OBJECTIVE To assess the involvement of volunteers with direct patient/family contact in UK palliative care services for children and young people. METHOD Cross-sectional survey using a web-based questionnaire. SETTING UK specialist paediatric palliative care services. PARTICIPANTS Volunteer managers/coordinators from all UK hospice providers (n=37) and one National Health Service palliati...

Despite health systems improvements in Tanzania, gaps in the continuum of care for maternal, newborn and child health persist. Recent improvements have largely benefited those over one month of age, leading to a greater proportion of under-five mortality in newborns. Community health workers providing home-based counselling have been championed as uniquely qualified to reach the poorest. We pro...

Social networks offer great potential for fostering collaboration between individuals and amongst groups. This potential collaborative environment is not only applicable for recreation, but can also provide considerable value to diverse research communities. For this reason scientists are increasingly utilizing social networking concepts in projects to form groups, share information, publicize ...

The purpose of this study was to explore the characteristics of pet therapy which promote positive experiences and health in the elderly. Data were obtained through observations of pet therapy sessions, through interviews with a pet therapy provider, and residents of a long-term care facility who participated in pet therapy, and from the reflections of my (first author) own experiences as a pet...

This paper analyzes supply and demand side characteristics of (voluntary) Red Cross services in Austria. Empirical results are presented based on a CV study on people’s willingness to pay for the maintenance of emergency treatment after injury, transportation services and disaster relief activities. A comparison of aggregated willingness to pay measures with actual cost of the Red Cross system ...

Recent studies have called attention to the improvement of “collaborative resilience” by fostering the collaboration potentials of public and private stakeholders during disasters. With our research we consider real and virtual volunteers in order to detect conditions for cooperation among those citizen groups through social media. Therefore we analysed the usage of Twitter during a tornado cri...

Background. Short-term international volunteer trips traditionally involve volunteers from high-income countries travelling to low- and middle-income countries to assist in service-related development activities. Their duration typically ranges from 7 to 90 days. The city of La Romana, Dominican Republic, receives hundreds of short-term international volunteers annually. They participate in act...

OBJECTIVE The study proposes "critical solidarity" as a value to be incorporated into the 21st century's bioethics agenda and as an instrument to guide people and associations in volunteer praxis. METHODS To explain how solidarity materializes itself, the motivations for engaging in volunteer activities in associations that integrate the corps of volunteers of the Instituto Nacional do Cancer...