This chapter provides insights into the complex and adaptive nature of systems and illustrates key characteristics of such systems. These contribute to an understanding of the challenges in health promotion and imply a need for more context-specific research to evaluate the health promotion interventions. CARA can address this need as it can be used to evaluate and support change in complex adaptive systems. To support and inspire other health promotion researchers who want to adopt CARA as their research approach, we have discussed our experiences and provided some guiding principles. Overall, complexity thinking can help to understand the challenges in health promotion, whereby CARA provides a possible strategy for health promotion researchers when dealing with the challenges of evaluating health promotion interventions in complex adaptive systems.
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Olga Haenen, Lector INVIS (Nieuwe eiwitten, insecten en vis, gezond, duurzaam en veilig) spreekt over de Health Challenge tijdens haar HAS Talk.
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Within European cross-border health care, recent studies have identified several types of international patients. Within the Anglo-Saxon setting, the specific terminology of medical tourism is used. The analytical purpose of the paper is to resolve this semantic difference by suggesting an alternative terminology, 'transnational health care' that is understood as a 'context-controlled and coordinated network of health services'. For demand-driven trans-border access seekers and cross-border access searchers, there is a need to opt for regional health-policy strategies. For supply-driven sending context actors and receiving context actors, there would be organizational benefits to these strategies.Applying the terminology of trans-border access seekers, cross-border access searchers, sending context and receiving context actors results in a transnational patient mobility typology of twelve types of international patients, based on the criteria of geographical distance, cultural distance and searching efforts, public/private/no cover and private/public provision of health services. Finally, the normative purpose of the paper is to encourage the use of this terminology to promote a policy route for transnational health regions. It is suggested that the development of transnational health regions, each with their own medical and supportive service characteristics, could enhance governmental context-controlled decision power in applying sustainable health destination management.
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Micro and macro algae are a rich source of lipids, proteins and carbohydrates, but also of secondary metabolites like phytosterols. Phytosterols have important health effects such as prevention of cardiovascular diseases. Global phytosterol market size was estimated at USD 709.7 million in 2019 and is expected to grow with a CAGR of 8.7% until 2027. Growing adoption of healthy lifestyle has bolstered demand for nutraceutical products. This is expected to be a major factor driving demand for phytosterols. Residues from algae are found in algae farming and processing, are found as beachings and are pruning residues from underwater Giant Kelp forests. Large amounts of brown seaweed beaches in the province of Zeeland and are discarded as waste. Pruning residues from Giant Kelp Forests harvests for the Namibian coast provide large amounts of biomass. ALGOL project considers all these biomass residues as raw material for added value creation. The ALGOL feasibility project will develop and evaluate green technologies for phytosterol extraction from algae biomass in a biocascading approach. Fucosterol is chosen because of its high added value, whereas lipids, protein and carbohydrates are lower in value and will hence be evaluated in follow-up projects. ALGOL will develop subcritical water, supercritical CO2 with modifiers and ethanol extraction technologies and compare these with conventional petroleum-based extractions and asses its technical, economic and environmental feasibility. Prototype nutraceutical/cosmeceutical products will be developed to demonstrate possible applications with fucosterol. A network of Dutch and African partners will supply micro and macro algae biomass, evaluate developed technologies and will prototype products with it, which are relevant to their own business interests. ALGOL project will create added value by taking a biocascading approach where first high-interest components are processed into high added value products as nutraceutical or cosmeceutical.
Micro and macro algae are a rich source of lipids, proteins and carbohydrates, but also of secondary metabolites like phytosterols. Phytosterols have important health effects such as prevention of cardiovascular diseases. Global phytosterol market size was estimated at USD 709.7 million in 2019 and is expected to grow with a CAGR of 8.7% until 2027. Growing adoption of healthy lifestyle has bolstered demand for nutraceutical products. This is expected to be a major factor driving demand for phytosterols.Residues from algae are found in algae farming and processing, are found as beachings and are pruning residues from underwater Giant Kelp forests. Large amounts of brown seaweed beaches in the province of Zeeland and are discarded as waste. Pruning residues from Giant Kelp Forests harvests for the Namibian coast provide large amounts of biomass. ALGOL project considers all these biomass residues as raw material for added value creation.The ALGOL feasibility project will develop and evaluate green technologies for phytosterol extraction from algae biomass in a biocascading approach. Fucosterol is chosen because of its high added value, whereas lipids, protein and carbohydrates are lower in value and will hence be evaluated in follow-up projects. ALGOL will develop subcritical water, supercritical CO2 with modifiers and ethanol extraction technologies and compare these with conventional petroleum-based extractions and asses its technical, economic and environmental feasibility. Prototype nutraceutical/cosmeceutical products will be developed to demonstrate possible applications with fucosterol.A network of Dutch and African partners will supply micro and macro algae biomass, evaluate developed technologies and will prototype products with it, which are relevant to their own business interests. ALGOL project will create added value by taking a biocascading approach where first high-interest components are processed into high added value products as nutraceutical or cosmeceutical.
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a severe inflammatory condition of the central nervous system (CNS) affecting about 2.5 million people globally. It is more common in females, usually diagnosed in their 30s and 40s, and can shorten life expectancy by 5 to 10 years. While MS is rarely fatal; its effects on a person's life can be profound, which signifies comprehensive management and support. Most studies regarding MS focus on how lymphocytes and other immune cells are involved in the disease. However, little attention has been given to red blood cells (erythrocytes), which might also be important in developing MS. Artificial intelligence (AI) has shown significant potential in medical imaging for analyzing blood cells, enabling accurate and efficient diagnosis of various conditions through automated image analysis. The project aims to implement an AI pipeline based on Deep Learning (DL) algorithms (e.g., Transfer Learning approach) to classify MS and Healthy Blood cells.
