A Qualitative Study of Patients' Attitudes toward HIV Testing in the Dental Setting

An estimated 1.1 million people in the USA are living with HIV/AIDS. Nearly 200,000 of these individuals do not know that they are infected. In 2006, the CDC recommended that all healthcare providers routinely offer HIV screening to adolescent and adult patients. Nurse-dentist collaborations present unique opportunities to provide rapid oral HIV screening to patients in dental clinic settings and reach the many adults who lack primary medical providers. However, little is known about the feasibility and acceptability of this type of innovative practice. Thus, elicitation research was undertaken with dental providers, students, and patients. This paper reports the results of qualitative interviews with 19 adults attending a university-based dental clinic in New York City. Overall, patients held very positive attitudes and beliefs toward HIV screening in dental sites and identified important factors that should be incorporated into the design of nurse-dentist collaborative HIV screening programs

Do 72-Hour Waiting Periods and Two-Visit Requirements for Abortion Affect Women's Certainty? A Prospective Cohort Study

PurposeThis paper examines how Utah's two-visit requirement and 72-hour waiting period influence women's certainty about their decision to have an abortion.ProceduresThis study uses data from a prospective cohort study of 500 women who presented at an abortion information visit at four Utah family planning facilities. At the information visit, participants completed a baseline survey; 3 weeks later, they completed telephone interviews that assessed their pregnancy outcome, change in certainty, and factors affecting changes in certainty.Main findingsOverall, 63% reported no change in certainty owing to the information visit and 74% reported no change in certainty owing to the waiting period. Changes in certainty were primarily in the direction of increased certainty, with more women reporting an increase (29%) than a decrease (8%) in certainty owing to the visit and more women reporting an increase (17%) than a decrease (8%) owing to waiting. Changes in certainty in either direction were concentrated among the minority (8%) who were conflicted about their decision at baseline. Learning about the procedure, meeting staff, and discovering that the facility was a safe medical environment were main contributors to increased certainty.ConclusionMost women were certain of their decision to have an abortion when they presented for their abortion information visit and their certainty remained unchanged despite the information visit and 72-hour waiting period. Changes in certainty were largely concentrated in the minority of women who expressed uncertainty about their decision before the beginning of the information visit. Thus, individualized counseling for the minority who are conflicted when they first present for care seems more appropriate than universal requirements

Naturalization of the microbiota developmental trajectory of Cesarean-born neonates after vaginal seeding

Early microbiota perturbations are associated with disorders that involve immunological underpinnings. Cesarean section (CS)-born babies show altered microbiota development in relation to babies born vaginally. Here we present the first statistically powered longitudinal study to determine the effect of restoring exposure to maternal vaginal fluids after CS birth.This work was partially supported by the C&D Research Fund, the Emch Fund for Human Microbiome Studies, and CIFAR FS20-078 #125869 (to M.G.D.-B.); Chilean CONICYT PIA/ANILLO grant ACT172097 and Chilean SOCHIPE Project 022019 (to P.R.H.); and the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (2019-0350), the Emerald Foundation, an NIH Pioneer award (1DP1AT010885), the National Institute of Justice (2016-DN-BX-4194), the San Diego Digestive Diseases Research Center (NIDDK 1P30DK120515), Janssen Pharmaceuticals (20175015)Peer reviewe

Mothers, Morals, and Medicine: Navigating Stigma and Identity in the Abortion Experience

Abortion in the United States is generally considered a highly contested moral andpolitical issue. Two competing activist frameworks tend to dominate the public conversation around abortion. Yet the experience of having an abortion is socially complex, often shaped by inconsistent cultural schemas related to motherhood, medicine, life, and death. Little empirical research examines how people talk about the morality of their own abortion experiences. In this dissertation I examine how individuals who have abortions construct moral identities in the face of persistent gendered stigma. The dissertation is in the format of three research papers. In the first paper, I analyze 156 personal narratives from an abortion storytelling website. I identify four discursive frameworks used to confront the problem of abortion as a morally controversial act. In the second paper, I examine eighteen in-depth interviews with cisgender women who obtained abortions after receiving a diagnosis for a serious fetal condition. I examine how participants maintained moral worth and constructed symbolic boundaries between themselves and those who have abortions for reasons other than fetal health. In the last paper, I question why, despite an unambivalent embrace of motherhood ideals and severe fetal diagnoses, this group of women experienced abortion stigma. I identify a need for a theoretical reorientation toward defining abortion stigma as a multi-level social process embedded in existing structures of power and inequality. The findings of this research contribute to an evolving discussion of how the perspectives of people who have had abortions fit into abortion rights discourses and the broader public sphere

Palaeoseismological records of multiple great earthquakes in south-central Alaska: a 4000 year record at Girdwood.

Analysis of sediment sequences beneath a tidal marsh at Girdwood, Alaska, record seven great earthquakes in the past 4000 years, including the Mw = 9.2 earthquake of March 27, 1964. The key theme that arises from studies of crustal deformation for the south central Alaska earthquake zone over timescales of the last few millennia is one of temporal and spatial variability. We have quantitative data to show both temporal and spatial similarities and differences for different earthquake cycles. There is not a fixed recurrence interval. The shortest interval is between ~180 and 720 years. The longest interval is 790–920 years, which is between the penultimate and the 1964 earthquakes. Estimates of subsidence at Girdwood for each earthquake show values similar to or less than that recorded in 1964. Similarities between each earthquake cycle leads to a model for the Girdwood area with coseismic subsidence, followed by rapid postseismic uplift in the decades after the earthquake. This merges into centuries of slower interseismic uplift before a period of preseismic subsidence. Correlations with sites beyond Girdwood reveal regional-scale temporal variability and spatial heterogeneity in the crustal deformation processes