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The purpose of this study is to assess the effectiveness of a disaster preparedness communication curriculum for public health graduate students' understanding and use of communication strategies for reaching vulnerable groups with preparedness messages.

A training module was piloted in a health communication seminar in 2008 (n=9 students) and 2009 (n=15 students). The interactive module included lectures, videos, case study discussions, and disaster plan and message development. Students gave presentations to a panel of risk communication specialists from the university and state health department.

Analysis of Likert‐type pre/post‐survey items showed significant improvement in students' knowledge about disaster communication and confidence regarding use of communication principles to develop clear messages (p<0.05). In response to open‐ended questions, students reported enjoying the “practical experience of developing messages” and learning the “importance of media and health professionals working together”.

This pilot evaluation involved a relatively small sample of students. Although students were assured that all survey responses would remain anonymous, social desirability may have played a role in their written responses.

The educational module appears to be effective in engaging public health students in disaster communication strategies for reaching vulnerable populations. Studying effective communication strategies well before a disaster situation occurs will help to anticipate community‐specific communication needs and reduce concern.

The instructional approach and content developed could be adapted for training health care and public health professionals to communicate effectively in planning for and responding to disaster situations.

Risk communication is a critical component of individual health decision making and behavior. In disaster situations, it is crucial that risk-related messages are communicated accurately and that they reach and inform target audiences about the steps they can take to protect their health. Despite a global recognition of the importance of risk communication in responding to disasters, there remains a dearth of evidence on how to evaluate the effectiveness of risk communication messages. The purpose of this paper is to develop and assess a pilot tool to evaluate the effectiveness of disaster risk messages.

A pilot evaluation tool was developed using the existing risk communication literature. An expert assessment of the tool was conducted using an open-ended survey and a focus group discussion with 18 experts at the Public Health Agency of Canada in February 2013.

The tool measures content, reach, and comprehension of the message. It is intended to be a quick, internal evaluation tool for use during a disaster or emergency. The experts acknowledged the practicality of the tool, while also recognizing evaluation challenges.

This pilot exploratory tool was assessed using a relatively small sample of experts.

This tool offers public health and disaster preparedness practitioners a promising approach for evaluating and improving the communication and management of future public health emergencies.

This is the first practical tool developed to evaluate risk communication messages in disaster situations.

The digitisation of various parts of society is developing at an increasingly rapid rate, which effects the way people receive services and how familiar they are with new innovations and technological challenges in educational environments. The future members of society must be prepared to participate in the creation of new innovative solutions as well as to support the process of knowledge creation. Despite the fact that rapid development of technologies requires society to immediately respond, even under these circumstances society must be able to make meaningful decisions. These processes put on the forefront of competence have the ability to predict the unpredictable, which means that the educational environment must to a certain extent be able to predict what has not yet existed and cannot be verified. However, it must at the same time involve specialists from different fields who must deal with technologies and technological solutions that have not been tested or proven consistent in the long run, measure their impact and predict what services are up to date and what technologies and skills are required. This section examines the conditions for technology-enhanced learning (TEL) in a higher education (HE) context to understand what technologies and digital solutions have traditionally been used as well as the role of educators in driving TEL. The aim of the research is to conduct a pilot study to identify the most recent trends in the use of technologies in HE, identify the future research directions, predict the future directions of development and collect and analyse the obtained data.

We study a microfounded search model of exchange in the laboratory. Using a within-subjects design, we consider exchange behavior with and without an intrinsically worthless token object. While these tokens have no redemption value, like fiat money they may foster greater exchange and welfare via the coordinating role of having prices of goods in terms of tokens. We find that welfare is indeed improved by the presence of tokens provided that the economy starts out with a supply of such tokens. In economies that operate for some time without tokens, the later surprise introduction of tokens does not serve to improve welfare. We also explore the impact of announced changes in the economy-wide stock of tokens (fiat money) on prices. Consistent with the quantity theory of money, we find that increases in the stock of money (tokens) have no real effects and mainly result in proportionate changes to prices. However, the same finding does not hold for decreases in the stock of money.

The website is a digital media, a platform that represents the school through its visual and textual elements. This way, it is becoming an important channel of communication and source of information. This chapter primarily looks at the school image as one of the aspects that the school needs to take into account in the context of the website, thinking not only about the good image, but, in particular, about the goals and values as a whole. Secondly, previous studies on the content and function of websites are analysed. In order to better explore the current practice of content creation and discover its weaknesses and potential, semi-structured in-depth interviews with Latvian school representatives, namely website content managers, were carried out.

The school website still has a lot of unrealised potential. Nonetheless, the website as a technological tool can improve both the learning process and the school image, as well as serve as an information channel in the local community. Schools, for the most part, do not control their self-image, as well as the choice of content on the website is often not strategic enough. Overall, schools focus on regularly informing the audience, but much less on the marketing and learning solutions on the website. The represented image of the schools include both the characteristics of the local community and the formal institution. Identifying audience and its desires, as well as redistributing resources, are one of the necessities for realising the website’s potential.

Acrylamide is a compound found in several food products. Due to the toxicity of this compound, research also seeks strategies to modify industrial and homemade processes, impacting on the reduction of the compound. This paper aims to discuss the aspects surrounding the presence of acrylamide in foods.

Published literature on the presence of acrylamide in foods and on its effects has been reviewed. This paper explores the importance of this compound, summarizes the knowledge of its formation and gathers data on its incidence in food and the possibilities of mitigation. Special attention is given to an evaluation of the toxicological tests applied, to analyze whether acrylamide can be considered as a food safety problem.

Human exposure to food with high levels of acrylamide varies in their levels regarding the consumption of food in the diet and not only by the level of the compound present in them. Although the compound is well defined as toxic to humans, the association between its intake and most common cancers may not be directly related.

Depending on the approach of the researchers, contradictory results are obtained, showing the importance of this topic to the development of healthy food products. Further research is still needed to validate the potential effects of acrylamide on human health.

The aim of this paper is to study the consumer perception of functional foods and to identify determinants of functional foods consumption in Slovakia.

The research is based on primary data obtained by conducting an online questionnaire survey in 2021 using the snowball sampling method (n = 1,138 Slovak respondents). By applying inferential and multivariate statistics, several segments of functional food consumers were identified.

Research identified three segments of functional food consumers in Slovakia differing in the agreement scores of the four dimensions of beliefs about functional foods. The “Skeptic” is the largest segment, comprising 52% of the sample. Consumers have higher agreement on the risk beliefs and lower agreement on the benefit, trend and interest beliefs. These consumers do not consume functional food regularly. The segment “Less interested”, comprising 35% of the sample, has average agreement scores, and consumers consume functional food occasionally or regularly. The “Enthusiastic” is the smallest segment, comprising only 12% of the sample. Consumers have high agreement on the benefits and interest beliefs and low agreement on the risk beliefs. Most consumers consume functional food regularly and are focusing on functional product features.

The results provide essential information for both the academic and commercial field. Obtained information can be used by producers of functional foods to better understand their customers as well as to improve their marketing strategies on the Slovak market.