College students with congenital heart disease: A critical time for transition

As medical and surgical advances improve, more young adults with congenital heart disease (CHD) are attending college. This case study illustrates some of the issues that these young adults may face as they attend college and discusses the role that college health practitioners can play in easing that transition. Participants: A case of a male with CHD presenting to the college health clinic with a new onset headache. Methods: The authors discuss some of the unique challenges that college health practitioners may face when caring for students with CHD. In addition, they make recommendations on how best to care for these patients and how best to coordinate care with CHD students other care providers. Results: This student with a history of coarctation of the aorta presented with new onset headaches and was found to have high blood pressure. He was diagnosed with recurrent coarctation, underwent percutaneous treatment with stenting and quickly resumed classes. Conclusions: As more students with CHD enter college, college health providers will need to understand some of the health risks that CHD students face. In addition, understanding some of the optimal ways to coordinate care with CHD providers can ease the transition that CHD students face as they enter college.     

Playground Accessibility and Neighbourhood Social Interaction Among Parents

While the positive association between social interaction and access to green space is well accepted, little research has sought to understand the role of children??s playgrounds in facilitating social interaction within a community. Playgrounds are spaces designed to facilitate play and the interaction of children, but may also be important places of interaction between parents. In this paper we examine how access to playground spaces is related to social interaction between parents. We use two measures of accessibility (1) walking distance to the closest playground and (2) playground service area, a measure of the number of potential users of a playground based on population density. We use generalized estimating equations, an extension of generalized linear models, to control for the confounding effects of socio-economic status (income, education), neighbourhood dynamics (neighbourhood location, years in neighbourhood) and free time (daily outdoor activity, marital status, number of children) on the independent relationship between social interaction and access to playground spaces. Our results suggest that while accessibility to playgrounds is associated with social interaction among parents, the direction of the effect is opposite to existing literature on green space and social interaction; parents with low accessibility to playgrounds are more likely to interact socially with their neighbours than parents with high accessibility. Our results suggest a pattern of spatial behaviour in which the burden of poor access to some resources may actually encourage greater neighbourhood engagement. Future research studying the relationship between health and green space may benefit from studying the specific role of playground spaces.     

Validating Work Discrimination and Coping Strategy Models for Sexual Minorities

The purpose of this study was to validate and expand on Y. B. Chung's (2001) models of work discrimination and coping strategies among lesbian, gay, and bisexual persons. In semistructured individual interviews, 17 lesbians and gay men reported 35 discrimination incidents and their related coping strategies. Responses were coded based on Chung's models. Results supported the validity of the Work Discrimination model and two coping strategy models (Vocational Choice and Identity Management). The Discrimination Management coping strategy model was expanded. Implications for practice and research are discussed.     

Intergenerational class mobility in contemporary Britain: political concerns and empirical findings

In Britain in recent years social mobility has become a topic of central political concern, primarily as a result of the effort made by New Labour to make equality of opportunity rather than equality of condition a focus of policy. Questions of the level, pattern and trend of mobility thus bear directly on the relevance of New Labour's policy analysis, and in turn are likely be crucial to the evaluation of its performance in government. However, politically motivated discussion of social mobility often reveals an inadequate grasp of both empirical and analytical issues. We provide new evidence relevant to the assessment of social mobility - in particular, intergenerational class mobility - in contemporary Britain through cross-cohort analyses based on the NCDS and BCS datasets which we can relate to earlier cross-sectional analyses based on the GHS. We find that, contrary to what seems now widely supposed, there is no evidence that absolute mobility rates are falling; but, for men, the balance of upward and downward movement is becoming less favourable. This is overwhelmingly the result of class structural change. Relative mobility rates, for both men and women, remain essentially constant, although there are possible indications of a declining propensity for long-range mobility. We conclude that under present day structural conditions there can be no return to the generally rising rates of upward mobility that characterized the middle decades of the twentieth century - unless this is achieved through changing relative rates in the direction of greater equality or, that is, of greater fluidity. But this would then produce rising rates of downward mobility to exactly the same extent - an outcome apparently unappreciated by, and unlikely to be congenial to, politicians preoccupied with winning the electoral 'middle ground'.     

How far merit selection? Social stratification and the labour market1

The question of how societies allocate occupational positions and subsequent rewards has long been of interest to sociologists. According to one influential theory, the needs of modern industrial societies and economies demand that high-level and functionally important occupational positions are allocated according to meritocratic principles. I argue that, ultimately, employers get the final say about which characteristics are rewarded in the labour market. In order to examine which skills and attributes are required by employers for particular occupations I analyse data drawn from a content analysis of c.5000 British newspaper job advertisements. The results show that both merit and non-merit characteristics are requested by employers in job advertisements, even for occupations falling within the higher classes. I also find evidence that employers have similar requirements for similar occupations, cross-cutting class boundaries.     

Adolescent self-mutilation: diagnosis & treatment

Self-mutilation is complicated and difficult to diagnose. Its incidence among adolescents has increased during the past 10 years. Most mental health professionals discover that the behavior has been part of patients' lives long before their initial visit and that patients have become very good at hiding their behavior. The literature on self-mutilation is increasing, but newer statistics, specifically about cutting and picking behaviors, need to be assessed. The disorder often co-exists with another disorder that requires psychotropic medications, the administration of which should be managed by psychiatric clinicians who specialize in children and adolescents. A multidisciplinary team is necessary to achieve the best outcomes.     

Advances in the surgical management of prolapse

Prolapse is an extremely common condition, for which 11% of women will have a surgical procedure at some point in their lives. The recurrence rate after most of the traditional surgical procedures is high and upto 29% of women who have had surgery for prolapse will require a further operation. In order to improve the surgical outcome, there is currently much interest in the use of grafts to augment traditional repairs and new procedures have been developed using specifically developed grafts. These have been combined with minimally invasive surgical techniques in an attempt to reduce surgical morbidity. These procedures may improve the outcome of surgery for prolapse. However, there is currently a lack of long-term data from randomized trials to demonstrate their effectiveness and safety.     

Spirit of aging rising: cross-cutting thematic modules to enrich foundation graduate social work courses

To enrich an urban generalist MSW program serving a diverse aging community, an innovative approach was initiated. A team of students, faculty and a field instructor collaborated in creating and evaluating 3 sets of cross-cutting thematic modules. An overview of the thematic modules (addressing elder abuse, family caregiving, and mental health), integrated across multiple curriculum areas (Human Behavior and the Social Environment, Macro/Policy, Practice and Research), is presented along with results of a faculty focus group evaluating the process of coordinating module content for one full week of class per foundation area (one topic per quarter).     

Roads to American Empire: U.S. Military Public Works and Capitalist Transitions, 1898–1934.

Between 1898 and 1934, in synchronous and successive U.S. military interventions and occupations in Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, American soldiers made public works, and especially roads, into a global technology of imperial power. This essay examines infrastructure as a factor in state formation and capitalist transition in these five different imperial spaces as a way to study U.S. empire, and its effects on foreign societies, through a comparative, global, and intra‐imperial approach often precluded by the methodological nationalism of historical and sociological literatures. Despite significant differences between these sites of U.S. war and occupation, both prior to American interventions and during them, U.S. military public works expressed and advanced a common political‐economic logic of state centralization and capital accumulation. Colonial and post‐colonial political institutions and political economies, the strength of central governments, the extent of plantation agriculture and rural proletarianization, world commodity markets, and geography and natural events varied, but determined U.S. imperial infrastructure's outcomes. By the 1930s, the U.S. military had elevated infrastructural improvement to a key repertoire of American imperial power in the world, and one which persisted as the United States turned away from formal colonialism in the era of the Cold War and decolonization.