Climate change is one of the most significant threats to human and planetary health. As trusted sources, health professionals have a unique opportunity to help protect society from the impacts of ...climate change by educating key publics including policymakers about solutions to climate change, as well as reducing their sector's contribution to climate change by promoting sustainable practices in the workplace. Developing methods to activate health professionals as climate educators and advocates is an important step in activating this opportunity. Drawing on the practice of behavioral journalism, this study tests the effectiveness of role model stories at increasing attitudinal and behavioral engagement of health professionals with sustainability.
Participants in this study (n = 39) were employees of a network of U.S. hospitals and urgent care centers that were subscribed to a sustainability e-newsletter published by the healthcare system. Participants were randomly assigned to a control group that only received the regular newsletter, or a treatment group that received an additional series of emails featuring stories about sustainability role models in their healthcare system.
We found that receiving the role model stories increased participant's belief that health professionals have a responsibility to support sustainability efforts and their willingness to receive more information about joining a climate and health advocacy organization, although there were no between-group differences on other dependent variables.
This study although limited by a small sample size provides evidence that role model stories can play a role in activating healthcare professionals to participate in sustainability initiatives and advocate for climate and health solutions.
Climate change arguably represents one of the greatest global health threats of the present time. Health professionals can advocate for global efforts to reduce emissions and protect people from ...climate change; however, evidence of their willingness to do so remains scarce. In this study, the authors report findings from a large, multinational survey of health professionals (n = 4654) that examined their views of climate change as a human health issue. Consistent with previous research, participants in this survey largely understood that climate change is happening and is caused by humans, viewed climate change as an important and growing cause of health harm in their country, and felt a responsibility to educate the public and policymakers about the problem. Despite their high levels of commitment to engaging in education and advocacy on the issue, many survey participants indicated that a range of personal, professional, and societal barriers impede them from doing so, with time constraints being the most widely reported barrier. However, participants stated that various resources - continuing professional education, communication training, patient education materials, policy statements, action alerts, and guidance on how to make health care workplaces sustainable - can help to overcome those barriers. The study provides recommendations on how to strengthen and support health professional education and advocacy activities to address the human health challenges of climate change.
Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated their potential in social science research by emulating human perceptions and behaviors, a concept referred to as algorithmic fidelity. This study ...assesses the algorithmic fidelity and bias of LLMs by utilizing two nationally representative climate change surveys. The LLMs were conditioned on demographics and/or psychological covariates to simulate survey responses. The findings indicate that LLMs can effectively capture presidential voting behaviors but encounter challenges in accurately representing global warming perspectives when relevant covariates are not included. GPT-4 exhibits improved performance when conditioned on both demographics and covariates. However, disparities emerge in LLM estimations of the views of certain groups, with LLMs tending to underestimate worry about global warming among Black Americans. While highlighting the potential of LLMs to aid social science research, these results underscore the importance of meticulous conditioning, model selection, survey question format, and bias assessment when employing LLMs for survey simulation. Further investigation into prompt engineering and algorithm auditing is essential to harness the power of LLMs while addressing their inherent limitations.
Following the cease-fire in Jan 2009, the international community mounted a humanitarian response. The health care sector in Gaza was crippled by a lack of supplies and medicines. With funding from ...the World Health Organization and the United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund, Merlin, a global medical relief organization, initiated a program in Jan 2009 to assess, monitor, and assist people living in the buffer zone along the Israeli border. Here, Kotcher shares her experience nursing in Postwar Gaza and finds devastation and resilience in the shadow of the border.
Cosmic-ray tests of the DØ preshower detector Baringer, P; Bross, A; Buescher, V ...
Nuclear instruments & methods in physics research. Section A, Accelerators, spectrometers, detectors and associated equipment,
08/2001, Letnik:
469, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
The DØ preshower detector consists of scintillator strips with embedded wavelength-shifting fibers, and a readout using Visible Light Photon Counters. The response to minimum ionizing particles has ...been tested with cosmic-ray muons. We report results on the gain calibration and light-yield distributions. The spatial resolution is investigated taking into account the light sharing between strips, the effects of multiple scattering and various systematic uncertainties. The detection efficiency and noise contamination are also investigated.
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