Ana Vieira

• PhD
• PostDoc Position at University of Lisbon

Background Implementation and uptake of health technology assessment for evaluating medical devices require including aspects that different stakeholders consider relevant, beyond cost and effectiveness. However, the involvement of stakeholders in sharing their views still needs to be improved. Objective This article explores the relevance of dist...

Desirability–doability framework (2 × D) is a novel framework for the collaborative evaluation of public policies. Fundamental objectives and performance indicators are agreed upon in workshops, policies are characterised, and barriers to implementation identified. MACBETH interactive protocols are then applied in decision conferences to elicit qua...

As a teaching subject, animal welfare is challenging for educators and learners, as was recently shown in a recent survey on the evolution of animal welfare teaching in Europe. Among several suggestions to overcome the current resistance to implementing animal welfare education, we highlight two. The first is that animal welfare education should be...

Promoting participation and combining evidence with expert knowledge in constructing composite indices that can be meaningfully interpreted are key open challenges identified in performance measurement literature. To address them, this article proposes a sociotechnical decision-aid process, under a collaborative value-modelling framework, rooted in...

Simple Summary In order to be effective, on-farm welfare assessment protocols should always rely on reliable, as well as valid and feasible, indicators. Inter-observer reliability refers to the extent to which two or more observers are observing and recording data in the same way. The present study focuses on the problem of assessing inter-observer...

Achieving a balanced healthcare workforce requires health planners to adjust the supply of health human resources (HHR). Mathematical programming models have been widely used to assist such planning, but the way uncertainty is usually considered in these models entails methodological and practical issues and often disregards radical yet plausible c...

Environmental health (EH) is influenced by complex interactions between health and the built and natural environments, there being little research on its specificities in urban settings. The use of suitable indicators to monitor and assess EH is fundamental in informing evidence-based interventions at the local level. A participatory approach to se...

Most consumers expect welfare to be part of the core of animal production and will avoid products which they view as not fulfilling minimum conditions. But even if consumers did not object to poor animal welfare, there is more than enough evidence that promoting welfare corresponds to better performance and higher quality products. Thus, there are...

Background: Population health measurements are recognised as appropriate tools to support public health monitoring. Yet, there is still a lack of tools that offer a basis for policy appraisal and for foreseeing impacts on health equity. In the context of persistent regional inequalities, it is critical to ascertain which regions are performing bes...

Background: Health inequalities have been consistently reported across and within European countries and continue to pose major challenges to policy-making. The development of scenarios regarding what could affect population health (PH) inequalities across Europe in the future is considered critical. Scenarios can help policy-makers prepare and be...

This paper proposes a new Collaborative Value Modelling framework, that combines Delphi and multicriteria decision conferencing, to build widely informed evaluation models. Multicriteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) is commonly used to help decision-makers and other stakeholders in complex evaluation contexts. Further to the technical soundness and mea...

In complex organizational choices with consequences spread all over the organization, good management practice recommends the auscultation of the points of view of people from different operational areas, to inform a final decision-making body. In large corporations such an internal participatory process may easily involve a large number of people,...

Simple Summary The use of feasible indicators to evaluate animals’ emotional states in farm animals is strongly encouraged for welfare assessment. The inclusion of qualitative behaviour assessment (QBA) in on-farm protocols has been constantly increasing during the last few years; but its association with other welfare measures has been scarcely in...

This study was conducted within the context of the Animal Welfare Indicators (AWIN) project and the underlying scientific motivation for the development of the study was the scarcity of data regarding inter-observer reliability (IOR) of welfare indicators, particularly given the importance of reliability as a further step for developing on-farm wel...

Despite the significant advances that have been made at the European Union (EU) level in terms of health inequality measurement, there is still a lack of comparable health-related data across countries and regions 1. Existing measures and indicators of health status and quality of life are considered inadequate2 to capture the holistic understandin...

Consistency over time (COT) of animal-based indicators is key to a reliable and feasible welfare protocol, indicating that results are representative over long-term situations. High levels of consistency ensure fairness for the farmer and credibility of the system. In addition, indicator COT reduces recording costs, as having indicators that do not...

A considerable amount of behavioural research studies are based on observer’s ratings collected during field visits. New methods for collecting this type of data have recently emerged, for instance using videos or photographs that are presented and assessed during workshops or meetings, or through electronic data devices. In this article we present...

The AWIN project aimed at developing an on-farm welfare assessment protocol for adult dairy goats. A prototype protocol was tested in 30 intensive dairy goat farms to evaluate its feasibility in farms of different size. Time for applying the prototype was recorded and any other constraint was taken into account. Moreover, data collected during the...

Welfare assessment can play multiple roles in the path to welfare improvement. In the dairy goat area, identification of the main welfare problems across countries and different production systems is needed. By the application of a prototype welfare assessment protocol, based on animal-based indicators, we aimed to provide an insight into the main...

In this paper we address the problem of identifying goats in dairy farms with sub-optimal values of Body Condition Score (BCS). The BCS conveys information on whether an animal is fat or thin and its identification has a strong economic impact as very thin animals have poorer milk production and associated health problems. Albeit its important impl...

Simple Summary The Animal Welfare Indicators (AWIN) project developed a practical welfare assessment protocol for lactating dairy goats in intensive husbandry systems, using animal-based indicators that cover the whole multidimensional concept of animal welfare. The strict collaboration between scientists and stakeholders resulted in an easy-to-use...

Body condition scoring (BCS) is the most widely used method to assess changes in body fat reserves, which reflects its high potential to be included in on-farm welfare assessment protocols. Currently used scoring systems in dairy goats require animal restraint for body palpation. In this study, the Animal Welfare Indicators project (AWIN) proposes...

The aim of this study is to gather information about the possibility of including the haircoat condition as an animal-based indicator in an on-farm welfare assessment protocol foradult dairy goats. Validity was tested in two repetitions performed in Portugal and Italy,in order to increase the sample size. Two homogeneous groups of 24 adult dairy go...

This paper reviews animal-based welfare indicators to develop a valid, reliable, and feasible on-farm welfare assessment protocol for dairy goats. The indicators were considered in the light of the 4 accepted principles (good feeding, good housing, good health, appropriate behavior) subdivided into 12 criteria developed by the European Welfare Qual...

One of the major causes of lameness in intensive dairy goat farms is claws' overgrowth and deformation. These problems are thought to be painful but more studies are needed to assess the degree and extension of pain. The demand for more objective ways to assess pain is growing. Infrared thermography may be one of them. In our study ninety four dair...

There has been a profound evolution concerning farm animal welfare perception in Europe. This together with growing evidence that animal welfare has an impact on food safety and quality led to new legislation for an animal friendlier production sector. Also, new support measures aid those who supply cost increased animal friendlier products with di...

Driven by consumer demands, European legislation has suggested the use of HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point) as the quality risk management programme for the whole dairy chain. Until now, an exception has been made for primary producers, but as regulations evolve, on-farm HACCP-like programmes should be ready to assure food safety as we...

Quality is a keyword in animal production. Next to product quality, process quality has also become relevant for dairy farmers. Issues like food safety, public health, animal health and welfare are determined by the conditions of the production process. To address these, he EU has issued the General Food Law (178-2002) and the Hygiene directives (E...