National Voice Research Articles

More power, less influence: European union actors in media debates on fiscal policy after the eurocrisis

ABSTRACT Stronger European Union (EU) competencies come with greater media presence, according to existing cross-sectional comparisons. While presence comes with the power to influence public discourse, we know little about how it affects the overall tone of public discourse. This article investigates the effect of the empowerment of EU institutions on media presence and the tone of debate in the EU. It does this through an original claims analysis of newspaper articles in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Denmark, and Poland during the height of the Euro crisis (2011–2012), the Greek bailout crisis (2015), and the Italian budget crisis (2018). EU media presence indeed increases following empowerment. However, this does not result in a more pro-European debate, because pro-European national voices are crowded out. While this does not affect the desirability of austerity, it does harden Eurosceptic public discourse.

Voice of the Tribes: A History of the National Tribal Chairman's Association by Thomas A. Britten (review)

Reviewed by: Voice of the Tribes: A History of the National Tribal Chairman's Association by Thomas A. Britten Paul McKenzie-Jones (bio) Voice of the Tribes: A History of the National Tribal Chairman's Association by Thomas A. Britten University of Oklahoma Press, 2020 THOMAS A. BRITTEN has produced a meticulously researched history of the short-lived and often-forgotten American Indian advocacy group, the National Tribal Chairman's Association (NTCA). Founded in 1973 and ended in 1987, the NTCA sought (often unsuccessfully) to present itself to the U.S. federal government and Indigenous people within the lower forty-nine U.S. states as the sole "bona-[fide representative of] federally recognized Indians" (104) when lobbying the government for Indigenous rights. Britten tracks the genesis of the organization—as a perceived antidote to the "wrong Indian voices" (42) of urban Indian activism and the structural uncertainties that beset the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Britten argues that the elected tribal leaders who sought to chart a more conservative approach to American Indian rights reform saw an opportunity to fill a vacuum and seize control of the narrative and direction of the self-determination movement. The text is preceded by a foreword from founding member of the American Indian Press Association and former NCAI director Charles Trimble, who hints at the still-lingering resentment felt over the ideological divisions between American Indian rights advocates from that era. In the current climate of Indigenous rights activism, the foreword can best be described as tone deaf in the way Trimble excoriates and seeks to invalidate the youth movements of the NCAI and the American Indian Movement as being rude, divisive, disrespectful, radical, and violent. Fortunately, while the book exposes the tensions that existed between the various groups fighting for American Indian rights during the 1960s and 1970s, Britten takes a much more measured and diplomatic tone than Trimble when discussing these divisions. As Britten shows, there was a certain amount of lateral violence and prejudice behind the decision to create an organization of elected tribal chairman and attempt to position themselves as the sole voice of American Indians within the United States. This prejudice included resentment at the NCAI opening its membership to include urban Indians. The charter [End Page 187] members of the NTCA saw urban Indians as inauthentic, illegitimate, and undeserving of either a voice in the Indian rights movement or government funding. In their eyes, the only "real" Indians were reservation-based Indians. As such, they determined that their organizational membership was exclusively limited to democratically elected tribal leaders. Fundamental to this exclusivity was the NTCA founders' determination to take a more measured and conservative approach to fighting for reform by using official channels of diplomacy and more politically "traditional" practices of lobbying, rather than protests, blockades, or occupations. The strength of Britten's history of the NTCA is his honest evaluations of the success of the organization in shifting or directing government policies toward American Indian communities and people. He offers a measured judgment that reflects the ambiguity with which the NTCA was viewed within Indian Country. Some saw NTCA as de facto mouthpieces for the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) while others resented their disdain for nonreservation based American Indians. Connecting the mistrust from both sides of this argument was a collective distrust of NTCA insistence on conservative approaches to federal policy reform and insistence on framing themselves as the exclusive authentic voice of American Indians and tribal nations. As Britten points out, many more tribal chairmen were members of the NCAI than were members of the NTCA. Somewhat ironically, the downfall of the NTCA was a result of the very factionalism and aggressive activism that the organization was created to counter. "Radicalized" (181) by the stringent budget cuts of the Reagan administration, NTCA leaders became much more vocal in their criticism of the government and government policies. Ultimately, this more vocal approach resulted in the government pulling away funding that the organization relied on. Unsurprisingly, the demise of the organization went largely un-mourned in Indian Country, except for those members involved. Britten shows how some former...

Inexpensive Detection of Substance Abuse Based on Social Media Data using Machine Learning

Over the past few years, substance abuse has become one of the most severe public health problems in the United States. The annual cost of substance abuse aftereffects in the United States alone is approximately $3.73 Trillion. The societal costs of substance abuse include premature deaths, lost productivity, and increased crime rates. Unfortunately, many victims, especial¬ly in lower-income families, don't have access to early detection and early family intervention tools due to limited access to traditional diagnostic tools and rehab specialists. Currently, there is no complete diagnostic pipeline to inexpensively detect substance abuse and automatically inform family members or trusted contacts. To combat this, the experimenter developed the SOS 280 system, which utilizes machine learning techniques in a smartphone application. SOS 280 works through social media monitorin¬g and automatic notification using SMS and GPS location. The SOS280 algorithm primarily uses social media data, namely publicly available Twitter, and Instagram posts, to identify substance abuse-related activity. The experimenter collected and classified data by applying for the Twitter and Instagram Developer API Platforms, mining tweets and posts with specific drug keywords present. The investigator trained a Natural Language Processing (NLP) text classification model to analyze the sentiments on the tweets, then classifying them as positives (containing substance abuse-related keywords) and negatives. The master model is a Bidirectional Encoder Representations (BERT) derivative that uses a transformer-based architecture to detect emotions in sentences and conversations to classify substance abuse instances. In total, the researchers looked at 55,551 tweets and Instagram posts indicative of potentially alarming substance usage. Finally, the experimenter developed a smartphone application to capture trusted contact information and GPS location, send data to a remote server housing the neural network, output the network's detection, and send automated alerts to trusted contacts via SMS and GPS location. The experimenter further validated the system's effectiveness through a partnership with national nonprofit Faces and Voices of Recovery, which works with 23 million addiction recovery victims. SOS280 is an inexpensive, reliable, easy to use, and timely tool for families of young adults in predicting substance abuse.

World Voice Day 2022

World Voice Day 2022 Robert T. Sataloff CARE OF THE PROFESSIONAL VOICE Click for larger view View full resolution Robert T. Sataloff [Modified in part from: R.T. Sataloff, "World Voice Day 2021," Journal of Voice (2021; in press).] Each year, the Journal of Singing publishes an issue highlighting World Voice Day. The journal is committed to collaborating with the American Academy of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery (AAO-HNS), the Voice Foundation, the American Laryngological Association (ALA), and other organizations to support World Voice Day. That issue is modified periodically and republished before World Voice Day (April 16th) in order to remind people to prepare to participate in World Voice Day. This topic has been discussed previously by the author and others (see References). All singing and acting teachers, physicians, speech-language pathologists, nurses, voice patients, and others who care for and about the voice should work together to raise awareness of the importance of the voice and of developments in voice care. More than three decades ago, the World Health Organization recognized a particularly high rate of laryngeal cancer in Brazil. In April, 1989, the Executive Committee of the Sociedade Brasileira de Laringologia e Voz (Brazilian Association of Laryngology and Voice), a multidisciplinary society that includes physicians, speech-language pathologists, and singing teachers, proposed April 16th as "Voice Day." Later, it was transformed to a national voice week, and even a voice month in some locations. Brazilian otolaryngologists established a National Voice Week. Soon, other societies around the world recognized the importance of public education about the voice, and the European Laryngological Association (www.elsoc.org), American Bronchoesophagological Association (www.abea.net), and other societies began collaborating to establish an annual World Voice Day. World Voice Day was celebrated in the United States for the first time on April 16, 2003. It was supported by the AAO-HNS (www.entnet.org), the Voice Foundation (www.voicefoundation.org), the American Laryngological Association (www.alahns.org), the National Association of Teachers of Singing (www.nats.org), and numerous other societies and organizations. A summary of the evolution of World Voice Day can be found on the website of the AAO-HNS and at World-Voice-Day.org. Typical World Voice Day activities include lectures, concerts, educational programs, clinical voice screenings, and media events scheduled to take place on and around April 16th. Web-based educational initiatives may be found through the AAO-HNS and the Voice Foundation websites, and elsewhere. Singers, singing teachers, actors, acting teachers, laryngologists, speech-language [End Page 491] pathologists, nurses, and others organize celebratory events in cities throughout the world to expand public appreciation of and knowledge about the human voice, and to raise awareness about the importance of good voice health and education. In Philadelphia in 2021, for example, World Voice Day events included a PECO Crown Lights display visible throughout much of the city, online voice education presentations, and other activities, despite the pandemic. Extensive events honoring World Voice Day take place each year in Lisbon, Portugal, under the auspices of Professor Mario Andrea; in the Detroit area under the guidance of Dr. Adam Rubin; in Pittsburgh with Dr. Libby Smith; in San Francisco with Drs. Clark Rosen and VyVy Young; in Los Angeles under the guidance of Dr. Michael Johns; in São Paulo, Brazil, under the guidance of Dr. Mara Behlau; and in many other cities. In addition, the National Association of Teachers of Singing supports World Voice Day actively, and many events around the U.S.A. are organized by singing teachers. Future activities promise to be even more expansive as guided through the new ad hoc World Voice Day planning committee, notable for its broad international representation. The group's initial meeting was held in Erlangen, Germany, on July 4, 2012; the organization is dedicated to sharing the excitement of voice science, pedagogy, and the vocal arts globally in collaboration with like-minded existing groups. Under the guidance initially of Johan Sundberg, Ph.D., in Stockholm, Sweden, and recently also of Dr. Mara Belau, this group documented 461 World Voice Day events in 2014, 736 in 2016, 632 in 2017 (when April 16th was on Easter Sunday...

Refining and Agreeing on a Constitutional Amendment for a First Nations Voice

Refining and Agreeing on a Constitutional Amendment for a First Nations Voice

New Zealand’s rural hospitals in 2021: findings from an exploratory questionnaire survey.

Introduction There is a gap in our knowledge of the place and contribution of rural hospitals in the New Zealand health system. There is no current description of rural hospital services, no national policies and little published research regarding their value. Aim To explore rural hospital leader perspectives of the role of rural hospitals. Methods An on-line survey of rural hospital leaders conducted to capture perspectives on areas including facility nomenclature; access and equity; funding and the health reforms. Results Fifty-five rural hospital leaders representing 19/24 rural hospitals responded. 'Rural Hospital' was the most common term used to describe facilities with 80% of respondents indicating this as their preferred term. Other descriptive terms varied widely from primary through to secondary care. Respondents indicated that the loss of rural hospital in-patient beds would be unacceptable to communities (median 0, IQR 0, 1). Scores on questions about 'range of services' (median 7, IQR 6, 8), 'accessibility' (median 7, IQR 6, 8) and how rural hospitals were addressing health equity (median 6, IQR 5, 7) were variable. The process for allocating funds to rural hospitals was perceived as lacking transparency (median 3, IQR 2, 5). National strategy and 'local governance and control' were both rated as important (median 9, IQR 7, 10 and median 9, IQR, 8, 10) for a rural hospital's future. Discussion By capturing a collective national rural hospital leadership voice, this study facilitates the understanding of the rural hospital concept. The findings inform subsequent research needed to gain a clearer picture of New Zealand rural hospital provision.

The Impact of Culturally-Centered Care on Peripartum Experiences of Autonomy and Respect in Community Birth Centers: A Comparative Study

ObjectiveNational studies report that birth center care is associated with reduced racial and ethnic disparities and reduced experiences of mistreatment. In the US, there are very few BIPOC-owned birth centers. This study examines the impact of culturally-centered care delivered at Roots, a Black-owned birth center, on the experience of client autonomy and respect.MethodsTo investigate if there was an association between experiences of autonomy and respect for Roots versus the national Giving Voice to Mothers (GVtM) participants, we applied Wilcoxon rank-sum tests for the overall sample and stratified by race.ResultsAmong BIPOC clients in the national GVtM sample and the Roots sample, MADM and MORi scores were statistically higher for clients receiving culturally-centered care at Roots (MADM p < 0.001, MORi p = 0.011). No statistical significance was found in scores between BIPOC and white clients at Roots Birth Center, however there was a tighter range among BIPOC individuals receiving care at Roots showing less variance in their experience of care.Conclusions for PracticeOur study confirms previous findings suggesting that giving birth at a community birth center is protective against experiences of discrimination when compared to care in the dominant, hospital-based system. Culturally-centered care might enhance the experience of perinatal care even further, by decreasing variance in BIPOC experience of autonomy and respect. Policies on maternal health care reimbursement should add focus on making community birth sustainable, especially for BIPOC provider-owners offering culturally-centered care.

'Waiting with Bated Breath'

'Waiting with Bated Breath'

Ecocritical Concerns in Select Afrikaans Narrative Works: Critical Perspectives

Summary Environmentally oriented literary and cultural studies, or ecocriticism for short, gained traction in the United States of America in the late 1980s. It took root in South Africa no earlier than the start of this century and has been applied to the field of Afrikaans literature only for about the last decade. At a conference in Nijmegen in 2010, the leading German ecocritic Axel Goodbody expressed concern about the slow spread of ecocriticism to non-Anglophone literatures. He highlighted the debilitating effect of the hegemony of English as medium of communication on practising ecocriticism. Goodbody warned that ecocritic debates would be poorer if they neglect the resources of theorising and critical analyses in non-English-speaking language and other contexts; and cultures that are not dominated by Anglophone traditions. Afrikaans has been part of the surge of different national voices and languages in this field. This article enters the debate about the expansion of ecocritical studies to include a more environmentally oriented world of research than the one dominated by Anglophone literatures for quite a few decades. It offers a critical-descriptive overview of how ecocritical studies centred on Afrikaans literary narratives add nuances to and amplify thematic matters of interest for ecocriticism in our country. I want to highlight the diverse and convincing contributions made by Afrikaans literary critics to “the understanding of the human relationship to the planet” (Joni Adamson & Scott Slovic, 2009: 6). These contributions are analysed in order to also evaluate the relevance of the various theoretical angles of approach in use, regarded within the broader theoretical discourse of ecocriticism.

Co-Designing Change

Co-Designing Change

State and territory legislative vulnerabilities and why an Indigenous Voice must be constitutionally enshrined

This article sets out the background to what has occurred since the issuing of the Uluru Statement from the Heart and provides an overview of the Indigenous Voice Co-Design Interim Report and its Voice design options. In doing so, we discuss the possible progression of Local and Regional Voices and other sub-national legislation on First Nations issues. We analyse how those efforts might be limited and/or extinguished if a First Nations Voice is not constitutionally enshrined when we consider the relationship and legislative powers of the Commonwealth, state, and territory parliaments.

Overseas Dissemination of Ancient Chinese Costume Culture from the Perspective of Cultural Confidence

Since the reform and opening-up, China has actively followed overseas costume trends and bidden farewell to the era of uniforms. It has gone through evolution from collective imitation to physical liberation to the advocacy of diversified individuality to this new age, where the Chinese culture of costume is radiant with self-confidence. The culture of ancient Chinese costume has a long history with extensive and profound connotations. This paper, from the perspective of cultural confidence, adopts the propagation mode of ‘5W’ to discuss the overseas dissemination of ancient Chinese costume culture, the specific content of Chinese-foreign exchange, and theoretical approaches in the theoretical framework of communication based on the case of ‘American Tour of Innovative Design Works of Ancient Chinese Costume Culture’, organised by Jiangnan University in 2018, in a bid to serve as a reference for the narration of the national story, the communication of a national voice and the creation of a national image.

Love in the High Court: Implications for Indigenous Constitutional Recognition

This article considers implications of the recent Love decision in the High Court for the debate about Indigenous constitutional recognition and a First Nations constitutional voice. Conceptually, it considers how the differing judgments reconcile the sui generis position of Indigenous peoples under Australian law with the theoretical ideal of equality—concepts which are in tension both in the judicial reasoning and in constitutional recognition debates. It also discusses the judgments’ limited findings on Indigenous sovereignty, demonstrating the extent to which this is predominantly a political question that cannot be adequately resolved by courts. Surviving First Nations sovereignty can best be recognised and peacefully reconciled with Australian state sovereignty through constitutional reform authorised by Parliament and the people. The article then discusses political ramifications. It argues that allegations of judicial activism enlivened by this case, rather than demonstrating the risks of a First Nations voice, in fact illustrate the foresight of the proposal: a First Nations voice was specifically designed to be non-justiciable and therefore intended to address such concerns. Similarly, objections that this case introduced a new, race-based distinction into the Constitution are misplaced. Such race-based distinctions already exist in the Constitution’s text and operation. The article then briefly offers high-level policy suggestions addressing two practical issues arising from Love. With respect to the three-part test of Indigenous identity, it suggests a First Nations voice should avoid the unjustly onerous burdens of proof that are perpetuated in some of the reasoning in Love. It also proposes policy incentives to encourage Indigenous non-citizens resident in Australia to seek Australian citizenship, helping to prevent threats of deportation like those faced by Love and Thoms.

Spiritual care training needs in hospice palliative care settings in South Africa: Chorused national, provincial and local voices

ABSTRACT Globally, spiritual care is recognized as an important component of palliative care. In the Global North spiritual care training is gaining momentum and being prioritized, but not so in the Global South. This study seeks to establish what the national spiritual care training needs are in hospice palliative care settings with formalized spiritual care services in a middle-income country in the Global South. This was a three-part study: a quantitative national online survey of hospices in South Africa establishing what their spiritual care training needs were – survey results were collated, analyzed and filtered for key issues and overarching themes; a qualitative study consisting of focus group discussions with hospices in the Western Cape Province, South Africa, who have formalized spiritual care services, with the aim of understanding their spiritual care practices and workforce needs – the discussions were analyzed using thematic analysis; and a qualitative study drawing on the experiences of a cohort of spiritual care workers from an established hospice in Cape Town to understand their training needs in spiritual care and explore their workforce issues. Results revealed a chorused need for the development of a national training curriculum in spiritual care for hospices providing palliative care in South Africa and a chorused recognition that spiritual care services are nuanced and require both formalization and flexibility for spiritual care workers to be led by patient needs. Two elements – finance and human capital – were identified as key barriers to developing a spiritual care curriculum.

ABHW files amicus brief in Wit v. United Behavioral Health

The Association for Behavioral Health and Wellness (ABHW), the national voice for payers that manage behavioral health insurance benefits for over 200 million people, on April 14 submitted an amicus curiae brief in support of United Behavioral Health in Wit v. United Behavioral Health, which is on appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The brief focuses on the rigorous process by which plans develop clinical guidelines and the central role of those guidelines in plans' management of member benefits. According to an excerpt from the brief, “Clinical guidelines health plans use to determine coverage and benefits are the products of rigorous processes that aim to balance numerous considerations: safeguarding the goal that plan members receive the treatment most appropriate for their condition, achieving consistency with generally accepted medical standards, and enabling the plan to manage benefits.” The brief also indicated, “It is not a court's role to condemn evidence‐based clinical guidelines that a plan has chosen to apply under its own contracts — even if the court or a party's paid experts believe different standards are better or conclude the plan should have weighed the relevant considerations differently.”

Suicide in England in the COVID-19 pandemic: Early observational data from real time surveillance.

BackgroundThere have been concerns that the COVID-19 pandemic may lead to an increase in suicide. The coronial system in England is not suitable for timely monitoring of suicide because of the delay of several months before inquests are held.MethodsWe used data from established systems of "real time surveillance" (RTS) of suspected suicides, in areas covering a total population of around 13 million, to test the hypothesis that the suicide rate rose after the first national lockdown began in England.FindingsThe number of suicides in April-October 2020, after the first lockdown began, was 121•3 per month, compared to 125•7 per month in January-March 2020 (-4%; 95% CI-19% to 13%, p = 0•59). Incidence rate ratios did not show a significant rise in individual months after lockdown began and were not raised during the 2-month lockdown period April-May 2020 (IRR: 1•01 [0•81–1•25]) or the 5-month period after the easing of lockdown, June-October 2020 (0•94 [0•81–1•09]). Comparison of the suicide rates after lockdown began in 2020 for the same months in selected areas in 2019 showed no difference.InterpretationWe did not find a rise in suicide rates in England in the months after the first national lockdown began in 2020, despite evidence of greater distress. However, a number of caveats apply. These are early figures and may change. Any effect of the pandemic may vary by population group or geographical area. The use of RTS in this way is new and further development is needed before it can provide full national data.FundingThis study was funded by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership (HQIP).The HQIP is led by a consortium of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, the Royal College of Nursing, and National Voices. Its aim is to promote quality improvement in patient outcomes, and in particular, to increase the impact that clinical audit, outcome review programs and registries have on healthcare quality in England and Wales. HQIP holds the contract to commission, manage, and develop the National Clinical Audit and Patient Outcomes Program (NCAPOP), comprising around 40 projects covering care provided to people with a wide range of medical, surgical and mental health conditions. The program is funded by NHS England, the Welsh Government and, with some individual projects, other devolved administrations, and crown dependencies.

The rights movement of young people living in and leaving care in England between 1973 and 2011: A history from below

AbstractThis paper explores the history of the rights movement of young people in care in England between 1973 and 2011. It describes the histories of the different groups that made up the movement during this 38‐year period: the Leeds Ad‐Lib group (1973–1975); Who Cares? (1975–1978); the National Association of Young People in Care (1979–1994); Black and In Care (1983–1985); and A National Voice (1998–2011). The narrative includes an analysis of contextual factors and the contribution of these groups in increasing awareness of leaving care policy and practice issues. The article concludes with a discussion of a young person's history of care, including recurring themes relating to young people's transitions to adulthood: their ‘loss’ of family; their disrupted lives in care; their experience of education; leaving care early; and their lack of support into adulthood.

Shireen Morris, A First Nations Voice in the Australian Constitution, Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2020, 344 pp, hb $108.00 (AUD)

Book review of: 'A First Nations voice in the Australian Constitution', by Shireen Morris, Oxford: Hart Publishing, 2020, 344 pp, hb $108.00 (AUD).

‘More than a Thought Bubble…’

‘More than a Thought Bubble…’

Canadian Association of Radiologists White Paper on De-identification of Medical Imaging: Part 2, Practical Considerations.

The application of big data, radiomics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms in radiology requires access to large data sets containing personal health information. Because machine learning projects often require collaboration between different sites or data transfer to a third party, precautions are required to safeguard patient privacy. Safety measures are required to prevent inadvertent access to and transfer of identifiable information. The Canadian Association of Radiologists (CAR) is the national voice of radiology committed to promoting the highest standards in patient-centered imaging, lifelong learning, and research. The CAR has created an AI Ethical and Legal standing committee with the mandate to guide the medical imaging community in terms of best practices in data management, access to health care data, de-identification, and accountability practices. Part 2 of this article will inform CAR members on the practical aspects of medical imaging de-identification, strengths and limitations of de-identification approaches, list of de-identification software and tools available, and perspectives on future directions.