Multidisciplinary Baseline Assessment of Homosexual Men with and without Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection. I. Overview of Study Design

Although much is known about the virus believed by most experts to be the cause of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome and about its pathogenic actions, major areas of ignorance remain. Among these are the reasons for the varying time between infection with human immunodeficiency virus and development of acquired imunodeficiency syndrome, the relationship between neurologic and medical aspects of the disease, the time course of neuropsychological findings, and the prevalence of psychiatric morbidity. We assessed 124 homosexual men who were positive for human immunodeficiency virus and 84 who were negative for the virus. In this article we describe the study design, method of recruitment, and medical and demographic characteristics of the cohort, which will be followed up for 5 years

LGBT community, social network characteristics, and smoking behaviors in young sexual minority women.

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/106605/1/LGBT community, social network characteristics, and smoking behaviors in young sexual minority women.pd

The Benefits and Challenges of Health Disparities and Social Stress Frameworks for Research on Sexual and Gender Minority Health

Research on the health of sexual and gender minority populations has been predominantly framed within the context of health disparities and social stress. Findings produced from research employing health disparities and social stress frameworks have spurred significant advancements in basic and applied science on sexual and gender minority health, and have been useful in arguing for the removal of discriminatory social policies. Critiques of these frameworks suggest their dominant role in the research literature risks an artificially narrow portrayal of relevant lived experience, and further pathologizes and stigmatizes sexual and gender minority populations. Methodological challenges involve the measurement of explanatory variables within comparative research designs. By taking stock of these benefits and challenges, suggestions can be made for future research designed to maximize the benefits of health disparities and social stress frameworks for understanding and improving the health of sexual and gender minority populations in ways that are responsive to critiques while recognizing variability in lived experience

Understanding the micro and macro politics of health: Inequalities, intersectionality & institutions-A research agenda

This essay brings together intersectionality and institutional approaches to health inequalities, suggesting an integrative analytical framework that accounts for the complexity of the intertwined influence of both individual social positioning and institutional stratification on health. This essay therefore advances the emerging scholarship on the relevance of intersectionality to health inequalities research. We argue that intersectionality provides a strong analytical tool for an integrated understanding of health inequalities beyond the purely socioeconomic by addressing the multiple layers of privilege and disadvantage, including race, migration and ethnicity, gender and sexuality. We further demonstrate how integrating intersectionality with institutional approaches allows for the study of institutions as heterogeneous entities that impact on the production of social privilege and disadvantage beyond just socioeconomic (re)distribution. This leads to an understanding of the interaction of the macro and the micro facets of the politics of health. Finally, we set out a research agenda considering the interplay/intersections between individuals and institutions and involving a series of methodological implications for research - arguing that quantitative designs can incorporate an intersectional institutional approach

Identidad de género y orientación sexual: cambiando una discriminación social

Curso de Especial Interés – Psicología y SexualidadEl estudio profundiza en una fundamentación teórica alrededor de los temas LGBT, discriminación y violencia. Su objetivo general es la promoción de la protección de los derechos sexuales y reproductivos de la comunidad LGBT. Este estudio indagó de diferentes formas los niveles de discriminación en la comunidad LGBT, y a partir de los resultados se construyó una página web que permitiera cumplir el objetivo general.RESUMEN Y JUSTIFICACIÓN 1. IDENTIDAD DE GÉNERO Y ORIENTACIÓN SEXUAL 2. MARCO METODOLÓGICO 3. ESTUDIO DE MERCADEO 4. RESULTADOS 5. CONCLUSIONES Y RECOMENDACIONES BIBLIOGRAFÍA ANEXOS O APÉNDICESPregradoPsicólog

Rehabilitating the Safety Net: Polio and Chronic Disease Management In Los Angeles County

My dissertation investigates the polio epidemics’ impact on the Los Angeles County healthcare system’s management of chronic disease. It emphasizes how the county’s safety net for chronic patients was shaped by an interaction between the following: (1) a high local polio incidence during the 1920s, late 1940s, and early 1950s; (2) the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis’ strategy of establishing regional rehabilitation centers for respirator-dependent polio patients; (3) Seventh-Day Adventist physician leaders’ involvement in the local polio effort; (4) a post-World War II increase in federal funding for research and hospital construction which benefitted hospitals that provided rehabilitation services.My dissertation begins by examining how California’s experience of epidemic polio during the 1920s prompted the establishment of the Crippled Children’s Services (CCS). A statewide program that was administered by the counties, the CCS helped families pay for medical care following the 1927 polio epidemic. After the Social Security Act was enacted in 1935, the CCS evolved into California Children’s Services. The CCS today uses a combination of federal, state, and county funds in financing care for children with designated chronic conditions, such as cerebral palsy.Epidemic polio again provided the impetus for the county’s expansion of its safety net when major epidemics migrated westward across the United States during the 1940s. Los Angeles’ problems managing care for respirator-dependent polio patients were part of a new period characterized by large outbreaks in the Central and Western United States. As a voluntary organization, the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (NFIP) raised millions of dollars, which it used to establish regional centers that rehabilitated respiratory patients. In the NFIP Respiratory Center, rehabilitation was a multispecialty team-based approach that served the objectives of helping to patients become independent of iron lungs to the greatest extent possible, to improve their physical functioning, and to become integrated into their communities. Many of the physicians who had leadership roles at Rancho Los Amigos, the Los Angeles center, were educated at the College of Medical Evangelists, an Adventist medical school in Loma Linda, California. A Protestant Christian denomination with a unique emphasis on medical missionary work, Adventism advocated for a clinical approach that had much in common with rehabilitation in chronic disease management. As the 1950s mass polio vaccinations began, Rancho Los Amigos’ rehabilitation leaders anticipated losing financial support from the National Foundation. They thus began looking to federal sources for funding and adapted the infrastructure that they built in response to polio to rehabilitate chronic conditions such as heart disease and stroke.During the 1960s and 1970s, Rancho Los Amigos would obtain its current position as the rehabilitation center of the Los Angeles County’s municipal health system. However, it was also a public hospital with a mandate to care for the underserved. At this time, Rancho’s patient base included increasing numbers of chronic patients from low-income minority communities. By the 1970s, Los Angeles was maintaining a safety net which was providing costly specialized rehabilitative services to some of the county’s most underserved residents. During this decade, the Los Angeles municipal system experienced large funding cuts in response to inflation. Since then, the county has repeatedly explored the option of turning Rancho Los Amigos into a private nonprofit hospital. Facing a spiraling deficit, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors ordered Rancho Los Amigos’ closure in 2003 (an order that was later reversed by a federal appellate judge.) Through focusing on how polio shaped the management of chronic disease in Los Angeles County, my dissertation provides a local history of the national shift towards rehabilitation during the 1940s and 1950s. It also elucidates a process, which occurred during the AIDS epidemic and the COVID-19 pandemic, by which infectious disease outbreaks affect the American welfare state’s expansion. But my dissertation additionally reveals the shortcomings of clinical science in responding to the social problems that are connected to chronic illness. The years that Rancho Los Amigos was a highly regarded rehabilitation center were some of the years that it was the most fiscally fragile. When the federal judge eventually ruled against its closure, she did so based on the premise that without Rancho Los Amigos, large numbers of medically-complex Medicaid patients would lose access to the advanced level of care that they needed