The Government's ’Natural Capital Committee', set up to check how far the Government bases its policies on the cost the benefits the UK derives from its natural environment - such as clean air, water, food and recreation - should be put on a permanent statutory footing, the Environmental Audit Committee recommends. The NCC was set up in May 2012 with a three-year remit that ends just before the General Election. It has produced 2 progress reports so far, highlighting gaps in the available data on these factors and calling for a 25-year plan to plug the gaps and start using the information in Government decisions. But the Government has yet to respond in detail to those NCC reports. The environment is just one strand of a wider view of people's well-being, which also addresses people's economic and social circumstances, as well as their view of the satisfaction they get from their lives. In November 2010, the Prime Minister launched a programme to measure well-being to complement economic statistics like ’GDP' in - "measuring our progress as a country". However, more than three years since then, the Committee note, our quality of life is not yet receiving the same attention as those economic metrics. The Committee highlight the links being uncovered in the statistics between people's view of their well-being and their background and circumstances - for example the link between well-being and people's health, marital status or religion. But the MPs warn that the data are not yet sufficiently robust to support a single metric that could encompass well-being and which could be set alongside GDP.

Measuring Functioning and Well-Being is a comprehensive account a broad range of self-reported functioning and well-being measures developed for the Medical Outcomes Study, a large-sale study of how patients fare with health care in the United States. This book provides a set of ready-to-use generic measures that are applicable to all adults, including those well and chronically ill, as well as a methodological guide to collecting health data and constructing health measures. As demand increases for more practical methods to monitor the outcomes of health care, this volume offers a timely and valuable contribution to the field. The contributors address conceptual and methodological issues involved in measuring such important health status concepts as: physical, social, and role functioning; psychological distress and well-being; general health perceptions; energy and fatigue; sleep; and pain. The authors present psychometric results and explain how to administer, score, and interpret the measures. Comprising the work of a number of highly respected scholars in the field of health assessment, Measuring Functioning and Well-Being will be of great interest and value to the growing number of researchers, policymakers, and clinicians concerned with the management and evaluation of health care.

Where LNPs have been successful, they have demonstrated the benefits of local engagement, harnessing enthusiasm in finding solutions to local priorities. Where they have not been successful, the solution is not to impose additional tasks but to re-energise the unfocussed local commitment. Many LNPs are starved of funding and resources, meaning much of the good work in getting them up and running, is being undone. The whole country-urban as well as rural-need the natural environment protections that LNPs can provide. Rather than leave under-performing LNPs to wither away, the next Government should urgently review LNPs and their funding, and re-energise the initiative.

Stigma is one of the major barriers to care for people with mental health and related disorders. Stigma includes negative beliefs about and hostile perceptions towards others, shame and self-stigma, discriminatory practices in hiring, promotion and recognition of people who suffer from mental health challenges, and structural and organizational policies and processes that result in inequalities for people who have mental health challenges. Stigma has been recognized as a significant factor in the well-being of people with mental health and related problems and can be more debilitating than the direct effects of mental health problems themselves. The Mental Health Commission of Canada (MHCC) was established to conduct policy reviews and to promote initiatives related to mental health. The Opening Minds program of the MHCC is the largest systematic effort in Canadian history to reduce stigma related to mental illnesses. The program has adopted the systematic development, evaluation and deployment of targeted programs based on theories of change, best practices and available research evidence as a model for stigma reduction. The Stigma of Mental Illness is an important vehicle to communicate conceptual issues in the field of stigma reduction, to document the work done to date within the MHCC Opening Minds program, and to offer practical strategies to broaden the scope and utility of the work for different contexts, cultures, and countries. This volume will be a global interest, given the growing importance of stigma reduction related to mental disorders and related problems.

This book aims to help leaders maximise the engagement of employees and citizens by exploring the impact of a process of active enthusiasm (PACE). Engagement of employees has long been recognised as a key factor for organisational and national success. Yet, worldwide, engagement levels languish at only 25%. Providing a practical model, developed from in-depth global research, the authors show that engagement is continuous and cannot be assessed by annual surveys. Instead it demonstrates that it is specific to individuals and will only increase if employee perceptions are improved. Readers will discover how the PACE process model can be used to maximise employee engagement through the modification of primary causal factors, and consequently generate direct outputs such as increased productivity and reduced absenteeism. Transforming Engagement and Wellbeing provides an invaluable set of tools to help leaders enthuse their people and to improve individuals’ optimism and propensity for engagement, making it essential reading for academics interested in human resource management, as well as managers, leaders and policy-makers.

Many books on celestial navigation take shortcuts in explaining concepts; incorrect diagrams and discussion are often used for the sake of moving the student along quickly. This book tells the true story-and the whole story. It conveys celestial navigation concepts clearly and in the shortest possible time.It's tailored for navigation in the GPS age-a time of computers, calculators, and web resources. Although it covers all of the traditional methods of 'working a sight, ' the primary thrust is using the (under $10) scientific calculator. By using equations that you key into your calculator, this book guides you toward a better understanding of the concepts of celestial navigation.You will learn novel ways to plot lines of position, ways to check your sextant accurately by star sights, and how to tell what time it is from a moon sight. The many appendices are a treasure of references and explanations of abstract ideas. Celestial Navigation is a crucial skill for the offshore navigator to know, this book provides the shortest path to that knowledge.

City of Well-being provides a radical and holistic introduction to the science and art of town planning. It starts from the premise that the purpose of planning is the health, well-being and sustainable quality of life of people. It offers inspiration, information and an integrated perspective which challenges all professions and decision-makers that affect the urban environment.

Over the past decades, the field of health psychology has witnessed a tremendous growth, and social psychologists have contributed substantially to the theoretical foundation of this field. Their research has focused on a wide variety of health-relevant topics such as how individuals decide to respond to threats to their health and well-being, how and why they change their behavior to avoid such threats, and especially, how they adjust to or cope with the risk of threatening disease and with the diseases themselves. As diverse as this literature may be, however, there does appear to be a common theme throughout much of it--the observation that comparison of oneself and one's health status and coping efforts with others is an integral part of the coping process. Consequently, social comparison theory is increasingly becoming recognized as a fruitful framework for illuminating health related issues. A still expanding literature is exploring the role of social comparisons with respect to coping with a wide range of health problems, including cancer, physical decline among the aged, rheumatoid arthritis, AIDS, stress at work and occupational burnout, and eating disorders. Social comparison theory has augmented knowledge about the ways in which people cope with stressful events, and thus has contributed significantly to it. At a more basic level, research in this applied context has made significant contributions to the development of social comparison theory itself. The present volume presents an overview of the various ways in which social comparison theory has been applied to issues related to health, coping, and well-being, and also points out how these applications have contributed to our insight into the way humans employ social comparison information. Given the attention paid to theoretical and applied issues, this volume will appeal to a wide audience, including social and health psychologists, as well as therapists, physicians, clinicians, medical sociologists, nurses, and those involved in the growing field of nursing research.