Feminist collectives or private owners: both used media to advance lesbian goals

From the 1970s in Australia, feminist collectives published lesbian magazines that challenged gay male thinking, the women’s movement, and mainstream society. From the late 1980s such publishing ventures were increasingly undertaken by privately-owned publishing businesses. Responding to change around them, the political project for these private media ventures shifted from radical restructuring of society to promotion of lesbian community. Their publishers developed synergies with this developing community that expanded advertising revenues and distribution, and assisted the growth of both community and the publications. This led to greater readership reach and a range of relationships with mainstream businesses that further built community and made lesbians more visible.     

公共卫生支出、健康结果与卫生投入政策——基于189个国家和地区的面板门槛分析（1995—2011年）

利用189个国家和地区1995—2011年的数据实证检验公共卫生支出规模对一个国家的健康结果（婴儿死亡率和出生时的平均期望寿命）的影响，结果表明，公共卫生支出占GDP的比重对婴儿死亡率和出生时的平均期望寿命的影响具有门槛效应，门槛值分别位于1.9%和6.62%。分段回归结果显示，公共卫生支出占GDP的比重低于1.9%时，公共卫生投入对出生时的平均期望寿命没有显著影响，对婴儿死亡率的影响较弱；超过1.9%后，公共卫生投入的规模效应开始体现，对健康结果指标的影响均显著增强；超过6.62%后，公共卫生投入对婴儿死亡率的影响不再显著，对出生时平均期望寿命的弹性系数不再变化，单位边际贡献不再增加。中国当前政府卫生投入规模仍然较低，需要继续增大公共资金投入、降低个人卫生支出比重。     

铜陵公务员体育锻炼现状及健康状况的研究

本文通过对铜陵市279名在编公务员的问卷调查和跟踪访谈,对公务员的体育锻炼动机、影响体育锻炼的影响因素、体育锻炼场所、项目、形式及健康体检等结果做系统性的分析,寻找出公务员这一人群体育锻炼与身体健康存在的问题,并提出可行性的建议,为改善公务员的身心健康提供一定的科学依据。     

A Psychometric Review of Measures Assessing Discrimination Against Sexual Minorities

ABSTRACT

Discrimination against sexual minorities is widespread and has deleterious consequences on victims’ psychological and physical wellbeing. However, a review of the psychometric properties of instruments measuring lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) discrimination has not been conducted. The results of this review, which involved evaluating 162 articles, reveal that most have suboptimal psychometric properties. Specifically, myriad scales possess questionable content validity as (1) items are not created in collaboration with sexual minorities; (2) measures possess a small number of items and, thus, may not sufficiently represent the domain of interest; and (3) scales are “adapted” from measures designed to examine race- and gender-based discrimination. Additional limitations include (1) summed scores are computed, often in the absence of scale score reliability metrics; (2) summed scores operate from the questionable assumption that diverse forms of discrimination are necessarily interrelated; (3) the dimensionality of instruments presumed to consist of subscales is seldom tested; (4) tests of criterion-related validity are routinely omitted; and (5) formal tests of measures’ construct validity are seldom provided, necessitating that one infer validity based on the results obtained. The absence of “gold standard” measures, the attendant difficulty in formulating a coherent picture of this body of research, and suggestions for psychometric improvements are noted.     

Sexual Orientation Change Efforts and the Search for Authenticity

This article is based on structured interviews of a sample of 15 former participants in sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE), who currently identify as gay or lesbian. The primary research question for this study was, “What was the experience of self-identified gay men and lesbians who went through some type of SOCE and eventually asserted themselves as gay or lesbian?” The research concludes that participants sometimes identified as heterosexual during SOCE, but never changed their underlying homosexual orientation, and that suppression, disconnection, and a sense of inauthenticity were significant phenomena of this process.     

Couple Longevity in the Era of Same‐Sex Marriage in the United States

The author used a new longitudinal data set, the How Couples Meet and Stay Together surveys (N = 3,009), to generate the first nationally representative comparison of same‐sex couple stability and heterosexual couple stability in the United States. He measured the association between marriage (by several definitions of marriage) and couple longevity for same‐sex couples in the United States. Reports of same‐sex relationship instability in the past were due in part to the low rate of marriages among same‐sex couples. After controlling for marriage and marriage‐like commitments, the break‐up rate for same‐sex couples was comparable to (and not statistically distinguishable from) the break‐up rate for heterosexual couples. The results revealed that same‐sex couples who had a marriage‐like commitment had stable unions regardless of government recognition. A variety of predictors of relationship dissolution for heterosexual and for same‐sex couples are explored.     

Healthy Barbs: Activism Confronts Mortality

Barbara Brenner, JD, was the Executive Director of Breast Cancer Action (BCA) from 1995–2010. Before that, she was a longtime activist in the anti-war movement and an attorney who, for most of her career, practiced public policy law. After she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1993 at the age of 41, she took the helm of BCA. Under her leadership, the organization moved into a position of national advocacy—demanding research on the causes and prevention of breast cancer, including the role of industrial pollutants. Barbara started the “Think Before You Pink” campaign, encouraging people to question whether companies that display pink ribbons actually produce products that harm women's health or generate any funds to fight breast cancer. Her blog, “Healthy Barbs,” challenged readers to critique routine healthcare practices and policies. Barbara received numerous awards, including a Jefferson Award for Public Service in 2007, the Smith College Medal in 2012, and the ACLU-Northern California's Lola Hanzel Courageous Advocacy Award in 2012. Barbara had a recurrence of breast cancer in 1996. She died of complications associated with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, ALS, on May 10, 2013.     

Ideologies & Narratives in Relation to ‘Fat’ Children as Bullies, ‘Easy Targets’ and Victims

In this study, we explore narratives in relation to ‘fatness’, drawing on focus group interviews with parents, early years practitioners, teachers and young people. The study is located in a larger study on bullying and resilience, with no specific focus on obesity or ‘fatness’. Analysis of the interview data highlighted a recurrent focus on ‘fatness’ within the participants’ narratives, by labelling and stigmatising the ‘fat kid’ and ‘bigger children’. We conclude that obesity and fatness, as abnormalities, are now included in commonsense talk in relation to ‘easy targets’, victims and bullies.     

Planning an integrated agriculture and health program and designing its evaluation: Experience from Western Kenya

Multi-sectoral programs that involve stakeholders in agriculture, nutrition and health care are essential for responding to nutrition problems such as vitamin A deficiency among pregnant and lactating women and their infants in many poor areas of lower income countries. Yet planning such multi-sectoral programs and designing appropriate evaluations, to respond to different disciplinary cultures of evidence, remain a challenge. We describe the context, program development process, and evaluation design of the Mama SASHA project (Sweetpotato Action for Security and Health in Africa) which promoted production and consumption of a bio-fortified, orange-fleshed sweetpotato (OFSP). In planning the program we drew upon information from needs assessments, stakeholder consultations, and a first round of the implementation evaluation of a pilot project. The multi-disciplinary team worked with partner organizations to develop a program theory of change and an impact pathway which identified aspects of the program that would be monitored and established evaluation methods. Responding to the growing demand for greater rigour in impact evaluations, we carried out quasi-experimental allocation by health facility catchment area, repeat village surveys for assessment of change in intervention and control areas, and longitudinal tracking of individual mother-child pairs. Mid-course corrections in program implementation were informed by program monitoring, regular feedback from implementers and partners’ meetings. To assess economic efficiency and provide evidence for scaling we collected data on resources used and project expenses. Managing the multi-sectoral program and the mixed methods evaluation involved bargaining and trade-offs that were deemed essential to respond to the array of stakeholders, program funders and disciplines involved.     

Housing hardship and energy insecurity among native-born and immigrant low-income families with children in the United States

The costs for rent and utilities account for the largest share of living expenses, yet these two critical dimensions of material hardship have seldom been examined concurrently in population-based studies. This paper employs multivariate statistical analysis using American Community Survey data to demonstrate the relative risk ratio of low-income renter-occupied households with children experiencing ‘rent burden', ‘energy insecurity', or a ‘double burden’ as opposed to no burden. Findings suggest that low-income households are more likely to experience these economic hardships in general but that specific groups are disproportionately burdened in different ways. For instance, whereas immigrants are more likely to experience rental burden, they are less likely to experience energy insecurity and are also spared from the double burden. In contrast, native-born African Americans are more likely than all other groups to experience the double burden. These results may be driven by the housing stock available to certain groups due to racial residential segregation, decisions regarding the quality of housing low-income householders are able to afford, as well as home-country values, such as modest living and energy conservation practices, among immigrant families. This paper also points to important policy gaps in safety net benefits related to housing and energy targeting low-income households.