Using Ethnography to Explore HIV Risk Among Transgender Sex Workers in Washington, DC

2005 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 18-22
Author(s):  
Amy Hardt
Keyword(s):  
Hiv Infection ◽  
Ethnic Minority ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Health Workers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Income Status

In the United States, HIV/AIDS is a health issue that we tend to associate with developing countries in Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe. The quiet truth is that American HIV infections have remained steady over the past decade, with sex, gender, and race/ethnic minority populations disproportionately affected by AIDS in the 21st century. A subgroup that appears to have one of the highest rates of HIV infection is characterized by a confluence of sex/gender/race/ethnic minority attributes, as well as low-income status. This subgroup comprises male-to-female transgender individuals (MTFs) who engage in street-based commercial sex work (prostitution) in urban centers such as Washington, DC. MTF as a gender and sex work as an employment are not standard categories on the US census, so we do not have the kind of nationwide population data that would be necessary to generate a representative epidemiological profile for this sub-group. However, CDC surveillance does tell us that men of color who sleep with men (MSM) have a growing rate of HIV infection around the country, and the MSM category is understood to include most MTFs who reveal their status to health workers. Also, studies in several cities suggest that HIV among MTF transgenders, and MTF sex workers in particular, may be at epidemic levels. In a 1999-2000 study of 188 MTF transgenders living in the Washington, DC area, thirty-two percent (32%) reported their positive HIV status (Xavier 2000). In a similar study in San Francisco, thirty-five percent (35%) of 392 MTF transgenders actually tested seropositive (Clements-Nolle et al. 2001). Studies with MTF sex workers, such as one with 55 participants conducted in Atlanta, have found over fifty percent (50%) of samples infected with HIV (Boles and Elifson 1994).

It’s Not Just Sex: Relational Dynamics between Street-Based Sex Workers and Their Regular Customers

2021 ◽  
pp. 095001702110217
Author(s):  
Sharon S Oselin ◽  
Katie Hail-Jares
Keyword(s):  
Sex Work ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Service Industry ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Work Practices ◽  
Considerable Time ◽  
Economic Stability ◽  
Relational Dynamics ◽  
Relational Work ◽  
Boundary Setting

Establishing regular customers is an integral aspect of any service industry since they can increase profits and referrals. Most research on regulars within sex work focuses on indoor, high-end workers, who cultivate them through relational work practices. Yet very little is known about whether street-based sex workers employ these same tactics or even seek out regulars. This article draws upon interviews with 36 street-based sex workers in Washington, DC, USA. Sex workers dedicate considerable time and effort in order to retain regulars via relational work, noting such customers offer greater economic stability and fewer risks. Relational work also has disadvantages, exacerbated by the illicit and illegal nature of this work. Street-based sex workers navigate boundary setting and slippage as a part of retaining or rejecting regular clients. These findings have implications for policies that can reduce harms for sex workers and enhance their protections.

Conflict and Agency among Sex Workers and Pimps

2014 ◽  
Vol 653 (1) ◽  
pp. 225-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Marcus ◽  
Amber Horning ◽  
Ric Curtis ◽  
Jo Sanson ◽  
Efram Thompson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Young Adult ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Sex Trafficking ◽  
The United States ◽  
Child Sex Trafficking ◽  
Holistic Understanding ◽  
Effective Policy ◽  
The Relationship

The dominant understanding in the United States of the relationship between pimps and minors involved in commercial sex is that it is one of “child sex trafficking,” in which pimps lure girls into prostitution, then control, exploit, and brutalize them. Such narratives of oppression typically depend on postarrest testimonials by former prostitutes and pimps in punishment and rescue institutions. In contrast, this article presents data collected from active pimps, underage prostitutes, and young adult sex workers to demonstrate the complexity of pimp-prostitute dyads and interrogate conventional stereotypes about teenage prostitution. A holistic understanding of the factors that push minors into sex work and keep them there is needed to designand implement effective policy and services for this population.

scholarly journals Merchant Attitudes Toward a Healthy Food Retailer Incentive Program in a Low-Income San Francisco Neighborhood

2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 207-215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia A. McDaniel ◽  
Meredith Minkler ◽  
Lisa Juachon ◽  
Ryan Thayer ◽  
Jessica Estrada ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
Low Income ◽  
The United States ◽  
Healthy Food ◽  
Willingness To Participate ◽  
Healthy Foods ◽  
Incentive Program ◽  
Meeting Program ◽  
Food Retailer ◽  
Past Experiences

In low-income urban communities across the United States and globally, small stores frequently offer processed foods, sodas, alcohol, and tobacco but little access to healthy products. To help address this problem, the city of San Francisco created a healthy food retailer incentive program. Its success depends, in part, on retailers’ willingness to participate. Through in-person interviews, we explored attitudes toward the program among store owners or managers of 17 nonparticipating stores. Eleven merchants were uninterested in the program due to negative past experiences trying to sell healthier products, perceived lack of customer demand, and fears that meeting program requirements could hurt profits. Six merchants expressed interest, seeing demand for or opportunity in healthy foods, foreseeing few difficulties in meeting program requirements, and regarding the assistance offered as appealing. Other municipalities considering such interventions should consider merchants’ perspectives, and how best to challenge or capitalize on retailers’ previous experiences with selling healthy foods.

scholarly journals Identifying Risk Factors and Spatial Clustering of HIV Infection Among Female Sex Workers in India

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-53
Author(s):  
Elangovan Arumugam ◽  
Vasna Joshua ◽  
Santhakumar Aridoss ◽  
Ganesh Balasubramanian ◽  
Nagaraj Jaganathasamy ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
High Risk ◽  
Hiv Infection ◽  
Sex Work ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Female Sex Workers ◽  
Component Analysis ◽  
Index Score ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Female Sex ◽  
Selling Sex

Background: The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) epidemic in India is generally considered to be more concentrated, with the focus on high-risk groups including female sex workers (FSWs). The Integrated Biological and Behavioral Surveillance (IBBS), the first nationwide surveillance conducted during 2014-2015, collected many key indicators, including indicators related to HIV/STI transmission. The purpose of this study was to develop an index score for each domain surveyed and to identify focus areas for interventions among FSWs. Methods: The study population consisted of 27,007 FSWs. Forty high-risk related covariates of HIV/STI transmission, demographic characteristics, sexual history, condom practices, knowledge of HIV/STI and biological variables were considered. The original data set was examined using the correlation matrix and was reduced to 15 highly-correlated factors using principal component analysis. The factors were further improved using varimax rotation and the percentage of variation was used as weights to obtain the initial score for each domain, which were then standardized for comparison. Bartlett’s test of sphericity was examined before the factor extraction. Results: Six factors were extracted, which together explained about 73% of the total variation. The factors were: (1) more number of clients; (2) younger FSW and started selling sex at younger age; (3) experiencing condom breakage; (4) having occasional clients and poor HIV/AIDS knowledge; (5) illiteracy; and (6) a longer period of sex work. Six domains with an index score of above 80, from the states of Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Arunachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Jharkhand need greater intervention. Conclusion and Implications for Translation: FSWs’ current age, age at commencement of sex work, and the number of clients were the indicators most-associated with HIV infection. Therefore, program and policy interventions should focus on FSWs who are younger than <25 years, who started selling sex at <22 years, and who have >10 clients. Key words: • Female Sex Worker • Kriged Map • Factor Analysis • Principle Component Analysis • HIV • Sexually Transmitted Infections   Copyright © 2021 Elangovan et al. Published by Global Health and Education Projects, Inc. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in this journal, is properly cited.

scholarly journals Community health workers at the dawn of a new era

2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (S3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph M. Zulu ◽  
Henry B. Perry
Keyword(s):  
Community Health ◽  
Population Health ◽  
Community Health Workers ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Health Workers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Noncommunicable Diseases ◽  
Full Potential ◽  
New Era

Abstract Background There is now rapidly growing global awareness of the potential of large-scale community health worker (CHW) programmes not only for improving population health but, even more importantly, for accelerating the achievement of universal health coverage and eliminating readily preventable child and maternal deaths. However, these programmes face many challenges that must be overcome in order for them to reach their full potential. Findings This editorial introduces a series of 11 articles that provide an overview highlighting a broad range of issues facing large-scale CHW programmes. The series addresses many of them: planning, coordination and partnerships; governance, financing, roles and tasks, training, supervision, incentives and remuneration; relationships with the health system and communities; and programme performance and its assessment. Above all, CHW programmes need stronger political and financial support, and this can occur only if the potential of these programmes is more broadly recognized. The authors of the papers in this series believe that these challenges can and will be overcome—but not overnight. For this reason, the series bears the title “Community Health Workers at the Dawn of a New Era”. The scientific evidence regarding the ability of CHWs to improve population health is incontrovertible, and the favourable experience with these programmes at scale when they are properly designed, implemented, and supported is compelling. CHW programmes were once seen as a second-class solution to a temporary problem, meaning that once the burden of disease from maternal and child conditions and from communicable diseases in low-income countries had been appropriately reduced, there would be no further need for CHWs. That perspective no longer holds. CHW programmes are now seen as an essential component of a high-performing healthcare system even in developed countries. Their use is growing rapidly in the United States, for instance. And CHWs are also now recognized as having a critically important role in the control of noncommunicable diseases as well as in the response to pandemics of today and tomorrow in all low-, middle-, and high-income countries throughout the world. Conclusion The promise of CHW programmes is too great not to provide them with the support they need to achieve their full potential. This series helps to point the way for how this support can be provided.

Distributive Justice for LGBTQ People

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Libby Adler
Keyword(s):  
Low Income ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
Homeless Youth ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cultural Transformation ◽  
Full Spectrum ◽  
Reform Agenda ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Legal Reforms

Leading advocates for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) advancement in the United States debate the central objectives of the movement as well as its proper reformist scope. On the libertarian right, gay rights proponents articulate a narrow vision, devoid of race or class consciousness and focused on obtaining formal equality through spare legal reforms—mainly access to marriage and military inclusion. On the left, advocates envision a larger cultural transformation, one that intersects with racial and economic justice and challenges the norms of powerful institutions such as family, capitalism, and the military. A review of empirical research demonstrates that the needs in the LGBTQ community are diverse and, in many cases, urgent. The most privileged, along axes of race and class, may have few concerns apart from protection against discrimination and formal exclusion from major social institutions. Once the full spectrum of LGBTQ demographics and experience are considered, however, such a constricted range of reform objectives reveals itself to be insufficient to address such obstacles as hunger, homelessness, and unemployment. A fresh approach to evaluating LGBTQ legal needs yields an equally fresh set of alternatives to the mainstream legal reform agenda. An intersectionally and distributively cognizant shift in the movement’s direction could advance the needs of the most disadvantaged members of the community, including homeless youth, transgender sex workers, and low-income parents.

scholarly journals Transferring Racial/Ethnic Marketing Strategies From Tobacco to Food Corporations: Philip Morris and Kraft General Foods

2020 ◽  
Vol 110 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-336 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim H. Nguyen ◽  
Stanton A. Glantz ◽  
Casey N. Palmer ◽  
Laura A. Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Minority ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Tobacco Industry ◽  
The United States ◽  
Community Action ◽  
Target Marketing ◽  
Marketing Program ◽  
Philip Morris ◽  
Food And Beverage ◽  
Racial Ethnic

Objectives. To investigate the transfer of marketing knowledge and infrastructure for targeting racial/ethnic minorities from the tobacco to the food and beverage industry in the United States. Methods. We analyzed internal industry documents between April 2018 and April 2019 from the University of California San Francisco Truth Tobacco Industry Documents Library, triangulated with other sources. Results. In the 1980s, Philip Morris Companies purchased General Foods and Kraft Foods and created Kraft General Foods. Through centralized marketing initiatives, Philip Morris Companies directly transferred expertise, personnel, and resources from its tobacco to its food subsidiaries, creating a racial/ethnic minority–targeted food and beverage marketing program modeled on its successful cigarette program. When Philip Morris Companies sold Kraft General Foods in 2007, Kraft General Foods had a “fully integrated” minority marketing program that combined target marketing with racial/ethnic events promotion, racial/ethnic media outreach, and corporate donations to racial/ethnic leadership groups, making it a food industry leader. Conclusions. The tobacco industry directly transferred racial/ethnic minority marketing knowledge and infrastructure to food and beverage companies. Given the substantial growth of food and beverage corporations, their targeting of vulnerable populations, and obesity-related disparities, public policy and community action is needed to address corporate target marketing.

Conclusion

Camming ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 229-250
Author(s):  
Angela Jones
Keyword(s):  
Sex Work ◽  
Sex Workers ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
Global Network ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Individual Freedom ◽  
Critical Question ◽  
Critical Issues ◽  
Essential Questions

The conclusion examines critical issues regarding the growth of online sex work and how since the introduction of the Internet laws have not been adequately updated. It raises several essential questions about the future of online sex work and the law. Additionally, the current anti–sex work climate in the United States and the fear of litigation created by policies such as FOSTA are beginning to reverberate throughout the global network of sex work industries. Perhaps the conditions created by FOSTA, alongside the existing exploitation, discrimination, and harassment cam models regularly face, will be the catalyst for political mobilization. At this point, there are no indications that among cam models any movement toward unionization or collective struggle to challenge capitalist exploitation is afoot. Another critical question emerges, If cam models do organize, what would resolve their experiences of exploitation, discrimination, doxing, harassment, and privacy violations? The conclusion uses the case of the movement to decriminalize prostitution to explore how many sex workers survive state-sponsored violence by politically drawing on neoliberal ideologies about individual freedom and liberties.

History of Medical Informatics: Fifty Years in Medical Informatics

2006 ◽  
Vol 15 (01) ◽  
pp. 174-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morris Collen
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
Medical Informatics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Medical Decision ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Kaiser Permanente ◽  
Karolinska Institute ◽  
History Of ◽  
Computer Based ◽  
The Many

SummaryAn overview of personal experiences in medical informatics based on Dr. Morris Collen’s 50 years of research in the field.A personal reminiscence and historical overview, focusing on the first two decades of medical informatics, when Dr. Collen began working with Dr. Sidney Garfield, the founder of Kaiser Permanente, leading to his involvement in computer-based medical care, through the development of the pioneering Automated Multiphasic Health Testing (AMHT) system, which they introduced into Kaiser clinics in Oakland and San Francisco.Statistical models for medical decision-making based on consultations with Jerzy Neyman and George Dantzig were incorporated into the AMHT, and tested on a large database of cases. Meetings with other pioneers in medical informatics at the Karolinska Institute led to the formation of the early society Salutas Unitas, and the many national and international collaborations which followed during the first two decades helped coalesce the field as clinicians and researchers investigated problems of medical data, decision support, and laboratory, hospital, and library information systems.Dr. Collen’s research and his many medical informatics activities significantly contributed to the growth of the field. The U.S. contributions are covered extensively in his book, A History of Medical Informatics in the United States, 1950-1990. Washington, DC: Am Med Informatics Association 1995.

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