Reducing Stigma-Driven Health Disparities in People Living with HIV (PLWH): A Literature Review

Introduction: Research has found that HIV-related stigma has numerous negative impacts on the lives of people living with HIV (PLWH). Although there are more resources than ever dedicated to HIV/AIDS efforts, stigma continues to be a major factor challenging the prevention and treatment of HIV today. Understanding the impacts of stigma on health outcomes and quality of life in PLWH is essential to address the global HIV epidemic and reduce health disparities. Search Strategy: We conducted a secondary meta-analysis of existing research that discussed and evaluated the impacts of HIV-related stigma and discrimination on PLWH. We searched the following databases for peerreviewed articles: EBSCO Host, Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), and PubMed. We also obtained reports from Centers for Disease Control (CDC), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), World Health Organization (WHO), and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS). Results: Our review of the literature revealed that HIV-related stigma is a socially constructed global phenomenon that reflects social and cultural tradition. Most current stigma-reduction interventions are designed to address individual-level stigma (symbolic stigma). While this has contributed to improvements in individual attitudes towards PLWH, interventions at the individual level alone do not address the macro-level attitudes and societal norms that influence individual ideals and behaviors. Conclusion: Findings in the literature review suggest that because of the pervasiveness of HIV-related stigma globally, addressing stigma is imperative to the HIV response. It also suggests that interventions that address stigma at the structural level and target multiple domains might have a more profound impact on HIV-related health outcomes

The Best-Selling Bibles: What Librarians Need to Know

This article presents guidance for librarians in the selection and recommendation of Bible translations. Pairing a reader with an appropriate Bible requires clear understanding of patron reading level and intended purpose along with a general knowledge of the major translations and their key characteristics. Bibliographic details and annotative summaries of the 10 best-selling Bibles in the United States are included. Ranking is based on the latest unit sales data released April 2014 by the Association for Christian Retail

Working Effectively With Employees who Have Sustained a Brain Injury

This brochure on individuals who have sustained a brain injury and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is one of a series on human resources practices and workplace accommodations for persons with disabilities edited by Susanne M. Bruyère, Ph.D., CRC, SPHR, Director, Program on Employment and Disability, School of Industrial and Labor Relations – Extension Division, Cornell University. It was updated in June, 2000 by Stephanie Hanson, Ph.D., College of Health Professions, University of Florida. The original as written by Thomas P. Golden, M.S., Program on Employment and Disability, Cornell University. Cornell University was funded in the early 1990’s by the U.S. Department of Education National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research as a National Materials Development Project on the employment provisions (Title I) of the ADA (Grant #H133D10155). These updates, and the development of new brochures, have been funded by Cornell’s Program on Employment and Disability, the Pacific Disability and Business Technical Assistance Center, and other supporters

Sustainability and Spread of Community-based Initiatives: A case study of Community Cares, a Children’s Hospital’s 16 year effort to serve its community

The sustainability and spread of innovations is often elusive, presenting continuous challenges to clinicians and healthcare leaders. Somewhere between 33 - 70% of all innovations are reportedly not sustained, and even fewer are spread beyond the original team, or to other units within an organization. In plain language, sustainability is defined as locking in progress, while continually building upon that foundation, while spread is the exchange of knowledge and experience to others beyond the original implementing team. The literature supports the concept that sustainability is both multi-dimensional and multi-factorial and has several characteristics and pre-conditions. Tax-exempt, not-for-profit organizations in the USA must provide measurable community benefits to the populations they seek to serve. Many of these community benefits take the form of locating necessary services closer to or directly within the communities being served in order to enhance access. A case study of a 16 year effort to provide a medical home-oriented primary care model to underserved children in Houston, Texas Children’s Pediatrics’ Community Cares, is presented as illustrative of such a community benefit. Many of the characteristics and preconditions essential to a model for sustainability and spread are highlighted and the Community Cares case study is discussed from the standpoint of this framework

Work and reversibility in quantum thermodynamics

It is a central question in quantum thermodynamics to determine how irreversible is a process that transforms an initial state $\rho$ to a final state $\sigma$, and whether such irreversibility can be thought of as a useful resource. For example, we might ask how much work can be obtained by thermalizing $\rho$ to a thermal state $\sigma$ at temperature $T$ of an ambient heat bath. Here, we show that, for different sets of resource-theoretic thermodynamic operations, the amount of entropy produced along a transition is characterized by how reversible the process is. More specifically, this entropy production depends on how well we can return the state $\sigma$ to its original form $\rho$ without investing any work. At the same time, the entropy production can be linked to the work that can be extracted along a given transition, and we explore the consequences that this fact has for our results. We also exhibit an explicit reversal operation in terms of the Petz recovery channel coming from quantum information theory. Our result establishes a quantitative link between the reversibility of thermodynamical processes and the corresponding work gain.Comment: 14 page

Congenital Chagas Disease in the United States: Cost Savings Through Maternal Screening

Chagas disease, caused by Trypanosoma cruzi, is transmitted by insect vectors through transfusions, transplants, insect feces in food, and from mother to child during gestation. Congenital infection could perpetuate Chagas disease indefinitely, even in countries without vector transmission. An estimated 30% of infected persons will develop lifelong, potentially fatal, cardiac or digestive complications. Treatment of infants with benznidazole is highly efficacious in eliminating infection. This work evaluates the costs of maternal screening and infant testing and treatment of Chagas disease in the United States. We constructed a decision-analytic model to find the lower cost option, comparing costs of testing and treatment, as needed, for mothers and infants with the lifetime societal costs without testing and the consequent morbidity and mortality due to lack of treatment or late treatment. We found that maternal screening, infant testing, and treatment of Chagas disease in the United States are cost saving for all rates of congenital transmission greater than 0.001% and all levels of maternal prevalence above 0.06% compared with no screening program. Newly approved diagnostics make universal screening cost saving with maternal prevalence as low as 0.008%. The present value of lifetime societal savings due to screening and treatment is about $634 million saved for every birth year cohort. The benefits of universal screening for T. cruzi as part of routine prenatal testing far outweigh the program costs for all U.S. births