Obstetric Violence as Reproductive Governance in the Dominican Republic

ABSTRACT

A human rights violation, obstetric violence encompasses numerous forms of mistreatment against women giving birth in health care facilities. Based on this framework, we conducted open-ended exit interviews with 43 women who had given birth at either one of the two largest public maternity hospitals in the Dominican Republic. Women’s narratives revealed a contrast between scholarly definitions of obstetric violence and their own perceptions of receiving abusive care. Analyzing obstetric violence as a form of reproductive governance and the adaptive preference that ensues helps explain why most women accepted with endurance the poor quality of care that they received.     

Prevalence and correlates of everyday discrimination among black Caribbeans in the United States: the impact of nativity and country of origin

Objectives: Black Caribbeans in the United States have been the victims of major discrimination (e.g. unfairly fired, denied a promotion, denied housing). What is not known is the degree to which they also experience more routine forms of everyday discrimination such as receiving poor restaurant service, being perceived as dishonest, and being followed in stores. This paper investigates the distribution and correlates of everyday discrimination among a national sample of black Caribbeans in the U.S.

Design: This analysis used the black Caribbean sub-sample (n?=?1,621) of the National Survey of American Life. Demographic and immigration status correlates of ten items from the Everyday Discrimination Scale were investigated: being treated with less courtesy, treated with less respect, receiving poor restaurant service, being perceived as not smart, being perceived as dishonest, being perceived as not as good as others, and being feared, insulted, harassed, or followed in stores.

Results: Roughly one out of ten black Caribbeans reported that, on a weekly basis, they were treated with less courtesy and other people acted as if they were better than them, were afraid of them, and as if they were not as smart. Everyday discrimination was more frequent for black Caribbeans who were male, never married, divorced/separated, earned higher incomes, and who were second or third generation immigrants. Black Caribbeans attributed the majority of the discrimination they experienced to their race.

Conclusion: To our knowledge, this is the first study to provide an in-depth investigation of everyday discrimination among the black Caribbean population. It provides the frequency, types and correlates of everyday discrimination reported by black Caribbeans in the United States. Understanding the frequency and types of discrimination is important because of the documented negative impacts of everyday discrimination on physical and mental health.     

Once covered,forever covered: The actuarial challenges of the Belgian private health insurance system

The Belgian Law of 20 July 2007 has drastically changed the Belgian private health insurance sector by making individual contracts lifelong with the technical basis (i.e. actuarial assumptions) fixed at policy issue. The goal of the Law is to ensure the accessibility to supplementary health coverage in order to protect policyholders from discrimination and exclusion, essentially when these operate on the basis of age. Due to the unpredictable nature of medical inflation risk and the difficulty to model future increases of health claims, the legislator introduced medical indices together with a specific updating mechanism, which aim at establishing standardized and fair premium adjustments across the sector. This paper considers two major issues of the current Belgian system. The first one is related to the transferability of the reserves, whereas the second one is related to age-discrimination. We discuss these issues and their interplay, and we address the conflict between the goal of the Law and the practical problems arising in the light of the actuarial techniques.     

听觉辨别训练对儿童构音障碍的疗效

目的 观察听觉辨别训练对儿童构音障碍的康复治疗效果。方法 2017年7月至2019年7月,选取本院构音障碍患儿43例,随机分为对照组(n = 21)和治疗组(n = 22)。对照组每天行常规语言训练30 min,治疗组用其中10 min行听觉辨别训练,共4周。治疗前后行构音检查和言语清晰度测试。结果 治疗组治疗后辅音正确率和言语清晰度均显著提高(t > 7.919, P < 0.001),对照组仅辅音正确率显著提高( t = 7.047, P < 0.001)。 结论 听觉辨别训练可提高构音障碍患儿的治疗效果,可作为儿童构音障碍训练的常规内容。     

Physical violence and vulnerable adolescents: the roles of school climate and presence of similar peers

ABSTRACT

Using nationally representative data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (a.k.a., Add Health), this study examines the impact of school climate and share of vulnerable groups of students on self-perceived discrimination and violence involvement in high school. Violence involvement is operationalized as victimization and perpetration of physical violence. Five categories of vulnerability status are analyzed: the emotionally disabled, learning disabled, physically disabled, obese and LGB. Results suggest that relatively higher odds of violence involvement for individuals who were members of vulnerable groups as adolescents are fully explained by school climate and an extensive set of individual-level controls. While the share of vulnerable groups in school is not consistently correlated with violence involvement, school climate is found to be highly predictive of self-perceived discrimination and violence involvement. Consequently, we believe that improving school climate is the most effective strategy for reducing violence involvement of vulnerable youth in school.     

Qualitative evidence for Resilience,Stress, and Ethnicity (RiSE): A program to address race-based stress among Black women at risk for cardiovascular disease

ObjectiveGrowing evidence demonstrates that perceived discrimination and racism are significant contributing factors to psychological distress, low-grade chronic inflammation, and cardiovascular health disparities among minorities, particularly among Black women. Despite this evidence, there are no evidence-based complementary therapy interventions available to ameliorate chronic stress associated with racism and discrimination. The purpose of this study was to examine the feasibility and effectiveness of a novel, 8-week, group-based stress reduction program, Resilience, Stress and Ethnicity (RiSE), designed to help Black women at risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD) develop effective coping skills for dealing with chronic stress uniquely associated with being a minority.MethodsWe conducted two semi-structured focus groups with Black women (N = 22) following their participation in the 8-week RiSE program. We analyzed the data using constant comparative qualitative methods.ResultsAttrition rate was low (13%) with all participants attending at least 6 of the 8 classes. Participants reported high levels of satisfaction with the program and the majority (81%) reported practicing the skills that they learned in real-life stressful situations. In describing the participants’ response to the program, four key categories emerged from the data: (1) Increasing awareness of stressors associated with perceived discrimination and racism; (2) Coping with race-based stressors; (3) Coping with other sources of stress; and (4) Increasing sense of empowerment and emotion regulation.ConclusionsFindings suggest that RiSE is feasible and effective in helping Black women at risk for CVD cope with chronic stress associated with being a minority. Given evidence that perceived discrimination and racism are underlying factors in many inflammatory-based chronic diseases, this research may have broader implications for reducing health disparities across a wide-spectrum of chronic illnesses in which women minorities are disproportionately affected.     

Phonemes,words, and phrases: Tracking phonological processing in pre-schoolers developing dyslexia

ObjectivesIndividuals with dyslexia often suffer from deficient segmental phonology, but the status of suprasegmental phonology (prosody) is still discussed.MethodsIn three passive-listening event-related brain potential (ERP) studies, we examined prosodic processing in literacy-impaired children for various prosodic units by contrasting the processing of word-level and phrase-level prosody, alongside segmental phonology. We retrospectively analysed school children’s ERPs at preschool age for discrimination of vowel length (phoneme processing), discrimination of stress pattern (word-level prosody), and processing of prosodic boundaries (phrase-level prosody).ResultsWe found differences between pre-schoolers with and without later literacy difficulties for phoneme and stress pattern discrimination, but not for prosodic boundary perception.ConclusionOur findings complement the picture of phonological processing in dyslexia by confirming difficulties in segmental phonology and showing that prosodic processing is affected for the smaller word level, but not the larger phrase level.SignificanceThese findings might have implications for early interventions, considering both phonemic awareness and stress pattern training.