College students’ knowledge about Sickle Cell Disease

ABSTRACT

Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) is a serious health problem affecting millions around the world. Key to prevention is knowledge about the disease and the reproductive implications. This study explored college students’ knowledge about SCD. Participants included 416 college students at a North Texas campus between October and December 2014. A cross-sectional survey design using an 18-question survey was used. Although most participants had heard of SCD, 21% had never heard of the disease. Furthermore, participants lacked knowledge regarding the differences between the disease and carrier status, prevalence, reproductive implications, prevention, and testing. Findings showed that couples had more knowledge about SCD compared to singles and there were no significant differences between those with children and those without indicating a need for education before they start dating. Most participants had not undergone SCD carrier screening and had no interest in screening. The Universal Prevention approach would be a suitable approach and should be utilized in improving knowledge about SCD.     

Mindfulness in financial literacy

ABSTRACT

Financial education is becoming imperative in a society that has pitfalls for unwary consumers. To ensure effectiveness, educational strategies must take into consideration the readiness of consumers to learn the curriculum. Behavioral economics highlights the obstacles that educators face in promoting financial efficacy. Such obstacles include envy, fear, greed, and other all too familiar human failings. One innovative model, mindfulness, provides insight into the human dynamics of personal financial behaviors. This article ties together financial education, mindfulness techniques, and transtheoretical stages of readiness. The impact of gradually introduced educational tasks is presented with an eye toward clients’ stages of readiness, and mindfulness addresses the emotional burdens of altering a financially profligate lifestyle.     

Using photography to understand change and continuity in the history of residential care for older people

The Last Refuge by Peter Townsend is a seminal study of residential care for older people. The fieldwork was carried out in the late 1950s and the data are now deposited in the National Social Policy and Social Change Archive at the University of Essex. We have undertaken research, funded by the ESRC, which has revisited Townsend's work and some of the homes he studied in order to conduct an overtime comparison. In this paper we focus on Townsend's use of photography and our subsequent use of photography in our revisiting study. We argue that although Townsend did not analyse his photographs, they were significant data for use in his arguments critiquing residential care. They were, however, the product of a different socio‐historical context to our own and as such posed considerable practical and ethical challenges for us when attempting to use this aspect of his methodology for an overtime comparison. We argue that despite the resulting constraints, photography was an important part of our methodology, enabling comparisons and illuminating historical patterns in residential care for older people.     

Going Global: The Transnational Politics of the Dalit Movement

This article analyses the involvement of the Dalits (formerly ‘untouchables’) in the World Social Forum (WSF) processes. The focus will be on one networked organization in particular, the National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR) as a key organization which served as a catalyst for linking the Dalit struggle against neoliberal globalization and casteism with the social forum process and the global justice movement. The article argues that the Dalit struggle, domestically and internationally, can best be understood from a Polanyian perspective, as a countermovement for social protection against neoliberal globalization. It examines the dialectic of globalization within an Indian context first in terms of the impact of neoliberal globalization upon the Dalit community and then the NCDHR's decision to go global, to the WSF. In taking their cause beyond India, a central focus of Dalit activity remains rooted in making the Indian state serve as a means of social protection for the Dalit peoples.     

Texts and the ontology of organizations and institutions

This paper examines the problem of how institutions and the phenomena called formal or large-scale organization exist—the problem of the ontology of organizations and institutions. It addresses this problem using an approach that has been developed as part of a sociology exploring the social from women's standpoint, from which standpoint the extra-locality and objectification of these forms of organization are problematized. For the most part, sociology formulates the phenomena of organizations and institutions in lexical forms of organization, institution, information, communication and the like, which suppress the presence of subjects and the local practices that produce the extra-local and objective. This paper argues that texts (or documents) are essential to the objectification of organizations and institutions and to how they exist as such. It suggests that exploring how texts mediate, regulate and authorize people's activities expands the scope of ethnographic method beyond the limits of observation; texts are to be seen as they enter into people's local practices of wrking, drawing, reading, looking and so on. They must be examined as they coordinate people's activities.     

Exploring and Adapting a Conceptual Model of Sexual Positioning Practices and Sexual Risk Among HIV-Negative Black Men Who Have Sex With Men

Estimates show a 50% lifetime human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) risk among Black men who have sex with men (BMSM) in the United States(U.S.). Studying the dynamics of sexual positioning practices among BMSM could provide insights into the disparities observed among U.S. groups of men who have sex with men (MSM). This study explored sexual positioning dynamics among HIV-negative BMSM and how they aligned with a theoretical model of sexual positioning and HIV/sexually transmitted infection (STI) risk among MSM. In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with 29 HIV-negative BMSM between ages 25 and 35 in Los Angeles. Comments related to sexual behaviors were reviewed for relevance regarding oral or anal sexual positioning practices. Data presented represent the range of themes related to decision making regarding sexual positioning. Personal preference, partner attraction, HIV avoidance, and feeling obligated to practice partner preferences influenced sexual positioning. Drug use also affected decision making and was sometimes preferred in order to practice receptive anal intercourse. These variables build on the conceptual model of sexual positioning practices and sexual risk, and add understanding to the relationship between preferences, practices, and risk management. Future research on risk among HIV-negative BMSM should quantify the relative impact of personal preferences, partner attraction, partner type, compromise, and substance use on sexual positioning practices and risk.