Fat in the Fire? Science,the News Media,and the “Obesity Epidemic”2

In recent years, the “obesity epidemic” has emerged as a putative public health crisis. This article examines the interconnected role of medical science and news reporting in shaping the way obesity is framed as a social problem. Drawing on a sample of scientific publications on weight and health, and press releases and news reporting on these publications, we compare and contrast social problem frames in medical science and news reporting. We find substantial overlap in science and news reporting, but the news media do dramatize more than the studies on which they are reporting and are more likely than the original science to highlight individual blame for weight. This is partly due to the news media’s tendency to report more heavily on the most alarmist and individual‐blaming scientific studies. We find some evidence that press releases also shape which articles receive media coverage and how they are framed.     

The effect of comment moderation on perceived bias in science news

Uncivil comments following online news articles about issues of science and technology have been shown to lead to biased interpretations of the news content itself. Using an experiment embedded in a nationally representative survey, we provide evidence that cues about comment moderation ? even without any change in the comments themselves ? have the potential to alleviate this so-called nasty effect. Participants exposed to uncivil comments that appear in a moderated environment were less likely to perceive bias in the news article itself. Importantly, perceptions of bias among respondents exposed to the uncivil, moderated stimulus were comparable to those of respondents who viewed both moderated and unmoderated civil comments. Our results suggest that visible cues about comment moderation are a potentially valuable endeavor for news organizations, especially in an age of declining profit margins.     

Physical, social and emotional function after work accidents: a medicolegal perspective

The aim of this study was to analyse social and functional consequences of work accidents in a group of workers' compensation claimants who had been referred from the National Insurance Administration for a medicolegal assessment. The injured workers were evaluated on average 3 years after their accidents. Their medical records were analysed, and each injury was scored according to the Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS). Participants completed the Short Form Questionnaire (SF-36). Factors relating to outcome on SF-36 were analysed using univariate and multivariate methods. 191 claimants returned the SF-36 (62%), 83% of the respondents had an AIS score of less than two, 33% reported working full time. Compared to population-based norms, the respondents reported significantly reduced health on all eight scales of SF-36. Better health and function was mainly associated with a higher level of education and more serious injuries. The extent of social support in the workplace after the accident was only partly related to outcome. The importance of psychosocial factors when making injury assessments in a medicolegal setting is highlighted.     

Measuring the Frequency of Regular Behaviors: Comparing the "Typical Week" to the "Past Week"

Social scientists often measure the frequency with which people perform behaviors executed regularly throughout their daily lives, but there is no standard approach to this measurement task: some investigators have asked respondents about their behavior during a "usual" or "typical" day, week, or month, whereas others sought to describe the same sorts of behavior patterns by asking about the most recent day, week, or month. This paper compares the validity of "typical" week and "past" week reports for assessing habitual behavior patterns using data from the 1989 National Election Study Pilot, in which respondents were randomly assigned to report TV news program and newspaper exposure during either a typical week or the past week. The predictive validity of the measures was assessed using objective tests of current events knowledge and identification of political figures, as well as self–assessments of political knowledge. The typical week questions consistently manifested superior predictive validity, especially among the most educated respondents.     

Converging technologies in the Italian daily press 2002–2006: preliminary results of an ongoing research project

The article introduces the preliminary results of an ongoing research project aiming to explore how the promises of NBIC to improve and cure the human mind and body are portrayed and what themes and actors the coverage makes salient in the public discourse. Focusing on the Italian daily press in the period 2002–2006, news stories about the two application areas of converging technologies related to brain enhancement and human–machine interfaces are examined here. Preliminary findings show an overwhelmingly positive coverage and a hegemonic position of natural and life scientists and medical doctors in the media discourse on converging technologies.     

HOW HEALTH STATUS IMPACTS THE TYPES OF INFORMATION CONSUMERS SEEK ONLINE

A few studies examine what types of health information people seek online, yet we know little about how this varies by health status. To examine this question we used data collected from a random sample of 2,038 adults for the Pew Internet and American Life Project, which asked respondents in the United States whether they searched for 16 different types of information. These 16 topics were grouped into three broad areas, including medical conditions and treatments, health issues (e.g. diet and smoking cessation), and providers and payment (e.g. a particular hospital). To build on prior literature, two measures of health status were used: a self-report and the presence of a medical condition. The data suggest that health status impacts the types of health or medical information people seek on the Internet. Self-reported health status was not significantly related to any of the topics; however, respondents diagnosed with a disability or chronic disease were more likely to seek medical information on 13 of the 16 topics addressed. These include specific diseases or medical conditions, medical treatments or procedures, experimental treatments or medicines, alternative treatments or medicines, pharmaceutical or over-the-counter drugs, diet, immunizations, smoking cessation, depression, sexual health, environmental health hazards, a particular physician or hospital, and Medicaid/Medicare (governmental health programs in the United States for the poor and elderly). These results suggest that individuals in the United States who have a medical condition are more likely than healthy individuals to research most health topics online. The Internet can provide consumers with a wealth of information on issues of health and illness, yet healthcare providers need to educate consumers to be cautious given the range in quality.     

Community,Family, and Race/Ethnic Differences in Health Status in Rural Areas1

Abstract Many race-specific differences in health outcomes that have been observed in previous research have been attributed to class and racebased group differences which either facilitate or constrain health opportunities and behaviors. These include such variables as different rates of poverty, health insurance coverage, and access to medical care. However, these relationships have been inadequately examined in rural communities where minority status may be even more detrimental to health than in urban areas, due to various constraints on access to health care. We present an analysis that assesses the effects of community, family structure, sociodemographic, and medical care variables on self-reported health status among Hispanics, Mrican Americans, and non-Hispanic whites in six rural communities in Florida. Community structural characteristics had a significant effect on self-reported health, as did some of the measures of how respondents “experience” community. These relationships held even when other sets of variables were added to the models. Family/household characteristics and sociodemographic and medical care variables were less important in explaining self-reported health status. These findings suggest that community continues to be important in explaining differences in health status in rural areas.     

Charity Care in Crisis: Reclaiming a Lost Professional Ethic

Abstract

The concept of “charity care” is a fundamental principle in the practice of medicine. This paper examines the origins of the construct charity, the expansion of charitable care during the Middle Ages, and its gradual secularization throughout the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. The paper then highlights the transformation of Almshouses, Infirmaries and Dispensaries into charitable institutions of medical science in the nineteenth century with the birth of progressivism during the early twentieth century. A conceptual model is then presented that depicts the erosion and qualitative changes in charity care as a result ofthe corporatization of health care over the course of the last century. The construct of charity care is now in crisis. The medical profession has gradually disassociated from its obligation of charitable care as an ethical precept for the practice of medicine. The paper ends with a challenge to reclaim and renew the importance of charity in the provision of health services.     

Critical Theory and Medical Care in America: Changing Doctor–Patient Dynamics

This paper examines the potential for theory to adapt to changing contexts of health in the western world. The commoditization of health and the ideology of biomedicine affects social life in creating dependency, social control, and vast inequalities. At the same time, increased access and diversity of consumer health knowledge as evidenced by the use of the Internet and the sharp rise in alternative medicine point to a different dialectic between doctor and patient and the potential for transforming diagnostic, treatment, and economic components of health care. Recent trends suggest increasing patient autonomy and the possibility of a re-emergence of medical pluralism. New theoretical directions should be considered by social scientists in order to more fully understand these changes.     

Measurement for a human science

This paper argues a number of points about measurement in the sociology of mental health: (1) measurement is critical, (2) measures should represent and assess elements of human experience, taking measure of life as people feel it, sense it, and understand it, and (3) social scientists should create a human science, producing information for the people it studies so that they can better understand and control their own lives. We argue that a human science is best achieved with the use of indexes, not diagnoses, to measure mental health. We present a brief history of diagnostic instruments and detail how a diagnosis is made. We show how use of diagnoses to measure mental health discounts much human suffering. They dichotomize the true range of feelings and emotions into crude either/or distinctions that do not reflect the reality of people's lives, and they often exclude suffering such as that due to loss or illness that does not meet medical model preconceptions about mental disorder. Using diagnoses to measure mental health presents a reified image of hidden disease knowable and manageable only by trained professionals--beyond the capacity of the suffering individuals to understand and control.     

Implications of urbanism for the use of local news media: effects of population concentration on types of news acquisition in Japan

The Internet, a global computer network enabling people to send and receive information anywhere in the world, also functions as a local medium of communication. This study focuses on the role of the Internet in transmitting local news and examines the effects of community population concentrations as socio-ecological environments on the use of local news media consumed online and offline. Data from 1367 respondents across 156 Japanese communities were used to analyze the relationships between type of community and type of news source. The findings suggest that people who live in highly populated communities tend more often to use the Internet to access local news, whereas those in less populated communities tend to use more traditional mass media. However, the results of this study did not show a relationship between population concentrations within communities and the acquisition of international news, nor did the social features of residents adequately explain the effects of population concentration on the acquisition of local news. These results are consistent with theoretical predictions based on network externalities, urbanism, and collective action. The findings indicate that local news consumption is embedded in local social contexts in a way that international news is not, reinforcing the importance of urbanism in the information age.     

The relationship between medical education and trans health disparities: a call to research

According to the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, 28% of trans respondents reported postponing medical care due to discrimination, and 28% reported being harassed by providers when they did seek out care. Scholars have proposed that what is taught (or not) in medical schools might play a role in the unequal health care experienced by many trans people. As medical education becomes a site of intervention for reducing transgender health disparities, it presents opportunities for sociologists to study and explain the processes by which medical training creates, reinforces, and potentially challenges stigma‐related health disparities. In this paper, we propose three areas of inquiry that might help explain this situation: the hidden curriculum, patient health movements and consumerism, and medical competency. By employing these concepts, we argue that sociologists can develop more comprehensive explanations for the relationship between medical education and transgender health inequalities and offer solutions to address this disparity.     

Needs and beliefs in construct accessibility: Keys to new understanding

In a general-population survey of 390 Ohioans, respondents rated five concepts as to closeness of linkage with osteopathic medicine. As suggested by the storage-bin concept in construct-accessibility theory, those who had experience with these concepts were most apt to use them in assessing osteopathic medicine. This held even though most respondents reported no contact with osteopathy.Also, those satisfied with their health insurance tended more than others to weigh “niceties” such as wellness heavily in assessing osteopathy. At the other extreme, persons without health insurance gave strong emphasis to cost-containment when evaluating this health-care school.     

Knowledge,boundaries, and bodies: Social construction between medical sociology and science and technology studies

Medical sociology and science and technology studies (STS) emerged from different positions, but often closely related concerns, within the broad discipline of sociology. Their interface and areas of overlap have mostly been shaped by theoretical positions broadly considered “social constructionist.” Taken together, these perspectives provide empirical and theoretical tools to analyze important questions about how social inequalities, forms of scientific knowledge, and patterns of human health come to be produced and feedback into one another. Examining their intersection enables sociological questions such as: How is medical and public health scientific knowledge produced, stabilized, and taken as fact? How are scientific facts about health and illness used, experienced, and challenged? What is the relationship between health inequalities and public health or medical knowledge? This article seeks to briefly trace the important contributions that social constructionist research has made at the interstices of medical sociology and STS, further clarifying the history, points of intersection, and areas of diversion between them. The current COVID-19 pandemic has unveiled the political struggles that constitute public health scientific knowledge and circulation. The interface between STS and medical sociology can help us to make sense of the interrelationships between politics, power inequalities, and public health scientific knowledge.     

中国药膳的奇功妙效(英文)

中国的医学、药学源远流长,久负盛名。而根据阴阳五行之术,集中医、中药学原理和中国膳食为一体的中国药膳,更堪称一绝。由于药膳可以通过精细的烹调制成,这种特殊的美味可口的良药深受百姓,特别是女性的喜爱。现代营养学的研究大大推进了药膳的发展,药膳正走上中西医结合的良好发展之路,它将为世界人民的健康做出贡献。     

Crime news,fear of crime,and mistrust: an examination of protective factors against influences of local crime news

This study investigates interpersonal communication ties and a neighborhood context as moderators of the influences of local crime news on fear of crime and mistrust. Data from a web survey of residents in Chicago show that the relationship between attention to local crime news and fear of crime is weaker for respondents who more frequently communicate with neighbors both intimately and casually and who live in more walkable neighborhoods. Data also indicate that the relationship between local crime news and mistrust is weaker for those who more often communicate with neighbors intimately and live in more walkable neighborhoods. Findings are discussed in terms of protective factors against the negative influences of local crime news.     

Investigating GM risk perceptions: A survey of anti-GM and environmental campaign group members

This study investigates how members of anti-GM campaign groups and environment groups perceive the risks and benefits of genetically modified (GM) technology in food and agriculture. The study targeted these groups as the most risk-averse sector of society when considering GM technology. Survey respondents were asked to rank the current and future risks and benefits of GM and to rank GM risks against other health risks. Respondents appear to be unconvinced by the claims that future GM technologies will provide additional consumer (or environmental) benefit, since perceived future risks were ranked more highly than future benefits. Results support the claim that there is an inverse relationship between perceived risk and perceived benefit. Results also suggest that among the respondents there are differences of opinion regarding the degree of risk to health posed by the technology. Women and people living in rural areas, on average, ranked risks more highly than men and people living in urban areas. This study serves to fill a void in the understanding of the perceptions of anti-GM campaigners.     

THE EMERGING ROLE OF THE MEDICAL SOCIOLOGIST IN PALLIATIVE CARE SETTINGS

The demographics of a rapidly aging society and the chronic nature of contemporary illness intersect in the twenty-first century to confront medicine with the challenge of reenvisioning health care at life's end. Using analytic, interpretive, and reflexive tools, the medical sociologist can assist health care teams in improving quality of life terminally ill patients and their caregivers. In this article, we explore the role of the medical sociologist in palliative care settings, discuss ways to integrate that role into the day-to-day processes of palliative medicine, and identify three areas of intervention where medical sociologists can bring a unique perspective to end-of-life settings. We conclude by examining impediments to the inclusion of the medical sociologist on the clinical team and discussing how these barriers can be addressed.     

Guinea Pig Kids: Myths or Modern Tuskegees?

The Tuskegee syphilis study represents a nadir in health research in the U.S., when individuals' bodies were used to satisfy researchers' curiosity with no anticipated clinical benefit. The study is often used as a teaching case, in research methods and biomedical ethics training, symbolizing the past, before the federal government intervened and created human protections regulations to protect participants. The Tuskegee study continues to have other ripple effects, contributing to African Americans' distrust of health research. This paper analyzes three medical studies from the 1990s that involved African American children. We examine the institutional actors that implemented these studies, and the community members of color who protested against them, and compare the tone of media accounts in African American and mainstream publications. We find that powerful governmental and medical institutions collaborated to implement these problematic studies, and that both mainstream and African American news outlets conveyed protestors' concerns about the ethics of the studies, resulting in federal investigations. Our hypothesis that African American outlets provided more negative coverage was not supported, suggesting distrust of biomedicine regarding race is more widespread. The unethical practices reported here raise key questions about the inclusion of both minority populations and children in medical research.     

The contribution of social science research to health policy: the Royal Commission on the National Health Service

This article adopts a case study approach to examine the contribution of social science research to health policy. It concentrates exclusively on the recent Royal Commission on the National Health Service. After describing its background and modus operandi the paper goes on to assess the Report's utilization of social science research, both in its diagnosis and recommendations. This assessment suggests that while the Commissioners made relatively little use of research-based evidence in their diagnosis, their recommendations provide the basis for a substantial increase in the contribution of social scientists, particularly in the field of health services evaluation.