Affirmative Action Programs in Social Service Agencies: Status of the Female M.S.W.

Job status and salary inequities between men and women have only recently been documented (Kravetz 1976). The federal government, over the past few decades, through various acts and executive orders, has created legislation to prohibit discrimination based on race, sex, color, religion or national origin in all employment practices. The question is to what extent this legislation has permeated social service agencies and affected their employment patterns, particularly with respect to administrative positions. In 1976, the Women\u27s Issues Committee of the Oregon Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers (NASW), addressed this question by initiating a study of social work employment in Oregon. The first part of the study examined the salaries and positions of NASW members in this state. The second part of the study was designed to study more specifically the employment patterns of women MSWs in Oregon\u27s social service agencies. Under the auspices of the Women\u27s Issues Committee, the second part of the study was designed and conducted by eight graduate students at the School of Social Work at Portland State University. One objective of the study was to find out the proportion of men and women filling the management positions in local social service agencies. But the primary purpose of the study was to examine the management-executive employment patterns in agencies before and after affirmative action programs were instituted. An attempt was then made to determine the effects, if any, of such programs. It was hoped that the results would clarify how agencies implement their affirmative action programs, the effects of implementation, and the barriers to the employment of women in management positions

Associations between depressive symptoms and disease progression in older patients with chronic kidney disease: results of the EQUAL study

Background Depressive symptoms are associated with adverse clinical outcomes in patients with end-stage kidney disease; however, few small studies have examined this association in patients with earlier phases of chronic kidney disease (CKD). We studied associations between baseline depressive symptoms and clinical outcomes in older patients with advanced CKD and examined whether these associations differed depending on sex. Methods CKD patients (>= 65 years; estimated glomerular filtration rate <= 20 mL/min/1.73 m(2)) were included from a European multicentre prospective cohort between 2012 and 2019. Depressive symptoms were measured by the five-item Mental Health Inventory (cut-off <= 70; 0-100 scale). Cox proportional hazard analysis was used to study associations between depressive symptoms and time to dialysis initiation, all-cause mortality and these outcomes combined. A joint model was used to study the association between depressive symptoms and kidney function over time. Analyses were adjusted for potential baseline confounders. Results Overall kidney function decline in 1326 patients was -0.12 mL/min/1.73 m(2)/month. A total of 515 patients showed depressive symptoms. No significant association was found between depressive symptoms and kidney function over time (P = 0.08). Unlike women, men with depressive symptoms had an increased mortality rate compared with those without symptoms [adjusted hazard ratio 1.41 (95% confidence interval 1.03-1.93)]. Depressive symptoms were not significantly associated with a higher hazard of dialysis initiation, or with the combined outcome (i.e. dialysis initiation and all-cause mortality). Conclusions There was no significant association between depressive symptoms at baseline and decline in kidney function over time in older patients with advanced CKD. Depressive symptoms at baseline were associated with a higher mortality rate in men

Symptom Burden before and after Dialysis Initiation in Older Patients

For older patients with kidney failure, lowering symptom burden may be more important than prolonging life. Dialysis initiation may affect individual kidney failure-related symptoms differently, but the change in symptoms before and after start of dialysis has not been studied. Therefore, we investigated the course of total and individual symptom number and burden before and after starting dialysis in older patients