A review of literature: An examination of the correlation between attachment styles and adolescent girls’ sexual behaviors

ABSTRACT

This literature review examines eight studies of parental attachment styles, sexual behavior, and health outcomes among adolescent girls. The review focuses on studies that analyzed the perceived relationships between parents and their adolescent daughters and whether instabilities of life experiences correlated with risky sexual behaviors and if high-risk sexual behaviors were associated with an increase of sexually transmitted infections, unplanned pregnancies, and other poor health outcomes in adolescent girls. Findings show adolescent girls with insecure parental attachment styles were at a higher risk of sexual behaviors, early pregnancies, and transmission of sexually transmitted infections (STI’s). The most common finding in the studies reviewed was the significant association of how higher parental communication and monitoring may prevent risky sexual behaviors at an earlier age. Recommendations for mental and health care providers include the development of treatment programs to address the importance of parent-attachment relationships and multifaceted health needs of adolescents girls. Programs can be strengthened by involving other family members, improving parent-daughter communication and relationships and emphasizing system-level change (policy, procedure, practice). Adding these elements may ultimately lead to sustained improvements over time. Future research on other family social factors (e.g., divorce and separation of attachment figure, poverty, and single-parent homes) associated with attachment and high-risk behaviors is warranted. More research is needed to exam how secure attachments among adolescent girls may prevent earlier sexual encounters, unplanned pregnancies, and STI’s.     

VCCEP Pilot: Progress on Evaluating Children''s Risks and Data Needs

The Voluntary Children's Chemical Evaluation Program (VCCEP) is designed to provide information to the public on children's potential health risks associated with chemical exposures. The key question of the VCCEP is whether the potential hazards, exposures, and risks to children have been adequately characterized, and, if not, what additional data are necessary. To answer this question, manufacturers or importers of 23 chemicals were asked by the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) to sponsor their chemicals in the first tier of a pilot program. These chemicals were selected for evaluation because they have been found as contaminants in human tissue or fluids (adipose tissue, blood, breath, breast milk, or urine); food and water children may eat and drink; or air children may breathe (including residential or school air). Under the VCCEP framework, sponsoring companies agree to prepare Tier 1 hazard, exposure, and risk assessments on the individual chemicals, and identify the need for additional data. These assessment documents are submitted to the U.S. EPA and subsequently undergo review by experts in an independent peer consultation meeting that is open to the public. Following this peer consultation process, the U.S. EPA reviews each submission and makes a data-needs determination, which may include requesting further data collection or generation by the sponsor. Sponsoring companies then decide whether to volunteer for the next tier and collect or generate the requested data. The purpose of this article is to describe the VCCEP process and to review and present the key findings from the first set of chemicals that have been fully or partially evaluated under the pilot program (vinylidene chloride, decabromodiphenyl ether, pentabromodiphenyl ether, octabromodiphenyl ether, acetone, methyl ethyl ketone, decane, undecane, and dodecane). Specifically, we provide a brief summary of the sponsors' submissions, the peer consultation panels' discussions, and the U.S. EPA's data-needs decisions. Although we do not attempt to conduct independent analyses of the underlying data, we do identify a number of common themes that have emerged during implementation of the pilot program and discuss several key issues that could become important in the future. The information presented here should be useful for various parties interested in the progress of the VCCEP and the results of the initial (Tier 1) children's assessments.     

Design Improvements for Message Propagation in Malleable Social Networks

This study presents the formal problem definition and computational analysis of the network design improvements for idea and message propagation in both enterprise and consumer social networks (ESN and CSN, respectively). Message propagation in social networks is impacted by how messages are seeded in the network, and by propagation characteristics of the network topology itself. It has been recognized that the propagation properties of these networks can be actively influenced by network design interventions, such as the deliberate creation of new connections. We address the problem of finding cost‐effective message seeding, and identifying potential new network connections that allow improved propagation in social networks with cascade propagation. We use the hop‐constrained minimum spanning tree (HMST) model to find the seeds and possible new connections that result in networks with improved propagation properties. Moreover, we present new heuristic algorithms that substantially improve the solution quality for the HMST problem. Computational results posit that the design improvements proposed by the HMST approach can greatly improve cascade propagation performance of the networks at low cost.     

"Anything Can Happen With Police Around": Urban Youth Evaluate Strategies of Surveillance in Public Places

In order to document urban youth experiences of adults in positions of public authority, including police, educators, social workers and guards, a broad based street survey of 911 New York City-based urban youth was conducted in which youth, stratified by race, ethnicity, gender and borough, were asked about their experiences with, attitudes toward, and trust of adult surveillance in communities and in schools. In-depth telephone interviews were conducted with 36 youth who have experienced serious, adverse interactions with police, guards, or educators. Findings suggest that urban youth, overall, express a strong sense of betrayal by adults and report feeling mistrusted by adults, with young men of color most likely to report these perceptions.     

Bioequivalence and the pharmaceutical industry

Since the early 1990s, average bioequivalence (ABE) studies have served as the international regulatory standard for demonstrating that two formulations of drug product will provide the same therapeutic benefit and safety profile when used in the marketplace. Population (PBE) and individual (IBE) bioequivalence have been the subject of intense international debate since methods for their assessment were proposed in the late 1980s and since their use was proposed in United States Food and Drug Administration guidance in 1997. Guidance has since been proposed and finalized by the Food and Drug Administration for the implementation of such techniques in the pioneer and generic pharmaceutical industries. The current guidance calls for the use of replicate design and of cross‐over studies (cross‐overs with sequences TRTR, RTRT, where T is the test and R is the reference formulation) for selected drug products, and proposes restricted maximum likelihood and method‐of‐moments techniques for parameter estimation. In general, marketplace access will be granted if the products demonstrate ABE based on a restricted maximum likelihood model. Study sponsors have the option of using PBE or IBE if the use of these criteria can be justified to the regulatory authority. Novel and previously proposed SAS^®‐based approaches to the modelling of pharmacokinetic data from replicate design studies will be summarized. Restricted maximum likelihood and method‐of‐moments modelling results are compared and contrasted based on the analysis of data available from previously performed replicate design studies, and practical issues involved in the application of replicate designs to demonstrate ABE are characterized. It is concluded that replicate designs may be used effectively to demonstrate ABE for highly variable drug products. Statisticians should exercise caution in the choice of modelling procedure. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Process evaluation of the midwifery initiated oral health-dental service program: Perceptions of midwives in Greater Western Sydney,Australia

Background

Despite links between poor maternal oral health, adverse pregnancy outcomes and early childhood decay there is limited emphasis on maternal oral health in Australia. To address this, the Midwifery Initiated Oral Health Dental Service (MIOH-DS) program was developed in collaboration with the Australian College of Midwives.

The Psychobiology of Maltreatment in Childhood

The varied maladaptive behavioral, social, medical, and psychiatric outcomes associated with maltreatment in childhood have been extensively documented in the extant empirical literature. In this review, we examine the adverse impact of the stress associated with child maltreatment on the regulation of the neurobiological stress systems, alterations in brain maturation, and neuropsychological outcomes in the developing child. Further, we provide a detailed discussion of the pathway between the psychobiological consequences of trauma and subsequent cognitive, language, and academic deficits that often have a deleterious impact on global functioning. We review neuroimaging techniques and the empirical results of studies utilizing such techniques to examine brain maturation in maltreated children and individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder. We address the practice, research, and policy implications of the psychobiological sequelae of child maltreatment and offer future directions for research.     

Poetic Labors and Challenging Political Science: An Epistolary Poem

ABSTRACT

The author, a political theorist, uses poetry to reflect on and spur structural change in admissions committees, hiring committees, funding decisions, curriculum development, and the institutionalized awards-making structure regarding African Politics in the American Political Science Association. This poem, delivered and performed at the American Political Science Association 2018 meeting in Boston, provides empirical and verifiable data about how scholarly awards are distributed in the discipline. The analysis of this process reflects on a long history of erasing, minimizing, and tokenizing the scholarship of African political scientists in the discipline of political science. Written as an epistolary poem, the author explains how #MeToo accounts for complex and interrelated forms of exclusion from the production of knowledge and uses the history of Black women in politics associations, writings by Patricia J. Williams, Pearl T. Robinson, Darlene Miller, and poetry by June Jordan (1936–2002) and Sweet Honey in the Rock (f. 1973).