Aging with HIV: Historical and Intra-Community Differences in Experience of Aging with HIV

Gay men living with HIV/AIDS face a complex of health issues, including those associated with the aging process, long-term HIV infection (25 years or more), and side effects from Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy (HAART). If aging can increase marginalization, this is more likely for the aging HIV positive gay man, who is already marginalized for being queer and living with a stigmatizing disease. This article presents findings from a study of a long-running HIV support group. It locates the members, all gay men living with HIV, in a specific historical and political context to explore how feelings of loss and the struggle to sustain community affect long-term survivors and other older HIV+ gay men. We identify specific challenges presented by aging for men who contracted HIV early in the epidemic, contrasting them with those faced by men infected with the virus later in life. While both groups appear to struggle with a vision of what life could have been, had AIDS not forced loss and change, they also celebrate the community their shared plight has enabled.     

Impacts of the Triple Global Crisis on Growth and Poverty: The Case of Yemen

Yemen is an oil‐exporting and food‐importing country with the highest levels of poverty in the Middle East and North Africa. The impacts of the triple crisis are likely to further complicate pre‐existing conditions of conflict, oil depletion and governance failure. Using a dynamic CGE model, this article finds that oil‐driven growth in 2008 dominated the negative growth impacts of the food crisis, but that growth was not pro‐poor. The financial crisis of 2009 slowed growth sharply and raised the poverty rate to 42.8%, up from 34.8% in 2005/6. Poverty continues to be higher in rural areas, where almost half the population live in poverty.     

“Try to make it seem like we're regular kids”: Youth perceptions of restrictiveness in out-of-home care

While there are several measures of living environment restrictiveness, none has used the youth perspective in conceptualizing and operationalizing restrictiveness. The purpose of this qualitative study was to obtain the perspectives of child welfare involved youth who have lived in out-of-home care. Using focus group methodology, 40 youth were asked to define restriction and give examples of how it is operationalized in practice. Youth defined restriction as “rules”. The rules were about what youth can do, where they can go, who they can be with and how and with whom they can communicate. These rules were primarily characterized as inconsistent, arbitrary, non-individualized and developmentally inappropriate, although some characterized them as beneficial in the long term. Rules were mostly attributed to adult need for power and avoidance of legal responsibility for the youths. Typical feelings about the rules were anger, resentment, feeling labeled, isolated and stigmatized. Relationships influenced perceptions: within a positive relationship, youth understood and tolerated the rules that limited independence. The perception of what were normal restrictions for other youth not in out-of-home care was another influencing factor. These findings are examined in light of cognitive and affective development in adolescence. Recommendations for improving the measurement of living environment restrictiveness as well as enhancing child welfare services are proposed.     

Presence and process of fear of birth during pregnancy—Findings from a longitudinal cohort study

Background

The prevalence of fear of birth has been estimated between 8–30%, but there is considerable heterogeneity in research design, definitions, measurement tools used and populations. There are some inconclusive findings about the stability of childbirth fear.

Collaborations with faith‐based social service coalitions

Based on the first national survey of faith‐based social service coalitions in the United States, this article presents data on the degree to which these nonprofit organizations collaborate with other specific organizational types, as well as the range and intensity of these collaborations. In general, faith‐based coalitions tend to collaborate most frequently with other faith‐based agencies, a pattern especially characteristic of the more religiously expressive ones. However, collaboration with non‐faith‐based organizations is also quite common. Based on seven organizational characteristics, we are able to predict which faith‐based coalitions are most likely to collaborate with different types of organizations: coalitions that have more explicitly religious policies and practices with reference to clients and staffs are less likely to participate in intense collaborations with some types of secular organizations, and consistently less likely to do so with all types of governmental agencies.     

Establishing self and meaning in low back pain narratives

Pain narratives encounter the problem of verbalising private and internalised experiences. Words appear to fall short of giving meaning to the feelings and impact of pain. In this paper we report on how people describe their low back pain and the way in which they claim to present this to clinicians. In the research interviews they need to establish themselves as believable narrators and provide accounts of how they legitimise their pain in clinical encounters. As a result, the interviews provide complex and layered narratives of pain and its representation.