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This is an open letter on academic culture, structural racism, and the place of Indigenous knowledges.

This paper maps the evolution of the Australian start-up and innovation ecosystem by exploring policy developments and mapping the key actors, activities, and artefacts. The study unpacks policy developments over the past two decades to show the government’s role in shaping the innovation ecosystem and the implications for start-ups. We outline the ecosystem’s key actors, including start-ups, scale-ups, support organisations, investors, research institutions, and their growth over time. We examine the artefacts of the ecosystem to understand start-up and innovation performance in a global context. We also explore the activities of the ecosystem in terms of collaboration, research, and development. The paper concludes with a discussion of policy gaps.

Biodesign disrupts the traditional temporalities of expectation and demand in wider design economies because designers are not selecting from a range of prefabricated samples from which they manufacture a product. Instead, they are plunged into the durations of other organisms for the simple reason that they must wait for something to grow. Situated in this context, this paper considers how we might conceptualise these events of ‘waiting’ such that we intensify their importance for ecological thought. In the philosophy of Henri Bergson, events of waiting are important as a mode of intuiting a register of movement beyond human habits of perception, what he refers to as duration. In this paper, I suggest that thinking events of waiting in biodesign via Bergson intervenes in debates surrounding posthuman creativity, not because it multiplies creative agents but because it cultivates a sympathy for temporal ecologies from which human perception is alienated.

Technology developers are key actors in an innovation system. Applying the technological innovation systems perspective as an analytical framework, our study unpacks drivers and barriers to technology development, adoption and diffusion in an innovation system and relates these to firm-level innovation processes. We approach this by situating our enquiry at the intersection of system- and firm-level perspectives. Based on case study data, our research highlights drivers and barriers prevailing in the mining innovation system affecting technology developers and establishes links to key innovation processes relevant to these firms. We complement these findings with insights into strategies firms employ to mitigate or overcome barriers identified, with the potential to positively affect innovation processes at the firm level. We argue that enablers and barriers to innovation encountered by firms have their effect by affording or impeding opportunities for firms to undertake the innovation processes required to attain technological innovation outcomes.

Organisations are showing a keen interest in digitalisation. However, they are uncertain about how to determine the impact of digitalisation on organisation performance outcomes. This places decision-makers in a challenging position to assess the feasibility and intended performance outcomes of digitalisation. This paper aims to address this important research need and provides the performance indicators, measures, metrics and scales based on a systematic review of 30 selected papers. The results from this review were synthesised using the “adaptive enterprise architecture”, and “results and determinants” frameworks as theoretical lenses. This work will benefit researchers and practitioners interested in studying the impact of digitalisation on organisational performance.

Social media is interactive, and interaction brings misinformation. With the growing amount of user-generated data, fake news on online platforms has become much more frequent since the arrival of social networks. Now and then, an event occurs and becomes the topic of discussion, generating and propagating false information. Existing literature studying fake news elaborates primarily on fake news classification models. Approaches exploring fake news characteristics to distinguish it from real news are minimal. Not much research has focused on statistical testing and generating new factor discoveries. This study assumes fifteen hypotheses to identify factors exhibiting a relationship with fake news. We perform the experiments on two real-world COVID-19 datasets using qualitative and quantitative testing methods. We determine the impact of conditional effects among sentiment, gender, and media usage. This study concludes that sentiment polarity and gender can significantly identify fake news. Dependence on the presence of visual media is, however, inconclusive. Additionally, Twitter-specific user engagement factors like followers count, friends count, favorite count, and retweet count significantly differ in fake and real news. Though, the contribution of status count is currently disputed. This study identifies practical factors to be conjunctly utilized in developing fake news detection algorithms.

Accurate data collection from LGBTIQ+ communities is crucial for public health research and the provision of equitable services. Emergent fluid, multiple, trans and non-binary gender identities complicate data collection in ways that make an excellent case-study for rethinking the categorization of such data. In this article, we explore some of the obstacles to collecting data from trans, gender-diverse and non-binary (TGD) communities, and the difficulties in synthesizing meaning about fluid or multiple identity categories. We review a selection of international surveys from the last 10 years and then present a case-study of data collection in an Australian mixed-methods study of LGBTQ+ young people’s uses of social media. In doing so we draw upon trans and gender diverse people’s lived experiences to reinterpret our survey dataset in which responses that ‘refused categorisation’ were initially removed. We argue that theorizing the ‘social life of data’ – that is analysing the disciplinary orientation and purpose of research, while also acknowledging the moment and site of data collection, the methods used, and the mutable meanings in play – better accounts for the lived experiences of gender beyond binary and static identities.

Accurate data collection from LGBTIQ+ communities is crucial for public health research and the provision of equitable services. Emergent fluid, multiple, trans and non-binary gender identities complicate data collection in ways that make an excellent case-study for rethinking the categorization of such data. In this article, we explore some of the obstacles to collecting data from trans, gender-diverse and non-binary (TGD) communities, and the difficulties in synthesizing meaning about fluid or multiple identity categories. We review a selection of international surveys from the last 10 years and then present a case-study of data collection in an Australian mixed-methods study of LGBTQ+ young people’s uses of social media. In doing so we draw upon trans and gender diverse people’s lived experiences to reinterpret our survey dataset in which responses that ‘refused categorisation’ were initially removed. We argue that theorizing the ‘social life of data’ – that is analysing the disciplinary orientation and purpose of research, while also acknowledging the moment and site of data collection, the methods used, and the mutable meanings in play – better accounts for the lived experiences of gender beyond binary and static identities.

Technology developers are key actors in an innovation system. Applying the technological innovation systems perspective as an analytical framework, our study unpacks drivers and barriers to technology development, adoption and diffusion in an innovation system and relates these to firm-level innovation processes. We approach this by situating our enquiry at the intersection of system- and firm-level perspectives. Based on case study data, our research highlights drivers and barriers prevailing in the mining innovation system affecting technology developers and establishes links to key innovation processes relevant to these firms. We complement these findings with insights into strategies firms employ to mitigate or overcome barriers identified, with the potential to positively affect innovation processes at the firm level. We argue that enablers and barriers to innovation encountered by firms have their effect by affording or impeding opportunities for firms to undertake the innovation processes required to attain technological innovation outcomes.

Racism in universities to be best described as “being ignored.” This means not having complaints heard, or having your existence and identities overlooked. Being ignored is a powerful tool used by racist institutions to suppress experiences of race and gender inequality. Being ignored is also an effective way to undermine your sense of self and the validity of your experience. This alternative narrative is a typology of the types of ignoring that goes on at the higher education—read and see how many types of ignoring you can relate with!.

Egocentric sampling of networks selects a subset of nodes (“egos”) and collects information from them on themselves and their immediate network neighbours (“alters”), leaving the rest of the nodes in the network unobserved. This design is popular because it is relatively inexpensive to implement and can be integrated into standard sample surveys. Recent methodological developments now make it possible to statistically analyse this type of network data with exponential-family random graph models (ERGMs). This provides a framework for principled statistical inference, and the fitted models can in turn be used to simulate complete networks of arbitrary size that are consistent with the observed sample data, allowing one to infer the distribution of whole-network properties generated by the observed egocentric network statistics. In this paper, we discuss how design choices for egocentric network studies impact statistical estimation and inference for ERGMs. The design choices include both measurement strategies (for ego and alter attributes, and for ego–alter and alter–alter ties) and sampling strategies (for egos and alters). We discuss the importance of harmonising measurement specifications across egos and alters, and conduct simulation studies to demonstrate the impact of sampling design on statistical inference, specifically stratified sampling and degree censoring.

Around the world an expanding array of behavioural conditions are being attached to social security payments. This paper offers empirical evidence of the various moral frames used in the welfare conditionality debate, by its supporters and detractors. We systematically analyse the debates in the Australian federal parliament in 2017 and 2018 on two bills attempting to introduce drug testing of working-age welfare recipients, each of which resulted in stalemate. We find that proponents of welfare conditionality primarily employed consequentialist and paternalist arguments, supplemented by social justice, contractualism and communitarianism whilst opponents primarily employed consequentialist and social justice arguments. We explore how proponents and opponents anticipated and engaged with each other's preferred moral frames. By investigating the normative lenses that underpin arguments made for and against the drug-testing proposal, we shed light on how the debate on drug testing might be moved beyond its current impasse.

International criminal justice mechanisms are guided by their mandates to hold individuals accountable for grave breaches of international humanitarian law. Within this body of law, a host of crimes are listed as prohibited, and if committed, could land individuals before national or international courts. While the legal categorisation of violence into discrete crimes serves the procedural justice of the courtroom, it simultaneously erases the overlapping, entangled, and messy practice of violence. In this paper, I engage in a queer (re)imagining of the legal category of the crime of torture, as defined and practiced at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). A queer reading of witness testimonies reveals the multiplicities and contingencies that constitute torture, but also exposes the logics of gender and sexuality that make the practice and prosecution of torture legible. I argue that the ICTY jurisprudence both erases and embraces the complicated ways that torture is practiced and embodied. A queer reading of this case offers opportunities to expand definitions and applications of torture in contemporary mechanisms of international criminal justice.

Background: Cycling for transport provides many health and social benefits – including physical activity and independent access to jobs, education, social opportunities, health care and other services (accessibility). However, some population groups have less opportunity to reach everyday destinations, and public transport stops, by bicycle – owing in part to their greater aversion to riding amongst motor vehicle traffic. Health equity can therefore be improved by providing separated cycleway networks that give more people the opportunity to access places by bicycle using traffic-free routes. The aim of this study was to assess the health equity benefits of two bicycle infrastructure development scenarios – a single cycleway, and a complete network of cycleways – by examining the distributions of physical activity and accessibility benefits across gender, age and income groups. Methods: Travel survey data collected from residents in Sydney (Australia) were used to train a predictive transport mode choice model, which was then used to forecast the impact of the two intervention scenarios on transport mode choice, physical activity and accessibility. The latter was measured using a utility-based measure derived from the mode choice model. The distributions of the forecast physical activity and accessibility benefits were then calculated across gender, age and income groups. Results: The modelled physical activity and accessibility measures improve in both intervention scenarios. However, in the single cycleway scenario, the benefits are greatest for the male, high-income and older age groups. In the complete network scenario, the benefits are more equally distributed. Forecast increases in cycling time are largely offset by decreases in walking time – though the latter is typically low-intensity physical activity, which confers a lesser health benefit than moderate-intensity cycling. Conclusions: Separated cycleway infrastructure can be used to improve health equity b

This article investigates how evidence of the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines is enacted in news media via a focus on the temporality of vaccine development. We argue that time constitutes a crucial object of and mechanism for knowledge production in such media and investigate how time comes to matter in vaccine evidence-making communication practices. In science communication on vaccine development, the vaccine object (along with the practices through which it is produced) undergoes a material-discursive shift from an imagined “rushed” product to being many years in the making and uninhibited by unnecessarily lengthy processes. In both these enactments of vaccine development, time itself is constituted as evidence of vaccine efficacy and safety. This article traces how time (performed as both calendar time and as a series of relational events) is materialized as an affective and epistemic object of evidence within public science communication by analyzing the material-discursive techniques through which temporality is enacted within news media focused on the timeline of COVID-19 vaccine development. We contend that time (as evidence) is remade through these techniques as an ontopolitical concern within the COVID-19 vaccine assemblage. We furthermore argue that science communication itself is an important actor in the hinterland of public health practices with performative effects and vital evidence-making capacities.

In a policy context of personalisation, disability support organisations recognise the increasingly contentious nature of clustering people according to disability. Instead, they are placing more emphasis on activities that promote community inclusion. Accordingly, the work between people with cognitive disability and their support workers is increasingly mobile. In this context, drawing on research using a conceptual framework based in recognition theory and social geography, this paper explores how the experience of liminal space-time influenced the working relationships between young people with cognitive disability and their support workers. It found that the pairs used liminal spacetime to build their relationships, creating conditions for mutual recognition to occur, whereby they experienced feeling cared about, respected and valued. These activities and negotiations were mediated at the institutional level by the policies and practices of the disability services. The significance of liminal moments were noted at the interpersonal level, both explicitly and tacitly; but not well taken account of at the institutional level. This disjuncture opens both opportunity and risk to young people and support workers. Appreciating the richness of liminal space-time for identity development opens the way for young people and support workers to use its productive potential.

Health research concerning Indigenous peoples has been strongly characterised by deficit discourse—a ‘mode of thinking’ that is overly focused on risk behaviours and problems. Strengths-based approaches offer a different perspective by promoting a set of values that recognise the capacities and capabilities of Indigenous peoples. In this article, we seek to understand the conceptual basis of strengths-based approaches as currently presented in health research. We propose that three main approaches exist: ‘resilience’ approaches concerned with the personal skills of individuals; ‘social–ecological’ approaches, which focus on the individual, community and structural aspects of a person's environment; and ‘sociocultural’ approaches, which view ‘strengths’ as social relations, collective identities and practices. We suggest that neither ‘resilience’ nor ‘social–ecological’ approaches sufficiently problematise deficit discourse because they remain largely informed by Western concepts of individualised rationality and, as a result, rest on logics that support notions of absence and deficit. In contrast, sociocultural approaches tend to view ‘strengths’ not as qualities possessed by individuals, but as the structure and character of social relations, collective practices and identities. As such, they are better able to capture Indigenous ways of knowing and being and provide a stronger basis on which to build meaningful interventions.

Senior leaders are usually understood to be ideally positioned to drive the organisational changes needed to promote workplace gender equality. Yet seniority also influences leaders’ values and attitudes, and how they interpret evidence of inequalities, determine organisational priorities, and design and implement remedies. This article examines leaders’ perceptions of workplace gender equality, using system justification theory to explain survey data from Australia’s public sector (n=2292). Multivariate analysis indicates that male and female leaders more positively rate the gender equality climate in their agencies, compared with lower-level staff, and that male leaders show most propensity to defend the status quo. Findings call into question the effectiveness of change strategies that rely on leadership and buy-in of those whose privilege is embedded in existing arrangements, and problematise dominant organisational approaches casting senior leaders as effective change agents for gender equality. The article helps to explain gendered power dynamics which produce and sustain organisational inequalities and make workplace equality so hard to achieve, and points to ways to strengthen practical approaches to promote equality in organisations.

The paper uses a child-centred approach to analyse Australia’s child immunisation laws. These laws condition enrolment to early education centres on the child being fully immunised and provide financial incentives to parents, encouraging them to comply with the national immunisation protocol. The paper seeks to contribute to the debates in public health about the utility of human rights and the definition of the ‘public’ by problematising the marginalisation of children from this space. Navigating between the positionalities of individuals and collectives in two terrains, namely, human rights and public health, the paper examines how children and their rights are conceptualised in the development of immunisation policies, and asks what these laws tell us about children’s positionality, lives and bodies in society. It argues that the current child immunisation laws commodify children’s bodies, physically and figuratively, as a means to protect the entire population from infectious diseases. This reproduces children and childhood as means to an end, seeing childhood as a vehicle to adulthood. Utilising a child-centred approach can advance a different approach to public health matters concerning children, safeguarding their rights in this domain and in turn changing their public visibility.

This paper argues that we need to challenge transcendent modes of evaluating creative practices in geography, both in order to question dominant ways of thinking about creativity and to cultivate a broader playing field on which to transform concepts and practices of aesthetics. This is important because the intervention of creative research must be coupled with a framework that can amplify it and make it count thereafter, or we risk returning to a familiar conceptual apparatus over the greater challenge of developing how creative practices make us think differently. In doing so, the paper presents five propositions for immanent evaluation elaborated through Gilles Deleuze, which are crucial for exploring a plurality of ‘aesthetic justifications’. Empirically, the paper draws on an exhibition entitled Sounding the City, which the author curated in Bristol, UK, in August 2014. The aim is not to explore the politics of curation, but to experiment with a mode of presenting research that supports the propositions for evaluation staged in the paper.

In both academic and policy spaces, learning is often cast as lifelong, dynamic, constructive and in particular, agentic. Despite this focus students’ voices are rarely privileged in these spaces–especially in policy. We respond to this oversight by deploying Foucault’s theories of knowledge to explore how students understand themselves as learners, considering this alongside dominant political and academic discursive constructions of learning. Using a metaphor card approach, we explored metaphors for learning articulated by students in longitudinal focus group interviews. Conducted over a two-year period with 47 students from four Western Sydney schools, student metaphors for learning were diverse and wide-ranging, frequently reflecting strategic approaches to learning that aligned with requirements of high stakes exit exams. Significantly, student descriptions of themselves as exhausted, passive containers of impermanent learning were at odds with national and international policy and higher education constructions of learning as ‘lifelong and agentic’. This contradiction raises critical questions about students’ experiences of learning in schools, the role of teacher education, and re-direction of university equity programmes aimed at increasing access and participation for educationally marginalised students.

Facebook is the most used social media platform globally, despite frequent and highly publicised criticism of some of its practices. In this article, we bring together perspectives from vital materialism scholarship – and particularly Jane Bennett’s concept of ‘thing-power’ – with our empirical research on Australian Facebook users to identify what they find important and valuable about the platform. Findings are presented in the form of seven case studies of Facebook use, identifying lively affective forces, relational connections and agential capacities that drive people to continue to use Facebook, moderate their use or take a break. We argue that this theoretical perspective allows for a nuanced understanding of the distributed and relational agencies generated with and through Facebook assemblages that motivate people to stay on this social media platform.

Background: Measurement of patients’ healthcare experiences is increasingly used as an indicator of quality of care, but there are concerns that existing measures omit information that is meaningful to patients and that results may not be used systematically to inform service improvement. Further, current approaches may be inadequate for some population groups, such as Indigenous people in Australia, whose healthcare experience is impacted by the context of colonisation and discordance between Indigenous understandings of health and the Western biomedical health system. This study aimed to assess the extent to which existing patient experience measures used in Australia collect information about critical aspects of cancer care, as previously identified by Indigenous people affected by cancer and their health care providers. Methods: A two-stage process was used to examine the adequacy of existing patient experience measures for Indigenous people in Australia: (1) relevant tools and measures were identified and assessed, and four measures selected as suitable comparators; (2) comparators were examined in detail and mapped against topics identified in earlier research as important to Indigenous people with cancer. Gaps in topic coverage in comparators were identified. Results: No comparators completely captured the critical aspects of cancer care identified by Indigenous people affected by cancer and their health care providers. The number of topics ‘partially’ captured by the four comparators ranged from 4 to 7 out of 9. While most topics were partially covered, the lack of questions around culture and cultural safety was notable. Conclusions: Existing tools are likely to miss key aspects of Indigenous peoples’ experiences of cancer care in Australia. Failure to adequately assess care experiences related to cultural safety may compromise efforts to improve health outcomes. Addressing gaps requires development of experience measures that are strengths-based, reflect a

In efforts to control disease, mathematical models and numerical targets play a key role. We take the elimination of a viral infection as a case for exploring mathematical models as ‘evidence-making interventions’. Using interviews with mathematical modellers and implementation scientists, and focusing on the emergence of models of ‘treatment-as-prevention’ in hepatitis C control, we trace how projections detach from their calculative origins as social and policy practices. Drawing on the work of Michel Callon and others, we show that modelled projections of viral elimination circulate as ‘qualculations’, taking flight via their affects, including as anticipation. Modelled numerical targets do not need ‘actual numbers’ or precise measurements to perform their authority as evidence of viral elimination or as situated matters-of-concern. Modellers grapple with the ways that their models transform in policy and social practices, apparently beyond reasonable calculus. We highlight how practices of ‘holding-on’ to projections in relation to imaginaries of ‘evidence-based’ science entangle with the ‘letting-go’ of models beyond calculus. We conclude that the ‘virtual precision’ of models affords them fluid evidence-making potential. We imagine a different mode of modelling science in health, one more attuned to treating projections as qualculative, affective and relational, as excitable matter.

Increasing women's representation in male dominated work sectors remains a persistent problem. This paper reorientates the focus from women's underrepresentation to male overrepresentation and privilege, to identify and compare the causal mechanisms between the overrepresentation of men in two traditionally male dominated work places in Australia: politics and construction. By applying feminist institutionalism, masculinities and privilege, it argues the overrepresentation of men is linked to gendered rules that uphold hegemonic masculinities which produce masculine privilege and supports a gender hierarchy. Masculine privilege occurs via three mechanisms: 1. a culture of denial; 2. perceptions that rules are neutral, legitimate and applied objectively; 3. through backlash and resistance to keep the gender status quo in place. We argue the effects of privilege combine to act as a barrier to the attraction, retention and progression of women to both sectors and conclude that the masculine privilege provides a valuable lens to explore how male dominance operates within work sectors.

Solar products are increasingly framed as being integral to addressing energy poverty in the Global South. This is especially the case in sub-Saharan Africa where the promise of centralized grids has given way to an emphasis on off-grid market-based solutions. While these solutions promise much, the quality and originality of these products is often contested. In this paper, we draw upon ethnographic insights from Malawi’s solar market to examine the energy justice implications of this deepening reliance on markets to provide energy for poor populations with no access to electricity. Specifically, we examine the ethics and implications of ‘somewhat original’ solar–an amorphous product category that constitutes the vast majority of solar products sold in the Global South. Analysing Malawi’s solar market, this paper illustrates how moral claims about off-grid solar products often sit incongruously with the realities of global supply chains and poor market regulation. We conclude that while off-grid solar products offer the energy poor some respite from darkness, they are, nonetheless, commodities that are prone to reproducing structural forms of injustice and do not, always, represent a sustainable solution to energy poverty in the Global South.

This article draws on the lived experiences and perspectives of young people and practitioners in therapeutic residential care to examine what constitutes relationship based practice. Eight young people and twenty-six practitioners across three residential care services in Australia participated in this qualitative study. Framework analysis identifies that personalised engagement, a delicate balance between care and control,and perseverance through turbulent times are conducive to relationship-based practice in therapeutic residential care. Relationship-based practice is also found to be employed in a unique historical and relational context that demands mindful navigation through three specific professional boundary issues including self-disclosure, overidentification and physical contact. Against this context, relationship-based practice in therapeutic residential care is considered a ‘double-edged sword’, offering practitioners copious opportunities to build connections with young people in informal environments whilst needing to mitigate multiple ethical ambiguities. Implications for practice include the need to safeguard the ‘do no harm’ priority whilst resisting defensive or detached practice. Contextualising relationship-based practice within anethical practice framework to embed ethics work in day-to-day practice becomes paramount.

The construction industry is known to be highly masculinised and to have work practices detrimental to employees’ wellbeing. Drawing on feminist institutional theory and a rapid ethnographic approach in two construction multinationals in Australia, we examine the relationship between the gendered nature of construction and workplace wellbeing for professional women and men employed in the industry. The findings reveal that adhering to the gendered ‘rules in use’ in the construction industry is negatively associated with wellbeing and is usually endured in silence. We also identify the ways in which the gendered rules have different effects on the wellbeing of men and women. We conclude that the construction industry is characterised by a set of ‘greedy’ gendered institutions that are inextricably linked to workplace wellbeing for both men and women and that these rules must be broken to improve worker wellbeing.

This article analyses trends in Chinese–international marriages and divorces, using Australia, a major migrant-receiving country, as a comparative case study. In exploring the recent rise of ‘Chinese–foreign’ marriage in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), we show that Chinese–international marriage within mainland China is a small, gendered phenomenon that largely involves Chinese women marrying men from other Asian societies. By examining unique data published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, we reveal that most marriages involving PRC-born people in contemporary Australia are between two people born in China. But the displacement of Chinese intimate relationships to a non-Asian country results in significant behavioural divergences from couples ‘at home’, especially regarding prior cohabitation. Marriages solely involving PRC-born couples in Australia are also typically less enduring than marriages to non-Chinese. We argue that these differences underscore the roles of country-specific immigration policies and labour mobility patterns in shaping unpredicted family formation behaviour.

Globally, labour markets are encountering profound changes because of the digital revolution. Middle income countries such as China, are leapfrogging high-income countries to take advantage of the digital economy. The growing use of digital technologies is also reshaping the labour market in high-income countries such as Australia. Potentially, new technologies may facilitate both employers and employees to overcome some of the barriers to disability employment. However, it seems that the opportunities and hopes have not yet translated into improved employment rate for people with disability. This paper uses an ecosystem framework to examine the state's role in improving the critical elements of disability employment: developing a national strategy, creating employment opportunities, building capacity and enhancing accessibility. This paper compares the historical development of disability employment and the policies introduced to take advantage of digital technologies across China and Australia. It studies the national policies, funded activities and the governing structure in China and Australia. The findings revealed distinctive approaches that have played to the strengths of each country. However, both countries need to address the weaker links to deliver a real paradigm shift.

Objectives: This study explored associations between birth region, sociodemographic predictors, and advance care planning (ACP) uptake. Methods: A prospective, multicenter, cross-sectional audit study of 100 sites across 8 Australian jurisdictions. ACP documentation was audited in the health records of people aged 65 years or older accessing general practice (GP), hospital, and long-term care facility (LTCF) settings. Advance care directives (ACDs) completed by the person (“person completed ACDs”) and ACP documents completed by a health professional or other person (“health professional or someone else ACP”) were counted. Hierarchical multilevel logistic regression assessed associations with birth region. Results: From 4,187 audited records, 30.0% (1,152/3,839) were born outside Australia. “Person completed ACDs” were less common among those born outside Australia (21.9% vs 28.9%, X2 (1, N = 3,840) = 20.3, p < .001), while “health professional or someone else ACP” was more common among those born outside Australia (46.4% vs 34.8%, X2 (1, N = 3,840) = 45.5, p < .001). Strongest associations were found for those born in Southern Europe: “person completed ACD” (odds ratio [OR] = 0.56, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.36–0.88), and “health professional or someone else ACP” (OR = 1.41, 95% CI = 1.01–1.98). English-language proficiency and increased age significantly predicted both ACP outcomes. Discussion: Region of birth is associated with the rate and type of ACP uptake for some older Australians. Approaches to ACP should facilitate access to interpreters and be sensitive to diverse preferences for individual and family involvement in ACP.

Best practice in sex work research advocates for a ‘nothing about us without us’ methodology. This study employed sex workers as peer researchers to assist in evaluating the sexual health outcomes and well-being of sex workers in Western Australia. All eight peer researchers were invited to reflect on their experiences as peer researchers through semi-structured interviews, and seven peer researchers participated. Giving sex workers a voice and the opportunity to facilitate change for their peers was the primary driver for participation. Some peer researchers from English speaking backgrounds experienced challenges engaging and communicating with study participants for whom English was not their first language. Others experienced role conflict on hearing viewpoints contrary to their own beliefs. Access to support from the project team and other peer researchers was a key enabler for undertaking the peer researcher role. The majority of peer researchers were motivated to participate in the research by the possibility of future changes to sex work-related legislation, and support for sex workers based on the research findings. Research partnerships with peer researchers that offer employment throughout the research process, including co-authorship of journal articles, opportunities for leadership roles and collaboration in research translation activities can increase research impact.

Objectives: Older people from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds are one of the fastest growing and rapidly ageing population segments in Australia. This qualitative study aims to explore the experiences, needs and challenges that individual program providers encountered in implementing and delivering a fall prevention program for CALD groups and meeting the linguistic, cultural and contextual needs of the program participants. Design: Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with a convenience sample of 24 program providers implementing, delivering or supporting fall prevention programs including Stepping On for CALD groups. Interview transcripts were analysed using thematic analysis. Results: Two major themes emerged: (1) extra layers of complexity are needed in program planning, delivery, recruitment and enabling participation of older people from CALD background and (2) program leaders ‘going the extra mile’ influences success of the program. Complexity included accommodating the linguistic and sociocultural needs in planning the programs, knowing and using the ‘right way’ to reach and deliver the program to CALD groups and understanding the nuances of facilitating program participation. While it was important to ensure the acceptability and accessibility of the program for the older people from diverse CALD communities, it was the drive and determination of the program leader and their striving for cultural relevance that made the program possible. Sustainability and wider implementation requires unique support and additional resources. Conclusion: These findings can be used by program providers, policy-makers and health researchers to improve the capacity of fall prevention programs to better respond to the growing diversity in needs and preferences among older populations in Australia and internationally.

Abstract Background Care services in industrialized nations are increasingly moving towards individualized funding models, which aim to increase individuals’ flexibility, choice and control over their services and supports. Recent research suggests that such schemes have the potential to exacerbate inequalities, however none has explored gendered dimensions of inequality. The Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is a major individualized funding reform, and has a female participation rate of only 37%, despite women and girls making up half of the disability population. Methods The objective of the study is to explore possible gendered barriers to applying for and receiving adequate support through the NDIS, and to suggest directions for future research. We report on semi-structured interviews with 30 women with disability and explore their experiences with the NDIS and their perspectives on challenges associated with being a woman seeking disability support in Australia. We analyse the results using thematic analysis. Results Most women in our sample reported differences between the experiences of men and women seeking disability support in Australia. Commonly reported gendered barriers to women being able to access the right supports for their disability involve a) confidence, negotiation and self-advocacy, b) gendered discrimination in diagnosis and the medical system, which has implications for disability support access, and c) support for and recognition of caring roles. Conclusions These results suggest that women are not receiving equitable treatment with regard to the NDIS, and that further research and policy reform are needed to ensure that women with disability are not further disadv

Domestic violence is a global pandemic. Domestic violence is gendered violence and perpetuates women's inequality. Women experience domestic violence at higher rates than men, and the perpetrators are, more often than not, men. Organizations play an essential role in addressing domestic violence. This article establishes the relationship between domestic violence and organizations at four interfaces of contemporary relevance, to make visible the ways in which domestic violence sustains gender inequality. Interfaces that are central to problematizing domestic violence and organization are discussed: domestic–work; business–society; men–women; and mind/rationality–body/emotion. Adopting the heuristic of interfaces draws our attention to the boundaries that separate fields but also that which connects them, enabling multidisciplinary research across domestic violence to be reviewed in a way that surfaces both the complexities and the organizational responsibility for action-based change in practice and scholarship. The article concludes by calling for future research that transcends practice and scholarship.

With the rise in popularity of market-based responses to social policy challenges, the stewardship of quasi-markets or public service markets, is a key concern for governments worldwide. Debates about how to manage quasi-markets have focussed on high-level decision-making processes. However local actors, in particular street level bureaucrats, are a key part of the complex work of managing quasi-markets. We examine how street level bureaucrats act as local market stewards in a new quasi-market for disability care, the Australian National Disability Insurance scheme. We find that the street level bureaucrats, known as local area coordinators, act as shapers of local markets but that their contributions are informal and often restricted by formal structures and processes. For example, we found evidence that the use of key performance indicators can disrupt effective local stewardship efforts towards a procedural approach. We conclude that introducing principles of the polycentric governance approach can improve connections between local market knowledge holders and central decision-making agencies, thereby improving market stewardship and outcomes.

In this 2021 AFHVS Presidential Address, Kim Niewolny provides a brief foray into the onto-epistemic framing of critical praxis for sustainable food systems transformation. Niewolny proposes we engage in the creative entanglement of critical praxis and the social imaginary to “unthink” the orthodoxies that govern our ideas of the possible. She offers several possibilities as pathways toward a food system that embodies health equity, ecological justice, land sovereignty, and human rights, including: (1) agroecological research and movement building; (2) food, farm, and health policy; (3) food and farm system worker protections as public health and human rights concerns; (4) intersectional food justice scholarship and curriculum; (5) narrative-led, community-based, and action-oriented methodologies as multi-dimensional inquiry; (6) and multi-sector and multi-racial coalitions as dynamic networks that challenge linear, neoliberal, and technical-rational practices. Niewolny concludes with a call for radical hope as a principle for critical food systems praxis.