The New Press; 2017 Hardcover: 288 pp; $26.95 ISBN-10: 1620972913 ISBN-13: 978-1620972915 Where the Line Is Drawn is a memoir tracking the arc ofa 40-year friendship between Palestinian human rights ...lawyer Raja Shehadeh and Henry Abramovitch, an Israeli physician originally from Canada. The first two chapters set up the narrative of the book, which alternates a description of the friendship with a description of the tightening grip of the Israeli occupation on Palestinian life. ...we Palestinians were subjected to harsh treatment by the Israeli forces -long curfews, house demolitions, censorship, and restrictions on academic freedom and travel (p. 25).
Aim
This study aimed to explore whether 30‐min rest breaks were as effective at lowering acute fatigue among 12‐h shift hospital nursing staff who cared for patients with COVID‐19 as among those who ...did not.
Design
The study was cross‐sectional in design.
Methods
Data from the SAFE‐CARE study collected online between May and June 2020 were used. A subsample (N = 338) comprised of nursing staff who reported working 12‐h shifts, and providing direct patient care in hospitals was used in this study. Data on socio‐demographics, work and rest breaks, and subjective measures of fatigue, psychological distress, sleep and health were used. Hierarchical multiple linear regression followed by stratified analyses was conducted to explore the relationships between rest breaks and acute fatigue among nursing staff groups with and without COVID‐19 patient care.
Results
The sample, on average, had high acute fatigue. Around 72% reported providing care to patients with COVID‐19, and 71% reported taking rest breaks ‘sometimes’, ‘often’ or ‘always’. In the group that cared for patients with COVID‐19, there was no significant relationship between rest breaks and acute fatigue (p = .507). In the group that cared for patients hospitalized for other reasons, rest breaks were associated with lower acute fatigue (p = .010).
Conclusion
Our findings showed both the importance and inadequacy of rest breaks in reducing acute fatigue. The process of within‐work recovery is complex, and routine rest breaks should be facilitated by nursing management on hospital units during and after the COVID‐19 pandemic.
Impact
Rest breaks may present an effective strategy in lowering fatigue. Although rest breaks were not associated with less fatigue among staff caring for patients with COVID‐19, other co‐workers experienced some fatigue recovery. For frontline nursing staff, routine rest breaks are encouraged, and a systematic evaluation pertaining the sufficiency of rest breaks during high work demands in future research is needed.
The statistics are stunning: 1.9 million Syrian refugees in Turkey, 1.7 million in Lebanon, 630 000 in Jordan, 506 000 in the European Union, and 1883 in the United States.1-3 The United States will ...admit an additional 10 000 Syrian refugees during the next fiscal year, at which point Syrians will constitute approximately 18% of the total refugee population admitted in 2016.4 But this is not a public health emergency in the United States.
In the United States, there is concern that recent state laws restricting undocumented immigrants' rights could threaten access to Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for ...citizen children of immigrant parents. Of particular concern are omnibus immigration laws, state laws that include multiple provisions increasing immigration enforcement and restricting rights for undocumented immigrants. These laws could limit Medicaid/CHIP access for citizen children in immigrant families by creating misinformation about their eligibility and fostering fear and mistrust of government among immigrant parents. This study uses nationally-representative data from the National Health Interview Survey (2005–2014; n = 70,187) and comparative interrupted time series methods to assess whether passage of state omnibus immigration laws reduced access to Medicaid/CHIP for US citizen Latino children. We found that law passage did not reduce enrollment for children with noncitizen parents and actually resulted in temporary increases in coverage among Latino children with at least one citizen parent. These findings are surprising in light of prior research. We offer potential explanations for this finding and conclude with a call for future research to be expanded in three ways: 1) examine whether policy effects vary for children of undocumented parents, compared to children whose noncitizen parents are legally present; 2) examine the joint effects of immigration-related policies at different levels, from the city or county to the state to the federal; and 3) draw on the large social movements and political mobilization literature that describes when and how Latinos and immigrants push back against restrictive immigration laws.
•Adds to the growing evidence on the effects of immigration laws on Latino children.•Examines the effects of restrictive state immigration laws on Medicaid/CHIP access.•Uses multidisciplinary theories of symbolic policies and health care disparities.•Suggests that community organizations may buffer the effects of restrictive laws.•Argues for research on the intersection of laws at local, state, & federal levels.
This mixed-methods exploratory study identified and then developed and validated a quantitative measure of a new construct of mental suffering in the occupied Palestinian territory: feeling broken or ...destroyed.
Group interviews were conducted in 2011 with 68 Palestinians, most aged 30-40, in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip to discern local definitions of functioning. Interview participants articulated of a type of suffering not captured in existing mental health instruments used in regions of political conflict. In contrast to the specific difficulties measured by depression and PTSD (sleep, appetite, energy, flashbacks, avoidance, etc.), participants elaborated a more existential form of mental suffering: feeling that one's spirit, morale and/or future was broken or destroyed, and emotional and psychological exhaustion. Participants articulated these feelings when describing the rigors of the political and economic contexts in which they live. We wrote survey items to capture these sentiments and administered these items-along with standard survey measures of mental health-to a representative sample of 1,778 32-43 year olds in the occupied Palestinian territory. The same survey questions also were administered to a representative subsample (n = 508) six months earlier, providing repeated measures of the construct.
Across samples and time, the feeling broken or destroyed scale: 1) comprised a separate factor in exploratory factor analyses, 2) had high inter-item consistency, 3) was reported by both genders and in all regions, 4) showed discriminate validity via moderate correlations with measures of feelings of depression and trauma-related stress, and 5) was more commonly experienced than either feelings of depression or trauma-related stress.
Feeling broken or destroyed can be reliably measured and distinguished from conventional measures of mental health. Such locally grounded and contextualized measures should be identified and included in assessments of the full impact of protracted political conflict on functioning.
Abstract Purpose Health disparities research seeks to understand and eliminate differences in health based on social status. Self-rated health is often used to document health disparities across ...racial/ethnic and immigrant groups, yet its validity for such comparative research has not been established. To be useful in disparities research, self-rated health must measure the same construct in all groups, that is, a given level of self-rated health should reflect the same level of mental and physical health in each group. This study asks, Is the relationship between self-rated health and four indicators of health status—body mass index, chronic conditions, functional limitations, and depressive symptoms—similar for adolescents and young adults of different races/ethnicities and immigrant generations? Methods Ordinary least squares regression was used to examine associations of self-rated health with the four indicators of health status both cross-sectionally and longitudinally using four waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. Results Health indicators explained similar amounts of variance in self-rated health for all racial/ethnic and immigrant generation groups. The cross-sectional association between the health indicators and self-rated health did not vary across groups. The longitudinal association between depressive symptoms and chronic conditions and self-rated health also did not differ across groups. However, an increase in body mass index was associated more negatively with later self-rated health for Asians than for whites or blacks. Conclusions Self-rated health is valid for disparities research in large, population-based surveys of US adolescents and young adults. In many of these surveys self-rated health is the only measure of health.
Abstract This study investigated parental psychological control of adolescents when construed as disrespect of individuality. First, 120 adolescents from 5 cultures were interviewed and asked to ...identify specific parental behaviors that communicated to them that they were disrespected as individuals. The interview data were coded and 8 new survey items were constructed to reflect key content. These items were then administered to 2100 adolescents in the same cultures along with a traditional measure of psychological control (PCS). Confirmatory factor analyses indicated that model fit was better when the two scales were kept separate, across culture and sex of parent. In structural equation models, the new scale – labeled Psychological Control – Disrespect – accounted for all and more of the variance in youth depression and antisocial behavior than the PCS did. The discussion centers on the validation the study makes of the construct and offers several suggestions for future research.
Objective: Male allies play an important role in sexual assault prevention, yet many college sexual assault prevention programs struggle to recruit and retain men. This study aims to identify ...barriers to recruitment and retention of male sexual assault prevention peer educators. Participants: Seventeen undergraduate male student leaders participated in this study during summer 2018. Methods: Semi-structured phone interviews were conducted, recorded, and transcribed. Response data were thematically analyzed. Results: Barriers to recruitment include perceived gender norms and discomfort with the topic of sexual assault. Barriers to retention include male peer educators' perception that women are resistant to men discussing sexual assault. Suggestions for improving recruitment and retention efforts are also identified. Conclusions: Recruitment and retention of male sexual assault prevention peer educators may require recruitment approaches that are tailored to men and programmatic changes that position men as allies in sexual assault prevention.
Increasing evidence shows that when adolescents feel cared for by people at their school and feel like a part of their school, they are less likely to use substances, engage in violence, or initiate ...sexual activity at an early age. However, specific strategies to increase students' connectedness to school have not been studied. This study examined the association between school connectedness and the school environment to identify ways to increase students' connectedness to school. Data from the in‐school and school administrator surveys of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (75,515 students in 127 schools) and hierarchical linear models were used to estimate the association between school characteristics and the average level of school connectedness in each school. Positive classroom management climates, participation in extracurricular activities, tolerant disciplinary policies, and small school size were associated positively with higher school connectedness.
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