Creating culturally-informed protocols for a stunting intervention using a situated values-based approach (WeValue InSitu): a double case study in Indonesia and Senegal.

International development work involves external partners bringing expertise, resources, and management for local interventions in LMICs, but there is often a gap in understandings of relevant local shared values. There is a widespread need to better design interventions which accommodate relevant elements of local culture, as emphasised by recent discussions in global health research regarding neo-colonialism. One recent innovation is the concept of producing 'cultural protocols' to precede and guide community engagement or intervention design, but without suggestions for generating them.

Local contextual factors of child stunting found via shared values of stakeholder groups: an exploratory case study in Kaffrine, Senegal.

Objective: This work aims to demonstrate an original approach to identify links between locally situated shared values and contextual factors of stunting. Stunting results from multi-factorial and multi-sectoral determinants, but interventions typically neglect locally situated lived experiences, which contributes to problematic designs that are not meaningful for those concerned and/or relatively ineffective.

Design: This case study investigates relevant contextual factors in two steps: by facilitating local stakeholder groups ( 11) to crystallise their shared-values-in-action using a specialised method from sustainability studies (WeValue_InSitu (WVIS)).

Understanding key vectors and vector-borne diseases associated with freshwater ecosystem across Africa: Implications for public health.

The emerging and re-emerging vector-borne diseases transmitted by key freshwater organisms have remained a global concern. As one of the leading biodiversity hotspots, the African ecoregion is suggested to harbour the highest number of freshwater organisms globally. Among the commonly found organisms in the African ecoregion are mosquitoes and snails, with a majority of their life cycle in freshwater, and these freshwater organisms can transmit diseases or serve as carriers of devastating diseases of public health concerns.

Antibiotic resistance in the aquatic environment: Analytical techniques and interactive impact of emerging contaminants.

Antibiotic pollution is becoming an increasingly severe threat globally. Antibiotics have emerged as a new class of environmental pollutants due to their expanding usage and indiscriminate application in animal husbandry as growth boosters. Contamination of aquatic ecosystems by antibiotics can have a variety of negative impacts on the microbial flora of these water bodies, as well as lead to the development and spread of antibiotic-resistant genes.

Phylogeography and genetic diversity of the copepod family Cyclopidae (Crustacea: Cyclopoida) from freshwater ecosystems of Southeast Nigeria.

Background: Copepods are key components of aquatic ecosystems and can help regulate the global carbon cycle. Much attention has been paid to the species diversity of copepods worldwide, but the phylogeography and genetic diversity of copepods in Nigeria is unexplored.

Results: Using a mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I marker, we preformed phylogenetic and phylogeographic analyses for Cyclopidae copepods in Southeast Nigeria.

A values-based approach for generating localized social indicators for use in sustainability assessment and decision-making: Test case of brownfield soft reuse in Nigeria.

Sustainable development is a global aim, aided in its application by the use of social, environmental and economic indicators for monitoring, planning, and assessment. However, several significant weaknesses are reported which reveal the need for improvement of the social indicators such as problems of being difficult to localize; to measure, and to be complete; being less commonly used; and thus, leading to assessments which are unbalanced across the three domains. Here we demonstrate that a values-based approach called WeValue InSitu, previously known to reliably 'crystallize' local shared values, can be successfully used as a bolt-on process to produce localized social indicators for direct insertion into the SuRF-UK process.