Tag: public

Posted on

Stress in the City

Before the stress in the city makes you sick, try new coping strategies. Of course, you cannot avoid the stress of hotspots like busy crossings or noisy construction sites. And these are only the visible stressors not to mention fine dust particles or mixtures of fragrances. Scientists have started to address these issues under the title of neuro-urbanism. This topic is part of a broader agenda on public mental health which addresses the rise in mental disorders globally. Expanding urbanization is considered a major driver of an often overwhelming cognitive load in cities. Growing into it helps, but many move to cities for professional reasons or simply a job being largely unprepared to the practice of daily commuting for years. Several potential stressors tend to cumulate: High Social density, broad diversity in aesthetics as well as social structure, relationships, social participation or public transport as part of mobility make cities interesting or hard to cope with.

Posted on

The next big challenge in medicine and public health seems to be the multiple long-term conditions. Many people do not suffer from just one medical condition, but several ones at the same time. Diabetes is one such condition which frequently comes along in combination with other conditions. The definition of Multiple long-term conditions comprises 2 and more conditions like cardiovascular, metabolic, respiratory or cancer, to name just a few of the more common ones. Our health and care systems are little prepared for adequate treatments as this involves a coordinated intervention and poly-pharmaceutical therapy. Changes in a single condition have repercussions in the condition and treatment. This makes adequate treatment a resourceful process with limited knowledge about the multiple interactions and intervening parameters. Add, for example, depression to any of the above mentioned conditions and the behavioral assumptions of correctly taking prescribed medication becomes a major issue for patients. The challenge for aging societies and societies with more people suffering from early onset of obesity and diabetes increases in the coming decades. There are several teams that address these challenges in research which gives hope to all those suffering already from Multiple long-term conditions.

Posted on

Holistic public health

Based on case study in Queensland Australia, Boocock et al. (2026) propose the wider application of holistic public health laws. Due to effects of global warming the local burden of disease may rise due to larger scale floods and subsequent growth of for example mosquito populations that transmit infectious diseases. It will be necessary for societies to understand the processes behind the growth of mosquito populations and what can be done to prevent and protect oneself from the consequences. This is not only an environmental issue, but also an issue of continuous learning across all strata of society. Neighborhoods tend to suffer the same impact of chemicals used or the spreading of diseases like Dengue or malaria. The case study makes a convincing argument about the intrinsic relationship between the social and environmental processes at work. 

Posted on

Better infrastructure

It doesn’t need much explanation to advocate better infrastructure. Even if we rarely agree on what constitutes better infrastructure, the lack of infrastructure is felt quickly. Almost everything we use on a daily basis like water, food or transportation rely on large scale infrastructure to facilitate individual uses. Companies settle where they spot good locations, most of them are related to infrastructure as well. The basics about infrastructure is the public versus private provision of such infrastructure and related services. Even a country’s defense hinges on good infrastructure to be able to respond quickly at the place where the defense is most needed. Telecommunication and satellites have been recent innovations in the field of infrastructure. Security and cybersecurity in particular are a critical component of infrastructure. The topic is huge. The means to address these issues are likewise of daunting scale. Therefore, it is all the more important to address these challenges.

Posted on

Paris Gare

Train stations in metropolitan inner cities are hot spots of traffic and mobility. The number of people passing through these exchanges are impressive. Public transport systems are continuously put to the test of their capacity to handle passengers who want to get from A to B the fastest way possible. In Paris the RER lines, metro and buses to a great job in handling the affluence of passengers. The comparatively small number of passengers arriving and departing nyy taxi, however, still take a disproportionate amount of space. That’s part of the differentiation or inequality of mobility in Paris. Person‘s in need of assistance should have special access to central points of mobility like train stations. Everybody else could rely on shared modes of transportation otherwise the millions of inhabitants will not be able to get around in a comfortable way.

 

Posted on

No tobacco Sweden

Sweden is the forerunner as country with the lowest number of smokers across Europe and probably even the world with only 5% of the population 16 years and older. The success of these public health policies is due to banning smoking not only form pubs and restaurants, but also outside in the surroundings of public spaces like schools, playgrounds, train stations and sports facilities. These policies work quite well and the effects of discouraging smoking in public is reduced to a minimum rather than the normal encounter.
Health of the other persons and children passing through these areas is not the only goal. A new estimate of lost days or years due to smoking based on a study from England shows that “each cigarette smoked reduces the smoker’s life by about 20 minutes (17 for men, 22 for women, LINK to study). Of course, there is a huge variance and other work and life conditions that play an important role as well, but the broad average estimate is a nice way of talking about statistics. The basis of the estimate is for those who stop smoking and not those reducing their tobacco intake by some percentage or replacement product.
In the Belgian football stadium (image below 2024) in Brussels the No tobacco sign is well placed to make parents of children and youth understand the challenge ahead. Good resolutions are assisted by gentle regular reminders as well.

Posted on

Democracy in Korea

For all scholars of the theory of democracy the writings of Alexis de Tocqueville (1835) “De la démocratie en Amérique” are a major point of reference. The comparison of the democracy in America with the French king and both constitutions reveals comparative strengths and weaknesses of political systems. Korea after the 4th of December 2024 is yet another warning of what are the dangers to democratic systems. The attempted “coup d’état” by the president of Korea together with a former defense minister and several hundred soldiers has failed due to the speedy reaction of the elected members of parliament and an attentive and reactive public (Korea Times reports).
Tocqueville (p.130-131, French edition online) states, beyond the separation of powers (John Locke), the importance of the right to nominate key positions in a society also public opinion for the survival of democracy. Modern social media have increased the “reaction time” of public opinion and the “time to action” if need be. The combination of both elements of public opinion ensured that parliamentarians in Korea rushed to parliament and used their potentially last chance to vote against the imposed martial law, which started to seal off parliament already.
Several lessons for democratic systems derive from this. Separation of power remains key for democracy. The distribution of state functions on many shoulders under the control of parliament are essential. Legal mechanisms, in case of a spontaneous attack on the system, have to be able to react fast in order to avoid spreading fake news about legality/illegality of interventions. Public opinion, the people at large, should have their opinions distributed rapidly as well. This is necessary even beyond the traditional media of TV, radio and print. In Korea 2024 the attempted “coup d’état” tried also to block traditional media and prominent figures of the opposition with high power of influencing and reach on social media.
Tocqueville stated already that kings are threatened by revolution. Elected presidents have to fear public opinion. A lesson still valid beyond the US., France and Korea in the 21st century.
(Image: joint exhibition at “Traditional Korean Painting”, Korean Cultural Centre Brussels, 2024)

Posted on

Game Tech

Gaming has moved digital and online for a long time. Networked gaming and following the best gamers online on video-platforms like twitch has captured a lot of attention from younger generations. With a real trend of gamification for industry and even public services, the digital gaming sector is moving from backstage to front end of companies and services. Public administration as a game. Enjoy the use of a public service through a game-like experience. Walk around in the metaverse world and get your admin work done. I would love to have such an experience. There are so many applications for gamification that the bottleneck is in the human resources to program all these applications. Coding the digital and virtual worlds to get real stuff done is just around the corner. The SCCON 2024 in Berlin showed these technologies next to each other. 2025 we might see integrated prototypes. I have a digital dream, others call it a vision for public services in the 21st century.

Posted on

Citizen Services

In addition to public services there are many citizen initiatives that pick up common interests of citizens. These range from long-term infrastructure projects to daily care and provision in small neighborhoods. Such efforts build on volunteers and the organization of volunteering as an integral part of community life and services. To facilitate these organizational tasks online tools can make a real difference. However, the trust in specific tools beyond the general platforms known for their sketchy treatment of data privacy and protection is low. Therefore it is necessary to rely on trustworthy open source software to support local communities and networks of volunteers in their work and efforts. Secure e-tools for collaboration have an important role to play to reward volunteers with e-learning and being part of or even driver of new digital services. The software „wechange“ offers a platform with several tools for e-organization and communication small communities can set up themselves. Bottom up organizing in addition to the more top down public services complement each other. Going digital is the way forward in both domains.

Posted on

Gov Tech

For many years we have believed that technology is something for experts and a special sector of the economy. Private sector companies have taken the lead and innovative applications of e-solutions or web-based applications have moved online to attract huge crowds. Some 20 years later, the scope to move public services online are on top of the agenda as well. Not only in security, defence, infrastructure management and health e-solutions are drivers of innovation and improve the reach out to persons in remote places, where it is hard to keep up equal provision of services otherwise. This is where “Gov Tech” comes into play. Government Technologies I would define as all technolgies that are needed to service your current citizens, past and future citizens as well as “want to be citizens”. This needs a whole of government approach, since there are many cross-cutting issues involved like cyber security and data protection.  “Gov Tech” is no longer just nice to have. It has become a “sine qua non” condition of government. The expectations of people have been shaped by private use and habituation to online access and amenities that government and public services have to follow suit in order to be perceived as similarly close and accessible for people. Besides the technological aspects of hardware and software solutions for gov tech there is the huge issue of taking people with you on that e-journey. Even social policies and social inequality are subject to the e-volution of gov tech. There is a potential to reach more people with the same number of administrators by use of new gov tech solutions. At the same time, the risks to loose people who choose to remain off-line or have no access to online services increases as well. Gov Tech poses multiple challenges as well as interesting solutions. Great to see many regions and states taking these issues very seriously.
(Image: SCCON, Berlin 2024-10).