Reducing Sexual Risk with Practice of Periodic Secondary Abstinence

Objective: Test a novel intervention to help sexually experienced girls increase abstinence behaviors and attitudes. Design: A quasi-experimental repeated measures design using qualitative and quantitative data. Setting: Two alternative public schools. Participants: Thirty-three females whose mean age was 16 and who were 79% African American participated. Most (79%) had experienced a pregnancy. Intervention: A 6 session, weekly, interactive intervention was delivered. Data were collected at baseline, last session, and at 5 and 7 month follow-ups. Main Outcome Measures: Measured outcomes related to abstinence included participants’ reasons, behaviors, stages of change, and attitudes. Results: The most common reason for abstinence was not wanting to have sex. At each postintervention data collection point, most participants (greater than or equal to 74%) reported that they had purposefully avoided sex. Duration of consecutive days of abstinence increased although only significantly at 5 month follow-up. Abstinence behaviors increased with the largest change from first to last session. Stage of change advanced from preparation to action by 7 month follow-up. Attitudes toward abstinence became more favorable. Conclusion: Effective sexual risk reduction interventions are critically needed to promote safety. Nurses may assist young women to decrease their sexual risks by teaching them to practice periodic abstinence

Implications of Gideon v. Wainwright on American Society

“Your Honor, I request this Court to appoint counsel to represent me in this trial,”1 stated defendant Clearance Earl Gideon before the Judicial Circuit Court of Florida. The court replied, “Mr. Gideon, I am sorry, but I cannot appoint counsel to represent you in this case. Under the laws of the State of Florida, the only time the court can appoint counsel to represent a Defendant is when that person is charged with a capital offense. I am sorry, but I will have to deny your request for counsel to defend you in this case.”2 Before 1963 there was no standard in American state courts requiring counsel as an essential fundamental right. Gideon v Wainwright is a landmark case in Supreme Court history because it was a vital step in the fight for the right to legal counsel. The court unanimously ruled that all state courts were required under the Sixth Amendment, of the United States Constitution, to provide counsel in all criminal cases for defendants who were not able to afford counsel.3 Gideon overruled a twenty year old Supreme Court decision in Betts v Brady by establishing that due process as incorporated in the Fourteenth Amendment obligated the states to furnish counsel in every case. Gideon v Wainwright has helped to remove vulnerabilities and ambiguities in the criminal justice system. It further protects American society by helping to provide an egalitarian system of administering justice, setting a clear standard for state courts to follow and allowing room for future developments in the right to counsel

Job Protection and Wage Replacement: Key Factors in Take Up of Paid Family and Medical Leave Among Lower-Wage Workers

In this brief, author Kristin Smith discusses two key factors—job protection and sufficient wage replacement—that influence take up of paid family and medical leave among lower-wage workers. She reports that lower-wage workers have substantially less access to employer-provided paid family and medical leave than higher-earning workers. More than nine in ten New Hampshire residents support guaranteed job protection for all workers taking paid family or medical leave. Eighty-eight percent of New Hampshire workers believe that a wage replacement rate of 60 percent or more for a worker taking leave is the right amount. She concludes that if state and federal policymakers intend to increase access to and decrease inequity in paid family and medical leave, they would do well to consider job protection and a scaled wage replacement scheme that allows lower-wage workers to maintain most of their wages. A worker’s financial stability should not be put in question when taking paid family and medical leave

As Opioid Use Climbs, Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome Rises in New Hampshire

In this brief, author Kristin Smith analyzes inpatient hospital discharge data (2012–2015) to assess the prevalence of neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) in New Hampshire; describes one hospital’s successful program for treating pregnant women and newborns; discusses how comprehensive and coordinated care and home visiting services provided through community based organizations can support new mothers and families; and discusses how a recent change to New Hampshire law intended to support child protection may be having unintended consequences. She reports that in the 10 years from 2005 to 2015, the number of infants diagnosed with neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) in New Hampshire increased fivefold, from 52 to 269. In 2015, 2.4 percent of New Hampshire births were diagnosed with NAS, and that number is projected to rise, with implications for early intervention programs, early education programs, and primary schools. Children born drug-exposed are at increased risk for behavioral health problems, especially if their parents continue using. Policies and programs should not consider opioid addiction in isolation, but rather as one interconnected symptom within a larger context. Both alcohol and tobacco use during pregnancy have proven negative health consequences for children, and the adverse effects on children are magnified when combined with opiates. Getting mothers on a path to recovery is a formidable challenge facing our state, but one that ultimately will help children and promote family unity

Secondary Student Metacognition Compared to Actual Participation in the Classroom

Many times in a conflict there are three different accounts of what happened: person one’s side, person two’s side, and the truth. As often as this saying gets made and joked about, it does reveal truth about how perception and truth don’t always align. With this thought, I want to compare a student’s perceived participation in comparison with actual class participation. In many secondary and collegiate level classrooms, course grades are partially determined on class participation. Because of this, it would seem relevant to consider perceptions with reality so that students can better understand themselves. When a student has a good grasp on his or herself, then he or she is more likely to modify behavior for improvement. As for the actual measuring of data, a survey will be given out after one session of recording, then to also be followed by a second session. During each recording session, the primary principal/co-principal investigator will record how often each student raises their hand, how often each student is called on with and without their hand raised separately by tallies. The students will also turn in their assignment, not for a grade but for a completion of finished, half finished, or not finished as a score. Assignments will be tallied on two different situations: one prior to the survey and one after the survey. After all data has been collected and coded to protect identities, surveys will be compared to before and after survey recordings and then compared through mean, mode and median

Book Review: Christianity in India: From Beginnings to the Present

A review of Christianity in India: From Beginnings to the Present by Robert Eric Frykenberg

The Portrayal of Powerful Women in the Media

The purpose of this research is to investigate the portrayal of powerful women in the media and to gain a perspective of different ways the media tend to elaborate and focus on gender issues to a greater extent than the general public may think. I intend to demonstrate that powerful women are often portrayed unfairly in the media and that this could affect the progress they make in their careers. I hypothesize that although women are making strides in the right direction, the often negative portrayal of powerful women in the media can be unwarranted and lead to the unfair perception of women in powerful positions. First, I address background information that includes the progress professional and influential women have made in corporate America. I then discuss how many of these advancements, although they are a start, are not as substantial as they should be in the twenty-first century. Next, I investigate the possibility that the media might hinder women’s abilities to move up into positions of power due the influence that the media have on our perceptions and behaviors. To demonstrate that the media do in fact focus on gender issues when portraying powerful women, I investigated how the media portrayed three specific women in power. I chose to examine media portrayals of Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Katie Couric, anchor of CBS Evening News, and Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. By concentrating not only on women in corporate America, but also on a woman in the world of journalism, and one in the political world, I was able to gain a perspective on whether unfair media portrayals of women in corporations are parallel in their portrayals of influential women in general

Parenting a Second Time Around: An Ethnography of African American Grandmothers Parenting Grandchildren Due to Parental Cocaine Abuse

This study describes a group of six African American grandmothers parenting their grandchildren secondary to cocaine abuse on the part of the parents. It explores the manner in which such parenting affected the grandmothers’ health. Data for this ethnography design were collected through participant observation, field notes, taped interviews, and supplementary data sources. The identification of cultural themes evolved from domain and taxonomic analyses. The themes—parenting a second time around, sacrifice, and God’s presence in daily life—expressed aspects of the grandmothers’ culture. The effects on health varied from none to exacerbation of chronic illnesses. The study results, and its picture of life from the grandmothers’ perspectives, suggest areas of nursing assessment and intervention that otherwise might be left unexplored

Lack of protections for home care workers: overtime pay and minimum wage

This brief examines overtime hours and hourly wages among home care workers (home health aides and personal care aides) and compares them with hospital and nursing home aides. These aides engage in similar work for their clients, even though they work in different institutional settings. Yet, home health aides and personal care aides have higher poverty rates (20 percent and 28 percent, respectively) than hospital aides and nursing home aides (about 12 percent for both). In addition, they typically work fewer hours per week, have lower rates of health insurance coverage, rely on public assistance to a greater extent, and receive lower hourly wages. Author Kristin Smith discusses the impact of the Department of Labor\u27s issued proposed rule changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 that would narrow the companionship exemption so that most home care workers would no longer be exempt from overtime pay and minimum wage requirements