Documenting and Addressing the Health Impacts of Carceral Systems

No other industrialized democracy has a carceral system that is as expansive, punitive, and racialized as that of the United States. More than 2.2 million people in 2018 were incarcerated in jails and prisons, a sixfold increase since the 1970s. Each year more than 600 000 people are released from prisons and more than 11 million cycle through jails, extending the effects of incarceration into households and shaping community health

Upstream Solutions: Does the Supplemental Security Income Program Reduce Disability in the Elderly?

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/72843/1/j.1468-0009.2007.00512.x.pd

The bomb in my backyard, the serpent in my house: environmental justice, risk, and the colonisation of attachment

Theorists have argued that environmental justice requires more than just the fair distribution of environmental benefits and harms. It also requires participation in environmental decisions of those affected by them, and equal recognition of their cultural identities, dimensions most clearly articulated in relation to indigenous struggles, where past devaluation of place-based cultural identities is seen as a source of injustice. I argue for an alternative concept of environmental justice that draws on accounts of how attachment (and place attachment specifically) is constitutive for both self-efficacy and collective agency in the face of an intrinsically uncertain future. Drawing on the work of Peter Marris and using a case study of UK gas pipeline infrastructure, I show how disruption to attachments also disrupts lived strategies for dealing with an uncertain future. The source of injustice involved in such disruption should be viewed as the ‘colonisation of attachment’

Disability and health status: ethnic differences among women in the United States

STUDY OBJECTIVES—There are few data describing disability and health status for ethnic groups. The disablement process involves social influences, which may include minority status. Cross sectional data were examined to investigate the relation of ethnicity to disability.
DESIGN—A stratified random digit dialled sample of women aged 40 and older. Disability and health status were measured as functional and activity limitations, work disability, and days of poor physical and mental health.
SETTING—United States.
PARTICIPANTS—Women interviewed by telephone included 774 white, 749 African-American, 660 Hispanic, and 739 Native American women.
MAIN RESULTS—The prevalence of disability was higher among minority women when classified by general health status, and the need for personal care assistance. There was a striking excess of work disability: 3.5% of white women compared with 7.1% to 10.3% for minority women. The differences were reduced when adjusted for other risk factors and socioeconomic status. White and minority women reported more similar disability when it was defined by poor mental and physical health days.
CONCLUSIONS—Disability is correlated with social and demographic characteristics as well as medical diagnoses. Ethnicity also is associated with disability and may be part of a social context for disablement. Future research should concentrate on the temporal sequence of disability. Consistent definitions of disability will facilitate this research.


Keywords: women's health; health status; disability; minority group