Browsing by Author "Widmer, Jocelyn M."

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Household-Level Spatiotemporal Patterns of Incidence of Cholera, Haiti, 2011
    Blackburn, Jason K.; Diamond, Ulrica; Kracalik, Ian T.; Widmer, Jocelyn M.; Brown, Will; Morrissey, B. David; Alexander, Kathleen A.; Curtis, Andrew J.; Ali, Afsar; Morris, J. Glenn Jr. (2014-09)
    A cholera outbreak began in Haiti during October, 2010. Spatiotemporal patterns of household-level cholera in Ouest Department showed that the initial clusters tended to follow major roadways; subsequent clusters occurred further inland. Our data highlight transmission pathway complexities and the need for case and household-level analysis to understand disease spread and optimize interventions.
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    The Role of Trust in Collaborative Natural Resource Management
    Coleman, Kimberly Jane (Virginia Tech, 2016-03-28)
    This dissertation examines how trust develops in landscape level collaborative natural resource management efforts. I took a case study approach to research four projects in the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP). I conducted qualitative analysis of interviews, notes and observations from site visits and archival documents to understand the role and function of trust within my four case studies. The results are organized into five chapters: an introduction chapter, three manuscripts intended for stand-alone publication (Chapters 2-4), and a conclusion chapter. Chapter 2 reports on the development and function of trust within the four collaboratives I studied. Chapter 3 discusses the roles of facilitators and coordinators for engendering and maintaining trust. Chapter 4 examines three of the four case studies and compares the observed trust outcomes to the literature on traditional forms of public involvement. Finally, Chapter 5 synthesizes the findings from Chapters 2-4. These results provide useful information about the types of trust that contribute to successful collaborative efforts, as well as identify some of the practices and structures that engender those types of trust.
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    Sport and Social Capital: Perceptions of Sport for Development Organization Leaders in Kigali, Rwanda
    White, Daniel M. (Virginia Tech, 2020-07-22)
    The United Nations (2016) and International Olympic Committee (2015) have offered analyses highlighting sport's contributions to societal well-being. More particularly, and for their part, scholars have suggested that sport for development (SFD) initiatives can encourage the development of social capital (Kidd and Donnelly, 2007; Nicholson and Hoye, 2008; Lyras and Welty Peachy, 2011; Coalter, 2013). This dissertation investigated those researchers' claims by exploring the relationship between two SFD organization sports programs and social capital formation among their youth participants in Kigali, Rwanda. I conducted semi-structured interviews with the leaders of both SFD entities to obtain their perceptions concerning whether and how the efforts I examined were linked to social capital creation. I utilized the World Bank's Social Capital Initiative Networks View of social capital for my analysis (Woolcock and Narayan, 2000). This study's participants, coaches and curriculum designers, argued that sport for development initiatives fostered such relationships in a variety of ways, including easing ethnic divisions among those participating and challenging social norms, especially as related to gender. Those interviewed for this inquiry also suggested that SFD programs encouraged the formation of simultaneous amalgams of bonding and bridging social capital among participating youth; novel and potentially powerful evidence of the efficacy of sport programming.
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    A ubiquitous method for street scale spatial data collection and analysis in challenging urban environments: mapping health risks using spatial video in Haiti
    Curtis, Andrew J.; Blackburn, Jason K.; Widmer, Jocelyn M.; Morris, J. Glenn Jr. (2013-04-15)
    Background Fine-scale and longitudinal geospatial analysis of health risks in challenging urban areas is often limited by the lack of other spatial layers even if case data are available. Underlying population counts, residential context, and associated causative factors such as standing water or trash locations are often missing unless collected through logistically difficult, and often expensive, surveys. The lack of spatial context also hinders the interpretation of results and designing intervention strategies structured around analytical insights. This paper offers a ubiquitous spatial data collection approach using a spatial video that can be used to improve analysis and involve participatory collaborations. A case study will be used to illustrate this approach with three health risks mapped at the street scale for a coastal community in Haiti. Methods Spatial video was used to collect street and building scale information, including standing water, trash accumulation, presence of dogs, cohort specific population characteristics, and other cultural phenomena. These data were digitized into Google Earth and then coded and analyzed in a GIS using kernel density and spatial filtering approaches. The concentrations of these risks around area schools which are sometimes sources of diarrheal disease infection because of the high concentration of children and variable sanitary practices will show the utility of the method. In addition schools offer potential locations for cholera education interventions. Results Previously unavailable fine scale health risk data vary in concentration across the town, with some schools being proximate to greater concentrations of the mapped risks. The spatial video is also used to validate coded data and location specific risks within these “hotspots”. Conclusions Spatial video is a tool that can be used in any environment to improve local area health analysis and intervention. The process is rapid and can be repeated in study sites through time to track spatio-temporal dynamics of the communities. Its simplicity should also be used to encourage local participatory collaborations.