A Study of Bus Stop Accessibility: Public Health Students Working in Partnership with the Center for Independent Living

Over 54 million U.S. citizens report living with at least one disability. The Americans with Disabilities Act stipulates legislation that prohibits the discrimination of persons on the basis of disability. Rather than riding the bus in areas that offer a fixed-route bus system, individuals with disabilities often rely on expensive and limited paratransit services, or on family and friends. It has been proposed that with improvements in bus accessibility, riders with disabilities could use the fixed-route system more often and increase their options for independence and community participation. During their 2008 spring semester, participants in the University of Florida College of Public Health and Health Professions’ course, Assessment and Surveillance, partnered with the Center for Independent Living (CIL) of North Central Florida to conduct an accessibility study of the Gainesville, Florida fixed-route bus system. Students focused on factors that make bus stops user-friendly for persons with disabilities. This paper presents the rationale, methods, and findings from this accessibility study and efforts undertaken to forge a mutually beneficial partnership among UF-PHHP students and the CIL

Informal HIV Caregiver Proxy Reports of Care Recipients’ Treatment Adherence: Relationship Factors Associated with Concordance with Recipients’ Viral Suppression

OBJECTIVE: To explore the role of informal caregivers in adherence, we compared adherence reports by caregivers to those of care recipients. We identified individual-level and relationship factors associated with agreement between caregivers’ reports of recipients’ adherence and assessed viral suppression. METHODS: Participants were care recipients, who were on ART and had ever injected drugs, and their caregivers (N=258 dyads). RESULTS: Nearly three-fourths of caregivers’ reports of recipients’ ART adherence agreed with recipients’ viral suppression status. Agreement was associated with recipient age and expressing affection or gratitude to the caregiver, caregiver’s having been close to someone who died of HIV/AIDS, and caregiver’s fear of caregiving-related HIV (re)infection, while it was negatively associated with recipient’s limited physical functioning. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings support the utility of caregiver proxy reports of care recipients’ ART adherence and suggest ways to identify and promote HIV caregiver attention to and support of this vulnerable population’s ART adherence