WASH in Schools Empowers Girls' Education: Proceedings of the Menstrual Hygiene Management in Schools Virtual Conference 2013

This publication brings together the key elements of the 16 presentations made at the Second Annual Virtual MHM in WinS Conference at UNICEF Headquarters in New York City on 21 November 2013. Building on recommendations from the MHM 2012 virtual conference, the 2013 conference focused on the research tools and instruments being used to explore MHM barriers and practices and to evaluate the interventions being trialed or implemented in various contexts

Where There is a Doctor: An Ethnography of Pediatric Heart Surgery Missions in Honduras

Traveling teams of cardiovascular specialists visit poor countries to treat children born with life-threatening heart defects. Working within challenging settings, volunteers may need to build temporary operating theaters and neonatal intensive care units before beginning their work. They also try to extend their humanitarian reach beyond the confines of an in-country visit: they train locally-based personnel in surgical and critical care techniques considered routine in rich countries yet locally unavailable; they donate machines, hardware, and disposable materials to local hospitals; they even build permanent surgical centers. Pediatric heart surgery missions thus define a new context where medical technologies circulate globally. It is well-known that medical technologies have far-reaching effects, transforming societies while at the same time being transformed by them, but few scholars have explored these processes in medical humanitarian arenas. This study investigates the moral logic, medical logistics, and unanticipated effects of short-term surgical missions. The setting is Honduras: a known hub of medical mission activity. The study begins with an examination of why Honduras attracts scores of medical missions, and why children with heart defects have emerged as central objects of humanitarian concern. I argue that humanitarian sentiments dovetail with other interests and desires on the part of surgical volunteers, such as adventure travel, learning, and the allure of practicing an alternative, low-tech version of biomedicine as a corrective to disappointments, frustrations, and lulls in their everyday professional lives. I then describe how this humanitarian ethos reconfigures biomedical practice. This is followed by a discussion of the implications of pediatric heart surgery missions for host countries, such as how they inadvertently re-inscribe social hierarchies and place strain on existing health services. Finally, I follow the lives of pediatric heart patients after their surgeries, show how their parents contest any stereotypical assumptions about humanitarian aid beneficiaries, and unpack the logic underpinning consent for especially high-risk procedures. My analysis emerges from 13 months of ethnographic field research primarily in Tegucigalpa, the nation’s capital, during which I participated in six pediatric heart surgery missions, and observed and interviewed volunteer clinicians, locally-based clinicians, and the parents of pediatric heart surgery patients

Opiate users' knowledge about overdose prevention and naloxone in New York City: a focus group study

BACKGROUND: Drug-induced and drug-related deaths have been increasing for the past decade throughout the US. In NYC, drug overdose accounts for nearly 900 deaths per year, a figure that exceeds the number of deaths each year from homicide. Naloxone, a highly effective opiate antagonist, has for decades been used by doctors and paramedics during emergency resuscitation after an opiate overdose. Following the lead of programs in Europe and the US who have successfully distributed take-home naloxone, the Overdose Prevention and Reversal Program at the Lower East Side Harm Reduction Center (LESHRC) has started providing a similar resource for opiate users in NYC. Participants in the program receive a prescription for two doses of naloxone, with refills as needed, and comprehensive training to reduce overdose risk, administer naloxone, perform rescue breathing, and call 911. As of September 2005, 204 participants have received naloxone and been trained, and 40 have revived an overdosing friend or family member. While naloxone accessibility stands as a proven life-saving measure, some opiates users at LESHRC have expressed only minimal interest in naloxone use, due to past experiences and common misconceptions. METHODS: In order to improve the naloxone distribution program two focus groups were conducted in December 2004 with 13 opiate users at LESHRC to examine knowledge about overdose and overdose prevention. The focus groups assessed participants' (i) experiences with overdose response, specifically naloxone (ii) understanding and perceptions of naloxone, (iii) comfort level with naloxone administration and (iv) feedback about increasing the visibility and desirability of the naloxone distribution program. RESULTS: Analyses suggest that there is both support for and resistance to take-home naloxone, marked by enthusiasm for its potential role in reviving an overdosing individual, numerous misconceptions and negative views of its impact and use. CONCLUSION: Focus group results will be used to increase participation in the program and reshape perceptions about naloxone among opiate users, also targeting those already prescribed naloxone to increase their comfort using it. Since NYC is advancing toward a citywide naloxone distribution program, the LESHRC program will play an important role in establishing protocol for effective and wide-reaching naloxone availability

Introduction : exploring forgiveness in nineteenth-century poetry

This essay serves as an introduction to the essays collected in the ‘Nineteenth-century Poetry and Forgiveness’ cluster. It takes as its foundation the recent turn to questions of hospitality, forgiveness and gift in the intra-disciplinary field of religion, philosophy and literature and highlights the centrality of these issues for reading nineteenth-century poetry. The essay argues that nineteenth-century poetry attempts to figure forgiveness as poetic sound and rhythm as a way of thinking reciprocal forgiving relationships between people. Part I contextualizes this argument and argues for an understanding of forgiveness through emotion. Part II offers an overview of the field of forgiveness scholarship and explores its relevance for nineteenth-century debate on the topic. Part III offers a way into thinking forgiveness as sound and rhythm in Wordsworth's poem ‘Airey-Force Valley’ through Martin Heidegger's reading of poetics and being

Provision of naloxone to injection drug users as an overdose prevention strategy: Early evidence from a pilot study in New York City

Introduction: Naloxone, an opiate antagonist that can avert opiate overdose morality, has long been prescribed to drug users in Europe and in a few US cities. However, there has been little documented evidence of naloxone distribution programs and their feasibility in the peer reviewed literature in the US. Methods: A pilot overdose prevention and reversal program was implemented in a New York City syringe exchange program. We assessed demographics, drug use, and overdose history, experience, and behavior at baseline, when participants returned for prescription refills, and 3 months after baseline assessment. Results: 25 participants were recruited. 22 (88%) participants were successfully followed-up in the first 3 months; of these, 11 (50%) participants reported witnessing a total of 26 overdoses during the follow-up period. Among 17 most-recent overdoses witnessed, naloxone was administered 10 times; all persons who had naloxone administered lived.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/40335/2/Galea_Provision of Naloxone to Injection Drug_2006.pd

Skunk River Review January 1992, vol 3

https://openspace.dmacc.edu/skunkriver/1006/thumbnail.jp

A Genome-Wide Association Study of Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis Identifies New Disease Loci

A genome-wide association study was performed to identify genetic factors involved in susceptibility to psoriasis (PS) and psoriatic arthritis (PSA), inflammatory diseases of the skin and joints in humans. 223 PS cases (including 91 with PSA) were genotyped with 311,398 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), and results were compared with those from 519 Northern European controls. Replications were performed with an independent cohort of 577 PS cases and 737 controls from the U.S., and 576 PSA patients and 480 controls from the U.K.. Strongest associations were with the class I region of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC). The most highly associated SNP was rs10484554, which lies 34.7 kb upstream from HLA-C (P = 7.8×10−11, GWA scan; P = 1.8×10−30, replication; P = 1.8×10−39, combined; U.K. PSA: P = 6.9×10−11). However, rs2395029 encoding the G2V polymorphism within the class I gene HCP5 (combined P = 2.13×10−26 in U.S. cases) yielded the highest ORs with both PS and PSA (4.1 and 3.2 respectively). This variant is associated with low viral set point following HIV infection and its effect is independent of rs10484554. We replicated the previously reported association with interleukin 23 receptor and interleukin 12B (IL12B) polymorphisms in PS and PSA cohorts (IL23R: rs11209026, U.S. PS, P = 1.4×10−4; U.K. PSA: P = 8.0×10−4; IL12B:rs6887695, U.S. PS, P = 5×10−5 and U.K. PSA, P = 1.3×10−3) and detected an independent association in the IL23R region with a SNP 4 kb upstream from IL12RB2 (P = 0.001). Novel associations replicated in the U.S. PS cohort included the region harboring lipoma HMGIC fusion partner (LHFP) and conserved oligomeric golgi complex component 6 (COG6) genes on chromosome 13q13 (combined P = 2×10−6 for rs7993214; OR = 0.71), the late cornified envelope gene cluster (LCE) from the Epidermal Differentiation Complex (PSORS4) (combined P = 6.2×10−5 for rs6701216; OR 1.45) and a region of LD at 15q21 (combined P = 2.9×10−5 for rs3803369; OR = 1.43). This region is of interest because it harbors ubiquitin-specific protease-8 whose processed pseudogene lies upstream from HLA-C. This region of 15q21 also harbors the gene for SPPL2A (signal peptide peptidase like 2a) which activates tumor necrosis factor alpha by cleavage, triggering the expression of IL12 in human dendritic cells. We also identified a novel PSA (and potentially PS) locus on chromosome 4q27. This region harbors the interleukin 2 (IL2) and interleukin 21 (IL21) genes and was recently shown to be associated with four autoimmune diseases (Celiac disease, Type 1 diabetes, Grave's disease and Rheumatoid Arthritis)

Virginia Woolf\u27s Interpolated Fiction and Humor

Since long before her death, and up to our present day, critics, scholars and readers have considered the body of work by Virginia Woolf in the reflection of a gloomy light. This wide opinion, if not directly caused, is at least enhanced by her numerous negative and even traumatic life experiences. Very little attention has been paid, or focus put, even by the most thorough and astute Woolf scholars, on another aspect of Woolf’s life and of her work. This thesis reveals another side of Woolf not only as a funny and entertaining woman, but as a sufficiently masterful manipulator of her craft to have used her fiction writing talent as an enhancement of her nonfiction works, and which included humor in the process

News Constructions of South Africa’s Trial of the Century: Identity Discourse in the Steenkamp Shooting and Pistorius Trial

Almost 20 years after South Africa’s formal transition to a democracy, South Africans of all races were consumed by the murder trial of former Paralympic champion Oscar Pistorius, who shot his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, on February 14, 2013. This article analyzes how the Times Live website in South Africa constructed identity discourse related to Oscar Pistorius, Reeva Steenkamp, and her mother, June Steenkamp, from 2013 to the conclusion of his final appeal in 2018. Drawing on theories of intersectionality and news as myth, we perform a critical discourse analysis of 208 articles to illustrate how these constructions serve primarily to reassert hegemonic discourses of gender, race, class, sexuality, and ability, but also to occasionally challenge those discourses. We found that several representations conformed to established myths: Pistorius as both the Victim and Trickster, and Reeva Steenkamp as the innocent Victim. June Steenkamp was initially constructed as The Good Mother and Victim, but news coverage later presented her as a villain because of her perceived greed. We conclude that enduring news values and economic imperatives foster editorial practices that sustain existing power relations despite efforts to transform and decolonize the newsroom