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To determine gendered patterns of preventive medical care (physical and dental/optical) use among pan-ethnic U.S. Asian and Latino adults.

Using National Latino and Asian American Study (2004) data, we apply Andersen’s (1995) Behavioral Model of Health Services Use to assess how preventive care use among Asian and Latino men and women varies as a function of predisposing, enabling, and need-based characteristics. We explore whether adjustment for these factors mediates gender disparities in both physical and dental/optical check-ups, and test whether certain factors operate differently among men versus women.

A higher proportion of women reported a routine care visit last year, especially among Latinos. Adjusting for predisposing, enabling, and need-based factors explained the gender difference in reporting a dental/optician check-up, but not a physical check-up, among both Asian and Latino adults.

Our findings illustrate how gender patterns in routine care use differ by race/ethnicity, and highlight the fundamental importance of enabling characteristics (especially health insurance and having a regular doctor) for shaping routine care use between men and women, both Asian and Latino. Limitations of this chapter are that the data are cross-sectional and were collected before the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, and measures are self-reported.

This chapter focuses on Asian and Latinos because they represent the fastest growing minority populations in the United States, yet few studies have evaluated gender differences in preventative health care use among these groups.

Recent national policy adoptions of the social determinants of health approach present enormous challenges to practitioners designing health promotion programs aimed at eliminating health disparities. This chapter provides a framework for understanding the social determinant rationale embedded in Healthy People 2020 and introduces the concept of place as an important consideration.

This chapter presents a conceptual explanation of social determinant thinking and describes the potential impact for traditional health promotion activities that target the at-risk populations.

Two major resources, the Health Impact Assessment Toolkit and the HHS Disparities Action Plan, have emerged as frameworks for developing a health in all policies approach that will enable health practitioners to enhance their social determinant interventions.

Current social determinant approaches and models need to be strategically tailored to interventions aiming to reduce health disparities. Additional research focusing on how these approaches are integrated within the existing health promotion program frameworks is required.

Very few health practitioners have had the opportunity to integrate a social determinant approach that emphasizes the concept of place and explores the consequences of using a health in all policies approach. This chapter serves as a practical introduction and outlines the major challenges.

The tipping point for the inclusion of social determinants of health in addressing health disparities occurred with the publication of Healthy People 2020. As this innovation begins to diffuse throughout the country, health practitioners will benefit by reviews and applications of the new rationale and model.

Using a Constrained Choice Theory framework, this paper will identify variation in choosing the constraint-reflective priorities of budget, taste, or health by sociodemographic group, familial status, and weight category. Identifying which groups experience unique constraints will allow for customized healthy eating programs to address barriers specific to each group.

Data are derived from a paper survey of families with children in Lexington, KY and analyzed using logistic regression.

The results of this study confirm that some sociodemographic groups are more likely to choose priorities that reflect contextual constraints in their lives than others. In particular, having a higher income reduces likelihood of prioritizing budget and increases chances of prioritizing taste. Being married or cohabitating is correlated with choosing health, but having more children reduces the likelihood of prioritizing health. Being obese correlates with increased likelihood of prioritizing budget. Membership in each of these categories reflects constraints on which foods are purchased for the home.

Families are encouraged to improve their diets by eating at home, but families face many constraints when choosing healthy foods at the grocery store. Understanding the constraints experienced by various groups when shopping for food will lead to health policy that more fully addresses barriers to healthy eating for groups with disproportionately high incidence of diet-related disease.

This paper extends Constrained Choice Theory by applying it to a new aspect of health, purchasing groceries, and also by examining a wider variety of sociodemographic groups than previous research.

Purpose: This report analyzes relationships between chronic inflammation and quality of life (QoL). It assesses the potential role of intimate relationships in associations between inflammation, medical sequelae such as pain and disability, and QoL.

Design/Methodology/Approach: Limited longitudinal data from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project (NSHAP) were analyzed. Inflammation was assessed via the biomarker C-reactive protein (CRP). The authors examined pathwise associations between CRP levels and general happiness. The authors used ordinal logistic regression with companion OLS models, and conducted a variety of sensitivity analyses.

Findings: Intimate partnerships – especially marriage – appear to impact associations between inflammation and QoL. When QoL is measured using general happiness, intimate relationships appear to shape directional associations between inflammation and QoL along with medical consequences of inflammation.

Research Limitations/Implications: Inflammation and its clinical consequences may substantially alter intimate relationship involvement and quality that in turn impact QoL. These relationships should not be viewed as unilateral explanations of the tremendous variability observed in QoL among people with inflammatory conditions, but rather as possible elements of complex causal frameworks. Further investigation using advanced methods for longitudinal modeling from limited waves of data can help to shed additional light on the nuances of happiness and QoL among people living with chronic inflammation.

Originality/Value: This chapter provides an overview of possible causal relationships between chronic inflammation, associated clinical and social experiences, and QoL. Researchers interested in advanced causal modeling of relationships between chronic inflammation and QoL can build on this work using novel methods and data sources.

THE continuance of war into the New Year proves again the fatuousness of prophecy which had assured us of peace, or at least the cessation of hostilities, by Christmas. We have to face now what must be another year of conflict, unless miracles occur as they sometimes do in war, and thus the postponement of many of the plans that the Library Association and a great many other bodies and persons have been making; but we must not offend by prophesying. At this time a glance back on the record of 1944 is justifiable and may be salutary.

It has been generally assumed that, although there may be material costs to the entire world which result from any attempt to eliminate global poverty through development, the only costs associated with the continued existence of poverty are human ones, costs which are borne primarily by the poor themselves. This article is a review of the literature on development and resource use; its primary purpose is to investigate the extent to which analysts have tested this assumption—that is, the extent to which they have addressed the issue of the material costs engendered by the perpetuation of global poverty. Its conclusion is that no systematic analysis of this assumption has been conducted. However, there is a recognition of the resource costs of global poverty implicit in much of the literature on development and on resource use, and there is sufficient evidence to indicate that more detailed study of the relationship is warranted, since it is clear that the continued acceptance of global poverty entails significant costs for every member of the global community.

This chapter provides an introduction to the volume along with a brief review of literature on gender, women’s health concerns, and other social factors in health and health care services.

Literature review.

The chapter argues for the importance of greater examination of gender, women’s health concerns, and social factors in health and health care services.

Reviews the issues of gender, women, and social factors and previews this book.

The coast at Berakas in the Brunei-Muara district of Brunei Darussalam suffers from erosion caused by a combination of fluvial and marine processes. This paper investigates the rate and pattern of erosion along a 1.8-km stretch of coast to compare the difference between the unprotected and protected sections. We used (i) image and spatial analysis and (ii) field geomorphology. The Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS) in ArcGIS was used to compare the study area using two Google Earth images. The study found that the unprotected section had receded by 4.6 m between 2009 and 2019, while the protected section had advanced by 8.0 m over the same period; intense gullying and slumping of cliff continued at both sections. The detached headland breakwaters in the protected section were effective in stabilizing the coast. A concrete drain installed parallel to the cliff edge appears to be capable of intercepting storm runoff, but its effectiveness was undermined by lack of maintenance. We conclude that terrestrial-fluvial processes continue to erode coastal land and cause slumping of the cliff face at Berakas. However, coastal protection structures that curb the marine process could stabilize the coastline, even where sediment transport is active.

This chapter provides both an introduction to the volume and a brief review of literature on women, gender, and health and health-care services as well as racial/ethnic minorities in the same areas.

The chapter argues for the importance of greater examination of women, issues of gender, and racial and ethnic minorities in health and health-care services.

The chapter reviews the issues of women and racial and ethnic minorities and previews this book.