NIHRDataInsights/HRCSData huggingface dataset:
Title: How States Account for Failure in Europe (HowSAFE): Risk and the Limits of Governance
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: What do environmental protection, health care, workplace safety, food, criminal justice, and education share in common? These diverse policy domains are increasingly governed through 'risk-based' approaches to regulation and management. Rather than seeking to eliminate all potential adverse outcomes, risk-based governance involves defining acceptable levels of risk, based on formal assessments of their probability and consequences, and then focusing control efforts on those risks deemed unacceptable following clearly defined principles. First developed in the fields of environmental health and safety, this risk-based approach has become pervasive, particularly in Anglo-Saxon countries, and is now being promoted internationally as a universal principle for policymaking and implementation, promising a more efficient and rational means of organising governance activities and accounting for their limits and potential failures. However, risk-based approaches embody particular understandings about how the State should define, and account for, adverse governance outcomes and, indeed, the very meaning of governance 'failure' and 'success'. Such ex ante risk-based rationalisations of the limits of governance may conflict with embedded governance traditions, norms, and accountability structures, as well as with deeply held societal values and expectations about how adverse outcomes should be managed, which vary both across countries and policy domains. To understand the institutional factors shaping the spread and adoption of risk-based governance, HowSAFE uses a comparative case study design focusing on six policy domains-occupational health & safety, flooding, food safety, health care, criminal justice, and education-and four countries-France, Germany, the Netherlands, and UK-to pursue three closely related objectives: 1) To document the extent, and diffusion processes, of risk-based governance across policy domains and national settings in Europe; 2) To compare the design, adaptation and practical application of risk-based instruments to different governance activities and functions, within and between policy domains; 3) To use that comparative dataset to explain the institutional factors driving, shaping, and constraining risk-based governance in Europe, and in so doing reflect more broadly on how states account for failure and the limits of governance.


Research activity codes: 8.3 POLICY, ETHICS AND RESEARCH GOVERNANCE
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE
Title: Extending the Human Rights Atlas
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: This project is a continuation of the ESRC-funded follow-on project Human Rights Atlas (ES/J000728/1) which has collated data on basic country statistics, legal comitments and human rights practices for all the countries and territories in the world for the period 1981 to 2011 [www.humanrightsatlas.org]. The continuation phase involves updating of the data in the main flat file and actively disseminating the Atlas to a primary user group in Latin America; assisting the user group in using the Atlas to map and analyse human rights issues in Latin America for the period 1990 to 2011; and working with two private organisations - The Mackman Group and the Thomson Reuters Foundation - to continue to raise awareness about the Atlas. The Latin American user group is being coordinated by the Faculty of Social Sciences in Mexico City (FLACSO), which is mapping human rights in the region and identifying gaps in knowledge about human rights using comparative statistical indicators of the kind already collated in the Human Rights Atlas. The work involves a workshop in Mexico City with FLACSO and its network of its researchers. The region itself had undergone remarkable and dramatic political transformations over the period envisaged for this study, including extraction from prolonged periods of authoritarianism, processes of transitional justice, re-establishment and consolidation of democracy, structural adjustment and macro-economic recovery, and rapid economic development among big regional actors such as Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Chile. The Atlas provides a systematic resource that addresses the main data needs of this research network. The second main part of the project is to work with the Mackman Group (a private sector partner in the original Human Rights Atlas project) and the Thomson Reuters Foundation (the charitable fundation of the global media company Thomson Reuters) to disseminate the Atlas resource and raise awareness about cross-national human rights indicators for a wide range of users, including key organisations from the public and private sectors. This part of the project will take advantage of the Mackman Group's marketing technologies and Thomson Reuters' AlertNet resource, which is dedicated to the humanitarian sector around the world. In addition to the on-line promotional work, the project will also host a large London-based user engagement event hosted by Thomson Reuters in its Canary Wharf facility. This event will feature high profile global leaders from the humanitarian sector to discuss the needs of users for systematic data and data visualisation of the kind carried out by the original Atlas project.


Research activity codes: 1.5 RESOURCES AND INFRASTRUCTURE (UNDERPINNING)
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE
Title: Big, Open Data: Mining and Synthesis (BODMAS)
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: The volume and assortment of available data for research in the social sciences has dramatically increased in recent years- a trend that shows no sign of stopping. For the first time researchers can obtain large amounts of population data free of charge (so-called "open data") thanks to government websites such as data.gov.uk. When these data are combined with the computing power to perform complex calculations it creates an unprecedented opportunity for social science researchers. We are now in an era of big data and this is fundamentally changing the research environment for investigations across social science. The purpose of this project is to develop some of the new perspectives required to adapt to these changes in the practice of data modeling and synthesis. These new perspectives include the need to account for the increased uncertainty in data provenance and less thorough metadata, as the data provision philosophy has shifted away from careful collection and dissemination to an emphasis on expediency. Researchers increasingly have to temper gains in data volume against losses in data quality when they embark on a study. Extra caution is also required when combining datasets, especially if they contain geographic information, as it is not always case that the spatial scales are compatible. The proposed project will develop a web-based tool to help social scientists minimise or eradicate these issues by enabling the synthesis, mining and visualisation of open datasets in a more informed way. The project will also use the newly combined data to undertake more complex analyses of population processes using supercomputers to gain unprecedented insights into phenomena such as commuter flows. In addition the project is focused facilitating my personal ambition to become a Future Research Leader. A comprehensive list of world-leading collaborators (ESRI (UK), the Open Data Institute, University of Illinois and University of Zurich) each have a specialism of interest to me and that is integral to the project. Activities with these organisations and my mentor, Professor Michael Batty, form part of a comprehensive plan for knowledge transfer and personal development. I have the full support of my host department, the UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, which ensures that the project activities are not confined to the time formally costed to it. As the proposal demonstrates, the proposed project is both ambitious and extremely timely and will strive for high impact social science.


Research activity codes: 1.4 METHODOLOGIES AND MEASUREMENTS
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE
Title: Healthy Ageing in Residential Places (HARP)
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: The World Health Organisation defines active ageing as allowing 'people to realise their potential for physical, social and mental well-being throughout the life course and to participate in society, while proiding them with adequate protection, security and care when they need'. Most government and community approaches focus mainly on keeping people out of long term residential care, even thought many people continue to live in these places now and will do so in the future. Equally important, little attention has been paid to the ageing labour force in long term residential care. Moreover, although long term residential care is mainly care for women by women, research on what this means for the health of staff and residents is virtually absent. Based on a broad view of health that includes mental, physical, social and spiritual aspects, we seek to identify healthy ageing strategies for long-term residential care that allow both staff and residents to live better, and more fulfilling lives. Such strategies also have the potential to save money by reducing the amount of medical and other care requiired for both residents and staff. Central to the proposed international project are comparative, collaborative case studies led by experienced national teams that will offer detailed information on physical, economic, environmental, social and behavioural conditions that shape and define healthy ageing for residents and staff in specific care facilities. Our reserach process begins with the collection and analysis of existing statistical information and reseach reports at the national or jurisdictional level in Canada, the UK, Sweden and Norway to set the context for understanding specific residences. Our main technique is the application of a new method in this field: rapid, site-switching ethnography. It is designed to capture the rich detail necessary to identify strategies for active, healthy ageing by brining local and foreign researchers together to study two facilities in each country. They will observe staff and residents, provide residents with cameras as a way of expressing their views and interview both staff and residents about their experiences in facilities. This will bring 'fresh eyes' to these sites while also maximising the 'local' knowledge of the home researcher.


Research activity codes: 1.2 PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIOECONOMIC PROCESSES
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE
Title: TRIPS Implementation and Secondary Pharmaceutical Patenting: An Empirical Analysis
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: This project examines patents, pharmaceutical innovation, generic competition, and access to medicines in the developing world. Our analysis is placed in the context of the global sea change in international rules on intellectual property, most importantly the requirement of the World Trade Organization's Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) that all countries grant pharmaceutical patents. We analyze national strategies to address the growth of applications for secondary patents in pharmaceuticals. Since such patents can extend periods of exclusivity and delay the entry of generic competition, they can have the effect of restricting access to medicines. As a result, a number of developing countries have adopted policy approaches to minimise the granting of such patents. We focus on "pre-emptive" approaches, which aim to restrict grants of such patents (rather than rely on litigation to invalidate patents after they issue). Pre-emptive measures have been widely promoted by analysts and international organizations. While countries' rights to adopt such measures are an acknowledged "flexibility" in the international patent regime, and while academics and development agencies encourage actively countries to take advantage of these flexibilities in designing national laws and institutions, little is known about what countries are adopting what sorts of measures, and to what effect. Our project begins by explaining the challenges that secondary patents present, developing a typology of approaches to restrict secondary patenting, and mapping countries according to this typology. Our empirical analyses will focus on five countries that have adopted pre-emptive approaches to limit secondary patenting (with variation in the types of pre-emptive mechanisms adopted), and two that have not. We will assemble novel datasets of pharmaceutical patents filed in the seven developing countries, read and code each of these patent applications to identify which are primary and which are secondary, and undertake analysis of patent prosecution histories to determine the outcomes of these applications. In doing so we consider not just the outcomes per se (i.e. was a given patent granted or rejected), but also the role that the pre-emptive mechanisms played in producing the outcomes. Our analysis allows us to assess the effectiveness of different national patent policy approaches. We aim to understand whether countries with pre-emptive mechanisms grant fewer patents on secondary innovations than they otherwise would, and we want to understand how pre-emptive mechanisms function in practice. We complement the quantitative analyses with case studies of three countries that aim to understand reasons for the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of these policies and the sources of any gaps between laws on the books and laws in practice.


Research activity codes: 8.3 POLICY, ETHICS AND RESEARCH GOVERNANCE
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE
Title: AAL-WELL Ambient Assistive Living Technologies for Wellness, Engagement and Long Life
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: As people across the world live longer, there is a growing need to support active ageing so that the extra years of life can be lived as well as possible. The potential of technology to assist people in all aspects of their lives is increasingly being recognised. Ambient Assistive Living (AAL) technologies refer to items that people can use in their everyday lives to make life easier and help them manage their daily activities. To enable the maximum number of people to benefit from current and future AAL technologies requires not only a good understanding of the needs of older adults but also a comprehensive analysis of how they view technology, their attitudes towards using it and how they make decisions about purchasing and using technology. Social and cultural factors can influence these issues and so this project aims to work with older adults across three different countries to explore their needs, attitudes and behaviour towards novel technologies. The project team brings together experts in gerontology, engineering, occupational therapy and psychology from the UK, Canada and Sweden to work with older adults to address their current and future needs for technology to support them to live their lives as well as possible. The project comprises several complementary elements that will be carried out in parallel within the three countries. The first element is a user needs analysis to examine the older adults' requirements in relation to AAL technologies, including those people who need support with cognitive activities, physical activities or motor activities. The findings from this stage will determine the development of novel AAL technologies in the next stage to address various aspects of daily life, such as shopping or cooking, supporting people with activities they need to remember, such as taking medication and keeping in touch with people. These novel technologies will be piloted with older adults in each of the three countries to examine how they respond to and explore them to inform future developments. Additionally, we will look at how to support people to learn to use new technologies and incorporate them into their lives to help them live as well as possible.


Research activity codes: 7.1 INDIVIDUAL CARE NEEDS
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE
Title: Determinants of healthy ageing in work and retirement: a cross-national longitudinal study based on the IDEAR network
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: Retirement is a major turning point in life, when financial and social circumstances may change substantially. These changes may have a large impact on the health of older people. In recent years, the transition from working life to post-working life has become much less standardised than it was in the past. The effects of retirement are likely to be different depending on when and how people retire, as well as how they are able to adapt to life in retirement. Additionally, the effects of retirement may be influenced both by working conditions during the last years before retirement as well as by the social and socioeconomic conditions in retirement - including factors such as income from pensions, home ownership, as well as family structure and social networks outside of work. Health-related behaviours, such as exercise, diet, and sleeping patterns, are also likely to be important factors influencing health after retirement. We propose to investigate how all these factors in later working life, during the retirement transition, and in early retirement influence for how long older individuals are able to live actively and healthily. This will be done using well-established large studies on ageing and registry data from five European countries representing three different welfare regimes and spanning up to several decades of the middle years in work, retirement, early old age and the beginning of old-old age. The key questions that this proposed research seeks to address are: What impact does retirement and other reasons for leaving employment have on the health and health behaviours of older people? Do different patterns of retirement, such as prolonged working life versus early retirement, have different effects on the health and health behaviours of older people? What are the processes during working life and the retirement transition that might contribute to poor health in later life? Do these relationships between retirement patterns and health differ in different European countries?


Research activity codes: 2.3 PSYCHOLOGICAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC FACTORS;1.2 PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIOECONOMIC PROCESSES
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE
Title: Extending working lives - health and well being implications and facilitators
Funder: Medical Research Council

Abstract: Background Alongside population ageing and falling demographic support ratios, an early retirement culture has arisen among men. Downward employment participation trends have reversed in recent years but have not returned to levels previously seen. These trends have raised concerns about poverty, skills shortages, and fiscal imbalances. Pension reform and extending working life (EWL), have therefore become policy priorities. There are, however, concerns in relation to the EWL agenda which raise the prospect of health risks for some groups. Focus of the study The study consists of 4 work packages, unified by a focus on the maintenance of health and wellbeing. Objectives include the investigation of: * later life job mobility patterns, exploring how and why they vary in different national contexts and associated implications * workplace policies and practices which may be associated with work strain, compromised wellbeing and dissatisfaction, particularly at older ages, which may therefore impede EWL * the health and well being implications of longer working for different socio-economic groups, comparing outcomes among the retired with matched individuals remaining employed * the mechanisms and cultural contexts by which health outcomes vary for different social groups, tracking changes in health related behaviours over the retirement transition period. The mixed methodology study is international and interdisciplinary due to end in 2017.


Research activity codes: 2.3 PSYCHOLOGICAL, SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC FACTORS;1.2 PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIOECONOMIC PROCESSES
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE
Title: The biosocial archive: transforming lifecourse social research through the incorporation of epigenetic measures
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council

Abstract: Identifying and understanding the many influences that act across different stages of the life course on social, behavioural and health outcomes continues to present a challenge. This project aims to apply new technologies in epigenomics to interrogate this issue. We propose that the epigenome (markings added to the DNA sequence that alter how genes are regulated) act not only as an index of previous exposures (such as early life adversity, smoking or stress) - a biosocial archive - but may be intimately linked to, and predictive of, future wellbeing. This project will explore the relationship between epigenetic marks and a variety of different exposures in early life and across childhood and early adulthood. These epigenetic signatures will then be related to social, behavioural and health outcomes. The study will be based upon the well-established Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC). Understanding the role of the epigenome and its place in the life course may help to identify when best to intervene to avoid adverse consequences of early life events on long term outcomes. This will have an important impact in informing future policy.


Research activity codes: 2.1 BIOLOGICAL AND ENDOGENOUS FACTORS
Health categories: GENERIC HEALTH RELEVANCE