue. By 1903, however, southern racism was shifting to an exclusionary approach, as the argument of the UCV reunion committee that Black bands had no place in a "strictly social" event trumped the past practices of their own organization. As Johnson explains, "Although white southerners romanticized the enslaved Black musician, who made music willingly for the master, they balked at the new generation of professional talent, who insisted on setting terms of employment and compensation" (126). The next chapter examines Black band participation in southern prohibition contests in the early 1900s, when the prohibition movement had shifted from courting Black voters to advocating for their disfranchisement. Despite being disfranchised, like women, Black men were active participants in these contests, and, on some occasions, Black anti-prohibition bands amazingly confronted white female prohibitionists publicly without negative repercussions. Johnson's book climaxes with a look at the 1909 Memphis mayoral campaign, in which Black band leader W. C. Handy created the hit song "Mister Crump" as part of the get-out-the-vote effort for victorious candidate E. H. Crump, who went on to become Memphis's political boss until the 1940s. That song also launched Handy to the zenith of his career. Rough Tactics is based on extensive and intensive reading of ninety-two newspapers from this era, Handy's autobiography, and a few manuscript collections. The concise yet detailed and nuanced overview of several local prohibition campaigns is clearly one of the strengths of this work. But the most notable achievement of Rough Tactics is how it expands and complicates our understanding of Black politics under Jim Crow. While some Black bands' activities might have appeared to have been reinforcing racist stereotypes or advancing political agendas deleterious to Black people, in reality the bands...

How Do We Grow Grassroots Critiques of the State? A Close Reading of Triple Jeopardy from East Baltimore

How Do We Grow Grassroots Critiques of the State?A Close Reading of Triple Jeopardy from East Baltimore Lenora R. Knowles (bio) When I sit with the images, concepts, and community voices of the Third World Women's Alliance (TWWA) in their Triple Jeopardy newspaper, I am struck by how this movement publication served as a key mechanism for the New York City chapter of the TWWA to grow leadership and critical consciousness of the racial capitalist U.S. state among their base of Third World women and Third World people more generally. In this first issue, the TWWA elucidates how members were teaching and circulating Third World political analysis and movement strategy, along with the meanings and values of Third World movement leadership. As a revised organic intellectual, organizer, and nepantlera,1 I find joy and possibility in the complex process of growing grassroots movement leaders struggling for broadscale social transformation. From its first issue through its last, Triple Jeopardy offers important considerations for doing the relational and processual work of political education and leadership development today. Below, I explore how writers of Triple Jeopardy utilized the rhetorical device of the question as a method for critical inquiry and political education. Moreover, I trace how they mobilized radical critiques of the state at multiple scales, ranging from global regimes of violence to everyday trauma, in order to build political unity. I suggest that these approaches provide invaluable tools for the grassroots base-building and leadership development that I attempt to practice while organizing in East Baltimore. To better understand some of what this first issue teaches us about leadership development, I provide a bit of context for the TWWA (see Springer 2005; Farmer 2017), the stakes of their organizing and theorizing within a Cold War context, and how they conceptualized the role of their [End Page 191] grassroots publication. The TWWA was a radical women of color organizing collective that first took shape in New York through the leadership of Black women organizers Frances Beal and Gwendolyn Patton. The organizational life of the New York–based TWWA spanned roughly from 1969 to 1977; during this time, they created an organizing program and collectivist organizational structure that centered a Third World woman of color politics that was anti-racist, anti-imperialist, and anti-sexist. The collective's effort to develop a united front of Third World women necessitated multimodal work that was deeply personal, epistemic, collective, analytical, and embodied in nature. Their writings and organizing articulated a Third World women's consciousness among working-class women of color. They mobilized members around key local and international campaigns that promoted reproductive justice, opposed the Vietnam War, and resisted police and carceral violence. Their growing numbers demonstrated the resonance of the organization's intersectional analysis and its strategies for organizing among Third World women. In addition, their thriving base spoke to their increased organizational capacity. Thus, we might think about the TWWA's increased grassroots power in terms of its potential threat to the U.S. nation-state's stability and working-class women's allegiance to a U.S. status quo. By 1971 the organization expanded into the West Coast with the formation of the Bay Area and Seattle chapters. The national membership has been estimated to be somewhere around two hundred members. While the NYC chapter mostly organized among Black diasporic and Puerto Rican women, the West Coast chapter expanded the membership of Chicana and Asian American and Pacific Islander women alongside African American women. The NYC chapter mobilized women for the annual International Women's Day and supported local workers' picket lines, as well as protests spearheaded by groups like the Black Panther Party, La Union Latina, and the Campaign to Free Angela Davis. One of their first actions as a collective was participating in the 1970 New York women's strike, during which members publicly delivered a critique of the hegemonic white feminist organizations of the time (TWWA [1974?], 2). The organization challenged state and corporate violence domestically and abroad, most notably in their work to end the country's imperial intervention in Vietnam, state discipline of Black activists, and attacks on Third World Women's reproductive capacity...

"We Wanted to Talk Plumbing": Organizing and Mutual Aid in Baltimore's High-Rise Public Housing

Federal and local campaigns to reform "distressed" high-rise public housing in the late twentieth century resulted in the elimination of thousands of public housing units from cities like Baltimore. Those reform campaigns often defined "distress" in cultural terms, imagining Black women residents as imperiled actors, public housing as an impediment to building normative family life, and housing demolition and privatization as a necessary and normalizing corrective. Oral histories with residents living in these disinvested spaces offer counternarratives and demonstrate how Black women residents theorized their own conditions, fashioned material political demands independent of policy makers and housing reformers, and worked to put these demands into practice. This piece reflects on the mutual aid organizing of two former residents of Baltimore's George B. Murphy Homes. Specifically, it analyzes the practical work they did to address the conditions that disinvestment produced, and the intellectual work they did to fashion a materialist vision for housing reform that pushed back against the drive toward demolition and privatization.

Gen-Z Local Wisdom Campaign Agenda in the Framework of Counter Hegemony, Digital Hegemony, Cultural Hegemony

Gen Z is currently facing challenges from foreign hegemony that comes with digital technology. The research analyses Gen-Z local wisdom campaign agenda in framework of counter-hegemony, digital-hegemony, and cultural-hegemony. This study uses a method based on research-based development, involving 100 Gen-Z participants with a series of discussion agendas and a local wisdom campaign on their social media. Result show that local wisdom content can be a solution for educating young people to have positive activities such as getting to know local values, increasing nationalism, and counteracting negative impacts of foreign cultural hegemony. It concluded that local wisdom can be a counter to hegemony that takes place in the new era of digital hegemony, as form of cultural hegemony.

Radio and Sustainable Food Production in Ghana: Citi Fm’s Local Rice Campaign in Perspective

Knowledge on sustainability is essential for behavioural change and sustainable lifestyle aimed at eliminating local and consequently, global challenges. The media, a major social institution charged with the responsibility of protecting public interest and fostering development, has a role through its information service function, to put accurate and relevant information on national issues out there for the consumption of their audiences. It is against this backdrop that this study examined the media as a strategic partner in promoting and sustaining food production in Ghana, using a local rice campaign by Citi FM as a case. Situated within the social responsibility and the agenda setting theories, this study was approached qualitatively, using semi-structured interviews with the Programme Director of Citi FM’s local rice campaign and the Head of Communications at the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) Office in Ghana. The study found among other things that, promoting agriculture was a core vision of Citi FM, and by this campaign, local rice production and consumption in Ghana was boosted per the strategies and information provided. However, this effort which aimed at improving the economic fortunes of farmers and reducing unemployment led to the FM station losing advertisement from rice importers. This paper recommends governmental support for sustainability focused media organisations, while urging others, especially local language FM stations to be sustainability oriented, and have as their vision, a commitment to promoting local initiative and fostering development to be able to contribute significantly to the global picture of promoting and attaining the SDGs by 2030.

Social Media Data Mining of Antitobacco Campaign Messages: Machine Learning Analysis of Facebook Posts.

Social media platforms provide a valuable source of public health information, as one-third of US adults seek specific health information online. Many antitobacco campaigns have recognized such trends among youth and have shifted their advertising time and effort toward digital platforms. Timely evidence is needed to inform the adaptation of antitobacco campaigns to changing social media platforms. In this study, we conducted a content analysis of major antitobacco campaigns on Facebook using machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) methods, as well as a traditional approach, to investigate the factors that may influence effective antismoking information dissemination and user engagement. We collected 3515 posts and 28,125 associated comments from 7 large national and local antitobacco campaigns on Facebook between 2018 and 2021, including the Real Cost, Truth, CDC Tobacco Free (formally known as Tips from Former Smokers, where "CDC" refers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), the Tobacco Prevention Toolkit, Behind the Haze VA, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, and Smoke Free US campaigns. NLP methods were used for content analysis, including parsimonious rule-based models for sentiment analysis and topic modeling. Logistic regression models were fitted to examine the relationship of antismoking message-framing strategies and viewer responses and engagement. We found that large campaigns from government and nonprofit organizations had more user engagements compared to local and smaller campaigns. Facebook users were more likely to engage in negatively framed campaign posts. Negative posts tended to receive more negative comments (odds ratio [OR] 1.40, 95% CI 1.20-1.65). Positively framed posts generated more negative comments (OR 1.41, 95% CI 1.19-1.66) as well as positive comments (OR 1.29, 95% CI 1.13-1.48). Our content analysis and topic modeling uncovered that the most popular campaign posts tended to be informational (ie, providing new information), where the key phrases included talking about harmful chemicals (n=43, 43%) as well as the risk to pets (n=17, 17%). Facebook users tend to engage more in antitobacco educational campaigns that are framed negatively. The most popular campaign posts are those providing new information, with key phrases and topics discussing harmful chemicals and risks of secondhand smoke for pets. Educational campaign designers can use such insights to increase the reach of antismoking campaigns and promote behavioral changes.

Campaigning Online: Use of the Internet by Parties, Candidates and Voters in National and Local Election Campaigns in Israel

Campaigning Online: Use of the Internet by Parties, Candidates and Voters in National and Local Election Campaigns in Israel

Democratic Governance and Human Rights Violations: A Focus on Nigeria

For decades, the menace of human rights violations in the Nigerian democratic setting has defied all responses. Not even the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), the 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, nor the more recent ENDSARS protest of October 2020 could adequately tackle the menace of human rights violations in Nigeria. For this reason, the study specifically examined how the Nigerian democratic governance through those in position of authority and security agencies have violated the socio-economic and political rights of Nigerian citizens. The study is qualitative and employed descriptive research design. It adopted John Locke’s Natural rights theory in explaining the relationship between democratic governance and human rights violations. Having presented and analysed the data gathered through documentary evidence, the study revealed that the arbitrary use of power by the Nigerian government and the security forces have grossly violated human rights of Nigerian citizens. Therefore, the study recommended inter-alia, the need for Nigerian citizens to step up their local and international campaigns against civilian-dictatorship as well as the need for the Nigerian government to set up a new independent and impartial institution that will be responsible to treat all cases of human rights violations in the state.

Soils, Geoenvironments and Ecosystem Services of a Protected Area in Western Brazilian Amazonia.

The Serra do Divisor National Park (SDNP) in the Westernmost Brazilian Amazonia possesses unique Mountain landscapes of sub-andean nature, with high geo-biodiversity and pristine environments, with a potential high contribution in ecosystems services. We studied and mapped the basic geo-environmental units of the main sector of the Park, evaluating soil carbon stocks as a key ecosystem service provided by the Protected Area. For the identification, characterization and mapping of the geoenvironmental units, we integrated pedological, geomorphological and vegetation data obtained by local soil survey and field campaigns, as well as secondary data. Eight geoenvironmental units were identified and mapped, distributed in three main compartments: the Serra do Divisor (SD) the upper Moa River and the medium Moa River. This region presents similar environments to the sub-Andean region, notably the Ceja Forest at the top surface of the SD. Soils at the SD have high organic carbon accumulation, with close association with the nutrient-poor, quartz-rich rocks, and shows organic matter illuviation indicating active podzolization. The SDNP encompasses important ecosystems and services linked with high geo-biodiversity, and high soil carbon stocks, representing a new frontier for scientific research in the only area of transitional sub-andean forested landscape in Brazil.

Power struggles: Police and crime commissioners, chief constables, and the battle over operational policing

Abstract This paper reviews the challenges that directly-elected Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) face in reforming controversial police tactics that are favoured by chief constables, but generate significant concerns among the electorate. Focusing on reforms to police-initiated stops, namely ‘stop and account’ and ‘stop and search’, the results suggest PCCs tend to achieve incremental changes, at best, as they struggle to overcome resistance from their chief constables and the legal constraints of ‘operational independence’. The results have significant implications because it suggests PCCs are not as powerful as has been assumed. However, PCCs can enhance the prospects of reform and better navigate resistance by exercising their rarely used soft powers, such as commissioning national regulatory bodies to review areas of concern or appealing to their local Police and Crime Panel for support in scrutiny. The results of this study are based on interviews with PCCs and chief constables, their deputies and assistants, local campaign groups and staff from national regulatory bodies, as well as participant observations across several police forces.

Knowledge and Attitude of General People Towards Symptoms of Heart Attack and the Impact of Delay Time in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Cardiovascular disease is prevalent worldwide. The goal of this research is to evaluate the knowledge of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, population about heart attack symptoms and risk factors. A one-year cross-sectional study was carried out. The study was conducted on 385 individuals in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. We used the Acute Coronary Syndrome Response Index, with additional questions added, such as risk factors of heart attack and physical activity time. An anonymous self-administered online questionnaire was used to collect the data. We collected data from 440 participants, but only 385 were included in the analysis. Males represented 41.4% of the participants. In terms of participant knowledge of heart attack symptoms, we found that chest pain or pressure was the most common (80.5%), followed by shortness of breath (77%) and weakness and fatigue (72.0%). In addition, 90.2% and 90.7% of the participants knew that smoking and obesity were risk factors for heart attacks. Furthermore, 46% of participants said they "would not be at all certain" of identifying the symptoms and indicators of a heart attack in another person and 45.7% "in themselves." We found that males were more likely than females to have low knowledge (RR: 1.84, 95% CI: 1.24:2.72, P = 0.002). Our findings suggest that there is a lack of awareness of the heart attack warning signs and symptoms. We propose that future local campaigns focus on increasing awareness and recognition of heart attack symptoms.

Social acceptance of renewable energy development in southern Spain: Exploring tendencies, locations, criteria and situations

Although, in general, there is a high level of public acceptance of renewable energies (RE) in Spain, at a local scale, protests and campaigns against RE projects are becoming increasingly frequent. In order to identify the factors that most influence the acceptance/rejection of renewable electricity generation technologies (photovoltaic, wind and biomass) at a local level, in this study we conducted a structured survey of the population of the province of Jaén in southern Spain. The analysis of the results of the questionnaire reveals that the social acceptance of RE plants is influenced by their location and size, and identifies the main criteria and situations that people take into consideration when deciding whether to support or reject RE projects. Although the results suggest that all RE technologies are widely accepted, they also highlight a preference for photovoltaic energy and for medium-sized plants in sites with low natural value. This article provides information and recommendations to facilitate the drafting of policies, plans and future studies that will enable social barriers to the implementation of RE technologies to be reduced, so helping accelerate the energy transition that is required in order for agreed climate targets to be met.

How to Collect Voters' Perceptions of Election Campaigns?

Diary postings are responses to real-world events, actors and processes that de facto exist and can be identified. This article explores the conditions of capturing voter behaviour and voters’ perceptions of election campaigns by methodologically testing innovative digital instruments for qualitative diary data collection (an app for mobile devices and a webform). We do this in light of three criteria: participant engagement, data relevance and participants’ personal involvement. Based on a real-world methodological experiment in the Fall of 2019 during the Norwegian local election campaign, we found that the app promotes more engagement as to frequency of diary postings, while the webform promoted more comprehensive postings. Concerning participants with different socio-demographic and political profiles, both platforms ensured data relevance in the sense that data match the concepts to be studied: voter behaviour and perception of election campaign. Moreover, both facilitated personal involvement and reflections. The article concludes with a reflection on the potential contribution of the diary method in election studies.

A High-Precision Mid-Infrared Spectrometer for Ambient HNO3 Measurements.

Precise and accurate measurements of ambient HNO3 are crucial for understanding various atmospheric processes, but its ultra-low trace amounts and the high polarity of HNO3 have strongly hindered routine, widespread, direct measurements of HNO3 and restricted field studies to mostly short-term, localized measurement campaigns. Here, we present a custom field-deployable direct absorption laser spectrometer and demonstrate its analytical capabilities for in situ atmospheric HNO3 measurements. Detailed laboratory characterizations with a particular focus on the instrument response under representative conditions for tropospheric measurements, i.e., the humidity, spectral interference, changing HNO3 amount fractions, and air-sampling-related artifacts, revealed the key aspects of our method: (i) a good linear response (R2 > 0.98) between 0 and 25 nmol·mol−1 in both dry and humid conditions with a limit of detection of 95 pmol·mol−1; (ii) a discrepancy of 20% between the spectroscopically derived amount fractions and indirect measurements using liquid trapping and ion chromatography; (iii) a systematic spectral bias due to water vapor. The spectrometer was deployed in a three-week field measurement campaign to continuously monitor the HNO3 amount fraction in ambient air. The measured values varied between 0.1 ppb and 0.8 ppb and correlated well with the daily total nitrates measured using a filter trapping method.

Awareness of Female Genital Schistosomiasis: A cross-sectional survey in rural Madagascar

Abstract Background Infections with S. haematobium are endemic in tropical regions and emerging in some European countries. Prolonged chronic infection with S. haematobium can cause Female Genital Schistosomiasis (FGS), which can lead to serious gynecological conditions, including infertility. However, awareness of FGS is limited, as are adequate guidelines and public health strategies to manage the disease. The aim of this study is to determine the levels and quality of FGS awareness among women and healthcare workers (HCW) in the Boeny region of Madagascar, where the disease is endemic. Methods Data collection involved a cross-sectional survey of adult women (n = 694) and HCWs (n = 93) on topics, such as respondents’ sociodemographic background characteristics, FGS awareness, and risk perceptions. Results were analyzed using descriptive statistics including proportions and 95% confidence intervals. Results Of the 694 women included in the study, 11.2% (CI [9.0-13.8%]) had heard of FGS. Among these, 34.6% (CI [24.1-46.2%]) were unaware of the gynecological symptoms signature for FGS, and 41% (CI [30.0-52.7%]) were unaware of the urological symptoms of the disease. Out of the 93 HCW surveyed, 53.2% (CI [42.6-63.6%]) had heard of FGS. Among these, 42.0% (CI [28.1-56.8%]) were unaware of the gynecological symptoms, and 52.0% (CI [37.4-66.3%]) were unaware of the urological symptoms. Conclusions Preliminary results show overall low levels of FGS awareness among the study population. While more women reported to have never heard of FGS than HCW, the proportion of HCWs who did not know the gynecological and urological symptoms of FGS was higher. Given the occurrence of FGS in Europe and the chronic character of the disease it would be crucial to conduct similar investigations in Europe. Such findings can contribute to the design of targeted local and global FGS awareness campaigns to improve the health of women affected by this disease worldwide. Key messages • Awareness of FGS among the study population in Madagascar, an endemic country, is low. • Lack of awareness can delay the identification of the disease and increase individual and community burden.

Community-based health professionals in face of crisis – a practice example from Bremen, Germany

Abstract At the end of 2020, a district-based analysis of Covid-19-infection rates in Bremen uncovered differences between socially deprived and “better off” areas. The first analysis conducted on a district level in Germany revealed a social gradient in the Covid-19-affectedness with deprived areas having above-average incidences. These areas are characterized by poor living conditions, high migrant population, low education and health literacy levels, language barriers and precarious job situations. Bremen's Health Senator acted on this challenge early on, initiated and financed the deployment of community-based health professionals (CHP) in disadvantaged areas to tackle the rising Covid-19-rates while reducing social inequalities and promoting health literacy. The CHPs’ work is coordinated by the Association for Health & Academy for Social Medicine Lower-Saxony. The 14 CHP are multilingual, with a background in health professions, social work and public health. They cooperate with local partners in 18 disadvantaged districts in Bremen and Bremerhaven. In 2021, work focused on outreach work, low-threshold provision of multilingual information (e.g., on regulations, vaccination) and the support of local vaccination campaigns. Bremen currently has the highest vaccination coverage in Germany (87,5% of population with primary series, national average: 76,2%; 07/2022). Since 2022, CHPs’ work has shifted to health promotion activities aimed at mitigating the effects of the pandemic, e.g., physical inactivity, mental stress. Bremen was the first German city to pilot a large-scale implementation of CHP in socially disadvantaged areas. Due to their continuous presence, CHP quickly became people of trust and are integrated into local structures. Their work has received huge attention both in professional contexts and public media. The low-threshold outreach-work and close cooperation with local partners has high potential to address other health challenges in disadvantaged communities. Key messages

Russian Parliamentary Parties Activities in Fundraising: Current State, Problems and Prospects

The paper deals with the problem of fundraising as the activity of political parties represented in the federal parliament. The research gave a definition of fundraising, revealed its normative legal basis, indicated the circle of persons who would not be able its subjects. Also, it fixed the principles of sanctioning legislative restrictions. The problems of fundraising development in the Russian political environment are the dominance of local campaigns to collect donations as a sponsorship and the low level of motivation of some parliamentary political parties to conduct fundraising campaigns because of their strong dependence on state funding. In conclusion, the author drew findings about the prospects for the development of fundraising in the activities of the Duma parties.

Challenges Reported by Candidates for Local Office

A survey of 711 candidates for local offices in the United States, conducted in December 2021, reveals that many were concerned before they began their campaigns about the impact of politics on their work and family, the time demands of campaigning, their ability to raise funds, and their knowledge of the process, among other obstacles. Many candidates who had anticipated each concern found it less onerous than they had expected. Those who were parents, those with full-time jobs, and those who had experienced poverty as children were especially likely to have difficulty meeting work and family obligations while campaigning. Being liberal, being young, having less education, and experiencing poverty in childhood were all associated with concerns about being qualified to run. The study offers additional details about which backgrounds and experiences are associated with specific challenges in local campaigns. The results may inform efforts to recruit and support underrepresented candidates.