‘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.     

‘Sex’ – it’s not only women’s work: a case for refocusing on the functional role that sex plays in work for both women and men

Mention of the term sex work often invokes images of marginalized women at risk for HIV infection. Such images, however, are counterintuitive to the functional role intended by the movement that spawned use of the terms ‘sex work’ and ‘sex worker.’ This article looks at the sexual practices of men in urban China to argue for a return to a functional definition of ‘sex work’, which was originally meant to legitimize the role sex plays in work. The progenitors of this movement intended to use ‘sex work’ as a means to legitimize sex as an income-generating activity for women involved in prostitution. I show that sex can also serve a functional role in the work-related duties of men seeking economic and political success in contemporary urban China. Men in China utilize sex as one way for demonstrating the loyalty necessary to access state-owned and controlled resources in a market economy governed under a Leninist system. Overall, the article demonstrates that reclaiming perception of sex work as a functional rather than behavioral category can expand its use for preventing HIV among the broad subset of people who engage in sex as part of their work.     

Recipient hypertonic saline infusion prevents cardiac allograft dysfunction

Objective

Hypertonic saline (HTS) has potent immune and vascular effects. We assessed recipient pretreatment with HTS on allograft function in a porcine model of heart transplantation and hypothesized that HTS infusion would limit endothelial and left ventricular (LV) dysfunction following transplantation.

Linguistic Validation of the US Spanish Work Productivity and Activity Impairment Questionnaire, General Health Version

INTRODUCTION: There are no measures of health-related absenteeism and presenteeism validated for use in the large and increasing US Spanish-speaking population. Before using a Spanish translation of an available English-language questionnaire, the linguistic validity of the Spanish version must be established to ensure its conceptual equivalence to the original and its cultural appropriateness. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to evaluate the linguistic validity of the US Spanish version of the Work Productivity and Activity Impairment questionnaire, General Health Version (WPAI:GH). METHODS: A US Spanish translation of the US English WPAI:GH was created through a reiterative process of creating harmonized forward and back translations by independent translators. Spanish-speaking and English-speaking subjects residing in the US self-administered the WPAI:GH in their primary language and were subsequently debriefed by a bilingual (Spanish-English) interviewer. RESULTS: US Spanish subjects (N = 31) and English subjects (N = 35), stratified equally by educational level, with and without a high school degree participated in the study. The WPAI-GH item comprehension rate was 98.6% for Spanish and 99.6% for English. Response revision rates during debriefing were 1.6% for Spanish and 0.5% for English. Responses to hypothetical scenarios indicated that both language versions adequately differentiate sick time taken for health and non-health reasons and between absenteeism and presenteeism. CONCLUSION: Linguistic validity of the US Spanish translation of the WPAI:GH was established among a diverse US Spanish-speaking population, including those with minimal education.     

心理因素对小学生脑力工作能力影响的研究

采用横断面研究方法，对180名小学三年级学生脑力工作能力与其智力、性格、学习动机等心理因素和学习、睡眠时间等作息因素的关系进行分析研究。验证了学习、睡眠时间是影响学生脑力工作能力重要的外部因素；脑力工作能力与智力和学习成绩呈正相关。学生自身的心理因素中，学习动机对脑力工作能力有重要影响，所以激发和强化学生的学习动机，是保持和提高学生学习工作能力的有效手段；而性格内外向性、情绪稳定性等因素，对脑力工作能力的影响不明显。