The Do\u27s and Don\u27ts of Working with Local Communities: Tips for Successful Community-Based Public Meetings

Communities must be provided with a forum to express residents\u27 opinions on proposed public policies through effective community-based public meetings. Planning is essential to conducting an effective public meeting. To be successful, an effective public policy education process must be implemented before, during, and after the public meeting

The Do\u27s and Don\u27ts of Working with Local Communities: Tips for Successful Community-Based Public Meetings

Communities must be provided with a forum to express residents\u27 opinions on proposed public policies through effective community-based public meetings. Planning is essential to conducting an effective public meeting. To be successful, an effective public policy education process must be implemented before, during, and after the public meeting

The Relevancy of the apostolate of the lay educator in Catholic elementary schools, of the archdiocese of Hew Orleans, in the state of Louisiana, in the light of Vatican council II

This study has been accomplished as a result of the inspiration of lay personnel with whom the writer was privileged to be associated from 1963-1969. These lay teachers, who were employed at Christ the King Elementary School, Gretna, Louisiana, were men and women of great sincerity. The efforts they expanded for the Catholic Church and its apostolate of education will be long remembered by the parents and others of the area. It is to there tremendously dedicated teaching that this paper is dedicated -- in return for their Christian spirit in really giving of themselves to better others

The Relevancy of Apostolate Of The Lay Educator In Catholic Elementry Schools, Of The Archdiocese Of New Orleans, In the State Of Louisiana In The Light Of Vatican Council II

For decades the Catholic of the United States have voluntarily supported school systems. Statistics attest that in 1970, 4,367,323 pupils we being educated in the elementary and secondary schools alone. In the recent past these schools were staffed and administered largely by religious personnel. However, research indicates that the layman pioneered in the nineteenth century in the organizing, financing administering and staffing of the Catholic School

Stigma and Therapy Completion for Latent Tuberculosis among Haitian-origin Patients

A prospective cohort study of LTBI treatment conducted within the Haitian population of South Florida investigated the predictive association between illness-related stigma among patients near the beginning of treatment and completion of preventive therapy. Factors associated with perceived stigma were also investigated. Ninety patients from Broward and Palm Beach counties were administered a questionnaire that included items related to illness history, perceptions and understanding of latent tuberculosis, and a 25-item stigma scale adapted from previously developed measures of tuberculosis-related stigma. Therapy completion was determined through a follow-up chart review. Data analyses compared patients who completed therapy with those who defaulted on a number of variables including perceived stigma. No association was found between perceived stigma or demographic characteristics and adherence to preventive therapy. Perceived stigma was associated with patient report of illness-related distress and was higher among patients who were lost to follow up. Some evidence suggested that stigma was higher among contacts of cases, patients with limited understanding of the condition, and patients who were more closely monitored during treatment. Case management should focus on patient-centered approaches to education and counseling about LTBI that address patient understanding of the condition and concerns about its physical and psychosocial effects

Mark NICHTER, Global Health: Why Cultural Perceptions, Social Representations, and Biopolitics Matter

Le nouveau livre de Mark Nichter, portant sur la santé globale, est issu d'un rapport commandité par le programme spécial OMS-UNICEF-PNUD-Banque mondiale de recherche et de formation concernant les maladies tropicales (TDR). Il passe en revue l'état des recherches en sciences sociales sur la compréhension culturelle des maladies tropicales et la santé des enfants et des femmes. Son objectif principal est d'explorer les perceptions et représentations des populations locales des pays en dévelop..

Combining scales to assess suicide risk

Authors posting Accepted Author Manuscript online should later add a citation for the Published Journal Article indicating that the Article was subsequently published, and may mention the journal title provided they add the following text at the beginning of the document: “NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Journal of Cardiovascular Echography. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Journal of Psychiatric Research, [VOL#, ISSUE#, (DATE)] DOI#”A major interest in the assessment of suicide risk is to develop an accurate instrument, which could be easily adopted by clinicians. This article aims at identifying the most discriminative items from a collection of scales usually employed in the assessment of suicidal behavior. Methods: The answers to the Barrat Impulsiveness Scale, International Personality Disorder Evaluation Screening Questionnaire, BrowneGoodwin Lifetime History of Aggression, and Holmes & Rahe Social Readjustment Rating Scale provided by a group of 687 subjects (249 suicide attempters, 81 non-suicidal psychiatric inpatients, and 357 healthy controls) were used by the Lars-en algorithm to select the most discriminative items. Results: We achieved an average accuracy of 86.4%, a specificity of 89.6%, and a sensitivity of 80.8% in classifying suicide attempters using 27 out of the 154 items from the original scales. Conclusions: The 27 items reported here should be considered a preliminary step in the development of a new scale evaluating suicidal risk in settings where time is scarce.This article was supported by the National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Affective Disorders (NARSAD), Fondo de Investigacion Sanitaria (FIS) PI060092, Fondo de Investigacion Sanitaria FIS RD06/0011/0016, ETES (PI07/90207), the Conchita Rabago Foundation, and the Spanish Ministry of Health, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, CIBERSAM (Intramural 521 Project, P91B; SCO/3410/2004)

Social research on neglected diseases of poverty: Continuing and emerging themes

Copyright: © 2009 Manderson et al.Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) exist and persist for social and economic reasons that enable the vectors and pathogens to take advantage of changes in the behavioral and physical environment. Persistent poverty at household, community, and national levels, and inequalities within and between sectors, contribute to the perpetuation and re-emergence of NTDs. Changes in production and habitat affect the physical environment, so that agricultural development, mining and forestry, rapid industrialization, and urbanization all result in changes in human uses of the environment, exposure to vectors, and vulnerability to infection. Concurrently, political instability and lack of resources limit the capacity of governments to manage environments, control disease transmission, and ensure an effective health system. Social, cultural, economic, and political factors interact and influence government capacity and individual willingness to reduce the risks of infection and transmission, and to recognize and treat disease. Understanding the dynamic interaction of diverse factors in varying contexts is a complex task, yet critical for successful health promotion, disease prevention, and disease control. Many of the research techniques and tools needed for this purpose are available in the applied social sciences. In this article we use this term broadly, and so include behavioral, population and economic social sciences, social and cultural epidemiology, and the multiple disciplines of public health, health services, and health policy and planning. These latter fields, informed by foundational social science theory and methods, include health promotion, health communication, and heath education

Women's Time and the Use of Health Services

Summary The premise of this paper is that services and information can only contribute to improving health to the extent that people are aware of them, are able to make use of them, and choose to do so. Many service?related factors, as well as social, economic and cultural aspects of people's lives, can interfere with the use of health services or the implementation of health practices. The specific issue with which this article is concerned, however, is the possible negative effect of time constraints on women's capacity to use health services or to engage in other health related activities. It attempts to disaggregate health services and practices along a number of dimensions, with the goal of identifying those health related activities that may be particularly vulnerable to non?utilization because of conflicting demands on women's time. Resumé Les femmes, leur temps disponible et leur utilisation des services de soins de santé Le présent article a pour thèse que les services et l'information ne peuvent contribuer à l'amélioration de la santé que dans la mesure où les gens se rendent compte de leur disponibilité; se sentent capables de les utiliser; et se décident à le faire. Un grand nombre de facteurs qui ont trait aux services mêmes, en plus des aspects sociaux, économiques et culturels de la vie des utilisateurs de ces services, sont susceptibles d'affecter négativement l'utilisation des services de soins de santé et même, la mise en vigueur des pratiques de santé correspondantes. Ceci dit, cet article s'adresse spécifiquement aux éventuels effets négatifs des contraintes temporelles sur les capacités d'exploitation des services de santé parmi les femmes, voire sur leurs capacités de participer à d'autres activités qui ont trait à la santé. L'article tente d'analyser les services et pratiques de soins de santé sur plusieurs axes, dans l'optique d'identifier quelles sont les activités concernant la santé les plus menacées de non?utilisation en raison des nombreuses contraintes imposées sur le temps disponible des femmes. Resumen El tiempo de las mujeres y el uso de los servicios sanitarios La principal premisa de este artículo es que los servicios y la información sólo pueden contribuir al mejoramiento de las condiciones de sanidad en tanto y en cuanto la gente esté enterada de su existencia, pueda hacer uso de ellos, y lo elijan así. Muchos factores relacionados con los servicios, así como aspectos culturales, sociales y económicos, pueden interferir con el uso de los servicios de salud o la implementación de prácticas sanitarias. Sin embargo, el punto específico que aborda este artículo es el posible efecto negativo de los apremios del tiempo en la capacidad de la mujer para usar servicios sanitarios o comprometerse en otras actividades relacionadas a la salud. Trata de segregar pra?ticas y servicios sanitarios en diferentes dimensiones, con el objetivo de identificar esas actividades relacionadas de sanidad que pueden ser particularmente vulnerables a no ser usadas a causa de los requerimientos conflictivos en el tiempo de las mujeres