Understanding facilitators and barriers to contraception screening and referral in young women with cancer

BACKGROUND: Young women with cancer often worry about impaired fertility after treatment but can experience devastating consequences from an unplanned pregnancy during treatment. Contraception screening and referral appear to occur infrequently in cancer care. OBJECTIVES: We sought to understand oncologic providers’ current practices, perceptions of facilitators and barriers to screening for adequate contraception during cancer treatment, and to understand patient perspectives on these processes. METHODS: We interviewed 19 oncologic providers and 20 female reproductive-aged oncology patients stable on treatment or who had completed therapy within the last 24 months. We recruited participants from an urban, northeast medical center where they worked or received oncologic care. Semi-structured interview questions examined components of the Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services (PARiHS) framework, and subsequent constant comparative analysis identified similar themes. FINDINGS: Providers vary significantly in their current contraception screening practices with many focusing on diagnosing pregnancy rather than prevention. Providers identified many institutional and organizational barriers, including lack of education and lack of clear provider responsibility. Providers also identified resources and supports that would assist with contraception screening and referral, including education and enhanced interdisciplinary collaboration with gynecologic providers. Patients infrequently recalled contraception conversations with oncology providers and expressed challenges determining the most appropriate provider with whom to discuss contraception. CONCLUSION: Cancer centers should address barriers to contraception screening and referral locally in future implementation of contraception screening and referral. National organizations should work to develop guidelines to inform and support this process in clinical practice.2019-10-23T00:00:00

Child language brokers’ representations of parent-child relationships

This paper reports the analysis of qualitative data from a broader study of young people’s representations of conflicting roles in child development. Just over a quarter of the group, bilingual students who spoke a variety of first languages, had had personal experience of child language brokering (CLB). Employing vignette methodology, they were invited to reflect on the implications of an adolescent boy’s language brokering activities for, among other things, his relationships within his family. In this paper we will present brief case studies to illustrate different positions that members of the group adopted in relation to developmental scripts emphasizing independence and interdependence between young people and their parents (Dorner et al. 2008). Through an analysis of individual CLB case studies, we illustrate various ways in which individual young people reported the balancing of the demands of autonomy and connectedness in their analysis of relationships between young people and their parents

Recent research on child language brokering in the United Kingdom

Recent patterns of migration and population change in the UK have led in some places to a need for child language brokering (CLB). Although there is only limited evidence on CLB in the UK, the research that has been published indicates the diversity of the phenomenon and suggests its frequency and significance in the lives of some families. In this paper we review a range of small scale studies from different research centres to illustrate that diversity. The research has highlighted ways in which language brokering often elides into cultural brokering with young children playing a brokering role within as well as outside their families. An important line of enquiry has been research on the CLB process itself, but detailed studies of how children and young people respond to the challenges of translation in different settings remain elusive, as do studies of the impact that the activity has on their interactions with others. A key issue for the children and parents involved is others’ perceptions of and reaction to CLB, including not only the professionals and officials with whom they deal but also their peers at school and elsewhere who are not involved in language brokering. Ultimately CLB is of theoretical interest not only for the light it throws on children’s language learning and acculturation but also for the challenge it presents to traditional notions of child development and family role

Using the vignette methodology as a tool for exploring cultural identity positions : European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI) Special Interest Group 21: Learning and Teaching in Culturally Diverse Settings: Moving through cultures of learning

In this paper we will examine how the vignette methodology can aid understanding of cultural identity. Vignettes are typically short stories about a fictional character or fictional scenario appropriate to a particular study. The story places the behaviour of the character in a concrete context and allows the researcher to explore participants? positions and perspectives on the issues arising from the situation. We argue that within a framework of cultural development theory and the dialogical self theory (Hermans, 2001) identity positions can be explained in relation to the sociocultural context. To do so we report on part of wider study about representations of children who work. In particular this paper will focus on language brokering which involves translating or interpreting on behalf of family members who do not speak the host language. Language brokering requires the child to engage in both the cultural contexts of the host culture and the home culture and as such, the child must negotiate new cultural identities. Those interviewed were young people aged between 15-18 years, some of whom were brokers and others who were not. When looking at the language broker vignette scenario these young people often positioned the parents, teachers and friends of the language broker in the scenario in particular ways. Through notions of adequacy and inadequacy, visibility and invisibility, theoretical ideas around cultural identity theory and the dialogical self theory can provide an understanding of how the young people moved through different (often conflicting) identity positions

Cox Regression Model

Cox, in 1972, came up with the Cox Regression Model to deal handle failure time data. This work presents background information leading up to the Cox\u27s regression model for censored survival data. The marginal and partial likelihood approaches to estimate the parameters in this model are presented in detail. The estimation techniques of the hazard and survivor functions are explained. All of these ideas are illustrated using data from the Veteran’s Administration lung cancer study

Validating Local Transit Accessibility Measures Using Transit Ridershp

Local transit accessibility measures are important tools used by planners to understand the effects of changes to public transit systems. Several local transit accessibility measures exist in the literature; however, it is not clear how these measures relate to public transit usage. Therefore, the aim of this study is to evaluate several transit accessibility measures that are commonly used in the literature by examining their association with ridership levels at the dissemination area level. The assessed transit accessibility measures ranged from a basic stop count, to gravity-based measures which use distance decay functions from a local household survey, and Walk Score’s Transit Score. Using several land use and transit service datasets, including data collected from the fare box systems onboard the Saskatoon Transit buses, three types of model were tested. These models include ordinary least square models (OLS), spatial lag models (SLM), and spatial error models (SEM). The results from the models suggest that we can more closely predict actual public transit ridership when including a gravity-based accessibility measure in the model, while controlling for several household socioeconomic factors and built environment characteristics. In all cases, the measure that best fit the variation in ridership was the filtered frequency accessibility measure calculated using a 400 m network buffer and a distance decay function based on a Butterworth filter with a bandpass value of 250 m. This study offers transit planners and practitioners a better understanding of the performance of different transit local accessibility measures in relationship to actual transit ridership. Using the previous accessibility measure, the local accessibility of the proposed BRT system in Saskatoon was evaluated. The results showed an increase in accessibility in most of the city, even when the number of the stops was decreased from 1,443 to 994

Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire

Review of Queer Ecologies: Sex, Nature, Politics, Desire by Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands and Bruce Erickson, eds. (2010, Indiana UP)

Alien Registration- Lindsay, Sarah E. (Seboeis, Penobscot County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/16022/thumbnail.jp

Bioaugmentation mitigates the impact of estrogen on coliform-grazing protozoa in slow sand filters

Exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), such as estrogens, is a growing issue for human and animal health as they have been shown to cause reproductive and developmental abnormalities in wildlife and plants and have been linked to male infertility disorders in humans. Intensive farming and weather events, such as storms, flash flooding, and landslides, contribute estrogen to waterways used to supply drinking water. This paper explores the impact of estrogen exposure on the performance of slow sand filters (SSFs) used for water treatment. The feasibility and efficacy of SSF bioaugmentation with estrogen-degrading bacteria was also investigated, to determine whether removal of natural estrogens (estrone, estradiol, and estriol) and overall SSF performance for drinking water treatment could be improved. Strains for SSF augmentation were isolated from full-scale, municipal SSFs so as to optimize survival in the laboratory-scale SSFs used. Concentrations of the natural estrogens, determined by gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (GC-MS), revealed augmented SSFs reduced the overall estrogenic potency of the supplied water by 25% on average and removed significantly more estrone and estradiol than nonaugmented filters. A negative correlation was found between coliform removal and estrogen concentration in nonaugmented filters. This was due to the toxic inhibition of protozoa, indicating that high estrogen concentrations can have functional implications for SSFs (such as impairing coliform removal). Consequently, we suggest that high estrogen concentrations could impact significantly on water quality production and, in particular, on pathogen removal in biological water filters

Sequential Online Wellness Programming Is an Effective Strategy to Promote Behavior Change

The growing number of United States youth and adults categorized as overweight or obese illustrates a need for research-based family wellness interventions. Sequential, online, Extension-delivered family wellness interventions offer a time- and cost-effective approach for both participants and Extension educators. The 6-week, online Healthy Families Challenge (HFC) resulted in increased daily fruit and vegetable servings and leisure-time physical activity. These findings suggest that an Extension-delivered, sequential, online family wellness program is an effective education strategy