A National Survey of the Provision of Sexual Health Clinical Services by Public Health in Canada: First Insights

Objectives: Data documenting the scope of sexual health clinical services offered as public health in Canada are unavailable. This article provides first insights into the scope of STI and clinical sexual health services available nationally. Methods: Data were gathered using an online survey of 113 Canadian public health units. Results: Almost half of the clinics were not providing expedited partner therapy, one third were not providing point of care testing for HIV and one third were not using syndromic management of sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Low rates of physician support were evident. Conclusion: Given the ever-higher rates of STIs, findings from this study identify important challenges to providing comprehensive services.     

There's More Than Meets the Eye: The Nuances of Case Management

In this exploratory study, 50 mental health case managers from 2 Midwestern states were interviewed to capture their observations about the consumers they serve; aspects of the job they like and dislike; and their beliefs about the concept, process, and possibility of recovery from mental illness. The nature of the professional relationship in case management is described from the perspective of these professionals, as well as the methods these informants identify as key to the helping process. It is argued that effective case management requires complex and nuanced professional skills that might go unrecognized and underappreciated in community mental health.     

Relations of Early Goal Blockage Response and Gender to Subsequent Tantrum Behavior

Infants and their mothers participated in a longitudinal study of the sequelae of infant goal blockage responses. Four-month-old infants participated in a standard contingency learning/goal blockage procedure during which anger and sad facial expressions to the blockage were coded. When infants were 12- and 20- months-old, mothers completed a questionnaire about their children's tantrums. Tantrum scores increased with age and boys tended to show more tantrum behavior than girls. Anger expressed to goal blockage at 4 months was unrelated to tantrum behavior. There was a gender by sad expression interaction. Girls who expressed sadness in response to the goal blockage had lower total tantrum scores than boys; otherwise there was no difference. These results suggest that tantrums of infants who display sad, not anger expression, in response to goal blockage, are differentially influenced by children's gender.     

Expected estimating equations to accommodate covariate measurement error

Estimating equations which are not necessarily likelihood-based score equations are becoming increasingly popular for estimating regression model parameters. This paper is concerned with estimation based on general estimating equations when true covariate data are missing for all the study subjects, but surrogate or mismeasured covariates are available instead. The method is motivated by the covariate measurement error problem in marginal or partly conditional regression of longitudinal data. We propose to base estimation on the expectation of the complete data estimating equation conditioned on available data. The regression parameters and other nuisance parameters are estimated simultaneously by solving the resulting estimating equations. The expected estimating equation (EEE) estimator is equal to the maximum likelihood estimator if the complete data scores are likelihood scores and conditioning is with respect to all the available data. A pseudo-EEE estimator, which requires less computation, is also investigated. Asymptotic distribution theory is derived. Small sample simulations are conducted when the error process is an order 1 autoregressive model. Regression calibration is extended to this setting and compared with the EEE approach. We demonstrate the methods on data from a longitudinal study of the relationship between childhood growth and adult obesity.     

The geographic scale of Metropolitan racial segregation

This article addresses an aspect of racial residential segregation that has been largely ignored in prior work: the issue of geographic scale. In some metropolitan areas, racial groups are segregated over large regions, with predominately white regions, predominately black regions, and so on, whereas in other areas, the separation of racial groups occurs over much shorter distances. Here we develop an approach—featuring the segregation profile and the corresponding macro/micro segregation ratio—that offers a scale-sensitive alternative to standard methodological practice for describing segregation. Using this approach, we measure and describe the geographic scale of racial segregation in the 40 largest U.S. metropolitan areas in 2000. We find considerable heterogeneity in the geographic scale of segregation patterns across both metropolitan areas and racial groups, a heterogeneity that is not evident using conventional “aspatial” segregation measures. Moreover, because the geographic scale of segregation is only modestly correlated with the level of segregation in our sample, we argue that geographic scale represents a distinct dimension of residential segregation. We conclude with a brief discussion of the implications of our findings for investigating the patterns, causes, and consequences of residential segregation at different geographic scales.     

Persistence of Horned Lizards (Phrynosoma spp.) in urban preserves of Central Arizona

Urbanization is rapidly enveloping isolated remnants of Sonoran Desert habitat in southern Arizona. Understanding the means by which herpetofauna can persist in these habitats in the face of multiple impacts is vital to conservation efforts to retain intact biotic communities, especially those with a high diversity of reptile species. We surveyed ten preserves in the Phoenix Metropolitan region for Desert (Phrynosoma platyrhinos) and Regal (Phrynosoma solare) horned lizards, members of an iconic group of lizards of the Southwest. At least one horned lizard species is found in preserves across the range in size, age and habitat axes we assessed, provided that their primary prey, seed-harvester ants (Pogonomyrmex rugosus) are present. Horned lizards are apparently absent from one large preserve where they were once present, perhaps as a result of a decline in seed-harvester ants, but they may have been absent from other preserves due to the lack of appropriate habitat for their prey rather than due to direct anthropogenic impacts.     

How Measurement of Inequalities in Wealth by Race/Ethnicity Impacts Narrative and Policy: Investigating the Full Distribution

In recent decades, analysts and researchers have expanded understanding of economic security by adding wealth to traditional income measures of economic security, documenting substantial and growing inequalities in wealth in the USA that exceed notable income inequalities. Racial disparities in wealth have been well-documented and represent a major barrier to economic equality for communities of color. However, while the racial wealth gap is typically measured at the median due to the substantial skew of the wealth distribution, much remains unknown about racial disparities across the wealth distribution. This study aims to advance analytic discussions about measurement of racial wealth disparities examining recent trends in wealth by race/ethnicity using a more complete view of the wealth distribution. Using the Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) from 2001 to 2013, results reveal that racial wealth disparities across the distribution are even more widespread than an examination of central tendencies alone can observe. Also, while all households experienced notable wealth declines in recent years during the Great Recession, African American and Latino households across the distribution of wealth were particularly affected. From 2007 to 2013, the 75th percentile of wealth for African Americans and Latinos fell by approximately 50%, while losses for whites at the third quartile were just 15%. Similar differences in impacts of the economic downturn are seen across the distribution. Examination of net worth trends over the period reveals that losses were disproportionally experienced by households of color across the wealth distribution.     

Sex and the census: why surveys should not conflate sex and gender identity

ABSTRACT

The UK census authorities have proposed guidance for the 2021 census indicating that the sex question may be answered according to subjective gender identity. This raises issues about the measurement of sex and gender identity which other data collection exercises are also contending with. This paper addresses the questions that have arisen regarding the census, before going on to explain how these questions have emerged more widely. Finally, I address the difficulties of discussing the collection of data on sex in a climate of policy capture and silencing.     

A modern retrospective on probabilistic numerics

Statistics and Computing - This article attempts to place the emergence of probabilistic numerics as a mathematical–statistical research field within its historical context and to explore how...