Cooperative service between case work and group work agencies:

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston University, 1941. This item was digitized by the Internet Archive

An ultralong CDRH2 in HCV neutralizing antibody demonstrates structural plasticity of antibodies against E2 glycoprotein

A vaccine protective against diverse HCV variants is needed to control the HCV epidemic. Structures of E2 complexes with front layer-specific broadly neutralizing antibodies (bNAbs) isolated from HCV-infected individuals, revealed a disulfide bond-containing CDRH3 that adopts straight (individuals who clear infection) or bent (individuals with chronic infection) conformation. To investigate whether a straight versus bent disulfide bond-containing CDRH3 is specific to particular HCV-infected individuals, we solved a crystal structure of the HCV E2 ectodomain in complex with AR3X, a bNAb with an unusually long CDRH2 that was isolated from the chronically-infected individual from whom the bent CDRH3 bNAbs were derived. The structure revealed that AR3X utilizes both its ultralong CDRH2 and a disulfide motif-containing straight CDRH3 to recognize the E2 front layer. These results demonstrate that both the straight and bent CDRH3 classes of HCV bNAb can be elicited in a single individual, revealing a structural plasticity of VH1-69-derived bNAbs

Re-envisioning Addiction Treatment: A Six-Point Plan

This article is focused on improving the quality of addiction treatment. Based on observations that patients are leaving treatment too early and/or are continuing to use substances during their care, the authors propose six actions that could help reorient and revitalize this kind of clinical work: (1) conceptualize and treat addictive disorders within a psychiatric/mental health framework; (2) make the creation of a strong therapeutic alliance a core part of the healing process; (3) understand patients’ addictions and other problems using models based on multiple internal parts, voices, or modes; (4) make contingency management and the use of positive reinforcement systems a standard and central practice in all treatment settings; (5) envision long-term change and healing through the lens of identity theory; and (6) integrate the growing developments in recovery culture with formal treatment

“To promote, encourage or condone:” Science, activism and the political role of moralism in the formation of needle exchange policy in Springfield, Massachusetts, 1998–2005

This dissertation examines the cultural and political forces that shape and direct AIDS policy in the United States. Through a multi-sited, ethnographic research project in Springfield, Massachusetts, a post-industrial city with the 11th highest per capita AIDS rate in the nation, this project investigates the political culture that informs and directs needle exchange legislation. With a move toward a more politically engaged ethnography, this research blends political activism, participant observation, open-ended interviews and political analysis to provide an “insider” study of the policymaking process as it unfolded on the ground –from the Massachusetts State House and Springfield City Hall to an illegal needle exchange program operated by local AIDS activists. The political antagonism at the center of my investigation is a conflict between, on the one hand, the scientific consensus on the efficacy of needle exchange, and on the other, the moralizing discourse associated with injection drug use. Here, the often-contradictory forces of science and morality form a paradox within the policymaking process: although there is scientific consensus on the efficacy of needle exchange, needle exchange legislation is continuously defeated on moral grounds. Locating this paradox in the propensity of the American state - beginning with the Reagan administration in the early 1980s - to calibrate social policy through a juridical combination of an enhanced liberal individualism with neoliberal economic reforms, this dissertation interrogates the means by which policymakers harness a particular worldview of human nature–individual will, personal responsibility, entrepreneurship, economic man–to make sense of the AIDS epidemic. To what extent can we locate the present role of moralism in American social policy as indicative of our contemporary political culture? Do social policies operate as forms of moral regulation to govern people in alignment with “the common sense of our age?” If so, can we then argue that social policies are an essential feature of liberal statecraft, a system of moral governance that is reconfiguring the contemporary relationship between individual and society? The immediate concern for democratic politics is the prospect that social policies directed at the needs of politically marginalized groups may not motivated by social concerns alone but based on the cultural stigma associated with their practices