Browsing by Subject "Government"

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    Open Access
    Government policy interventions to reduce human antimicrobial use: protocol for a systematic review and meta-analysis
    (BioMed Central, 2017-12-13) Rogers Van Katwyk, Susan; Grimshaw, Jeremy M; Mendelson, Marc; Taljaard, Monica; Hoffman, Steven J
    Background: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a recognized threat to global public health. Increasing AMR and a dry pipeline of novel antimicrobial drugs have put AMR in the international spotlight. One strategy to combat AMR is to reduce antimicrobial drug consumption. Governments around the world have been experimenting with different policy interventions, such as regulating where antimicrobials can be sold, restricting the use of last-resort antimicrobials, funding AMR stewardship programs, and launching public awareness campaigns. To inform future action, governments should have access to synthesized data on the effectiveness of large-scale AMR interventions. This planned systematic review will (1) identify and describe previously evaluated government policy interventions to reduce human antimicrobial use and (2) estimate the effectiveness of these different strategies. Methods: An electronic search strategy has been developed in consultation with two research librarians. Seven databases (MEDLINE, CINAHL, EMBASE, CENTRAL, PAIS Index, Web of Science, and PubMed excluding MEDLINE) will be searched, and additional studies will be identified using several gray literature search strategies. To be included, a study must (1) clearly describe the government policy and (2) use a rigorous design to quantitatively measure the impact of the policy on human antibiotic use. The intervention of interest is any policy intervention enacted by a government or government agency in any country to change human antimicrobial use. Two independent reviewers will screen for eligibility using criteria defined a priori. Data will be extracted with Covidence software using a customized extraction form. If sufficient data exists, a meta-analysis by intervention type will be conducted as part of the effectiveness review. However, if there are too few studies or if the interventions are too heterogeneous, data will be tabulated and a narrative synthesis strategy will be used. Discussion: This evidence synthesis is intended for use by policymakers, public health practitioners, and researchers to inform future government policies aiming to address antimicrobial resistance. This review will also identify gaps in the evidence about the effectiveness of different policy interventions to inform future research priorities. Systematic review registration: PROSPERO CRD42017067514.
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    Restricted
    South Africans' participation in local politics and government.
    (SAGE Publications, 2008) Mattes, Robert
    In this article, I use public opinion data collected over the past decade to probe three widely held assumptions about local government and public participation in South Africa. The first, widely held by advocates of political decentralisation and devolution of power, posits a direct relationship between the physical proximity of government institutions from the citizens they serve and the level of popular goodwill toward that government. However, public evaluations of local government have consistently been worse than those of either provincial or national government. Not only do people see local government as more corrupt than any other government institution, their levels of performance approval and trust in political institutions are inversely related to the proximal distance between them and that institution. The second assumption, widely held by advocates of ‘participatory democracy’, assumes that citizens have a natural predisposition to participate in public affairs. Accordingly, the participatory movement in South Africa has tended to define its central task as one of creating the mechanisms and forums for citizens to debate with each other and communicate with policy makers. However, citizen engagement with local government (measured in the form of individual contact with local councilors) is very low, both in absolute terms but also in relative terms compared to other African countries (though various pieces of evidence suggests that participation is increasing). Third, more recent analyses have assumed that low levels of voter turnout in local elections and increasing levels of public protest are a function of enduring poverty and inequality and growing dissatisfaction with service delivery. Yet analyses of individual participation in both local politics and government, and in protests and demonstrations, reveals that the poor are more likely to participate (rather than less), and that neither dissatisfaction nor satisfaction with local government performance provides an adequate account of this participation.
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    Open Access
    The separation movement during the period of representative government at the Cape, 1854-1872
    (1938) Taylor, Noel H
    Abstract not detected properly (grammatical errors)