Om het organisch afval zoveel mogelijk waarde te geven in de context van de stad wordt een scala aan lokale oplossingen ontwikkeld, zoals lokale wormenhotels of schillenboeren die het gft aan huis ophalen. Hoewel er hiermee meer gft gescheiden en apart verwerkt wordt is echter niet goed vast te stellen hoe groot de meerwaarde hiervan is voor de maatschappij. Op dit moment is er namelijk nog geen goede meetmethode beschikbaar. Om deze waarde te kunnen beoordelen wordt in Re-Store een meetmethode ontwikkeld om de impact van deze initiatieven in te kunnen schatten.De meetmethode bestaat uit drie pijlers: milieukundige impact, economische impact en sociale impact. Het model voor de milieukundige impact wordt gebaseerd op de methodiek voor een Life Cycle Assessment. Met dit model worden de CO2-equivalenten geanalyseerd van een scenario. Daaraan gelieerd wordt voor de economische impact gebruik gemaakt van principes van de methodiek voor Life Cycle Costing. Met het economische model wordt de netto financiële waarde van een scenario geanalyseerd. Beide modellen worden echter dusdanig toegesneden en vereenvoudigd zodat ze te gebruiken zijn door non-experts.Om de sociale impact te meten worden drie indicatoren gemeten: sociale cohesie, samenwerkend participeren en educatieve ontwikkeling. Om dit te kunnen meten wordt gebruik gemaakt van een perceptiemeting. De eerste test hiermee geeft aanleiding om de indicatoren deels te heroverwegen, de methode aan te scherpen en een aanvullende methode toe te gaan passen.
On duty, police officers are exposed to a variety of acute, threatening stress situations and organizational demands. In line with the allostatic load model, the resulting acute and chronic stress might have tremendous consequences for police officers’ work performance and psychological and physical health. To date, limited research has been conducted into the underlying biological, dynamic mechanisms of stress in police service. Therefore, this ecological momentary assessment study examined the associations of stress, mood and biological stress markers of a 28-year-old male police officer in a N-of-1 study over three weeks (90 data points). Four times a day (directly after waking up, 30 minutes later, 6 hours later, before going to bed), he answered questions about the perceived stress and mood using a smartphone application. With each data entry, he collected saliva samples for the later assessment of salivary cortisol (sCort) and alpha-amylase (sAA). In addition, data was collected after six police incidents during duty. sCort and sAA were not related to perceived stress in daily life and did not increase in police incidents. Regarding mood measures, deterioration of calmness, but not valence and energy was associated with perceived stress. The results suggest continued police service to constitute a major chronic stressor resulting in an inability to mount a proper response to further acute stress. As an indicator of allostatic load, psychological and biological hyporesponsivity in moments of stress may have negative consequences for police officers’ health and behavior in critical situations that require optimal performance. Prospectively, this research design may also become relevant when evaluating the efficacy of individualized stress management interventions in police training.
Background: Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) demonstrate reduced levels of daily physical activity (DPA) compared to healthy controls. This results in a higher risk of hospital admission and shorter survival. Performing regular DPA reduces these risks. Objective: To develop an eHealth intervention that will support patients with COPD to improve or maintain their DPA after pulmonary rehabilitation. Methods: The design process consisted of literature research and the iterative developing and piloting phases of the Medical Research Council (MRC) model for complex clinical interventions and the involvement of end users. Participants were healthy adults and persons with COPD. Results: The mobile phone interface met all the set requirements. Participants found that the app was stimulating and that reaching their DPA goals was rewarding. The mean (SD) scores on a 7-point scale for usability, ease of use, ease of learning, and contentment were 3.8 (1.8), 5.1 (1.1), 6.0 (1.6), and 4.8 (1.3), respectively. The mean (SD) correlation between the mobile phone and a validated accelerometer was 0.88 (0.12) in the final test. The idea of providing their health care professional with their DPA data caused no privacy issues in the participants. Battery life lasted for an entire day with the final version, and readability and comprehensibility of text and colors were favorable. Conclusions: By employing a user-centered design approach, a mobile phone was found to be an adequate and feasible interface for an eHealth intervention. The mobile phone and app are easy to learn and use by patients with COPD. In the final test, the accuracy of the DPA measurement was good. The final version of the eHealth intervention is presently being tested by our group for efficacy in a randomized controlled trial in COPD patients.
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