Contribution of Pauline Goense to the 2nd Biennial Australian Implementation Conference on how policies, programs and practices can best be implemented so as to most effectively make a real, positive and enduring impact on people’s lives.
Every healthcare professional (HCP) in the Netherlands is expected to provide palliative care based on their initial education. This requires national consensus and clarity on the quality and goals of palliative care education and accessible education opportunities nationwide. These requirements were not met in the Netherlands, posing a major obstacle to improving the organization and delivery of palliative care. Therefore, a program, Optimizing Education and Training in Palliative Care (O2PZ), was established to improve palliative care education on a national level.
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Rationale, aims and objective: Primary Care Plus (PC+) focuses on the substitution of hospital-based medical care to the primary care setting without moving hospital facilities. The aim of this study was to examine whether population health and experience of care in PC+ could be maintained. Therefore, health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and experienced quality of care from a patient perspective were compared between patients referred to PC+ and to hospital-based outpatient care (HBOC). Methods: This cohort study included patients from a Dutch region, visiting PC+ or HBOC between December 2014 and April 2018. With patient questionnaires (T0, T1 and T2), the HRQoL and experience of care were measured. One-to-two nearest neighbour calliper propensity score matching (PSM) was used to control for potential selection bias. Outcomes were compared using marginal linear models and Pearson chi-square tests. Results: One thousand one hundred thirteen PC+ patients were matched to 606 HBOC patients with well-balanced baseline characteristics (SMDs <0.1). Regarding HRQoL outcomes, no significant interaction terms between time and group were found (P > .05), indicating no difference in HRQoL development between the groups over time. Regarding experienced quality of care, no differences were found between PC+ and HBOC patients. Only travel time was significantly shorter in the HBOC group (P ≤ .001). Conclusion: Results show equal effects on HRQoL outcomes over time between the groups. Regarding experienced quality of care, only differences in travel time were found. Taken as a whole, population health and quality of care were maintained with PC+ and future research should focus more on cost-related outcomes.
Urban open space has a huge impact on human health, well-being and urban ecosystems. One of the open spaces where the environmental and ecological challenges of cities manifest the most is the urban riverfront, often characterised by fragmented land use, lack of accessibility, heavy riverside vehicular traffic, and extreme degradation of river hydrology and ecology. More often than not, the current spatial design of the riverfront hinders rather than supports the delivery of ecosystem services and, in consequence, its potential to improve the health and well-being of urban inhabitants is diminished. Hence, the design of riverside open spaces is crucial. Urban and landscape design in those spaces requires instruments that can aid designers, planners, decision-makers and stakeholders in devising spatial interventions that integrate complex environmental and ecological goals in high quality public space design. By recognising the multiple environmental and ecological benefits of green space and water in the city, the project “I surf” applies a set of four design instruments, namely the Connector, the Sponge, the Integrator, and the Scaler. I surf is a three-phased project that tests, validates and updates these instruments through a design-driven research methodology involving two design workshops and expert meetings addressing three different riverside urban spaces in Amsterdam: in the Ij waterfront, along River Amstel, and on a site located on the canal network. The project concludes with an updated and transferrable instrument set available for urban and landscape design applications in Amsterdam and in other Dutch cities crossed by rivers.
With the help of sensors that made data collection and processing possible, many products around us have become “smarter”. The situation that our car, refrigerator, or umbrella communicating with us and each other is no longer a future scenario; it is increasingly a shared reality. There are good examples of such connectedness such as lifestyle monitoring of elderly persons or waste management in a smart city. Yet, many other smart products are designed just for the sake of embedding a chip in something without thinking through what kind of value they add everyday life. In other words, the design of these systems have mainly been driven by technology until now and little studies have been carried out on how the design of such systems helps citizens to improve or maintain the quality of their individual and collective lives. The CREATE-IT research center creates new solutions and methodologies in “digital design” that contribute to the quality of life of citizens. Correspondingly, this proposal focuses on one type of digital design—smart products—and investigate the concept of empowerment in relation to the design of smart products. In particular, the proposal aims to develop a model with its supplementary tools and methods for designing such products better. By following a research-through-design methodology, the proposal intends to offer a critical understanding on designing smart products. Along with its theoretical contribution, the proposal will also aid the students of ICT and design, and professionals such as designers and engineers to create smart products that will empower people and the industry to develop products grounded in a clear user experience and business model.
