Digital Commons Network^™

Project Ngage: Network Supported Hiv Care Engagement For Younger Black Men Who Have Sex With Men And Transgender Persons, Dexter R. Voisin

Faculty Scholarship

Background: Young Black men who have sex with men and transgender persons (YBMSMT) aged 13-29 carry the nation's highest burden of new HIV infections. Studies indicate that YBMSMT have poor retention in care, which is associated with reduced medication adherence and increased virologic failure. Objective: Project nGage is a randomized controlled (RCT) trial evaluating the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of a brief, dyadic intervention designed to promote adherence to HIV primary care in safety-net clinics. Network visualization is used to identify and engage a support confidant (SC) from participants' social networks. A social work interventionist then meets with the SC …

Decoding Literary Aids: A Study On Issues Of The Body, Masculinity, And Self Identity In U.S. Aids Literature From 1984-2011, Alexander Shimon Abrams

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Rather than waiting decades to respond, novelists of nearly every literary genre began conceptualizing the AIDS epidemic shortly after the first documented case of the virus in the United States in 1981. Writers, feeling a sense of urgency, wasted little time constructing didactic texts that differ from much historical fiction in that they were written as the tragedy they are commenting on occurred. However, AIDS literature has changed as the disease has spread well beyond the gay communities of San Francisco and New York, causing people to reexamine their longstanding beliefs on masculinity, sexuality, and body politics.

My Master's thesis …

Preventative Care And Culture, Anna Wagman

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This paper explores the intersection between culture and health. The similarities and differences between methods for preventative medicine employed by traditional and allopathic systems are discussed. These ostensibly disparate systems, in reality, display many parallels in regards to their delivery. The effects of industrial progress, and therefore cultural change, on the health of the inhabitants of rapidly urbanizing African cities are examined. Historical information from studies of Great Britain, the first area to undergo a full industrial revolution is also drawn on. These analyses essentially predict the societal issues that come with urbanization, such as the amalgamation of preexisting pollutants …

Rez Realities: Exploring The Perceptions Of Crime And Justice Among Tribal Police Officers In Indian Country, Favian Alejandro Martin

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

Although American Indians and Alaskan Natives (AI/NA) compose just over 1% of the general population in the U.S., they experience higher rates of crime and violence than the total population and are dramatically over-represented in the criminal justice system. In light of these realities, the paucity of research on AI/NA crime, violence, and justice problems is appalling. What research does exist suggests that AI/NA crime and victimization is correlated with social problems such as poverty and illegal drug use which are linked to the social ills of colonialism. Drawing on the work of Loader (1997), this dissertation examines the perceptions …

A Longitudinal Examination Of Risk And Protective Factors Associated With Drug Use And Unsafe Sex Among Young African American Females, Dexter R. Voisin

Faculty Scholarship

This study prospectively examined associations among multiple theoretically informed risk (e.g., depression, sexual sensation seeking, and risky peers norms) and protective factors (e.g., social support, STI knowledge, and refusal to have sex self efficacy) on unsafe sex among 715 African American adolescent females aged 15-21 who participated in an STI/HIV prevention intervention. Generalized estimating equation models were used to assess associations between baseline characteristics and sexual risk over a 12-month follow-up period. Overall risk in this population was high: at baseline, nearly a third of women reported sex under the influence of alcohol or substances; ≥ 2 partners for vaginal …

Building Partnership In Service-Learning : Some Reflections, Nirmala Jeyaraj

Asia-Pacific Regional Conference on Service-Learning 亞太地區服務研習會議

Service-Learning is a proven pedagogy for holistic learning and is practiced across the globe by educators both at secondary and tertiary levels. Different models and methods have been developed and adopted to suit one’s educational system, discipline of the learner, socio-cultural context and needs of the community. However the basic philosophy of service learning to mutually benefit the learner and the community remains the same. The success of S-L depends largely upon the partnership involved in the learning process. At micro level (within an educational institution) academic service learning involves two major players other than the community namely, the teacher …

History And Hope: The International Humanitarian Reader, Kevin M. Cahill, M.D.

Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs

History and Hope: The International Humanitarian Reader provides a better understanding—both within and outside academia—of the multifaceted demands posed by humanitarian assistance programs. The Reader is a compilation of the most important chapters in the twelve-volume International Humanitarian Affairs book series published by Fordham University Press. Each selected chapter has been edited and updated. In addition, the series editor, Kevin M. Cahill, M.D., has written, among other chapters, an introductory essay explaining the academic evolution of the discipline of humanitarian assistance. It focuses on the “Fordham Experience”: its Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs (IIHA) has developed practical programs for training …

Biopiracy And Vaccines: Indonesia And The World Health Organization’S New Pandemic Influenza Plan, Shawn C. Smallman Ph.D.

Journal of International and Global Studies

Viral samples of avian influenza are essential to preparing pre-pandemic vaccines. In 2007, the conflicting interests of the developed and developing nations led Indonesia to briefly stop sharing viral samples. The result was a struggle in which the two blocs argued for different paradigms for viral sample sharing. The first paradigm, articulated by the developed world, depicted the issue as one of health security, in which international law mandated the sharing of viral samples. The second paradigm, advanced by the developing world, depicted viral sample sharing as a form of biopiracy, which violated countries’ sovereign control of their biological resources. …

Transport And Health: A Look At Three Latin American Cities, Janeth Mosquera Becerra, Rodrigo S. Reis, Lawrence D. Frank, Farah A. Ramirez-Marrero, Benjamin Welle, Eugenio Arriaga Cordero, Fabian Mendez Paz, Carlos J. Crespo, Veronica Dujon, Enrique Jacoby, Jennifer Dill, Lynn Weigand, Carlos M. Padin

Community Health Faculty Publications and Presentations

Transport is associated with environmental problems, economic losses, health and social inequalities. A number of European and US cities have implemented initiatives to promote multimodal modes of transport. In Latin America changes are occurring in public transport systems and a number of projects aimed at stimulating non-motorized modes of transport (walking and cycling) have already been implemented. Based on articles from peer-reviewed academic journals, this paper examines experiences in Bogota (Colombia), Curitiba (Brazil), and Santiago (Chile), and identifies how changes to the transport system contribute to encourage active transportation. Bus rapid transit, ciclovias, bike paths/lanes, and car use restriction are …

The Impact Of The Chinese Rural Healthcare System On Infectious Disease: A Study Of The History And Reform Of Chinese Healthcare, And The Global Implications Of Infectious Disease Control In China, John Barbadoro

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

China’s healthcare system has gone through significant changes in the 20^th and 21^st centuries. These changes have mirrored not only the political focus of the time, but also the social issues facing China. The NRCMCS for rural residents is a cheap annual fee that covers a percentage of medical costs. There are two urban equivalents, the BMIUE and BMIUR for urban employees through their job, and residency respectively. Despite the focus on cheaper healthcare for rural residents, the problems of income inequality and mistrust in the medical system are major problems that affect the health of this large …

Global Patterns In Overweight Among Children And Mothers In Less Developed Countries, Jennifer Van Hook, Claire E. Altman, Kelly Stamper Balistreri

Sociology Faculty Publications

Objective: Past research has identified increases in national income and urbanization as key drivers of the global obesity epidemic. That work further identified educational attainment and urban residence as important moderators of the effects of national income. However, such work has tended to assume that children and adults respond in the same way to these factors. In the present paper, we evaluate how the socio-economic and country-level factors associated with obesity differ between children and their mothers. Design: We modelled the associations between maternal education, country-level income and urban residence with mother's and children's weight status. Setting We analysed ninety-five …

The Effect Of Metacognitive And Self-Regulatory Strategy Instruction On Impoverished Students' Assessment Achievement In Physics, Jaunine Fouche

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The purpose of this nonequivalent control group design study was to evaluate the effectiveness of metacognitive and self-regulatory strategy use on the assessment achievement of 215 9th-grade, residential physics students from low socioeconomic status (low-SES) backgrounds. Students from low-SES backgrounds often lack the self-regulatory habits and metacognitive strategies to improve academic performance. In an effort to increase these scores and to increase student self-regulation and metacognition with regard to achievement in physics, this study investigated the use of metacognitive and self-regulatory strategies specifically as they apply to students' use of their own assessment data. Traditionally, student performance data is used …

Guidance On Performing Focused Ethnographies With An Emphasis On Healthcare Research, Gina M.A Higginbottom, Jennifer J. Pillay, Nana Y. Boadu

The Qualitative Report

Focused ethnographies can have meaningful and useful application in primary care, community, or hospital healthcare practice, and are often used to determine ways to improve care and care processes. They can be pragmatic and efficient ways to capture data on a specific topic of importance to individual clinicians or clinical specialties. While many examples of focused ethnographies are available in the literature, there is a limited availability of guidance documents for conducting this research. This paper defines focused ethnographies, locates them within the ethnographic genre, justifies their use in healthcare research, and outlines the methodological processes including those related to …

Enhancing Communication Between Scientists, Government Officials, And The Lay Public: Advancing Science And Protecting The Public's Welfare Through Better Multi-Stakeholder Interfacing, Clark J. Lee, Patrick P. Rose, Earl Stoddard Iii

Homeland Security Publications

No abstract provided.

Documentation Of Hiv Prevention Research And Programmatic Learnings From India—Selected Peer-Reviewed Journal Publications From The Knowledge Network Project (Volume 1), Population Council

HIV and AIDS

Over the past decade (2000–11), India has achieved dramatic successes in reversing the HIV epidemic. These successes are largely due to the implementation of upscaled HIV-prevention interventions by the National AIDS Control Organization, two other donors, and nongovernmental organizations, under the National AIDS Control Program III. As the epidemic in India is concentrated in vulnerable subpopulations, these interventions were focused on high-risk groups. It is important to understand the lessons learned from the implementation of HIV-prevention programs and the vulnerabilities that need to be addressed to reach the goal of zero new infections. To support this understanding, the Population Council …

Comparing Two-Year Community College And Four-Year University Student Social And Behavioral Sexually Transmitted Infection Risk Factors, Oswald M. Attin

Faculty Dissertations

Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) could cause ectopic, cervical cancer, infertility, and organ damage to the heart, kidneys, and brain. This study compared several behavioral risk factors of STIs (condom use, number of sexual partners, type of sex (anal or vaginal) and drinking habits) between two distinct educational settings and their association with socioeconomic risk factors such as low income and parent’s lower level of education that are known to increase the incidence of STIs among college-aged students. This study was based on the precautionary-health-behavior model, where individuals act regardless of consequences, and the health-behavior-change model, where individual behaviors either increase …

Fox In The Henhouse: A Study Of Police Officers Arrested For Crimes Associated With Domestic And/Or Family Violence, Philip M. Stinson, John Liederbach

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

The problem of violence within police families has been increasingly recognized as an important socio-legal issue, but there is a lack of empirical data on what has commonly been referred to as officer-involved domestic violence (OIDV). There are no comprehensive statistics available on OIDV and no government entity collects data on the criminal conviction of police officers for crimes associated with domestic and/or family violence. Prior self-report officer surveys are limited by the tendency to conceal instances of family violence and the interests of officers to maintain a "code of silence" to protect their careers. The purpose of the current …

A Study Of Drug-Related Police Corruption Arrests, Philip M. Stinson, John Liederbach, Steven L. Brewer, Hans Schmalzried, Brooke E. Mathna, Krista L. Long

Criminal Justice Faculty Publications

Purpose – The purpose of the study is to provide empirical data on cases of drug-related police corruption. It identifies and describes incidents in which police officers were arrested for criminal offenses associated with drug-related corruption.

Design/methodology/approach – The study is a quantitative content analysis of news articles identified through the Google News search engine using 48 automated Google Alerts queries. Statistical analyses include classification trees to examine causal pathways between drugs and corruption.

Findings – Data were analyzed on 221 drug-related arrest cases of officers employed by police agencies throughout the United States. Findings show that drug-related corruption involves …

A Toolkit For Developing Bilingual Lexicons For International Hiv Prevention Clinical Trials, Catalina B. Ramirez, Natasha Mack, Barbara Friedland

HIV and AIDS

No standardized process exists for developing a set of agreed upon terms, definitions, and translations in local languages that ensures participants understand both technical and nontechnical terms used in a clinical trial context. HIV prevention trials deal with a disease that is stigmatized and with sexual behaviors that may not be openly discussed, thus care must be taken in the selection of words to ensure terms are appropriate for use in the context of a clinical trial and understandable but not offensive. The lack of a standardized process can make it difficult for researchers to decide which words to use, …

Understanding The Behavior And Attitude Of Professional Athletes In Saudi Arabia Toward Dietary Supplements, Sulaiman O. Aljaloud

Dissertations

A dietary supplement is defined as a product taken orally that contains a "dietary ingredient" (vitamins, minerals, herbs, amino acids, enzymes, etc.), and is intended to supplement one's diet. Dietary supplements include plant extracts and concentrates from foods. Supplements help provide required nutrients to fulfill nutritional levels for daily training or competitive performance, and can help remedy nutritional deficiencies. Therefore, it is important that sports professionals have a thorough knowledge of these supplement products. However, athletes need to be informed about the use and possible benefits, side effects, and risks associated with the use of dietary supplements. Four objectives guided …

Scaling Up Advocacy For Gender-Based Violence And Child Sexual Abuse In The East, Central And Southern Africa Region: Technical Exchange And Meeting, East Central And Southern African Health Community

Reproductive Health

The East, Central and Southern Africa (ECSA) Health Community, which prioritizes gender-based violence and child sexual abuse as regional health concerns, partnered with the Population Council to convene a pre-conference Expert Committee meeting of the Research, Information and Advocacy Programme. The conference marked a major milestone in the ECSA Health Community’s commitment to promote and support region-wide sharing and utilization of health research and policy information among its member states. This report summarizes the deliberations of the two-day workshop and the recommendations for implementing an advocacy plan to address this important facet of the region’s development agenda.

Bringing Hope To Those Forgotten: Is The Provision Of Transitional And Supportive Housing Effective In Reducing Homelessness? A Quantitative Analysis Of Willbridge Of Santa Barbara, Inc., Melissa Cervantes

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

No abstract provided.

Topological And Historical Considerations For Infectious Disease Transmission Among Injecting Drug Users In Bushwick, Brooklyn (Usa), Kirk Dombrowski, Richard Curtis, Samuel Friedman, Bilal Khan

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

Recent interest by physicists in social networks and disease transmission factors has prompted debate over the topology of degree distributions in sexual networks. Social network researchers have been critical of “scale-free” Barabasi-Albert approaches, and largely rejected the preferential attachment, “rich-get-richer” assumptions that underlie that model. Instead, research on sexual networks has pointed to the importance of homophily and local sexual norms in dictating degree distributions, and thus disease transmission thresholds. Injecting Drug User (IDU) network topologies may differ from the emerging models of sexual networks, however. Degree distribution analysis of a Brooklyn, NY, IDU network indicates a different topology than …

Factors That Shape Environmental Perceptions: The Role Of Health And Place, Elizabeth Langlois

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Risk perception is the judgment people make about the characteristics and severity of a risk. Numerous theories and models exist which have identified the factors that influence risk perception. Among these factors, location, health status, and demographic characteristics are known to shape risk perception. To measure the influence of these factors on environmental perception, a series of surveys conducted in four Louisiana communities between 2004 and 2005 describe community perceptions about environmental issues and health status. The objective of the study was to characterize and compare environmental concerns relative to location, health status, and demographic characteristics. Results indicate that location …

Leadership Traits Of School Health Coordinators In Tennessee, Katherine Andrea Strickland

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this quantitative study was to explore the leadership traits of the school health coordinators (SHCs) for the state of Tennessee and to determine if self-perceptions of the SHC leadership traits coincide with supervisor and colleague perceptions of SHC leadership traits. The health challenges facing young Americans today are different from those of past decades and child health is a major federal and state policy platform. SHCs work at the nexus of 2 highly regulated and political entities: healthcare and education. Thus, it is critical for SHCs to possess strong leadership traits to navigate through the issues and …

Insights From Characterizing Extinct Human Gut Microbiomes, Raul Y. Tito, Dan Knights, Jessica Metcalf, Alexandra J. Obregon-Tito, Lauren M. Cleeland, Fares Najar, Bruce Roe, Karl Reinhard, Kristin D. Sobolik, Samuel L. Belknap, Morris Foster, Paul Spicer, Rob Knight, Cecil M. Lewis Jr.

Sociology & Anthropology Faculty Publications

In an effort to better understand the ancestral state of the human distal gut microbiome, we examine feces retrieved from archaeological contexts (coprolites). To accomplish this, we pyrosequenced the 16S rDNA V3 region from duplicate coprolite samples recovered from three archaeological sites, each representing a different depositional environment: Hinds Cave (~8000 years B.P.) in the southern United States, Caserones (1600 years B.P.) in northern Chile, and Rio Zape in northern Mexico (1400 years B.P.). Clustering algorithms grouped samples from the same site. Phyletic representation was more similar within sites than between them. A Bayesian approach to source-tracking was used to …

African American Women: The Face Of Hiv/Aids In Washington, Dc, Ndidiamaka N. Amutah

The Qualitative Report

In 2007, the estimated HIV and AIDS case rates among adult and adolescent African-American females in the United States was 60.6 per 100,000, as compared to 3.3 per 100,000 for adult and adolescent white American females. Women living with HIV or AIDS often face complex social problems that may inhibit them from accessing resources and healthcare services to assist them in coping with the disease. In-depth interviews and direct observations utilizing open-ended note taking were conducted at an HIV service provider’s office to determine the unique needs that develop because of these complex social issues, specifically among HIV positive women …

Prevalence And Antimicrobial Agent Susceptibility Of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus In Healthy Pediatric Outpatients In Las Vegas, Echezona E. Ezeanolue, Mark P. Buttner, Patricia Cruz, Joanne L. Henry, Chad L. Cross, Linda D. Stetzenbach

Nevada Journal of Public Health

Colonization and infection by community-associated resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus are being reported in epidemic proportions. The purpose of this study was to determine the local prevalence of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) colonization in children and to characterize the MRSA isolates in the laboratory with regard to antimicrobial agent susceptibility patterns, and the presence of the mecA and the Panton-Valentine leukocidin (PVL) genes. Nasal swabs were collected at two pediatric clinics from a total of 505 children during health maintenance visits. A brief questionnaire was administered to collect demographic data and pertinent medical, family, and social history. Samples were cultured …

Information On Small Populations With Significant Health Disparities: A Report On Data Collected On The Health Of Asian Americans In Massachusetts, Carolyn Wong, Hannah Hosotani, John Her

Institute for Asian American Studies Publications

An analysis of publicly available sources of data on Asian Americans in Massachusetts with recommendations on ways to improve this collection of data.

Our report begins with a discussion of the important issues of data collection and reporting and then discusses the particular challenges of collecting and reporting on data in Massachusetts. Profiles of major datasets based on records for administrative entities are presented such as the Massachusetts Cancer Registry, hospital discharges, MassHealth, and Medicare, and mortality and natality records. This is followed by a description of major datasets based on population surveys such as the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance …

Barriers To The Effective Implementation Of Immunization Information Systems In A Private Provider Setting, Echezona E. Ezeanolue, Ineada Jack, William Downey, Benjamin Hart, Chad L. Cross

Nevada Journal of Public Health

One of the goals of Healthy People 2010 is to increase the proportion of children less than 6 years of age with two or more vaccinations recorded in a fully operational population-based immunization information system to 95%. In 2008, we piloted the Nevada web-based immunization information system (WEBIZ) in a large private pediatric clinic in north-west Las Vegas. Our objectives were: (1) to determine compliance with the recommendation that all vaccine providers report immunization activities to the WEBIZ without a state mandate and (2) to determine perceived barriers to compliance and suggestions on how to overcome expressed barriers. We documented …