Group consultations are a form of community-integrated care that involve patients with similar health issues meeting with a clinician in a group setting. This approach enhances self-care and co-production, as patients learn from each other and participate in shared decision making. Group consultations have been shown to improve patient activation and evidence-based outcomes for long-term conditions such as diabetes and COPD, often at lower costs than individual consultations. Group consultations can be delivered in different ways, depending on the needs and preferences of the patients and the clinicians, including virtual sessions that allow for holistic care in the home environment. Case studies from various settings illustrate the effectiveness of group consultations in managing conditions like hypertension and diabetes. Group consultations are therefore a valuable method that combines the best of traditional care with the advantages of peer support and education, leading to better health outcomes in an efficient way.

Person-centred care (PCC) is a healthcare approach that emphasises the importance of individual patient preferences, needs, and values. It involves a shift in the power dynamic of medical consultations, allowing for shared control between the professional and the patient. The UK’s National Health Service has prioritised six processes to enable PCC, which include shared decision making and personalised care planning. Person-centred care aims to enhance patients’ skills and confidence for self-management by focusing on what matters to them rather than solely on their health conditions. The Health Foundation’s model of PCC highlights the need for care to be personalised, coordinated, and respectful of the patient’s dignity. Lifestyle Medicine, which largely focuses on supporting people to change behaviour, greatly depends on PCC as it empowers individuals to manage their health. Care planning and shared decision making are collaborative processes that balance the expertise of both the clinician and the patient. Understanding a patient’s ‘activation level’ can be useful for tailoring support to their ability to make lifestyle changes. Ultimately, PCC enhances the outcomes of Lifestyle Medicine by fostering patient self-management and improving the quality of treatment decisions.

In this chapter, we look at sociolinguistic aspects of globalization. The sociolinguistic turn entailed a focus on variation, which became more intricate as social barriers shifted. Recent changes have intensified such trends, and today language variation is no longer seen as static, in a socially stratified and rather rigid system. Rather, it represents a negotiated system and a fluid form of identity construction characterized by ever-widening social networks in an increasingly digital world. We look at superdiversity in the postmodern world and effects of mobility on sociolinguistic repertoires, present theoretical and methodological issues, both geopolitically and geoculturally, and introduce the World Language System, which orders the world’s languages into different layers according to criteria such as usage, function and speaker numbers. Finally, we look at winners and losers of language and globalization (countries, companies and individuals) so as to assess general sociolinguistic trends in a postmodern world.

New possibilities of communication and a widening range of fair trade products prompted an evolution in the direction of a less hierarchical global network of actors since the late 1980s. The advent of the ‘network society’ has had a fundamental impact on civic activism. The history of the fair trade movement is particularly instructive in this respect, because activists had attempted to muster transnational coalitions ever since its inception. This chapter highlights the history of the Clean Clothes Campaign, which mustered a coalition of trade union representatives and human rights activists from the global South and solidarity activists in the North to pressure companies in the textile industry to improve working conditions. The history of the Clean Clothes Campaign also provides a perspective on the altered landscape of fair trade activism in the wake of the success of fair trade certification, which was extended into textiles with the introduction of fair trade-certified cotton in the early 2000s. Surveying the breadth of the movement, this chapter develops a typology of adversarial and collaborative approaches employed by activists targeting businesses.

This chapter assesses the imperial presence of lyric in the form of the textual tradition of the nine canonical poets established by Alexandrian scholars. It reviews the evidence for the circulation of archaic and classical lyric texts among students of literature and readers from the late Hellenistic period onwards. Papyri preserving lyric texts and commentaries, treatises discussing literary and rhetorical education, as well as the diffusion of lyric quotations among Greek prose writers are all surveyed to define the place of lyric poetry in imperial paideia. Compared to mainstream classics, the genre thus emerges as a special, more niche and refined form of reading. The chapter then shows that by the imperial period, the reception of lyric subgenres followed a crystallised system of personas, where each poet activated specific thematic, local, ethical and aesthetic associations. This mental map shaped the reception of lyric poetry by imperial writers who, like Aristides, knew and chose to deploy it.

Social media has a complicated relationship with democracy. Although social media is neither democratic or undemocratic, it is an arena where different actors can promote or undermine democratization. Democracy is built on a foundation of norms and trust in institutions, where elections are the defining characteristic of the democratic process. This chapter outlines two ways disinformation campaigns can undermine democratic elections’ ability to ensure fair competition, representation, and accountability. First, disinformation narratives try to influence elections, by spreading false information about the voting process, or targeting voters, candidates, or parties to alter the outcome. Second, disinformation undermines trust in the integrity of the electoral process (from the ability to have free and fair elections, to expectations about the peaceful transfer of power), which can then erode trust in democracy. Prior work on social media has often focused on foreign election interference, but now it’s important to realize electoral disinformation is increasingly originating from domestic, not foreign, political actors. An important threat to democracy thus comes from within — namely, disinformation about democratic elections that is being created and shared by political leaders and elites, increasing the reach and false credibility of such false narratives.

Healthy clinicians are more likely to provide better care for their patients.

However, they often face serious health challenges themselves, which often stem from both personal lifestyle behaviours and work-related factors. Some of the common problems include burnout, stress, fatigue, musculoskeletal disorders, and cardiovascular diseases. To address these issues, interventions need to adopt a comprehensive approach that incorporates Lifestyle Medicine principles, such as nutrition, physical activity, stress management, and social support. These principles can help healthcare workers improve their health behaviours and cope with the demands of their work. However, personal interventions are not enough. There is also a need for organisational support and policy changes that create a healthier work environment for healthcare workers. This includes supportive leadership, flexible work schedules, adequate staffing, and access to wellness programmes. By improving the health of healthcare workers, interventions can also have positive impacts on patient care and healthcare costs.