Pained

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Stein ◽  
Sandro Galea
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Structural Components ◽  
Racial Equity ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Gender

As a country, the United States overinvests in medical care, often at the expense of the social, economic, and cultural forces that produce health. Indeed, the rise of medicine as a cornerstone of American life and culture has coincided with a social and political devaluation of factors demonstrated to mean more to one’s vitality than anything else—influences like where one lives, works, and plays; livable wages that create opportunity for healthy living; and gender and racial equity. As such, this book moves the conversation around American health toward matters of class, money, and culture. It highlights how the structural components of everyday life ultimately determine who gets to be healthy in today’s America. In doing so, it makes a case for reframing the political discourse on public health in less myopic, more effectual terms.

Structural Transphobia, Homophobia, and Biphobia in Public Health Practice: The Example of COVID-19 Surveillance

2021 ◽  
pp. e1-e7
Author(s):  
Randall L. Sell ◽  
Elise I. Krims
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Public Health Surveillance ◽  
Public Health Practice ◽  
The United States ◽  
Health Surveillance ◽  
Essential Information ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Public Health Surveillance System

Public health surveillance can have profound impacts on the health of populations, with COVID-19 surveillance offering an illuminating example. Surveillance surrounding COVID-19 testing, confirmed cases, and deaths has provided essential information to public health professionals about how to minimize morbidity and mortality. In the United States, surveillance has also pointed out how populations, on the basis of geography, age, and race and ethnicity, are being impacted disproportionately, allowing targeted intervention and evaluation. However, COVID-19 surveillance has also highlighted how the public health surveillance system fails some communities, including sexual and gender minorities. This failure has come about because of the haphazard and disorganized way disease reporting data are collected, analyzed, and reported in the United States, and the structural homophobia, transphobia, and biphobia acting within these systems. We provide recommendations for addressing these concerns after examining experiences collecting race data in COVID-19 surveillance and attempts in Pennsylvania and California to incorporate sexual orientation and gender identity variables into their pandemic surveillance efforts. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print June 10, 2021: e1–e7. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.3062727 )

The Partisan Next Door

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ethan C. Busby ◽  
Adam J. Howat ◽  
Jacob E. Rothschild ◽  
Richard M. Shafranek
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Partisan Conflict ◽  
Democrats And Republicans ◽  
Political Realm

In the United States, politics has become tribal and personalized. The influence of partisan divisions has extended beyond the political realm into everyday life, affecting relationships and workplaces as well as the ballot box. To help explain this trend, we examine the stereotypes Americans have of ordinary Democrats and Republicans. Using data from surveys, experiments, and Americans' own words, we explore the content of partisan stereotypes and find that they come in three main flavors—parties as their own tribes, coalitions of other tribes, or vehicles for political issues. These different stereotypes influence partisan conflict: people who hold trait-based stereotypes tend to display the highest levels of polarization, while holding issue-based stereotypes decreases polarization. This finding suggests that reducing partisan conflict does not require downplaying partisan divisions but shifting the focus to political priorities rather than identity—a turn to what we call responsible partisanship.

scholarly journals Beyond quarantine: a history of leprosy in Puerto Rico, 1898-1930s

2003 ◽  
Vol 10 (suppl 1) ◽  
pp. 225-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie H. Levison
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
Social History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Political Events ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Individual

From biblical times to the modern period, leprosy has been a disease associated with stigma. This mark of disgrace, physically present in the sufferers' sores and disfigured limbs, and embodied in the identity of a 'leper', has cast leprosy into the shadows of society. This paper draws on primary sources, written in Spanish, to reconstruct the social history of leprosy in Puerto Rico when the United States annexed this island in 1898. The public health policies that developed over the period of 1898 to the 1930s were unique to Puerto Rico because of the interplay between political events, scientific developments and popular concerns. Puerto Rico was influenced by the United States' priorities for public health, and the leprosy control policies that developed were superimposed on vestiges of the colonial Spanish public health system. During the United States' initial occupation, extreme segregation sacrificed the individual rights and liberties of these patients for the benefit of society. The lives of these leprosy sufferers were irrevocably changed as a result.

scholarly journals The rising crisis of illicit fentanyl use, overdose, and potential therapeutic strategies

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ying Han ◽  
Wei Yan ◽  
Yongbo Zheng ◽  
Muhammad Zahid Khan ◽  
Kai Yuan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Severe Pain ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
The United States ◽  
Therapeutic Strategies ◽  
Public Health Threat ◽  
Reduction Strategies ◽  
Overdose Deaths

Abstract Fentanyl is a powerful opioid anesthetic and analgesic, the use of which has caused an increasing public health threat in the United States and elsewhere. Fentanyl was initially approved and used for the treatment of moderate to severe pain, especially cancer pain. However, recent years have seen a growing concern that fentanyl and its analogs are widely synthesized in laboratories and adulterated with illicit supplies of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and counterfeit pills, contributing to the exponential growth in the number of drug-related overdose deaths. This review summarizes the recent epidemic and evolution of illicit fentanyl use, its pharmacological mechanisms and side effects, and the potential clinical management and prevention of fentanyl-related overdoses. Because social, economic, and health problems that are related to the use of fentanyl and its analogs are growing, there is an urgent need to implement large-scale safe and effective harm reduction strategies to prevent fentanyl-related overdoses.

Technologies to Detect Concealed Weapons: Fourth Amendment Limits on a New Public Health and Law Enforcement Tool

2003 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 567-579 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jon S. Vernick ◽  
Matthew W. Pierce ◽  
Daniel W. Webster ◽  
Sara B. Johnson ◽  
Shannon Frattaroli
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Public Health Problem ◽  
The United States ◽  
Major Public Health Problem ◽  
Public Places ◽  
New Public Health ◽  
Gun Carrying ◽  
New Public ◽  
The Social

Firearm violence is a major public health problem in the United States. In 2000, firearms were used in 10,801 homicides – two-thirds of all homicides in the U.S. – and 533,470 non-fatal criminal victimizations including rapes, robberies, and assaults. The social costs of gun violence in the United States are also staggering, and have been estimated to be on the order of $100 billion per year.Illegal gun carrying, usually concealed, in public places is an important risk factor for firearm-related crime. In the 1980s and 1990s, police departments across the country began to develop and implement strategies to address illegal weapons carrying. Often these strategies have involved aggressive efforts to identify and physically search individuals suspected of illegally carrying a firearm.

scholarly journals The Black Lives Matter movement and health inequalities

2021 ◽  
pp. 01-04
Author(s):  
Jagriti Gangopadhyay
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Racial Disparities ◽  
Online Community ◽  
Public Health System ◽  
Health Sector ◽  
The United States ◽  
Racial Inequalities ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
And Gender

With the recent Black Lives Matter movement, existing racial inequalities in various sectors of the United States have regained prominence. Due to the pandemic, statistics on racial disparities in the health sector have been aggravated. On a related note, while the #Black Lives Matter movement received substantial support from India’s online community, deeply entrenched inequalities in terms of caste, community and gender in India’s health sector need to be critically evaluated as well. This paper is an attempt to understand how the awareness generated by the Black Lives Matter movement could be an opportunity to address structural inequalities in India’s own public health system.

scholarly journals Social Capital Dimensions are Differentially Associated with COVID-19 Vaccinations, Masks, and Physical Distancing

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ibtihal Ferwana ◽  
Lav R. Varshney
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Social Capital ◽  
Community Health ◽  
Collective Efficacy ◽  
Residential Mobility ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
The Social ◽  
Family Unity

Background Social capital has been associated with health outcomes in communities and can explain variations in different geographic localities. Social capital has also been associated with behaviors that promote better health and reduce the impacts of diseases. During the COVID-19 pandemic, social distancing, face masking, and vaccination have all been essential in controlling contagion. These behaviors have not been uniformly adopted by communities in the United States. Using different facets of social capital to explain the differences in public behaviors among communities during pandemics is lacking. Objective This study examines the relationship among public health behavior, vaccination, face masking, and physical distancing during COVID-19 pandemic and social capital indices in counties in the United States. Methods We used publicly available vaccination data as of June 2021, face masking data in July 2020, and mobility data from mobile phones movements from the end of March 2020. Then, correlation analysis was conducted with county-level social capital index and its subindices (family unity, community health, institutional health, and collective efficacy) that were obtained from the Social Capital Project by the United States Senate. Results We found the social capital index and its subindices differentially correlate with different public health behaviors. Vaccination is associated with institutional health: positively with fully vaccinated population and negatively with vaccination hesitancy. Also, wearing masks negatively associates with community health, whereases reduced mobility associates with better community health. Further, residential mobility positively associates with family unity. By comparing correlation coefficients, we find that social capital and its subindices have largest effect sizes on vaccination and residential mobility. Conclusion Our results show that different facets of social capital are significantly associated with adoption of protective behaviors, e.g., social distancing, face masking, and vaccination. As such, our results suggest that differential facets of social capital imply a Swiss cheese model of pandemic control planning where, e.g., institutional health and community health, provide partially overlapping behavioral benefits.

scholarly journals Social capital dimensions are differentially associated with COVID-19 vaccinations, masks, and physical distancing

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (12) ◽  
pp. e0260818
Author(s):  
Ibtihal Ferwana ◽  
Lav R. Varshney
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Social Capital ◽  
Community Health ◽  
Collective Efficacy ◽  
Residential Mobility ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
The Social ◽  
Family Unity

Background Social capital has been associated with health outcomes in communities and can explain variations in different geographic localities. Social capital has also been associated with behaviors that promote better health and reduce the impacts of diseases. During the COVID-19 pandemic, social distancing, face masking, and vaccination have all been essential in controlling contagion. These behaviors have not been uniformly adopted by communities in the United States. Using different facets of social capital to explain the differences in public behaviors among communities during pandemics is lacking. Objective This study examines the relationship among public health behavior—vaccination, face masking, and physical distancing—during COVID-19 pandemic and social capital indices in counties in the United States. Methods We used publicly available vaccination data as of June 2021, face masking data in July 2020, and mobility data from mobile phones movements from the end of March 2020. Then, correlation analysis was conducted with county-level social capital index and its subindices (family unity, community health, institutional health, and collective efficacy) that were obtained from the Social Capital Project by the United States Senate. Results We found the social capital index and its subindices differentially correlate with different public health behaviors. Vaccination is associated with institutional health: positively with fully vaccinated population and negatively with vaccination hesitancy. Also, wearing masks negatively associates with community health, whereases reduced mobility associates with better community health. Further, residential mobility positively associates with family unity. By comparing correlation coefficients, we find that social capital and its subindices have largest effect sizes on vaccination and residential mobility. Conclusion Our results show that different facets of social capital are significantly associated with adoption of protective behaviors, e.g., social distancing, face masking, and vaccination. As such, our results suggest that differential facets of social capital imply a Swiss cheese model of pandemic control planning where, e.g., institutional health and community health, provide partially overlapping behavioral benefits.

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