Participatory research in Northwest Atlanta's Proctor Creek Watershed: Using photovoice to explore environmental health risks at the water's edge

In this study we used a participatory research method, photovoice, to explore community perceptions about environmental health risks, community assets, and strengths in and around an urban, degraded watershed in Northwest Atlanta, Georgia. This watershed, formed by Proctor Creek, is a focal point for redevelopment and infrastructure investments for years to come. Using a community-based participatory research approach, 10 Proctor Creek residents (watershed researchers), and a university partner, engaged in data collection; participatory data analysis; internal discussions; translation of research findings into watershed restoration, community revitalization, remedial action, and policy solutions; and dissemination of results to fellow watershed residents, stakeholders, and decision makers. We present a conceptual model linking the watershed researchers' understanding of urban policies and practice in the Proctor Creek Watershed to environmental, neighborhood and housing conditions and their influence on health outcomes and quality of life. Engaging community members in defining their own community environmental health challenges and assets yielded the following primary themes: 1) threats to the natural environment, 2) built environment stressors that influence health, 3) blight and divestment of public resources, and 4) hope for the future. Residents’ vision for the future of the watershed - a restored creek, revitalized neighborhoods, and restored people - is fueled by a strong connection to history, memory, and sense of place. We demonstrate the value of local knowledge in identifying previously unaddressed environmental health risks in the Proctor Creek Watershed as well as solutions to reduce or eliminate them.     

‘When you visit a man you should prepare yourself’: male community care worker approaches to working with men living with HIV in Cape Town,South Africa

Caring is typically constructed as a feminised practice, resulting in women shouldering the burden of care-related work. Health-seeking behaviours are also constructed as feminine and men have poorer health outcomes globally. Employing men as carers may not only improve the health of the men they assist but also be transformative with regards to gendered constructions of caring. Using semi-structured interviews and observational home visits, this study explored the techniques that community care workers employ when working with male clients. The empirical analysis draws on the perspectives of eight care workers and three of their male clients from the Cape Town area. Interviews reveal how care workers and clients perform and negotiate masculinities as they navigate hegemonic masculine norms that require men to act tough, suppress emotions and deny weakness and sickness. Both parties bump up against ideals of what it means to be a man as they strive to provide care and receive support. Community care workers avoid rupturing client performances of hegemonic masculinities which inhibit confession and support. To do this, they use techniques of indirectly broaching sensitive subjects, acting in a friendly way and being clear about the intention of their work.     

Modernisation,smoking and chronic disease: Of temporality and spatiality in global health

This article explores the spatio-temporal logics at work in global health. Influenced by ideas of time–space compression, the global health literature argues that the world is characterised by a convergence of disease patterns and biomedical knowledge. While not denying the influence of these temporalities and spatialities of globalisation within the global health and chronic disease field, the article argues that they sit alongside other, often-conflicting notions of time and space. To do so, it explores the spatio-temporal logics that underpin a highly influential epidemiological model of the smoking epidemic. Unlike the temporalities and spatialities of sameness described in much of the global health literature, the article shows that this model is articulated around temporalities and spatialities of difference. This is not the difference celebrated by postmoderns, but the difference of modernisation theorists built around nations, sequential stages and progress. Indeed, the model, in stark contrast to the ‘one world, one time, one health’ globalisation mantra, divides the world into nation–states and orders them along epidemiological, geographical and development lines.     

健康教育在白血病护理中的应用效果

目的评价血液科白血病疾病护理中应用健康教育的临床效果,为白血病护理工作提供参考。方法选择医院收治的白血病患者,总计60例。进行白血病患者随机分组护理,对照组与试验组各30例白血病患者,分别采取常规护理和常规护理+健康教育,比较2组白血病患者的负性情绪、自我效能状况评分以及护理满意度、护理依从率。结果试验组白血病患者干预后SAS、SDS、GSES评分均明显优于对照组,护理满意度与护理依从率均明显高于对照组,指标差异具有统计学意义,P>0.05。结论血液科白血病治疗期间配合落实常规护理、健康教育可以在提高患者自我效能的同时提高患者的依从性,符合患者身心护理需求,整体护理效果显著。     

Electronic health records and support for primary care teamwork

Objective Consensus that enhanced teamwork is necessary for efficient and effective primary care delivery is growing. We sought to identify how electronic health records (EHRs) facilitate and pose challenges to primary care teams as well as how practices are overcoming these challenges.Methods Practices in this qualitative study were selected from those recognized as patient-centered medical homes via the National Committee for Quality Assurance 2011 tool, which included a section on practice teamwork. We interviewed 63 respondents, ranging from physicians to front-desk staff, from 27 primary care practices ranging in size, type, geography, and population size.Results EHRs were found to facilitate communication and task delegation in primary care teams through instant messaging, task management software, and the ability to create evidence-based templates for symptom-specific data collection from patients by medical assistants and nurses (which can offload work from physicians). Areas where respondents felt that electronic medical record EHR functionalities were weakest and posed challenges to teamwork included the lack of integrated care manager software and care plans in EHRs, poor practice registry functionality and interoperability, and inadequate ease of tracking patient data in the EHR over time.Discussion Practices developed solutions for some of the challenges they faced when attempting to use EHRs to support teamwork but wanted more permanent vendor and policy solutions for other challenges.Conclusions EHR vendors in the United States need to work alongside practicing primary care teams to create more clinically useful EHRs that support dynamic care plans, integrated care management software, more functional and interoperable practice registries, and greater ease of data tracking over time.     

Healing the Professional Culture of Medicine

The past decade has been a time of great change for US physicians. Many physicians feel that the care delivery system has become a barrier to providing high-quality care rather than facilitating it. Although physician distress and some of the contributing factors are now widely recognized, much of the distress physicians are experiencing is related to insidious issues affecting the cultures of our profession, our health care organizations, and the health care delivery system. Culture refers to the shared and fundamental beliefs of a group that are so widely accepted that they are implicit and often no longer recognized. When challenges with culture arise, they almost always relate to a problem with a subcomponent of the culture even as the larger culture does many things well. In this perspective, we consider the role of culture in many of the problems facing our health care delivery system and contributing to the high prevalence of professional burnout plaguing US physicians. A framework, drawn from the field of organizational science, to address these issues and heal our professional culture is considered.