The Impact of Community Health Agencies on the Prevention of Breast Cancer in Underserved Populations

The purpose of this project was to identify barriers that prevent women from adhering to recommended screening practices or seeking help when they have concerns about their breast health. Health disparities concerning breast cancer stem from multiple determinants of health including race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, geographic location, and age (Jimenez et al., 2011). Early detection and treatment lead to better breast health outcomes. Yet, women at a higher risk are not utilizing prevention measures as recommended. Women from minority racial and ethnic groups report experiencing structural, clinical, and personal barriers (Young et al., 2011). In an effort to address these barriers, federal and state funding is available for widespread breast cancer screenings and health teaching conducted with the goal of eliminating health disparities. This project was conducted at a federally qualified health center in a rural county in Eastern North Carolina. The two objectives were: 1) to conduct a chart audit on women receiving breast cancer screening through the Breast and Cervical Cancer Control Program (BCCCP) to gather information on demographics and screening experiences and 2) to interview key informants about their perspective on reaching underserved populations. BCCCP provides funding to cover around 150 women every year at this center. Fifty two charts were audited from the last six years. This group was 46.15% White, 23.08% African American, and 5.77% Latino. The remaining 25% chose not to report their race. Ages ranged from 22-68 with an average of 49.9 years. Breast symptoms, including lumps, pain, and lesions, brought 27 women in for BCCCP services and 18 of these women were diagnosed with breast cancer. Many women express fears of receiving bad news as well as associated costs, so they delayed screening. BCCCP provides educational material in multiple languages about the program as well as signs and symptoms of breast cancer. BCCCP also works with multiple facilities and public transportation to reduce structural barriers. The communities this program serves would greatly benefit from transportation services. An attempt needs to be made to form a partnership with local transportation as well as transportation to farther locations for consults and treatment. This facility could target minority women to increase their participation in the program through outreach programs including partnerships with salons, churches, and women’s groups. Staff training is necessary in order to fully serve all woman

Perpetrating Cyber Dating Abuse: A Brief Report on the Role of Aggression, Romantic Jealousy and Gender

There is increasing evidence that the use of elec-tronic communication technology (ECT) is being integrated into romantic relationships, which can be used as a medium to control a romantic partner. Most research focuses on the vic-tims of cyber dating abuse, however, we focused on the factors that predict perpetration of cyber dating abuse. We explored whether aggression (verbal aggression, physical aggression, anger and hostility), romantic jealousy (emotional, cognitive and behavioral jealousy), and gender predicted perpetration of cyber dating abuse (n = 189). We found that hostility, behav-ioral jealousy and gender significantly predicted perpetration of cyber dating abuse. The findings of this study contribute to our understanding of the psychological factors that drive cyber dating abuse in romantic relationships

The genetic regulatory signature of type 2 diabetes in human skeletal muscle

Type 2 diabetes (T2D) results from the combined effects of genetic and environmental factors on multiple tissues over time. Of the 4100 variants associated with T2D and related traits in genome-wide association studies (GWAS), >90% occur in non-coding regions, suggesting a strong regulatory component to T2D risk. Here to understand how T2D status, metabolic traits and genetic variation influence gene expression, we analyse skeletal muscle biopsies from 271 well-phenotyped Finnish participants with glucose tolerance ranging from normal to newly diagnosed T2D. We perform high-depth strand-specific mRNA-sequencing and dense genotyping. Computational integration of these data with epigenome data, including ATAC-seq on skeletal muscle, and transcriptome data across diverse tissues reveals that the tissue-specific genetic regulatory architecture of skeletal muscle is highly enriched in muscle stretch/super enhancers, including some that overlap T2D GWAS variants. In one such example, T2D risk alleles residing in a muscle stretch/super enhancer are linked to increased expression and alternative splicing of muscle-specific isoforms of ANK1.Peer reviewe

Sowing the Seeds of Resistance: Agrarian Reform, Political Violence, and Popular Mobilization in the Aguán Valley of Honduras

The agrarian conflict in the Aguán Valley of Honduras is among the most violent and distressing in contemporary Latin America. It has roots in both local and global political economic processes, including structural adjustment and the proliferation of neoliberal economic policies in the region. In particular, the Ley de Modernización y Desarrollo del Sector Agrícola, or Law of Modernization and Development of the Agricultural Sector, drastically altered the landscape in rural Honduras, both literally and figuratively. An analysis of this policy reveals much about the nature of the current conflict, as well as that of the campesino (small farmer) movements that have organized to regain their land. This thesis seeks to shed light on the interconnectedness of economic policy, political violence, and popular resistance in the Aguán Valley and to examine the ways in which campesino movements frame their struggles and assert themselves as legitimate actors in the policy realm

The Impact of Community Health Agencies on the Prevention of Breast Cancer in Underserved Populations

The purpose of this project was to identify barriers that prevent women from adhering to recommended screening practices or seeking help when they have concerns about their breast health. Health disparities concerning breast cancer stem from multiple determinants of health including race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, geographic location, and age (Jimenez et al., 2011). Early detection and treatment lead to better breast health outcomes. Yet, women at a higher risk are not utilizing prevention measures as recommended. Women from minority racial and ethnic groups report experiencing structural, clinical, and personal barriers (Young et al., 2011). In an effort to address these barriers, federal and state funding is available for widespread breast cancer screenings and health teaching conducted with the goal of eliminating health disparities. This project was conducted at a federally qualified health center in a rural county in Eastern North Carolina. The two objectives were: 1) to conduct a chart audit on women receiving breast cancer screening through the Breast and Cervical Cancer Control Program (BCCCP) to gather information on demographics and screening experiences and 2) to interview key informants about their perspective on reaching underserved populations. BCCCP provides funding to cover around 150 women every year at this center. Fifty two charts were audited from the last six years. This group was 46.15% White, 23.08% African American, and 5.77% Latino. The remaining 25% chose not to report their race. Ages ranged from 22-68 with an average of 49.9 years. Breast symptoms, including lumps, pain, and lesions, brought 27 women in for BCCCP services and 18 of these women were diagnosed with breast cancer. Many women express fears of receiving bad news as well as associated costs, so they delayed screening. BCCCP provides educational material in multiple languages about the program as well as signs and symptoms of breast cancer. BCCCP also works with multiple facilities and public transportation to reduce structural barriers. The communities this program serves would greatly benefit from transportation services. An attempt needs to be made to form a partnership with local transportation as well as transportation to farther locations for consults and treatment. This facility could target minority women to increase their participation in the program through outreach programs including partnerships with salons, churches, and women’s groups. Staff training is necessary in order to fully serve all woman

Alcohol Use, Alcohol-Related Outcome Expectancies, and Partner Aggression Among Males Court-Mandated to Batterer Intervention Programs: A Brief Report

Additional work is needed to determine how and/or why the relationship between alcohol use and increased risk of partner aggression (PA) exists. Researchers have begun to examine whether alcohol-related outcome expectancies (i.e., beliefs about the cognitive and behavioral effects of alcohol) are associated with PA irrespective of alcohol use. We examined the relationship between alcohol use, alcohol expectancies, and PA among 360 males arrested for a domestic violence offense and court-mandated to treatment. Results indicate that certain alcohol expectancies do play a role in the relationship between alcohol use and some forms of PA