Freedom of Speech at Ursinus College

Freedom of speech is a hot topic issue on many college campuses across the United States. My research project’s goal is to find out how our community at Ursinus College feels about freedom of speech. My project is going to explore how well Ursinus holds itself to its standards of free and open inquiry and how the students on campus feel about free and open inquiry. In order to understand how the community feels about free speech on our campus, we borrowed a survey from the Foundation of Individual Rights in Education and distributed it to roughly half of the student body. The findings of this survey will provide us with valuable data as to how our community feels about free speech and if it feels the school is doing a good job at upholding its values when it comes to freedom of speech

Ambivalence in digital health: co-designing an mHealth platform for HIV care

In reaction to polarised views on the benefits or drawbacks of digital health, the notion of ‘ambivalence’ has recently been proposed as a means to grasp the nuances and complexities at play when digital technologies are embedded within practices of care. This article responds to this proposal by demonstrating how ambivalence can work as a reflexive approach to evaluate the potential implications of digital health. We first outline current theoretical advances in sociology and organisation science and define ambivalence as a relational and multidimensional concept that can increase reflexivity within innovation processes. We then introduce our empirical case and highlight how we engaged with the HIV community to facilitate a co-design space where 97 patients (across five European clinical sites: Antwerp, Barcelona, Brighton, Lisbon, Zagreb) were encouraged to lay out their approaches, imaginations and anticipations towards a prospective mHealth platform for HIV care. Our analysis shows how patients navigated ambivalence within three dimensions of digital health: quantification, connectivity and instantaneity. We provide examples of how potential tensions arising through remote access to quantified data, new connections with care providers or instant health alerts were distinctly approached alongside embodied conditions (e.g. undetectable viral load) and embedded socio-material environments (such as stigma or unemployment). We conclude that ambivalence can counterbalance fatalistic and optimistic accounts of technology and can support social scientists in taking-up their critical role within the configuration of digital health interventions

The American Dream: Living Paycheck to Paycheck

A debate that has gained traction due to recent economic circumstances is how the United States government should raise the federal minimum wage, and if they should raise it at all. I propose the United States government should raise the federal minimum wage by implementing a living wage or tying the federal minimum wage to inflation. Implementing a living wage would benefit workers as it would cover the cost of living in their geographic area. It would also benefit employers as their employees would be getting paid according to their needs rather than being paid a blanket wage that may not be needed in their geographic area. Tying the federal minimum wage to inflation is also enticing as it would provide steady purchasing power for citizens, ensuring they can purchase goods they need regardless of the situation. Both proposals are better than the current one size fits all model. The one size fits all model does not take into account different local economies and does not account for changes in purchasing power of the U.S. dollar

Examining mortality among formerly homeless adults enrolled in Housing First: An observational study

BACKGROUND: Adults who experience prolonged homelessness have mortality rates 3 to 4 times that of the general population. Housing First (HF) is an evidence-based practice that effectively ends chronic homelessness, yet there has been virtually no research on premature mortality among HF enrollees. In the United States, this gap in the literature exists despite research that has suggested chronically homeless adults constitute an aging cohort, with nearly half aged 50 years old or older. METHODS: This observational study examined mortality among formerly homeless adults in an HF program. We examined death rates and causes of death among HF participants and assessed the timing and predictors of death among HF participants following entry into housing. We also compared mortality rates between HF participants and (a) members of the general population and (b) individuals experiencing homelessness. We supplemented these analyses with a comparison of the causes of death and characteristics of decedents in the HF program with a sample of adults identified as homeless in the same city at the time of death through a formal review process. RESULTS: The majority of decedents in both groups were between the ages of 45 and 64 at their time of death; the average age at death for HF participants was 57, compared to 53 for individuals in the homeless sample. Among those in the HF group, 72 % died from natural causes, compared to 49 % from the homeless group. This included 21 % of HF participants and 7 % from the homeless group who died from cancer. Among homeless adults, 40 % died from an accident, which was significantly more than the 14 % of HF participants who died from an accident. HIV or other infectious diseases contributed to 13 % of homeless deaths compared to only 2 % of HF participants. Hypothermia contributed to 6 % of homeless deaths, which was not a cause of death for HF participants. CONCLUSIONS: Results suggest HF participants face excess mortality in comparison to members of the general population and that mortality rates among HF participants are higher than among those reported among members of the general homeless population in prior studies. However, findings also suggest that causes of death may differ between HF participants and their homeless counterparts. Specifically, chronic diseases appear to be more prominent causes of death among HF participants, indicating the potential need for integrating medical support and end-of-life care in HF

Introducing Housing First in a Rural Service System: A Multistakeholder Perspective

Housing First (HF) represents a fundamental shift in thinking about how to address chronic homelessness that has taken place during the past two decades. Whether and how the logic of HF fits in rural systems of care has not been previously explored in the research literature. Using a case study approach and thematic analysis of accounts from 20 key stakeholders, this study investigated whether and how the introduction of HF into a small, rural state in the Northeastearn United States affected the dominant institutional logic. The overall account by multiple stakeholders remained largely consistent: The introduction of an outside HF program brought new resources and expertise, which resulted in a previously underserved population being effectively engaged in services. The extent to which the introduction of an outside provider with a specific, well-defined HF philosophy fit within the existing social services system was complicated by existing providers’ limited knowledge about or input during the grant submission that provided funding for the HF program. Numerous social forces and concerns regarding limited resources also influenced stakeholder perceptions. The impact of HF on existing institutional logics was not always clearly identified by stakeholders, yet HF’s emphasis on providing service options and allowing for client choice, as well as the demonstrated effectiveness of the approach, emerged as influential. Features of local environments (including systems of care but also funding, political, and cultural contexts) and their potential for triggering transformative change may influence the relative merits of implementing HF services by an outside provider with known expertise or supporting an existing provider to develop the infrastructure and foster a service philosophy based on an HF logic

Introducing Housing First in a Rural Service System: A Multistakeholder Perspective

Housing First (HF) represents a fundamental shift in thinking about how to address chronic homelessness that has taken place during the past two decades. Whether and how the logic of HF fits in rural systems of care has not been previously explored in the research literature. Using a case study approach and thematic analysis of accounts from 20 key stakeholders, this study investigated whether and how the introduction of HF into a small, rural state in the Northeastearn United States affected the dominant institutional logic. The overall account by multiple stakeholders remained largely consistent: The introduction of an outside HF program brought new resources and expertise, which resulted in a previously underserved population being effectively engaged in services. The extent to which the introduction of an outside provider with a specific, well-defined HF philosophy fit within the existing social services system was complicated by existing providers’ limited knowledge about or input during the grant submission that provided funding for the HF program. Numerous social forces and concerns regarding limited resources also influenced stakeholder perceptions. The impact of HF on existing institutional logics was not always clearly identified by stakeholders, yet HF’s emphasis on providing service options and allowing for client choice, as well as the demonstrated effectiveness of the approach, emerged as influential. Features of local environments (including systems of care but also funding, political, and cultural contexts) and their potential for triggering transformative change may influence the relative merits of implementing HF services by an outside provider with known expertise or supporting an existing provider to develop the infrastructure and foster a service philosophy based on an HF logic

Policy Recommendations for Meeting the Grand Challenge to End Homelessness

This brief was created forSocial Innovation for America’s Renewal, a policy conference organized by the Center for Social Development in collaboration with the American Academy of Social Work & Social Welfare, which is leading theGrand Challenges for Social Work initiative to champion social progress. The conference site includes links to speeches, presentations, and a full list of the policy briefs

Understanding digital health: productive tensions at the intersection of sociology of health and science and technology studies

In this editorial introduction, we explore how digital health is being explored at the intersection of sociology of health and science and technology studies (STS). We suggest that socio-material approaches and practice theories provide a shared space within which productive tensions between sociology of health and STS can continue. These tensions emerge around the long-standing challenges of avoiding technological determinism while maintaining a clear focus on the materiality and agency of technologies and recognising enduring sets of relations that emerge in new digital health practices while avoiding social determinism. The papers in this Special Issue explore diverse fields of healthcare (e.g. reproductive health, primary care, diabetes management, mental health) within which heterogenous technologies (e.g. health apps, mobile platforms, smart textiles, time-lapse imaging) are becoming increasingly embedded. By synthesising the main arguments and contributions in each paper, we elaborate on four key dimensions within which digital technologies create ambivalence and (re)configure health practices. First, promissory digital health highlights contradictory virtues within discourses that configure digital health. Second, (re)configuring knowledge outlines ambivalences of navigating new information environments and handling quantified data. Third, (re)configuring connectivity explores the relationships that evolve through digital networks. Fourth, (re)configuring control explores how new forms of power are inscribed and handled within algorithmic decision-making in health. We argue that these dimensions offer fruitful perspectives along which digital health can be explored across a range of technologies and health practices. We conclude by highlighting applications, methods and dimensions of digital health that require further research