UWCScholar

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The ocean view community care centre (ccc): lessons for everyday health systems resilience from a community-led response to the covid-19 pandemic in South Africa
(Elsevier B.V., 2026) Brady, Leanne; George, Asha; De Vries, Shaheem
Community engagement is widely acknowledged as critical to Everyday Health Systems Resilience (EHSR), but there are few empirical case studies that examine ‘how’ and ‘why’ initiatives at the community-health system interface unfold over time. In this paper, we present the experience of the Ocean View Community Care Centre (CCC), a community-led response to the Covid-19 pandemic in the Western Cape, South Africa. Using a five-year long embedded research approach, we drew on traditions of participatory action research and organisational ethnography. Data collection included documenting observations and reflections in a research diary during implementation, in-depth interviews, focus group discussions (using photo-elucidation methods) and a WhatsApp archive. In addition, a series of sensemaking discussions with academic research team members were done. Our analysis draws on and extends the EHSR framework which characterises resilience as an emergent phenomena of health systems. We consider the CCC as a potentially transformative resilience strategy as it nurtured system capacities (networks and relationships) that could support future responses to shocks. Our findings demonstrate how relationships and networks can generate resources (hardware and software) and nurture system capacities for EHSR, but also highlights that relationships and networks on their own are not enough. The CCC experience offers the notion of boundary spanning (not yet explored in the EHSR literature) to shed light on how the energy of these networks needs to be harnessed by individuals who have a ‘passport of legitimacy’ to work across networks, suggesting that boundary spanners are themselves important in nurturing system capacities for resilience.
Testing subhalo abundance matching with galaxy kinematics
(Oxford University Press, 2026) Boreiko, Fedir; Jarvis, Matt J.; Yasin, Tariq
The rotation velocities of disc galaxies trace dark matter halo structure, providing direct constraints on the galaxy–halo connection. We construct a Bayesian forward model to connect the dark matter halo population predicted by Lambda-cold dark matter with an observed sample of disc galaxies from the Spitzer Photometry and Accurate Rotation Curves (SPARC) database through their maximum rotation velocities. Our approach combines a subhalo abundance matching scheme (accounting for assembly bias) with a parametrized halo response to galaxy formation. When assuming no correlation between selection in the SPARC survey and halo properties, reproducing the observed velocities requires strong halo expansion, low abundance matching scatter, and a halo proxy that strongly suppresses the stellar masses in satellite haloes. This is in clear tension with independent clustering constraints. Allowing for SPARC-like galaxies to preferentially populate low (Formula presented) haloes at fixed virial mass greatly improves the goodness of fit and resolves these tensions: the preferred halo response shifts to mild contraction, the abundance matching scatter constraint relaxes to (Formula presented) dex at (Formula presented) and the proxy becomes consistent with clustering. However, the inferred selection threshold is extreme, implying that SPARC galaxies occupy the lowest (Formula presented) per cent of the (Formula presented) distribution at fixed (Formula presented). Moreover, even with selection, the inferred scatter remains in statistical disagreement with the low-mass clustering constraints, which are most representative of the SPARC galaxies in our sample. Our analysis highlights the advantage of augmenting clustering-based constraints on the galaxy–halo connection with kinematics and suggests a possible tension using current data.
From meekness to influence: rethinking oral health advocacy
(Springer Nature, 2026) Benzian, Habib; Naidoo, Sudeshni
Oral health remains a soft voice in loud global health spaces. Other healthcare fields have secured coalitions, goals, governance, and entitlements; oral health often settles for symbolic inclusion and pilot projects. This paper uses ‘meekness' as a metaphor for a structural posture of oral health advocacy marked by caution, deference, and lack of political leverage. Meekness is expressed across four domains: professional voice, institutional platforms, academic culture, and civic positioning. They create an architecture that privileges visibility over influence. Professional associations dominate public discourse but are closely tied to clinical and commercial interests. Weak civil society and groupspeak rhetoric reinforce cautious advocacy, while charity and awareness campaigns substitute for structural reform. Academic incentives discourage outward-facing scholarship and public intellectual leadership, muting analytic and civic pressure. Together, these factors sustain marginality in universal health coverage despite a large disease burden and strong evidence for prevention. The paper outlines what full recognition would entail: defined essential services, stable financing, primary healthcare-based delivery, diversified workforce models, and regulatory action on commercial determinants. Moving from meekness to power requires explicit demands for benefits, budgets, and rules, stronger civic alliances, and academic cultures that reward public reasoning as part of systemic change.
Using systems thinking causal loop modelling to analyze the water resources system in Rietspruit sub-basin, South Africa
(Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH, 2026) Banda, Vincent Dzulani; Kanyerere, Thokozani; Dzwairo, Rimuka Bloodless
A qualitative system dynamics modelling framework was applied in this study to analyze the main driving forces and their feedback interactions influencing water resources management in the Rietspruit sub-basin, South Africa. The dynamics of the water resource system were analyzed using the Vensim™ PLE modelling platform and its archetypes of causal loop diagram, reinforcing and balancing loops. The model visually displayed the causal links of different processes influencing the water resource system and their feedback loops. Special focus was to ascertain and analyze the reinforcing feedback loops within a typical urbanized watershed, with the aim of depicting constraints that could influence sustainable water resource management and adaptation thereof. The causal loop model synthesized that, based on evidence from scientific literature and policy documents, the main driving forces towards the water resource challenges in the study area are associated with rising temperature, degraded water infrastructure and institutional and socioeconomic processes. The study, through the presented conceptual model, offered leverage points and potential pathways for sustaining both water quantity and quality, including infrastructure investment, sustainable revenue generation, decentralized groundwater use and public awareness and participation. The analysis in this study provided a conceptual framework for understanding of interactions of elements within the different systems influencing water resources in the Rietspruit sub-basin. This could be key for ensuring effective and sustainable management of the resource in the context of changing climate and socioeconomic developments.
Monitoring of heavy metals in the Kuilsriver and potential use of macrophytes in heavy metal remediation
(University of the Western Cape, 2003) Qoko, Mathabo Malishoane Indira; Raitt, Lincoln; Aalbers, Johannes
Water and soil pollution is one of the major concerns all over the world due to various activities such industrialization and urbanization. This is a problem because water is a vital resource for human survival and economic development; as populations and economies grow, water shortages increase. Phytoremediation is one of the promising techniques that can help to remove heavy metals from polluted and contaminated water and soil by using plants to clean up.