Nonprofit Learning Lab AI policy workshop

Across low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), patients and the public remain involved only to a limited extent in respiratory health research. In this Photovoice project, people living with chronic respiratory diseases (CRDs) and carers partnered with the research team, shifting researcher-led processes towards co-production that influenced study design, conduct, analysis, and dissemination. This case study reports and reflects on the patient and public involvement (PPI) approach and its impacts. We conducted PPI-related activities throughout a Photovoice project to capture lived experiences of breathlessness, adaptation, and resilience across three engagement levels: (1) community awareness and screening, (2) healthcare-providers (HCPs) reflection, and (3) policy co-design. Two PPI carers reviewed all patient-facing materials for clarity and cultural sensitivity and advised on recruitment through treating physicians to build trust. Three PPI members and two participants contributed to the thematic validation. Participants took part in dissemination, co-curated the exhibitions and the Living with CRD photobook, and co-drafted a policy brief. The team thematically analysed reflections, discussions, and facilitator notes to identify key enablers and challenges. PPI shaped every stage of the study. Their inputs influenced recruitment approaches, interpretation of lived-experience data, and design of dissemination materials. Participants described a sense of being ‘heard’ for the first time and expressed pride in contributing to change. The Photovoice exhibitions connected communities, clinicians, and policymakers, leading to co-developed recommendations through exhibition dialogues and the policy workshop. This Photovoice project demonstrates how PPI partners can strengthen study relevance, enrich interpretation, and support dissemination to clinicians and policymakers in LMIC settings. Their engagement with design, analysis, and dissemination illustrates feasible co-production that builds trust, fosters empowerment and generates actionable, context-sensitive recommendations. Chronic respiratory diseases (CRDs) such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease affect many people in Malaysia, yet patients and carers are still involved only to a limited extent in respiratory health research. In this Photovoice project in Klang, Malaysia, people living with CRDs and their carers worked with the research team as partners. This is a case study of patient and public involvement (PPI) in the project, describing how patients and carers were involved as partners and what that involvement changed. The project explored experiences of breathlessness, adaptation, and resilience through three engagement levels: (1) community awareness and screening, (2) reflection with healthcare providers, and (3) policy co-design. Study participants took photographs and wrote short captions about everyday life with a chronic lung condition. These were shared through public exhibitions, discussions with healthcare providers, and a policy workshop. PPI partners contributed throughout. Two carers reviewed patient-facing information for clarity and cultural sensitivity and advised on recruitment through treating physicians to build trust. Three PPI members and two participants supported validation of the interpretation. Participants led dissemination by co-curating exhibitions and the Living with CRD photobook and co-drafting a policy brief. We reviewed reflections, discussions, and facilitator notes to identify enablers and challenges of involvement. PPI shaped recruitment approaches, interpretation, and the design of dissemination materials. Participants described feeling ‘heard’ for the first time and expressed pride in contributing to change. Exhibition dialogues and the policy workshop supported co-developed, context-sensitive recommendations.

BackgroundThe European Joint Programme on Rare Diseases (EJP RD) was an initiative that sought to integrate different rare disease strategies into a research ecosystem. This paper summarizes the work of the dedicated work package on Integrative Research and Innovation Strategy and outlines recommendations to facilitate alignment with National Plans and Strategies for Rare Diseases.MethodsWe carried out three periodic surveys (in 2020, 2021 and 2023) on the status of national plans and strategies (NP/NS) for rare diseases in EJP RD member countries. Using the feedback from the surveys and other sources, we developed an annual mapping of research and innovation needs and their alignment with the EJP RD programme. A review of the findings and progress from these approaches – including two strategic policy workshops and the development of National Mirror Groups – informed the recommendations to bridge the gap between national efforts and European strategies.ResultsA total of 34 countries responded to at least one survey. Implementation is uneven: 76% of countries have had their NP/NS approved at some point, but renewals are irregular. For EU13 countries, the most frequent barrier to developing, improving and translating rare disease (RD) research results was funding. In terms of the Programme’s activities covering mapped needs, we achieved global coverage of 65.8%, with greater coverage of needs for both the diagnostic pathway and the treatment pathway (71%). Four National Mirror Groups were developed during the Programme’s first 5 years, and a further seven were established by mid-2024.ConclusionsDespite recent progress in establishing a research ecosystem for rare diseases in Europe, several challenges remain and should be addressed. These include availability and accessibility of diagnostics, medicines and medical devices across Europe, inequalities between and within countries, compliance with the FAIR data principles and the lack of a comprehensive policy framework to integrate different rare diseases initiatives. Next actions need to strengthen the coordination and alignment of funding and national policies, innovation in the translation of research results and the reach of a holistic research ecosystem. National Mirror Groups will play an important role in this respect.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12961-025-01389-7.

With recent growth in both domestic and global private health care markets and increased medical travel by patients, there has been an increase in the existence of medical mediation services. Whilst there is a developing scholarship that considers the brokerage of this travel, less attention has been paid to other forms of medical facilitation. Taking the example of fertility treatment - specifically egg donation - this paper examines how intermediaries develop, how they operate and specifically how they create multiple forms of value within systems of healthcare traditionally based around non-commercial logics. The data come from a large-scale comparative study of egg donation in Europe, designed to explore the new landscape and economy of human eggs in fertility treatment. Data collection included: interviews with key actors in the field (donors, clinic staff, intermediary representatives and other stakeholders, n=132); analysis of marketing material from clinic and intermediary websites; and discussions at deliberative policy workshops with the project team and stakeholders. We identified three types of intermediaries: egg agencies, egg banks, and online matching platforms; actors that are engaged in a multiplicity of valuation practices which give rise to novel forms of logistical, affective, commercial and circumventional value. We suggest that via these practices egg intermediaries are reconfiguring the relationship between donors, fertility patients and the traditional notion of the fertility clinic, and reshaping normative understandings around reproductive labour, kinship, and biomedicine in the wider fertility landscape.

The Boko Haram insurgency has inflicted profound disruption on communities in northeast Nigeria, with Gujba Local Government Area (LGA) among the most severely affected. Although transitional justice (TJ) initiatives have been introduced to address human rights violations, youth participation has remained limited and largely symbolic. This article examines the specific roles that young people occupy in TJ processes in Gujba LGA and proposes a strategic communication framework to enhance their substantive engagement. A mixed methods design was employed, with quantitative data from a structured survey of 300 youths (187 male, 113 female) and qualitative insights drawn from 13 key informant interviews. Findings reveal that while 40% of respondents have ever attended TJ events, attendance is typically confined to community reconciliation (60%), with minimal involvement in policy workshops (25%). Youth contributions frequently remain logistical or testimonial rather than consultative. Demographic analysis indicates higher participation among those aged 20–24 and individuals with post-secondary education, whereas farmers and young women face pronounced barriers. Drawing on framing and diffusion theories, the article outlines a seven-step advocacy campaign encompassing tailored messages in local languages, multi-channel dissemination (radio, town criers, mobile messaging) and culturally sensitive formats (women only sessions, youth led media). Preliminary pilot data suggest that targeted messaging can raise awareness from 35% to over 60% and increase active speaking roles among participants by 30%. The proposed framework offers policymakers and practitioners a replicable model for transforming youth from passive observers to active stakeholders in TJ, thereby strengthening the legitimacy and effectiveness of post conflict recovery processes.

The Boko Haram insurgency has inflicted profound disruption on communities in northeast Nigeria, with Gujba Local Government Area (LGA) among the most severely affected. Although transitional justice (TJ) initiatives have been introduced to address human rights violations, youth participation has remained limited and largely symbolic. This article examines the specific roles that young people occupy in TJ processes in Gujba LGA and proposes a strategic communication framework to enhance their substantive engagement. A mixed methods design was employed, with quantitative data from a structured survey of 300 youths (187 male, 113 female) and qualitative insights drawn from 13 key informant interviews. Findings reveal that while 40% of respondents have ever attended TJ events, attendance is typically confined to community reconciliation (60%), with minimal involvement in policy workshops (25%). Youth contributions frequently remain logistical or testimonial rather than consultative. Demographic analysis indicates higher participation among those aged 20–24 and individuals with post-secondary education, whereas farmers and young women face pronounced barriers. Drawing on framing and diffusion theories, the article outlines a seven-step advocacy campaign encompassing tailored messages in local languages, multi-channel dissemination (radio, town criers, mobile messaging) and culturally sensitive formats (women only sessions, youth led media). Preliminary pilot data suggest that targeted messaging can raise awareness from 35% to over 60% and increase active speaking roles among participants by 30%. The proposed framework offers policymakers and practitioners a replicable model for transforming youth from passive observers to active stakeholders in TJ, thereby strengthening the legitimacy and effectiveness of post conflict recovery processes.

Addressing the current unprecedented climate and environmental challenges in our urban areas and beyond entails innovation in policymaking across sectors, rather than siloing, which has often been the status quo. Nature-based solutions (NBS) can provide tangible, innovative and integrated policy solutions to current challenges, including climate change and nature renewal, therefore departing from previous sustainable development approaches. At the same time, the policy integration NBS entail mean they are subject to complex governance influences. Through a comparative analysis of interview and policy workshop data in three European city case studies, this paper examines the external, societal and governing influences on NBS innovation, and the governance structures in which NBS innovation is likely to occur—including political aspects of NBS which have hitherto been relatively unexplored. The results indicate important facilitating and hindering factors across governing, societal and external categories, and show some association between NBS innovation and decentralized policy making. They highlight the importance of policy coherence of NBS initiatives with government policy/strategy; and of the willingness by policy makers/local government staff to engage with/appeal strategically to political decision-makers regarding external policy drivers—e.g. climate adaptation and health. The data also indicates that where citizen participation was built into NBS projects, this led to both innovation and additionality in design, quality, biodiversity, multi-functionality and co-benefits of green/blue spaces. Key differences that led to differing NBS outcomes included size and complexity of the urban area, and characteristics of the governing architecture.

Abstract The past two decades have witnessed a surge of distance learning in higher education across the world. Scholars have argued that this is due to the increasing use and recognition of technologies to act as a means, channel and source for internationalization of knowledge. Further, internationalization at a distance (IaD) has seen a rapid increase in universities in Ghana, sub‐Saharan Africa, due to increased use of digital technologies and high demand for foreign education. Yet, there remains limited research about the role of technologies in facilitating and mediating IaD in countries in sub‐Saharan Africa. Moreover, few studies have explored students' experiences in IaD regarding prospects and challenges in Ghana, sub‐Saharan Africa. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to explore students' experiences and voices regarding the role of technologies in facilitating and mediating distance learning including students' critical reflections on the technological shift of IaD in higher education (including the COVID‐19 pandemic period) in Ghana. Data were collected following a qualitative research design via an in‐depth semistructured interview of 28 students (16 females and 12 males) enrolled in IaD learning program in three foreign universities (two in the United Kingdom and one in the United States). Data analyses were done via a constant comparative approach. Findings showed that students experienced enhanced quality of learning through the varied use of technologies such as Zoom, Team and Google Hangouts. However, students faced challenges such as unequal access to technologies, intermittent Internet connections/outages, high cost of tuition and lack of social and teaching engagement. These findings in many ways contribute to a new understanding and knowledge building of students' experiences and challenges of IaD in sub‐Saharan Africa. Practitioner notes What is already known about this topic? The number of students in internationalization at a distance (IaD) education programs is increasing alongside the development of digital technologies and the expansion of digital infrastructure. Increasing demands for higher education in sub‐Saharan Africa have led to an increase in the number of students from Ghana in IaD. What this paper adds? Ghanaian students in IaD benefited from the use of various digital technologies, improving their engagement and facilitating the acquisition of digital skills. They faced barriers in accessing digital technologies and Internet connectivity. Implications for practice and/or policy Pretraining programs and workshops to enhance students' digital skills before starting distance education could be beneficial for Global South students in IaD. Education provider should support the access to digital technologies and Internet connectivity of Global South students in IaD.

Youth mental health service organizations continue to rapidly broaden their use of virtual care and digital mental health interventions as well as leverage artificial intelligence and other technologies to inform care decisions. However, many of these digital services have failed to alleviate persistent mental health disparities among equity-seeking populations and in some instances have exacerbated them. Transdisciplinary and intersectional knowledge exchange is greatly needed to address structural barriers to digital mental health engagement, develop and evaluate interventions with historically underserved communities, and ultimately promote more accessible, useful, and equitable care. To that end, the Digital, Inclusive, Virtual, and Equitable Research Training in Mental Health Platform (DIVERT), the Maritime Strategy for Patient Oriented Research (SPOR) SUPPORT (Support for People and Patient-Oriented Research and Trials) Unit and IWK Mental Health Program invited researchers, policymakers, interprofessional mental health practitioners, trainees, computer scientists, health system administrators, community leaders and youth advocates to participate in a knowledge exchange workshop. The workshop aimed to (a) highlight local research and innovation in youth-focused digital mental health services; (b) learn more about current policy and practice issues in inclusive digital mental health for youth in Canada, (c) participate in generating action recommendations to address challenges to inclusive, diverse and equitable digital mental health services, and (d) to synthesize cross-sector feedback to inform future training curriculum, policy, strategic planning and to stimulate new lines of patient-oriented research. Eleven challenge themes emerged related to white-colonial normativity, lack of cultural humility, inaccessibility and affordability of participating in the digital world, lack of youth and community involvement, risks of too much digital time in youth's lives, and lack of scientific evidence derived from equity-deserving communities. Nine action recommendations focused on diversifying research and development funding, policy and standards, youth and community led promotion, long-term trust-building and collaboration, and needing to callout and advocate against unsafe digital services and processes. Key policy, training and practice implications are discussed.

In this paper, we aim to situate data portability within the evolving discussions of how to support data access for researchers studying the digital information environment.We explore how data donations, enabled by existing data access rights and data portability requirements, provide promising opportunities for supporting research on critical trust and safety topics.Evaluating other data access mechanisms that are more central to policy debates about platform transparency, we argue that data donations are a powerful additional mechanism that offer key legal, ethical, and scientific benefits.We then assess current challenges with using data donations for research and offer recommendations for various stakeholders to better align portability mechanisms with the needs of research.Taken together, we argue that although portability is often considered within a context of competition and user agency, regulators, industry actors, and researchers should understand and leverage portability's potential impact to empower critical research on the societal impacts of digital platforms and services.1.This paper is an expanded version of a chapter included in the compendium for a policy workshop, hosted by the Data Transfer Initative and held in Washington, DC, in February 2024.The compendium can be found here: https://dtinit.org/assets/DTI-Data-Portability-Compendium.pdf.2

the European research infrastructure for neurosciences.In 2023, he is also a Neurotech Fellow at the Foresight Institute.He has worked in Switzerland, Japan, the Netherlands, and the UK.His work focusses on the brain's heterocellularity and on neurotechnologies to interface with brain tissue.Over the last decade, Professor Jolivet has also been active in science policy at the European level, first within various working groups of the Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA), before being elected to the board of the Association for one term (2018)(2019)(2020).From there, he served as the MCAA representative on the board of the Initiative for Science in Europe (ISE), and as External Policy Advisor (2019)(2020)(2021)(2022).This work has led to a number of policy documents published by MCAA and ISE (e.g., on research precarity) and to a number of policy workshops and sessions.

Peri-urban ecosystem services (ES) play a vital role in the health and livelihoods of urban and peri-urban residents, but have received relatively little attention in the literature to date. Here we focus on agriculture-related peri-urban ecosystem services in south Asia: examining the relationships with multiple dimensions of poverty, and cross-scale interactions that affect the livelihoods and well-being of both urban and peri-urban residents across city regions.We present a novel analytical framework to reveal the dynamics of ES, poverty and livelihood interactions in rapidly urbanising contexts. Our framework adapts concepts from three complementary literatures and augments these with insights from our long-term empirical research in peri-urban India. We demonstrate the iterative development and operationalisation of this framework through an in-depth case study of the peri-urban village of Karhera in Ghaziabad, India. Transdisciplinary field research was carried out between 2014 and 2016 and involved a household census, in-depth interviews and participatory mapping exercises with peri-urban agricultural communities; alongside policy process analysis, and interviews and workshops with government officials, representatives from civil society organisations and other policy stakeholders.The analysis demonstrates how the wider political economy, associated peri-urban transformations and changes in urban consumer’ demand have multiple interacting impacts on agri-ecosystems, and how the ES derived from agri-ecosystems are accessed and utilised in diverse livelihood. We highlight specific drivers and processes of urbanisation that impact on the value and management of ecosystems, and the distinctive political, institutional, and socio-economiccharacteristics of peri-urban transformations that influence ES-poverty interactions. Our framework supports an enhanced understanding of the implications of mainstream development trajectories and governance arrangements for peri-urban ES and for the health and livelihoods of diverse stakeholders in the city regions that depend upon them. In doing so it draws attention to the potential tobuild synergies between environmental, poverty and health objectives.

Methodological innovation is needed that actively engages a range of policy makers in policy learning to address the climate and biodiversity crises. We developed Walkable Floor Map Policy Workshops (WFMPWs) as a way of engaging policy makers in policy learning towards NBS innovation in their local context. This paper examines WFMPW methodology for NBS through an analysis of three WFMPWs in three European urban case study sites. We find that implementation of WFMPWs facilitated policy learning through group discussion and experience sharing amongst participating policy makers. The WFMPWs added greater spatial contextualisation and the futures workshop elements facilitated discussions of future opportunities and barriers, leading to questioning of common approaches and assumptions and ‘thinking outside of the box’. The data provided in-depth, comparative, nuanced, and locally contextualised qualitative insights of interest across multiple disciplines. The findings provide a different way of understanding political and decision-making processes around NBS, including problem framing and shifting policy debates. The WFMPW approach enabled participating policy makers to describe and critique the current situation; imagine/visualise a preferable future situation; and explore ways of moving from the actual situation to the preferred one.

The impacts of climate change on society and the natural environment are being experienced now, with extreme weather events increasing in frequency and severity across the globe. To keep the Paris Agreement's ambition of limiting warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels there is now also a need to establish and scale a new sector to remove CO2 at Giga-ton scale for over a century. Despite this mounting evidence and warnings, current climate policy in the UK and globally falls far short of achieving the required reductions in CO2 emissions or establishment of a new removal sector needed to stave off the risks posed by climate change. Some of the science on climate risk is well-evidenced, but the policy response is lacking in effectiveness. Other evidence to design policy, such as Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR), is fraught with deep uncertainty. Why are the plethora of scientific evidence, assessments and decision support tools available to decision and policymakers not always translating into effective climate-net zero policy action? How can emergent evidence be introduced to shape new sectors such as CDR? What are the capacity gaps? Through a combination of literature review, interviews and UK policy workshops over 17 months these are some of the questions that this contribution sought insight. We set out three recommendations for policymakers and other stakeholders, including academic researchers and third sector organizations, to address the identified gaps associated with translating climate risk and net zero decision support into effective climate policy:• Enhance collaboration between decision-makers, policymakers, analysts, researchers, and other stakeholders to co-develop and co-design operational climate risk assessments and policies, relevant to context.• Identify the research and capacity gaps around climate risk decision-making under uncertainty, and work with stakeholders across the decision value chain to ensure those gaps are addressed.• Co-create effective translation mechanisms to embed decision-support tools into policy better, employing a participatory approach to ensure inclusion of diverse values and viewpoints.It is fundamental that there is improvement in our understanding about how we can make good decisions and operationalize them, rather than simply focus on further research on the climate risk and net zero problem.

Occupational health and safety (OHS) is the key to the company's growth in modern industry. Awareness of OHS has a positive impact on employees financially and non-financially. Indifference to OHS can be fatal, causing harm. OHS includes the establishment of a safe work environment through various approaches. Work accident data at PT. XYZ reaches 36% of the workforce, not yet meeting the government's zero accident policy—workshop at PT. XYZ has 9 types of OHS Risk. This study will use an assessment method using the Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (FMEA) method. After identifying and assessing these risks, improvement proposals will be made using Root Cause Analysis (RCA). Judging from the risks that need to be overcome immediately from the RPN value obtained, namely operating a gas-cutting machine with a value of 71.94, the eye is exposed to iron splashes during the turning process with a value of 64.51. Finally, interference with the eye during the welding process with a value of 60.11 is broken down through the RCA method to find the root cause of the problem. Then, a proposal for improvement is made.Keywords: FMEA, OHS, PPE, Risk, RPN, RCA

​In response to a Government request, the Productivity Com-mission is currently undertaking an inquiry into ‘new models of tertiary education’. At a time when the technological and social climate is changing so rapidly that our current model is struggling to keep up, this inquiry presents an opportunity for the Institute to set out ideas we have gathered as to how New Zealand might adopt a more dynamic tertiary education model that is fit for the 21st century.This think piece explores how the tertiary education system could change today in order to foster the development of skills that will be required of New Zealanders in the long term. In fifty years, the current cohort of young tertiary students will be in their early seventies, and a vastly different set of 17- to 25-year-olds will have inherited the world of tertiary institutions. How can we make space for this difference? How can we prepare our young people for a world that is continuously becoming more connected and therefore more complex? How can we change the purpose of our education system to reflect this?This think piece is broken up into three parts: (i) What have we learnt through hosting public policy workshops for young people? (ii) What is not working? and (iii) How might New Zealand become a trailblazer in tertiary education?

The rapid increase of Offshore Wind Farm (OWF) development in the North-Sea occurs under serious uncertainty, partly due to knowledge gaps concerning the North-Sea’s socio-ecological system. The situation is particularly urgent in the Netherlands due to the intense use of its maritime zone and related conflicts among stakeholders. Optimising the placement of OWFs requires the uptake of multidisciplinary knowledge in Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) policy through ongoing adaptation of policies to new knowledge. Currently, knowledge-uptake from research into policy is widely mentioned as a challenge for MSP, but knowledge management theory has hardly been applied to it. To be useful in the multidisciplinary environment of MSP, a common language about knowledge is needed to allow for cooperation between scientific disciplines and policy sectors. However, many risks exist that may hinder knowledge-uptake between research and policy-making. This thinking-gap between research and policy-making is recognised in many fields. However, MSP and relevant knowledge about the North-Sea is rapidly developing and understudied. This results in a high pressure and dynamic situation in a developing field which can be an insightful case to apply knowledge-management theory and provide new insights for scholars of MSP. This study focuses on risks for knowledge uptake that derive from incompatibilities between researchers and policy-makers in the use and development of knowledge within the context of OWF development and MSP. These incompatibilities range from differing timeframes and uses of data to more fundamental differences in roles between researchers desiring to understand the world, and policy-makers desiring to change it. Characteristics of MSP, such as the high political pressure and relative pioneering practice of MSP may exacerbate the impact of such incompatibilities. Notably, MSP may suffer from a focus on short-term policy-making, limited cumulative understanding and fragmentation in policy. The aim of this article is to consider the effect of incompatibilities between systems of research and policy-making on knowledge-uptake in Dutch MSP and how these may be exacerbated by characteristics of MSP. Using knowledge-management literature, a list of potential incompatibilities between systems of research and policy-making is drawn. Data was collected by means of document analysis, in-depth interviews with researchers and policy-makers, and observations of policy workshops, consortium meetings, and focus groups. Findings suggest that risks to knowledge-uptake are partially caused by the incompatibilities between research and policy-making and that the context of MSP exacerbates these incompatibilities in most instances. Simultaneously, some instances were found where MSP can actually help to decrease differences between researchers and policy-makers. However, the incompatibilities between researchers and policy-makers are so enduring that risks to knowledge-uptake still persist. Better joint understanding and recognition of differences between research and policy-making are required to limit the negative effect of incompatibilities between research and policy-making on knowledge uptake.

International Conference on Environment, Earth Science and Sustainability (ICES) Proceedings of International Conference on Environment, Earth Science and Sustainability (ICES 2022) Following six successful events of the Annual Workshop, the 7th Annual IIES Science and Policy Workshop was jointly organized with the International Conference on Environment, Earth Science and Sustainability (ICES) from 24 Oct to 28 Oct 2022 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The ICES 2022 - a multidisciplinary conference - initiated under the auspices of Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HCMUT), Trent University (Canada) and the IIES Network, and was taken place in the occasion of the 65th anniversary of HCMUT.This year, the ICES Conference with the theme of “Integrated Multidisciplinary Sciences towards Sustainable Development” was held in Ho Chi Minh City (24 - 26 Oct 2022) and Phu Quoc, Vietnam (27 - 28 Oct 2022). The Conference was successfully organized by a synergy of the consortium of Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City (VNU-HCM), Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology, International Institute for Environmental Studies, Trent University, Nan Jing University, Kunsan National University (KSNU), Dalhousie University, and Institute for Circular Economy Development - VNU-HCM.The ICES 2022 covers five main topics of (i) Civil Engineering, (ii) Environmental Sciences and Management, (iii) Environmental Engineering and Technologies, (iv) Earth Sciences/Natural Resources, and (v) Circular Economy/Sustainability. Participants gained insights into current research in civil engineering, earth and environmental science, policy and planning, and attained a worthy opportunity to meet colleagues from several institutions, universities, and agencies. For students, this is a chance to share their research outcomes and to build-up potential collaborative relationships at an international level. The Conference drew substantial attention from leading scientists, managers, lecturers, and merit students from universities, institutes, and research centers as well as officials from relevant government departments, agencies, companies, and enterprises.Overall, the Conference has attracted more than 216 papers from scientists, researchers, government managers, and graduate students. Among them, 79 high-quality papers were recommended to submit for peer-reviewing. Then, the double-blind review process was carried out for the 67 papers, in which each paper has been reviewed for its merit and novelty by at least two reviewers and one editor by matching the content areas. As a result, a total of 37 papers have been finally selected for this proceedings book. We believe that this proceedings book provides a broad overview of recent advanced studies in the fields of Civil Engineering, Material, Circular Economy, Environment, Resources and Earth Sciences for readers.Most importantly, we would like to express our sincere thanks to (i) Division of Science and Technology – Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City (Prof. Lam Quang Vinh); (ii) Rector of HCMUT (Prof. Mai Thanh Phong) for their help and other supports. We would like to thank all the reviewers for their timely and rigorous reviews of the papers and all authors for their interests in the ICES 2022.List of Editors are available in the pdf.

IntroductionPrivatisation through the expansion of private payment and investor-owned corporate healthcare delivery in Canada raises potential conflicts with equity principles on which Medicare (Canadian public health insurance) is founded. Some...

BackgroundSepsis is a devastating disease which causes yearly over 10 million deaths worldwide. In 2017, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a resolution prompting member states to improve the prevention, recognition, and management of sepsis. The 2021 European Sepsis Report revealed that—contrary to other European countries—Switzerland had not yet actioned the sepsis resolution.MethodsA panel of experts convened at a policy workshop to address how to improve awareness, prevention, and treatment of sepsis in Switzerland. Goal of the workshop was to formulate a set of consensus recommendations toward creating a Swiss Sepsis National Action Plan (SSNAP). In a first part, stakeholders presented existing international sepsis quality improvement programs and national health programs relevant for sepsis. Thereafter, the participants were allocated into three working groups to identify opportunities, barriers, and solutions on (i) prevention and awareness, (ii) early detection and treatment, and (iii) support for sepsis survivors. Finally, the entire panel summarized the findings from the working groups and identified priorities and strategies for the SSNAP. All discussions during the workshop were transcribed into the present document. All workshop participants and key experts reviewed the document.ResultsThe panel formulated 14 recommendations to address sepsis in Switzerland. These focused on four domains, including (i) raising awareness in the community, (ii) improving healthcare workforce training on sepsis recognition and sepsis management; (iii) establishing standards for rapid detection, treatment and follow-up in sepsis patients across all age groups; and (iv) promoting sepsis research with particular focus on diagnostic and interventional trials.ConclusionThere is urgency to tackle sepsis. Switzerland has a unique opportunity to leverage from lessons learnt during the COVID-19 pandemic to address sepsis as the major infection-related threat to society. This report details consensus recommendations, the rationale thereof, and key discussion points made by the stakeholders on the workshop day. The report presents a coordinated national action plan to prevent, measure, and sustainably reduce the personal, financial and societal burden, death and disability arising from sepsis in Switzerland.