Lesbian,Gay, Bisexual,Transgender, Queer/Questioning (LGBTQ) Perceptions and Health Care Experiences

The goal of this study was to explore attitudes, health knowledge, and experiences with health care setting and providers among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning (LGBTQ) individuals and to identify areas for improvement. Members of Equality Florida? residing in the five counties of the Tampa Bay region were recruited through e-mail invitation to complete a 60-item questionnaire assessing demographics, attitudes, and experiences with health care providers (HCPs). Additional open-ended questions focused on experiences with HCPs and suggestions for ways to improve HCPs' cultural competency. A total of 632 respondents completed the survey of which 41% were gay men and 29% were lesbian. The majority of participants were White, non-Hispanic (93%), married/partnered (78%), and had health insurance (88%). The majority (67%) reported they always or often disclosed their sexual orientation/identity to an HCP and few had negative reactions in the health care setting (<10%). Health care settings with equality signs and gender-neutral language were perceived as safer. Participants' responses suggested need for policy changes and improved cultural competence among HCPs. Results show high rates of sexual orientation disclosure, greater acceptance from providers of LGBTQ status, and the need for examination of hospital policies and improved cultural competency.     

RIESMAN'S CHARACTER TYPOLOGY AND MUSICAL PREFERENCES

Researchers analyzed YUM(!) Brand/Kentucky Fried Chicken's (KFC's) response to the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals' (PETA's) KFC cruelty campaign in order to add a new component to the current organizational deviance literature related to how corporations defend themselves against attacks. KFC's reaction to PETA's attempts to label it deviant is a unique pattern of response we dub strategic interaction, in which each tactic used by PETA is met with a new and adaptive response by KFC. After an extensive campaign, PETA was still unable to succeed at changing KFC's policies. We attempt to explain PETA's lack of success in terms of superficial appeasement and appropriation. Superficial appeasement is a newly identified stalling tactic, which may provide organizations with the time they need to create a history of corporate responsibility in response to accusations of deviance. Appropriation involved KFC's co-optation of a joint panel that was intended to facilitate dialogue between the two organizations, but instead became almost entirely filled with panelists sympathetic to KFC's existing corporate policies, a technique that may facilitate other corporations attempting to defend themselves.     

Early Cultural Dialogues in Cross-Cultural Clinical Practice

This article examines the quality of cultural dialogues between clients and therapists when they initiate and integrate verbal references to culture in the beginning process of therapy. Six cross-cultural dyads in short-term–oriented community mental health services participated in the study. The initial three sessions of actual clinical encounters were taped, and conversation analysis was used for an intensive analysis of the treatment sessions. Despite the presence of a wide range of affectively charged cultural content raised by the clients, the therapists showed only minimal responses to these topics. The potential of therapeutically germane cultural dialogue was lost, and the discussion of material involving cultural differences regressed to monologues expressed by clients. In this sample, there was little talk that focused on cultural differences or similarities between clients and therapists. Implications and limitations of the study in cross-cultural clinical practice are discussed.     

Lone Parents and Welfare‐to‐Work in England: A Spatial Analysis of Outcomes and Drivers

Mirroring changes across nations of the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development, recent UK governments have redrawn lone parents' entitlement to social assistance benefits ever tighter around participation in the labour market. A radical shift since 2008 has been the gradual transfer of most non‐employed lone parents into the ‘activating’ Jobseekers' Allowance (JSA) regime. The enhanced conditionality requirements of this JSA regime have been justified by both paternalistic and contractualist arguments but, however justified, are built on the premise that behavioural factors drive lone parent employment outcomes, a view made increasingly forcefully under the current Coalition government. This article uses up‐to‐date administrative data at local authority level across England to provide a geographical perspective into the sub‐national changes in lone parent employment outcomes since the transfer to JSA from 2008, as well as the relevant importance of the alternative structural and behavioural accounts to these outcomes. The findings suggest that the JSA transfer has increased lone parent employment, that structural rather than behavioural drivers are more relevant causal factors and that there is good reason to be concerned about the effect of the reforms on the well‐being of lone parents and their children.     

Perspectives on spiritual development as part of youth development

Speaking to the issue of spiritual development from her extensive experience as a youth work practitioner, the author notes several ideas she finds particularly compelling, among them that spiritual development interacts with, yet is distinct from, moral and religious development; that spiritual development is a core construct of identity formation, one of the central tasks of adolescence; and that the spiritual dimensions of youth development relate not only to work with young people but also to motivations for engaging in this work. Engaging young people in the fundamental questions of life and being human is a task that belongs in both secular and religious settings.     

Community and drug use among gay men: the role of neighborhoods and networks

Gay neighborhoods serve as vital places for gay men's socializing, yet few studies have examined their contributions to gay men's health-either directly or indirectly via residents' social networks. Drawing from theoretical perspectives on community and networks, we test hypotheses concerning whether gay neighborhoods and social network factors are associated with patterns of recent illicit drug use among a sample of 740 urban gay men from New York City. Higher odds of drug use were observed among individuals who resided in gay neighborhoods, had networks composed predominantly of other gay men, and had increased socialization with gay men. Network factors did not mediate associations between gay neighborhoods and drug use. These findings highlight the need to better contextualize the health risks faced by gay men by accounting for both neighborhood and network structures.     

Adolescent Career Development in Urban‐Residing Aboriginal Families in Canada

The purpose of this study was to understand how urban‐residing Aboriginal adolescent–parent dyads (n = 11) jointly constructed and acted on goals and strategies with their social supports (n = 17) to facilitate the adolescents' career development. A modified protocol following the qualitative action‐project method was used. A discrete joint project was identified for each family. These joint projects can be clustered into 3 joint career development projects: (a) navigating toward a safe future, (b) negotiating school continuance, and (c) intergenerational continuity through tradition of care. A 4th project emerging from the data was family survival. Family survival projects supplanted participants' efforts to engage in career development projects.     

Visualizing Vandermonde's determinant through nonintersecting lattice paths

We use the Lindström–Gessel–Viennot Theorem to count nonintersecting lattice paths in a carefully chosen acyclic weighted digraph to give a visual combinatorial proof of Vandermonde's classic determinant.     

Total Economic Consequences of an Influenza Outbreak in the United States

Pandemic influenza represents a serious threat not only to the population of the United States, but also to its economy. In this study, we analyze the total economic consequences of potential influenza outbreaks in the United States for four cases based on the distinctions between disease severity and the presence/absence of vaccinations. The analysis is based on data and parameters on influenza obtained from the Centers for Disease Control and the general literature. A state‐of‐the‐art economic impact modeling approach, computable general equilibrium, is applied to analyze a wide range of potential impacts stemming from the outbreaks. This study examines the economic impacts from changes in medical expenditures and workforce participation, and also takes into consideration different types of avoidance behavior and resilience actions not previously fully studied. Our results indicate that, in the absence of avoidance and resilience effects, a pandemic influenza outbreak could result in a loss in U.S. GDP of $25.4 billion, but that vaccination could reduce the losses to $19.9 billion. When behavioral and resilience factors are taken into account, a pandemic influenza outbreak could result in GDP losses of $45.3 billion without vaccination and $34.4 billion with vaccination. These results indicate the importance of including a broader set of causal factors to achieve more accurate estimates of the total economic impacts of not just pandemic influenza but biothreats in general. The results also highlight a number of actionable items that government policymakers and public health officials can use to help reduce potential economic losses from the outbreaks.