Evaluating a community-led project for improving fathers' and children's wellbeing in England.

Although under-researched and under-theorized compared to other settings, there is potential for the family setting to be harnessed to support the development of healthy children and societies and to reduce health inequalities. Within this setting, the role of fathers as health facilitators has yet to be fully understood and considered within health promotion. This paper draws on a two year evaluation of a community embedded intervention for fathers and children in an area of multiple deprivation in North West England. The evaluation integrated a variety of qualitative methods within a participatory evaluation framework to help understand the development and impact of a programme of work co-created by a social enterprise and fathers from within the community. Findings suggest that allowing fathers to define their own concerns, discover solutions to these and design locally appropriate ways to share these solutions can result in significant change for them, their children and the wider community. The key to this process is the provision of alternative spaces where fathers feel safe to share the substantial difficulties they are experiencing. This improved their confidence and had a positive impact on their relationships with their children and with significant others around them. However, this process required patience, and a commitment to trusting that communities of men can co-create their own solutions and generate sustainable success. We suggest that commissioning of services delivered 'to' people could be replaced, or supplemented, by commissioning appropriate organisations to work with communities to co-create solutions to the needs they themselves have recognized.

Diesel matters: accelerating the light diesel vehicle endgame in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Air pollution from diesel-powered vehicles is likely to be contributing substantial harm to health in Aotea-roa New Zealand, as well as making it harder for this country to meet its international climate change commitments. There are a lack of controls and outdated standards applied to diesel vehicles in New Zea-land, and there is scope to extend the monitoring of emissions. A comprehensive list of interventions that would assist with the phase-out of light diesel vehicles and reducing their emissions during the transition has been compiled. This list includes regulatory interventions such as bringing forward the year in which the Climate Change Commission proposes to ban imports of internal combustion light vehicles (ie, from 2035 to 2025). Also detailed are fiscal measures (incentives and disincentives) and improvements to in-formation for consumers at point-of-sale.

"Beasts"-New Zealand's utility vehicles: their climate change emissions and macho marketing.

Vehicle emissions are an important contributor to the growth of greenhouse gas emissions in New Zealand. Here we explore the role of sports utility vehicles (SUVs) and light utility vehicles (utes) in this problem. Marketed as macho symbols of toughness and dominance, often through comparisons with savage predators, these vehicles are promoted largely to male consumers. Eight out of 10 of the highest-selling new light vehicles in 2018 were SUVs or diesel-powered utes, with the latter standing out as the heaviest emitters of CO2, as well as posing health hazards through their emissions of fine particulates and NOx. The current popularity of these vehicles may create resistance to some of the substantive regulatory steps which will be needed if New Zealand is to meet its climate change commitments under the 2015 Paris Agreement. An example of such an initiative is the current government proposal for a Clean Car Standard and Clean Car Discount-a 'feebate' scheme which confers a price advantage on new electric vehicles and smaller cars.

Lessons from the removal of lead from gasoline for controlling other environmental pollutants: a case study from New Zealand.

BACKGROUND: It took over two decades to achieve the removal of leaded gasoline in this country. This was despite international evidence and original research conducted in New Zealand on the harm to child cognitive function and behaviour from lead exposure. OBJECTIVE: To identify lessons from the New Zealand experience of removing leaded gasoline that are potentially relevant to the control of other environmental pollutants. DISCUSSION: From the available documentation, we suggest a number of reasons for the slow policy response to the leaded gasoline hazard. These include: (1) industry power in the form of successful lobbying by the lead additive supplier, Associated Octel; (2) the absence of the precautionary principle as part of risk management policy; and (3) weak policymaking machinery that included: (a) the poor use of health research evidence (from both NZ and internationally), as well as limited use of expertise in academic and non-governmental organisations; (b) lack of personnel competent in addressing technically complex issues; and (c) diffusion of responsibility among government agencies. CONCLUSION: There is a need for a stronger precautionary approach by policymakers when considering environmental pollutants. Politicians, officials and health workers need to strengthen policymaking processes and effectively counter the industry tactics used to delay regulatory responses.