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Background Ear and hearing care programs are critical to early detection and management of otitis media (or middle ear disease). Otitis media and associated hearing loss disproportionately impacts First Nations children. This affects speech and language development, social and cognitive development and, in turn, education and life outcomes. This scoping review aimed to better understand how ear and hearing care programs for First Nations children in high-income colonial-settler countries aimed to reduce the burden of otitis media and increase equitable access to care. Specifically, the review aimed to chart program strategies, map the focus of each program against 4 parts of a care pathway (prevention, detection, diagnosis/management, rehabilitation), and to identify the factors that indicated the longer-term sustainability and success of programs. Method A database search was conducted in March 2021 using Medline, Embase, Global Health, APA PsycInfo, CINAHL, Web of Science Core Collection, Scopus, and Academic Search Premier. Programs were eligible or inclusion if they had either been developed or run at any time between January 2010 to March 2021. Search terms encompassed terms such as First Nations children, ear and hearing care, and health programs, initiatives, campaigns, and services. Results Twenty-seven articles met the criteria to be included in the review and described a total of twenty-one ear and hearing care programs. Programs employed strategies to: (i) connect patients to specialist services, (ii) improve cultural safety of services, and (iii) increase access to ear and hearing care services. However, program evaluation measures were limited to outputs or the evaluation of service-level outcome, rather than patient-based outcomes. Factors which contributed to program sustainability included funding and community involvement although these were limited in many cases. Conclusion The result of this study highlighted that programs primarily operate at two points along the care pathway—detection and diagnosis/management, presumably where the greatest need lies. Targeted strategies were used to address these, some which were limited in their approach. The success of many programs are evaluated as outputs, and many programs rely on funding sources which can potentially limit longer-term sustainability. Finally, the involvement of First Nations people and communities typically only occurred during implementation rather than across the development of the program. Future programs should be embedded within a connected system of care and tied to existing policies and funding streams to ensure long term viability. Programs should be governed and evaluated by First Nations communities to further ensure programs are sustainable and are designed to meet community needs.

Background and objective There is currently no standardised way to share information across disciplines about initiatives, including fields such as health, environment, basic science, manufacturing, media and international development. All problems, including complex global problems such as air pollution and pandemics require reliable data sharing between disciplines in order to respond effectively. Current reporting methods also lack information about the ways in which different people and organisations are involved in initiatives, making it difficult to collate and appraise data about the most effective ways to involve different people. The objective of STARDIT (Standardised Data on Initiatives) is to address current limitations and inconsistencies in sharing data about initiatives. The STARDIT system features standardised data reporting about initiatives, including who has been involved, what tasks they did, and any impacts observed. STARDIT was created to help everyone in the world find and understand information about collective human actions, which are referred to as ‘initiatives’. STARDIT enables multiple categories of data to be reported in a standardised way across disciplines, facilitating appraisal of initiatives and aiding synthesis of evidence for the most effective ways for people to be involved in initiatives. This article outlines progress to date on STARDIT; current usage; information about submitting reports; planned next steps and how anyone can become involved. Method STARDIT development is guided by participatory action research paradigms, and has been co-created with people from multiple disciplines and countries. Co-authors include cancer patients, people affected by rare diseases, health researchers, environmental researchers, economists, librarians and academic publishers. The co-authors also worked with Indigenous peoples from multiple countries and in partnership with an organisation working with Indigenous Australians. Results and discussion Over 100 people from multiple disciplines and countries have been involved in co-designing STARDIT since 2019. STARDIT is the first open access web-based data-sharing system which standardises the way that information about initiatives is reported across diverse fields and disciplines, including information about which tasks were done by which stakeholders. STARDIT is designed to work with existing data standards. STARDIT data will be released into the public domain (CC0) and integrated into Wikidata; it works across multiple languages and is both human and machine readable. Reports can be updated throughout the lifetime of an initiative, from planning to evaluation, allowing anyone to be involved in reporting impacts and outcomes. STARDIT is the first system that enables sharing of standardised data about initiatives across disciplines. A working Beta version was publicly released in February 2021 (ScienceforAll.World/STARDIT). Subsequently, STARDIT reports have been created for peer-reviewed research in multiple journals and multiple research projects, demonstrating the usability. In addition, organisations including Cochrane and Australian Genomics have created prospective reports outlining planned initiatives. Conclusions STARDIT can help create high-quality standardised information on initiatives trying to solve complex multidisciplinary global problems.

Background Social marketing integrates communication campaigns with behavioural and environmental change strategies. Childhood obesity programs could benefit significantly from social marketing but communication campaigns on this issue tend to be stand-alone. Methods A large-scale multi-setting child obesity prevention program was implemented in the Hunter New England (HNE) region of New South Wales (NSW), Australia from 2005–2010. The program included a series of communication campaigns promoting the program and its key messages: drinking water; getting physically active and; eating more vegetables and fruit. Pre-post telephone surveys (n = 9) were undertaken to evaluate awareness of the campaigns among parents of children aged 2–15 years using repeat cross-sections of randomly selected cohorts. A total of 1,367 parents (HNE = 748, NSW = 619) participated. Results At each survey post baseline, HNE parents were significantly more likely to have seen, read or heard about the program and its messages in the media than parents in the remainder of the state (p