“Lift As You Climb”: A Narrative on Self-Empowerment and Student-Initiated Retention

Through a study on student-initiated retention projects, Maldonado, Buenavista, and Rhoads (2005) focused on the role of student agency and group empowerment and offered insight into how retention theory, policy, and practice may be reconsidered. This critical race counterstory will explore how my undergraduate experience was shaped by a student-initiated retention project in a way that contributed to my self-empowerment. I conclude with a discussion on empowerment’s relationship to retention and share suggestions for how student affairs educators may engage in student-centered and student–initiated programming to foster critical knowledge construction, community and identity formation, and leadership

Micro-finance, women’s empowerment and fertility decline in Bangladesh: How important was women’s agency?

As Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen has argued “[Bangladesh’s development achievements have] important lessons for other countries across the globe, [in particular a focus on] reducing gender inequality”. A major avenue through which this emphasis has been manifest lies, according to this narrative, in enhancements to women’s agency for instrumental and intrinsic reasons particularly through innovations in family planning and microfinance. The “Bangladesh paradox” of improved wellbeing despite low economic growth over the last four decades is claimed as a paradigmatic case of the spread of both modern family planning programmes and microfinance leading to women’s empowerment and fertility reduction. In this paper we show that the links between microfinance, empowerment and fertility reduction, are fraught with problems, and far from robust; hence the claimed causal links between microfinance and family planning via women’s empowerment needs to be further reconsidered

Implementing reproductive rights: population debates and institutional responses to the new agenda

Wellbeing, Rights and Reproduction Research Paper I

The right language? Reproduction, well-being and global social policy discourse

Wellbeing, Rights and Reproduction Research Paper

Re-thinking technology and its growing role in enabling patient empowerment

© The Author(s) 2018. The presence and increase of challenges to eHealth in today’s society have begun to generate doubts about the capability of technology in patient empowerment, especially within the frameworks supporting empowerment. Through the review of existing frameworks and articulation of patient demands, weaknesses in the current application of technology to support empowerment are explored, and key constituents of a technology-driven framework for patient empowerment are determined. This article argues that existing usage of technology in the design, development and implementation of patient empowerment in the healthcare system, although well intentioned, is insufficiently constituted, primarily as a result of fragmentation. Systems theory concepts such as holism and iteration are considered vital in improving the role of technology in enabling patient empowerment

A Selected Bibliography on Race/Ethnicity and Public Policy in the United States

A Selected Bibliography on Race/Ethnicity and Public Policy in the United State

The literary kiss: gestures of subterfuge

A complex, polyvalent phenomenon, the kiss, once embedded in a literary text, is first and foremost a cipher to be decoded. Texts effectively expose its many-sidedness: not merely its potentially seductive power or ostensible expression of affection, but, no less compellingly, its risky demeanors, its capacity to establish dominance, to terrorize, to subdue, to belittle, to ingratiate, even to infuriate. Variously bestowed, retracted, avowed, disavowed, meaningful, meaningless, the kiss can become, as it does in the work so named by Kate Chopin, a multi-layered form of contrivance, the incarnation of tempting, albeit ultimately invidious, non-realities. Though, perhaps, not manifest at first blush, a careful reading reveals that each occasion marked by the “joining of lips” yields an odd sequence of awkward and oft deleterious, consequences: motion is superseded by motive, candor by disingenuousness—all in an unending slew of backward and forward slippages. Thus is engendered the metaphorization of an altered reality—structured all but exclusively upon the relentless deceits it proffers. Jubilation and despair come and go, as though wholly inter-changeable; acceptance and rejection, promulgation and rescission are converted into mere variants of the same gestures of ambivalence, if not of travesty. One might thus conclude that the kiss adopts significance worthy of note only as a metonym for and of factitiousness, vacuity and thinly-veiled distortion. Chopin’s script adeptly explores the multifarious comportments and consequences of the kiss: an act fashioned as a “weapon” of dubious value, as a tactical strategy, as a play-act borne of ulterior objectives and, which, as such, deftly prostitutes itself, willingly, nefariously. In the given context, the kiss-act lays bare the heroine’s ostensible “liberation” to be more imagined than real. Her would-be triumph over gendered subjugation exists, if at all, as but an ill-conceived romantic daydream—destined to slake gradually into a woeful destiny of loneliness and imprisonment. Chopin’s brief narration center-stages betrayal, challenges authenticity and valorizes consummate illegitimacy

Challenges and tricky words. A stronger role for planners

In the last 20 years, a deliberate strategy of impoverishment of local governments argued the imperative need of: a) involving at all (public) costs, the private sector through the “trojan horse” of governance (Miraftab 2004); b) designing big and shortsighted urban projects (frequently destroying public resources and ignoring public needs) through the mantra of the urban and territorial competition. As it has been already noted, “by elevating Governance above Government, and Economics above Politics, the globalpolicy undermined nation- and state-building capacities in many Countries” (Demmers, Jilberto, Hogenboom, 2004). Moreover, through the rhetoric on pluralism, the neo-liberal governance has contributed to shrink and destroy the relevanceof public interest. In fact, behind the 'screen' of governance and the representation of an amorphous citizenship and a notqualified of diffuse interests, the deployment of capitalism has prevailed. This legitimized the partial and strongest interests into shaping the public agenda within the polarized inequalities. In thisframework, the paper will give some suggestions and advices for rethinking current problems, and trying to deal with them,by starting by the critical evaluation of some words we use. Moreover, by focusing on the ethic of responsibility andaccountability of planners (and for most of us as planning scholars), the paper argues that a stronger role for planners andplanning scholars has to do with our own field of responsibility (such as professionals/practitioners/scholars), andmoreover with our commitment in building and using new theories and research approaches at least to: a) incorporate the ‘others’/minorities by considering furthermore the interaction between capitalism accumulation in space and the minorities (Yiftachel 2013); b) improve critical urban theories mixing with place-based planning and research practices (Campbell 2012; 2014), by applying different approaches; c) co-produce (Watson 2014) a public model of development, being aware of the oligopolistic elites and extractive institutions (Acemouglou, Robinson, 2012)

Improving healthcare empowerment through breast cancer patient navigation: a mixed methods evaluation in a safety-net setting.

BackgroundBreast cancer mortality rates in the U.S. remain relatively high, particularly among ethnic minorities and low-income populations. Unequal access to quality care, lower follow up rates, and poor treatment adherence contribute to rising disparities among these groups. Healthcare empowerment (HCE) is theorized to improve patient outcomes through collaboration with providers and improving understanding of and compliance with treatment. Patient navigation is a health care organizational intervention that essentially improves healthcare empowerment by providing informational, emotional, and psychosocial support. Patient navigators address barriers to care through multilingual coordination of treatment and incorporation of access to community services, support, and education into the continuum of cancer care.MethodsUtilizing survey and qualitative methods, we evaluated the patient navigation program in a Northern California safety-net hospital Breast Clinic by assessing its impact on patients' experiences with cancer care and providers' perspectives on the program. We conducted qualitative interviews with 16 patients and 4 service providers, conducted approximately 66 hours of clinic observations, and received feedback through the self-administered survey from 66 patients.ResultsThe role of the patient navigator at the Breast Clinic included providing administrative assistance, psychosocial support, improved knowledge, better understanding of treatment process, and ensuring better communication between patients and providers. As such, patient navigators facilitated improved collaboration between patients and providers and understanding of interdisciplinary care processes. The survey results suggested that the majority of patients across all ethnic backgrounds and age groups were highly satisfied with the program and had a positive perception of their navigator. Interviews with patients and providers highlighted the roles of a navigator in ensuring continuity of care, improving treatment completion rates, and reducing providers' workload and waiting time. Uncertainty about the navigator's role among the patients was a weakness of the program.ConclusionsPatient navigation in the Breast Clinic had a positive impact on patients' experiences with care and healthcare empowerment. Clarifying uncertainties about the navigators' role would aid successful outcomes