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Preterm delivery (PTD), defined as delivery prior to 37 weeks gestation, is a key contributor to persistent racial disparities in infant mortality in the United States. Five major funding initiatives were devoted to advancing PTD epidemiology during the 1990s and 2000s. By examining content and rhetorical features of 94 studies conducted under these initiatives, and published between 1993 and 2011, this paper considers how calls for more "contextual" approaches (focusing on social and environmental contexts) interacted with more "conventional" approaches (focusing on individual-level risk factors) to PTD epidemiology during this period. Contextual advocates initially emphasized complex biosocial reasoning to better connect social adversity with embodied outcomes. Yet responses by researchers invested in conventional approaches, as well as in studies published under new initiatives that explicitly claimed to incorporate contextual insights, often reframed this complex reasoning in biologically reductionist terms. Subsequent contextual advocates then focused on developing statistical methods to support research about social and environmental causes of PTD, and this strategy appears to have gained some traction with conventional researchers. These findings call for closer attention to language and power in both social scientific studies of epidemiological knowledge production, as well as among epidemiologists themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social scientists have long demonstrated that socioeconomic resources benefit health. More recently, scholars have begun to examine the potential stratification in the health returns different groups receive for a given resource. Motivated by fundamental cause theory, this paper examines homeownership as a salient health resource with potentially stratified benefits. Homeowners have significantly greater housing quality, wealth, neighborhood quality and integration, and physical and mental health than renters. However, there are compelling theoretical reasons to expect the health advantage of homeownership to be unequally distributed across racial and ethnic groups. Regression analyses of 71,874 household heads in the United States from the 2012 March Current Population Survey initially suggest all homeowners experience a significant health advantage. Further examination finds robust evidence for a homeowner health advantage among Whites, on par with the difference between the married and divorced. The advantage among minority households is considerably smaller, and not significant among Latinos or Asians. Conditioning on a broad array of observable characteristics, White homeowners emerge as exceptionally healthy compared to White renters and all minority groups. This leads to the unexpected finding that racial/ethnic differences in health are concentrated among homeowners. The findings demonstrate the interactive nature of racial/ethnic stratification in health through both access to and returns from socioeconomic resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The increases in suicide among middle-aged baby boomers (born between 1946 and 1964) in the United States since 1999 suggest a changing epidemiology of suicide. Using data from 1935 to 2010, this paper conducts age-period-cohort analyses to determine the impact of cohorts in shaping temporal patterns of suicide in the United States. The analysis demonstrates that age, period and cohort effects are all important in determining suicide trends. Net of age and period effects, the cohort pattern of suicide rates is U-shaped, with cohorts born between 1915 and 1945 possessing among the very lowest suicide rates. Suicide rates begin to rise with boomers and subsequent cohorts exhibit increasingly higher rates of suicide. The general pattern exists for both men and women but is especially pronounced among males. The average suicide rate over the entire period for males is about 28 per 100,000, 95% CI [27.4, 28.7]. For males born in 1930–34, the suicide rate is estimated to be 17.4 per 100,000, 95% CI [15.9, 18.8]; for males born between 1955 and 1959, the rate is essentially the same as the average for the period while for males born between 1985 and 1989, the suicide rate is estimated to be 37.8 per 100,000, 95% CI [33.1, 43.4]. The results dispute popular claims that boomers exhibit an elevated suicide rate relative to other generations, but boomers do appear to have ushered in new cohort patterns of suicide rates over the life course. These patterns are interpreted within a Durkheimian framework that suggests weakened forms of social integration and regulation among postwar cohorts may be producing increased suicide rates. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In this paper we examine smoking prevalence and frequency among Asian and Latino U.S. immigrants, focusing on how gender differences in smoking behavior are shaped by aspects of acculturation and the original decision to migrate. We draw on data from 3249 immigrant adults included in the 2002–2003 National Latino and Asian American Study. Findings confirm the gender gap in smoking, which is larger among Asian than Latino immigrants. While regression models reveal that gender differences in smoking prevalence, among both immigrant groups, are not explained with adjustment for measures of acculturation and migration decisions, adjustment for these factors does reduce gender differences in smoking frequency to non-significance. Following, we examine gender-stratified models and test whether aspects of migration decisions and acculturation relate more strongly to smoking behavior among women; we find that patterns are complex and depend upon pan-ethnic group and smoking measure. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Research from across disciplines has demonstrated that social and political contextual factors at the national and subnational levels can impact the health and health behavior risks of individuals. This paper examines the impact of state-level social capital and ideology on individual-level health outcomes in the U.S. Leveraging the variation that exists across states in the U.S., the results reveal that individuals report better health in states with higher levels of governmental liberalism and in states with higher levels of social capital. Critically, however, the effect of social capital was moderated by liberalism such that social capital was a stronger predictor of health in states with low levels of liberalism. We interpret this finding to mean that social capital within a political unit—as indicated by measures of interpersonal trust—can serve as a substitute for the beneficial impacts that might result from an active governmental structure. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper examines the content of Post Abortion Syndrome (PAS) claims, the social actors involved and how this social diagnosis bypassed professional dissent and diffused into public policy in the United States. Previous works on the spread of PAS focus on almost exclusively on anti-abortion think tanks and policymakers. Missing from these analyses, however, is an emphasis on the grassroots-level actions undertaken by evangelical crisis pregnancy center (CPC) activists in introducing and circulating PAS claims. The CPC movement introduced PAS claims and provided the fodder for anti-abortion think tanks to construct evidence of pro-life claims. Despite dissent from health professionals and academic researchers, CPC PAS claims successfully diffused into federal and state abortion policy. I draw upon Brown et al.’s social diagnosis framework and Armstrong's five-stage model of diagnosis development to frame this account. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper uses the domain of breastfeeding in the U.S. and the work of International Board Certified Lactation Consultants to refine the concept of medicalization-demedicalization. Given lactation consultants' origins and current role in maternity care, they provide a unique lens on these processes because they are positioned at the crossroads of medicalization and demedicalization. Using 150 h of ethnographic observation and 39 interviews conducted between 2008 and 2012, I identify aspects of medicalizationedemedicalization in the work of lactation consultants according to four dimensions: medical definition, medical control, pathology, and medical technology. Lactation consultants work to demedicalize breastfeeding by challenging the construction of breastfeeding pathology and limiting intervention. At the same time, they hold a position of medical control and medicalize breastfeeding by reinforcing a medical definition and using medical technology to treat breastfeeding problems. However, lactation consultants are not only working toward demedicalization and medicalization simultaneously, but are also medicalizing to demedicalize. Their position of medical control over breastfeeding provides them with a certain measure of authority that they can use in their efforts to depathologize breastfeeding and limit medical intervention. These findings build upon previous research that has identified cases of medicalization and demedicalization occurring simultaneously and draw attention to the need for an understanding of medicalizationedemedicalization as a continuous process. Furthermore, the concept of "medicalizing to demedicalize" provides a novel contribution to the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper establishes associations between length/height and cognitive skills in infancy, toddlerhood, and school-entry. The data come from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study – Birth Cohort (ECLS-B), a representative longitudinal sample of U.S. children born in 2001. A positive association between length/height and cognition is found as early as 9 months and continues through school-entry. These associations are robust to controls for birthweight and economic status. Early growth is also shown to be a stronger predictor of reading and math skills in kindergarten than attained height. Girls exhibit stronger evidence of this latter result than boys. These findings have implications for the interpretation of early life as a critical period for the growth–cognition relationship. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The objective of this paper is to examine associations between multiple measures of discrimination (i.e., everyday, lifetime, and appraised burden) and components of allostatic load (AL). We drew on pooled cross-sectional data from the Biomarker Project of the Midlife in the United States study (n = 2118). Ages ranged from 25 to 84 years and included mostly Black (n = 389) and white (n = 1598) adults. Quasi-Poisson models were fit to estimate prevalence ratios for each discrimination measure and high-risk quartiles across seven physiological systems (i.e., sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system; HPA axis; inflammation; cardiovascular; metabolic glucose; and metabolic lipids) and overall AL scores. In fully adjusted models, everyday discrimination was associated with elevated lipids (aPR: 1.07; 95% CI 1.01, 1.13). Lifetime experiences of discrimination were associated with lower sympathetic nervous system (aPR: 0.82; 95% CI: 0.69, 0.98) and greater cardiovascular risk scores (aPR: 1.17; 95% CI: 1.02, 1.34) among those reporting three or more experiences, as well as increased inflammation (aPR: 1.13; 95% CI: 1.02, 1.25; aPR: 1.28; 95% CI: 1.14, 1.43), metabolic glucose (aPR: 1.35; 95% CI: 1.19, 1.54; aPR: 1.45; 95% CI: 1.24, 1.68), and metabolic lipids (aPR: 1.13; 95% CI: 1.03, 1.24; aPR: 1.28; 95% CI: 1.15, 1.43) scores for those reporting one to two and three or more experiences. Appraised burden yielded nuanced associations with metabolic glucose and parasympathetic nervous system scores. Everyday and lifetime measures were also associated with higher overall AL, though burden of discrimination was only associated with AL among those reporting "a little" burden. While AL summary scores provide insight into the cumulative impacts of discrimination on health, there appear to be distinct physiologic pathways through which varying forms of discrimination contribute to AL and, ultimately, to poorer health. These unique pathways may be useful in identifying potential points of intervention to mitigate the impacts of discrimination on health inequities. • Patterns between measures of discrimination and allostatic load vary. • Associations between discrimination measures and individual biomarkers also vary. • Distinct pathways between forms of discrimination and allostatic load may exist. • These variations may be useful in mitigating the health impacts of discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although local policies aimed at reducing childhood health inequities can benefit from local data, sample size constraints in population representative health surveys often prevent rigorous evaluations of child health disparities and health care patterns at local levels. Electronic Health Records (EHRs) offer a possible solution as they contain large amounts of information on pediatric patients within a health system. In this paper, we consider the suitability of using EHRs from a large health system to study local children's health by evaluating the extent to which the EHRs capture the county's child population. First, we compare the demographic characteristics of Duke University Health System pediatric patients who live in Durham County, NC (USA) to the child population estimates in the 2015–2019 American Community Survey. We then examine geographic variation in census tract rates of children captured in the EHR data and estimate negative binomial models to assess how tract characteristics are associated with these rates. We also perform these analyses for the subset of pediatric patients who have a well-child encounter. We find that the demographic characteristics of pediatric patients captured by the EHRs are similar to those of the county's child population. Although the county rate of children captured in the EHRs is high, there is variation across census tracts. On average, census tracts with higher concentrations of non-Hispanic Black residents have lower capture rates and tracts with higher concentrations of poverty have higher capture rates, with the poorest tracts showing the largest racial gap in rates of children captured by EHRs. Our findings suggest that EHRs from a large health system can be used to assess children's population health, but that EHR-based evaluations of children's health disparities and health care patterns should account for differences in who is captured by the EHRs based on census tract characteristics. • EHRs from a large health system are suitable for studying local children's health. • Local children in EHRs are demographically similar to county population estimates. • Rates of children captured in health system differ by census tract characteristics. • EHR-based analyses should adjust for local differences in capture rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the first longitudinal study of sex disparities in COVID-19 cases and mortalities across U.S. states, derived from the unique 13-month dataset of the U.S. Gender/Sex COVID-19 Data Tracker. To analyze sex disparities, weekly case and mortality rates by sex and mortality rate ratios were computed for each U.S. state, and a multilevel crossed-effects conditional logistic binomial regression model was fitted to estimate the variation of the sex disparity in mortality over time and across states. Results demonstrate considerable variation in the sex disparity in COVID-19 cases and mortalities over time and between states. These data suggest that the sex disparity, when present, is modest, and likely varies in relation to context-sensitive variables, which may include health behaviors, preexisting health status, occupation, race/ethnicity, and other markers of social experience. • First report of findings from unique longitudinal dataset of sex-disaggregated COVID-19 data in U.S. states. • Sex disparities in COVID-19 are highly heterogeneous in magnitude and direction and vary across states and over time. • Gender-related and other social and contextual factors likely shape COVID-19 sex disparities. • Single-factor approaches are ill-positioned to explain patterns in sex disparities in COVID-19 outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The decline in crime that occurred in the last decade of the 20th century was one of the most important societal changes in recent US history. In this paper, we leverage the sharp decline in violence that began in the 1990s to estimate the relationship between county-level murder rates and individual-level birth outcomes for Black, Hispanic, and White mothers. Using the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting data from 1992 to 2002 and individual-level data from more than 30,000,000 US birth certificates, we employ two-way fixed effects models with a rich set of controls to compare births to similar women in the same county who experienced different crime rates during their pregnancies. Elevated murder rates are associated with substantially higher risks of low birth weight for White mothers, low birth weight and small for gestational age among Black mothers, and small for gestational age among Hispanic mothers. Sensitivity analyses show that the existence of confounders that would invalidate these inferences is highly unlikely, suggesting that we have identified causal relationships, even if some uncertainty about the precision of our estimates remains. These findings have potential implications for prenatal and postpartum care, and they add to a growing body of evidence showing that the "Great American Crime Decline" was strongly linked to improved outcomes among groups that experienced the steepest declines in violence. • Stress is known to cause adverse birth outcomes; exposure to violent crime is a key source of stress. • The "Great Crime Decline" of the 1990's resulted in large-scale declines in exposure to crime. • We find that these declines were strongly linked to improvements in birth outcomes. • Relationships were particularly strong among Black and Hispanic mothers. • Results suggest that the decline in crime reduced racial/ethnic birth outcome disparities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public policies are a determinant of child health disparities; sound evaluation of these programs is essential for good governance. It is impossible in most countries to randomize assignment into child health programs that directly offer benefits. In the absence of this, researchers face the threat of selection bias—the idea that there are innate, immeasurable differences between those who take-up treatment and those who don't. In the field of Program Evaluation we are most concerned with the differences between the eligible people who take-up a program and the eligible people who choose not to enroll. Using a case study of a large U.S. nutrition program, this report illustrates how the perceived benefits of participation may affect the decision to take-up a program. In turn, this highlights sources of potential selection bias. Using data from a longitudinal study of mothers and infants conducted between May and December of 2005, I show that attitudes and beliefs prenatally toward breastfeeding determine enrollment in a U.S nutrition program that offers free Infant Formula. I also find that the significance of the selection bias differs by parity. Analysis reveals that maternal attitudinal responses are more highly predictive of future behavior, compared to standard demographic variables. In sum, this paper makes a case for rigorously understanding the factors that determine take-up of a program and how those factors can modify the results of a program evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As intuitive and inviting as it may appear, the concept of patient-centered care has been difficult to conceptualize, institutionalize and operationalize. Informed by Bourdieu's concepts of cultural capital and habitus, we employ the framework of cultural health capital to uncover the ways in which both patients' and providers' cultural resources, assets, and interactional styles influence their abilities to mutually achieve patient-centered care. Cultural health capital is defined as a specialized collection of cultural skills, attitudes, behaviors and interactional styles that are valued, leveraged, and exchanged by both patients and providers during clinical interactions. In this paper, we report the findings of a qualitative study conducted from 2010 to 2011 in the Western United States. We investigated the various elements of cultural health capital, how patients and providers used cultural health capital to engage with each other, and how this process shaped the patient-centeredness of interactions. We find that the accomplishment of patient-centered care is highly dependent upon habitus and the cultural health capital that both patients and providers bring to health care interactions. Not only are some cultural resources more highly valued than others, their differential mobilization can facilitate or impede engagement and communication between patients and their providers. The focus of cultural health capital on the ways fundamental social inequalities are manifest in clinical interactions enables providers, patients, and health care organizations to consider how such inequalities can confound patient-centered care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Clinical guidelines are important tools for managing health care quality. Research on the origins of guidelines primarily focuses on the institutional causes of their emergence and growth. Individual medical researchers, however, have played important roles. This paper develops knowledge of the role of individual medical researchers in advancing guidelines, and of how researchers' efforts were enabled or constrained by broader institutional changes. Drawing on an analytical case study focused on the role of Kerr White, John Wennberg, and Robert Brook, it shows that guidelines were a product of the interplay between institutional change in the medical field and actions by individual researchers, acting as institutional entrepreneurs. Increased government involvement in the health care field triggered the involvement of a range of new actors in health care. These new organizations created a context that allowed individual researchers to advance guidelines by creating job opportunities, providing research funding, and creating opportunities for researchers to engage with the policy process. Individual researchers availed of this context to both advance their ideas, and to draw new actors into the field. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: International policies regulating clinical ethics committees'' (CEC) roles are non-existent. Nonetheless, CECs have established themselves in several countries and there exist striking differences in the way these work. This international practice variation stems from the ways CECs developed, within particular legal, political, social and professional contexts. National guidelines and normative documents have been published in many countries regarding CECs. To better understand CECs'' evolution and differences in various countries, we reviewed guidelines, position statements and normative papers which describe and frame the development of CECs in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and France. Systematic content analysis addressed guideline development, CECs'' roles, consultation methods and CEC members'' education requirements. Differing contexts informed the ways in which guidelines were developed. American CECs, established within a strongly litigious context are perceived to play strong decision-making roles, whereas British CECs, encouraged by clinicians, endorse a more supportive model. Canadian guidelines focus on the role of the ethicist, while the French model is interested in a theoretical interdisciplinary approach. This analysis shows important challenges facing the implementation of accountable CECs in different contexts and can help inform future policy development. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: There is considerable policy interest in the impact of macroeconomic conditions on health-related behaviours and outcomes. This paper sheds new light on this issue by exploring the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and an indicator of problem drinking derived from state-level data on alcoholism-related Google searches conducted in the US over the period 2004–2011. We find the current recessionary period coincided with an almost 20% increase in alcoholism-related searches. Controlling for state and time-effects, a 5% rise in unemployment is followed in the next 12 months by an approximate 15% increase in searches. The use of Internet searches to inform on health-related behaviours and outcomes is in its infancy; but we suggest that the data provides important real-time information for policy-makers and can help to overcome the under-reporting in surveys of sensitive information. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: More than three decades of health disparities research in the United States has consistently found lower adult mortality risks among Hispanics than their non-Hispanic white counterparts, despite lower socioeconomic status among Hispanics. Explanations for the “Hispanic Paradox” include selective migration and cultural factors, though neither has received convincing support. This paper uses a large nationally representative survey of health and smoking behavior to examine whether smoking can explain life expectancy advantage of Hispanics over US-born non-Hispanics whites, with special attention to individuals of Mexican origin. It tests the selective migration hypothesis using data on smoking among Mexico-to-US migrants in Mexico and the United States. Both US-born and foreign-born Mexican-Americans exhibit a life expectancy advantage vis-à-vis whites. All other Hispanics only show a longevity advantage among the foreign-born, while those born in the United States are disadvantaged relative to whites. Smoking-attributable mortality explains the majority of the advantage for Mexican-Americans, with more than 60% of the gap deriving from lower rates of smoking among Mexican-Americans. There is no evidence of selective migration with respect to smoking; Mexicans who migrate to the US smoke at similar rates to Mexicans who remain in Mexico, with both groups smoking substantially less than non-Hispanic whites in the US. The results suggest that more research is needed to effectively explain the low burden of smoking among Mexican-Americans in the United States. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Research suggests that income inequality is inversely associated with health. This association has been documented in studies that utilize variation in income inequality across countries or across time from a single country. The primary criticism of these approaches is their inability to account for potential confounders that are associated with income inequality. This paper uses variation in individual experiences of income inequality among immigrants within the United States (U.S.) to evaluate whether individuals who moved from countries with greater income inequality than the U.S. have better health than those who migrated from countries with less income in equality than the U.S. Utilizing individual-level (March Current Population Survey) and country-level data (the United Nations Human Development Reports), we show that among immigrants who have resided in the U.S. between 6 and 20 years, self-reported health is more favorable for the immigrants in the former category (i.e., greater income inequality) than those in the latter (i.e., lower income inequality). Results also show that self-reported health is better among immigrants from more developed countries and those who have more years of education, are male, and are married. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Sleeping, dreaming, and health or well-being are all closely related phenomena from an experiential and cultural point of view, and yet all three are often studied in isolation from one another. In this paper, I use an ethnographic and clinical lens to compare and contrast patterns of sleeping and dreaming and their relationship to health in a rural Indonesian society and among urban middle class people in the US. I demonstrate how culturally shaped patterns of sleeping and dreaming become linked through social practice and the implication of these practices for health and well being. I underscore, in particular, the seamless connection between waking and non-waking life, how daytime activities affect patterns of sleeping and dreaming, but also how the emotional and behavioral residues of the night affect daytime life and experience. Data for the Indonesia case were collected during extended fieldwork in 1981–1983, while the U.S. data come from my ongoing part-time private practice of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: While it is well documented that economic expansions provide widespread and immediate financial benefits, the evidence on how an economic downturn affects individual''s health behaviors is surprisingly mixed. In this paper, we take a structural approach to investigate the effects of wages and working hours on health behaviors of low-educated persons using variations in wages and hours caused by changes in local economic activity. In the empirical analysis, we adopt a two-sample instrumental variables approach to combine the data on individual health behaviors from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) and the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) with the data on individual employment from the Current Population Survey (CPS). The total sample size of the combined CPS-BRFSS data for the time period of 1984–2005 is 967,594, while that of the combined CPS-NHIS data for the time period of 1976–2001 is 364,078. We find that increases in wages caused by economic expansions are associated with greater consumption of cigarettes in the United States. We also find that increases in hours of work caused by economic expansions are associated with more cigarette consumption, but less physical activity and physician visits. More importantly, the evidence suggests that most of such effects associated with changes in hours of work can be attributed to the changes at the extensive margin of employment, meaning the changes in employment status, rather than the changes at the intensive margin, meaning changes in hours of work conditional on being employed. These findings imply that changes in employment may have heterogeneous impacts on time-intensive and less time-intensive health behaviors and also provide additional evidence on the importance of time in health production, particularly for time-intensive activities. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This study examines the interactive contextual effect of income inequality on health. Specifically, we hypothesize that income inequality will moderate the relationships between individual-level risk factors and health. Using National Health Interview Survey data 1984–2007 (n = 607,959) and U.S. Census data, this paper estimates the effect of the dramatic increase in income inequality in the U.S. over the past two decades on the gradient of socioeconomic status on two measures of health (i.e., physical functioning and activity limitations). Results indicate that increasing income inequality strengthens the protective effects of family income, employment, college education, and marriage on these two measures of health. In contrast, high school education''s protective effect (relative to less than a high school education) weakens in the context of increasing income inequality. In addition, we find that increasing income inequality exacerbates men''s disadvantages in physical functioning and activity limitations. These findings shed light on research about growing health disparities in the U.S. in the last several decades. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Clinical guidelines and quality measures are important new paradigms for conceptualizing and managing quality in the United States. Researchers have proposed that professional elites—including members of academic medicine—were an important cause of the shift to guidelines and measures. This paper draws on content analysis of abstracts focused on quality in major American medical journals between 1975 and 2009 to empirically assess whether and how paradigms for managing quality changed in academic medicine. The content analysis shows that guidelines- and measures-based approaches to quality increased in prominence. Individual expertise-based approaches to quality, however, remain important. Concurrent with changing paradigms in academic medicine, there was a reorientation of policy toward increased use of guidelines and measures the late 1980s and early 1990s in the United States. This policy reorientation was informed by earlier work by medical researchers proposing new approaches to quality. The policy reorientation was followed by an increase in the prominence of guidelines and measures in medical research. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Several studies have demonstrated that universal helmet laws (UHLs) and other motor vehicle policies are effective in reducing fatal and non-fatal motorcycle injuries. Although state policies can improve traffic safety overall, very little is known about how they affect different segments of motorcycle riders. In this paper, we investigate the differential effectiveness of such policies by license state of the rider (i.e., in-state versus out-of-state). From a policy perspective, this information gap is noteworthy because variations in state regulations may influence where individuals choose to ride. We use state-level longitudinal (1988–2008) data on motorcycle fatalities in the United States from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS). Our results reconfirm the effectiveness of UHLs and offer new evidence suggesting that states without such policies may attract more risky riders from out-of-state. In particular, not having a UHL increases out-of-state rider fatalities by 18 percent and this effect is more pronounced for out-of-state riders who reside in a UHL state. These findings have important implications regarding unintended spillover effects of state-specific motor vehicle policies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In this paper, we investigate the relationship between alcohol consumption and psychological well-being among young adults in the United States. We do so by exploiting the discontinuity in alcohol consumption at age 21 and using a regression discontinuity design. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1997 Cohort), we document that young adults tend to increase their alcohol consumption and drink on average 1.5 days per month more once they are granted legal access to alcohol at age 21. However, we also show that in general, this discrete jump in alcohol consumption at age 21 has no statistically significant impact on several indicators of psychological well-being among young adults. This result suggests that although stricter alcohol control targeted toward young adults may result in meaningful reductions in alcohol consumption, the immediate spillover effects of such policies on psychological well-being are relatively limited. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper analyzes the relationship between same-sex marriage laws and sexually transmitted infections in the United States using state-level data from 1981 to 2008. We hypothesize that same-sex marriage laws may directly affect risky homosexual behavior; may affect or mirror social attitudes toward gays, which in turn may affect homosexual behavior; and may affect or mirror attitudes toward non-marital sex, which may affect risky heterosexual behavior. Our findings may be summarized as follows. Laws banning same-sex marriage are unrelated to gonorrhea rates, which are a proxy for risky heterosexual behavior. They are more closely associated with syphilis rates, which are a proxy for risky homosexual behavior. However, these estimates are smaller and less statistically significant when we exclude California, the state with the largest gay population. Also, laws permitting same-sex marriage are unrelated to gonorrhea or syphilis, but variation in these laws is insufficient to yield precise estimates. In sum, the findings point to a modest positive association—if any at all—between same-sex marriage bans and syphilis. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The creation of the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) under the Affordable Care Act has set comparative effectiveness research (CER) at centre stage of US health care reform. Comparative cost analysis has remained marginalised and it now appears unlikely that the PCORI will require comparative cost data to be collected as an essential component of CER. In this paper, we review the literature to identify ethical and distributional objectives that might motivate calls to set priorities without regard to comparative cost. We then present argument and evidence to consider whether there is any plausible set of objectives and constraints against which priorities can be set without reference to comparative cost. We conclude that – to set aside comparative cost even after accounting for ethical and distributional constraints – would be truly to act as if money is no object. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper examined the importance of household and economic contextual factors as determinants of ethnic disparities in adolescent body mass index (BMI). Individual-level data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 for the years 1997 through 2000 were combined with economic contextual data on food prices, outlet density and median household income. The Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition method was used to examine the factors that could help explain ethnic disparities in BMI. Ethnic differences in household demographic, parental socioeconomic status (SES), and economic contextual factors explained the majority of the male black–white (63%), male Hispanic–white (78%) and female Hispanic–white (62%) BMI gaps but less than one-half of the female black–white BMI gap (44%). We found that adding the economic contextual factors increased the explained portion of the ethnic BMI gap for both female and male adolescents: the economic contextual factors explained 28% and 38% of the black–white and Hispanic–white BMI gaps for males and 13% and 8% of the black–white and Hispanic–white BMI gaps for females, respectively. Parental SES was more important in explaining the Hispanic–white BMI gap than the black–white BMI gap for both genders, whereas neighborhood economic contextual factors were more important in explaining the male BMI gap than the female BMI gap for both black–white and Hispanic–white ethnic disparities. A significantly large portion of the ethnic BMI gap, however, remained unexplained between black and white female adolescents. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Although the population of homeschooled children in the United States is large and growing, little is known about their access to and utilization of preventive health care services. This paper compares the health care access and utilization of homeschooled children and public school children in the United States using data from the nationally-representative 2007 National Survey of Children''s Health. Using logistic regression models, this study finds that homeschooled children were significantly less likely than public school children to have access to a medical home, to visit a health care professional annually, and to receive the Human Papillomavirus vaccine. They were not statistically less likely to have health insurance, to receive annual dental care, or to receive Tetanus or Meningitis vaccinations. This research suggests that public health practitioners, medical providers, researchers, and educators should be attentive to the health care needs of homeschooled children. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: During the first decade of the 21st century a new “dramatic story” about the growing global surrogacy industry brought renewed attention to surrogacy as a social problem and a health policy issue. This paper asks: What cultural assumptions about gender, family and the global reproductive health market are revealed in current U.S. media coverage of and public discourses about surrogacy? From a qualitative analysis of prominent news accounts of surrogacy that were published in 2008, New York Times articles and blogs published on the topic between 2006 and 2010, and over 1000 online reader comments to these articles, I identify key frames used to discursively construct and debate the international surrogacy market. This study reveals the distinct contrast between the occasions when reproductive labor is rhetorically distanced from commodification processes and when it is linked to those processes. The findings contribute to intersectional analyses of assisted reproductive practices and women’s health/bodies/gametes. In particular, this study’s analysis of recent media framings of and public discourses about surrogacy across the globe serves as another illustration that national/classed/racialized bodies continue to be reproductively stratified via differently gendered discourses about women, motherhood and family. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This article addresses the main scholarly frames that supported the deservingness of unauthorized immigrants to health benefits in the United States (U.S.) following the passage of the Personal Responsibility Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), known as the Welfare Reform bill, in 1996. Based on a critical literature review, conducted between January 1997 and March 2011, this article begins with an analysis of the public health rhetorics that endorsed immigrants’ inclusion into the U.S. health safety net. In this vein, the “cost-saving” and “the effortful immigrant” frames underscore immigrants’ contributions to society vis-à-vis their low utilization of health services. These are complemented by a “surveillance” account that claims to protect the American public from communicable diseases. A “maternalistic” frame is also discussed as a tool to safeguard families, and particularly immigrant mothers, in their roles as bearers and caretakers of their American-born children. The analyses of the “chilling” and the “injustice” frames are then introduced to underscore major anthropological contributions to the formulation of counter-mainstream discourses on immigrants’ selective inclusion into the U.S. health care system. First, the “chilling effect,” defined as the voluntary withdrawal from health benefits, is examined in light of unauthorized immigrants’ internalized feelings of undeservingness. Second, an “injustice” narrative highlights both the contributions and the limitations of a social justice paradigm, which advocated for the restoration of government benefits to elderly immigrants and refugees after the passage of PRWORA. By analyzing the contradictions among all these diverse frames, this paper finally reflects on the conceptual challenges faced by medical anthropology, and the social sciences at large, in advancing health equity and human rights paradigms. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper examines the associations between Chinese and Korean immigrant parents’ early life material and food deprivation and their concern about their child’s diet or weight, preferences for heavier children, and weight-promoting diet and child weight, alongside the moderating role of parents’ acculturation toward American culture. In 2010, Chinese and Korean immigrant parents of children ages 3–8 years in the United States (N = 130) completed interviews which asked about their perceived early life material deprivation and food insecurity, acculturation, child feeding practices, and evaluations of whether their child weighed more or less than the ideal, and child consumption of soda and candy. Independent measures of child and parent BMI were also obtained. Regression analyses revealed that parents’ early life food insecurity was associated with the evaluation that their child should weigh more than they do and greater consumption of soda and sweets by their child, among the least acculturated parents. Parental material deprivation was associated with more laissez-faire child feeding practices: less monitoring, less concern about the child’s weight or diet, and less perceived responsibility for the child’s diet, but only among less acculturated parents. Overall, the results suggest that immigrant parents’ child feeding practices and body size evaluations are shaped by material hardship in childhood, but these influences may fade as acculturation occurs. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper combines resources from the organization studies and sociology literatures to advance understanding of institutional change processes in healthcare that emerge from the professionalization projects of occupations. Conceptually, we introduce a model that combines the ‘archetype’ approach to analyzing structural change with a framework for analyzing the agency of emergent professions. We then employ the model to frame a historical case analysis (1972–2009) of the highly contested process by which the occupation of dental hygiene in the US fought to introduce a new organizational form, the alternative practice hygiene (APH) archetype. This archetype challenges the traditional model (the dentist’s office archetype) that is supported by the dominant dentistry profession. Our analysis contributes two main sets of empirical findings. First, we present a systematic comparison of the APH and Dentist’s Office archetypes in terms of their belief systems, formal structures, agents, and policy implications (e.g., access to services). Second, we provide an account of the agency of dental hygienists’ attempts to secure the APH model as part of their professionalization project. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Although it has long been conjectured that having physicians in leadership positions is valuable for hospital performance, there is no published empirical work on the hypothesis. This cross-sectional study reports the first evidence. Data were collected on the top-100 U.S. hospitals in 2009, as identified by a widely-used media-generated ranking of quality, in three specialties: Cancer, Digestive Disorders, and Heart and Heart Surgery. The personal histories of the 300 chief executive officers of these hospitals were then traced by hand. The CEOs are classified into physicians and non-physician managers. The paper finds a strong positive association between the ranked quality of a hospital and whether the CEO is a physician or not (p < 0.001). This kind of cross-sectional evidence does not establish that physician-leaders outperform professional managers, but it is consistent with such claims and suggests that this area is now an important one for systematic future research. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Over the course of the 20th century, Mexico-U.S. migration has emerged as an important facet of both countries, with far reaching economic and social impacts. The health of Mexican immigrants in the U.S. has been well studied, but relatively less is known about the health of returned migrants to Mexico. The objectives of this paper are twofold. Relying on health data pertaining to two stages of the life course, early life health (pre-migration) and adult health (post-migration) from the Mexican Migration Project gathered between 2007 and 2009, we aim to assess disparities in adult health status between male returned migrants and male non-migrants in Mexico, accounting for their potentially different early life health profiles. While we find evidence that returned migrants had more favorable early life health, the results for adult health are more complex. Returned migrants have a higher prevalence of heart disease, emotional/psychiatric disorders, obesity, and smoking than non-migrants but no differences are found in self-rated health, diabetes, or hypertension. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Health-related behaviors in adolescence establish trajectories of risk for obesity and chronic degenerative diseases, and they represent an important pathway through which socio-economic environments shape patterns of morbidity and mortality. Most behaviors that promote health involve making choices that may not pay off until the future, but the factors that predict an individual’s investment in future health are not known. In this paper we consider whether expectations for the future in two domains relevant to adolescents in the U.S.—perceived chances of living to middle age and perceived chances of attending college—are associated with an individual’s engagement in behaviors that protect health in the long run. We focus on adolescence as an important life stage during which habits formed may shape trajectories of disease risk later in life. We use data from a large, nationally representative sample of American youth (the US National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health) to predict levels of physical activity, fast food consumption, and cigarette smoking in young adulthood in relation to perceived life chances in adolescence, controlling for baseline health behaviors and a wide range of potentially confounding factors. We found that adolescents who rated their chances of attending college more highly exercised more frequently and smoked fewer cigarettes in young adulthood. Adolescents with higher expectations of living to age 35 smoked fewer cigarettes as young adults. Parental education was a significant predictor of perceived life chances, as well as health behaviors, but for each outcome the effects of perceived life chances were independent of, and often stronger than, parental education. Perceived life chances in adolescence may therefore play an important role in establishing individual trajectories of health, and in contributing to social gradients in population health. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper assesses how the relationship between health and educational attainment has changed over the last three decades. We examine trends in disease prevalence and self-reported health using the US National Health Interview Survey for five chronic conditions—arthritis, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, and lung diseases. The sample is limited to non-Hispanic Whites ages 40–64 to focus on the value of education and not changing representation of minority populations. We find that health benefits associated with additional schooling rose over time by more than ten percentage points as measured by self-reported health status. This can be attributed to both a growing disparity by education in the probability of having major chronic diseases during middle age, and better health outcomes for those with each disease. The value of education in achieving better health has increased over the last 25 years; both in protecting against onset of disease and promoting better health outcomes amongst those with a disease. Besides better access to health insurance, the more educated increasingly adapted better health behaviors, particularly not smoking and engaging in vigorous excercise, and reaped the benefits of improving medical technology. Rising health disparities by education are an important social concern which may require targeted interventions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The prevalence of diabetes is growing in many countries. Prescription oral medications have been developed to treat the disease since the 1950s. More recently, a group of diabetes drugs, known as the glitazones, have been developed and introduced on to North American and European markets since the late 1990s. When first introduced, the glitazones were widely regarded as ‘innovative’ pharmaceuticals and have remained on the American and EU markets, among others, throughout the 2000s. Yet, enormous uncertainties about their therapeutic value have remained since they came on the market a decade ago. This paper investigates how socio-political systems of drug development and regulation generate such pharmaceutical uncertainty consequent upon the limited informational value that diabetes drug trials provide about the health risks and benefits of such medications when used in clinical practice. Drawing on documentary research and fieldwork interviews, the first in-depth analysis of regulation of ‘innovative’ pharmaceuticals in both the US and supranational EU is presented. It is argued that these pharmaceutical uncertainties can be explained by reference to four key factors: regulatory paradigms using surrogate markers for drug efficacy; drug approval standards in policy and legislation; ideological expectations of innovation within regulatory agencies; and pharmaceutical industry shaping of drug evaluation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Medication is critical to the management of medical problems, however relatively little attention has been paid to the treatment recommendation process where a new medication is first prescribed. This article argues that how and when a patient agrees to a physician’s treatment demonstrates a patient’s active involvement in decisions about treatment. Using 100 video recorded primary care visits across 10 internal medicine clinics in the Western United States, this paper uses conversation analysis to document the delivery and reception of treatment recommendations in acute medical visits with adult patients. Specifically, this article analyzes patients demonstrating active participation regarding treatment decisions as a limited form of agency. Starting from the premise that participants orient to physicians’ treatment recommendations as normatively requiring patient acceptance before moving to a next activity, this article argues that when patients resist a recommendation, they actively participate in how the treatment recommendation emerges as acceptable. This article argues that through resistance to a treatment recommendation, patients work to negotiate and collaboratively co-construct what counts as an acceptable recommendation. Overall, this article argues that patient resistance is an interactional resource for patients to assert their agency by ensuring the ensuing recommendation is acceptable and in accord with their treatment preferences and concerns. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: A number of recent studies have examined the effect of installing physical barriers or otherwise restricting access to public sites that are frequently used for suicides by jumping. While these studies demonstrate that barriers lead to a reduction in the number of suicides by jumping at the site where they are installed, thus far no study has found a statistically significant reduction in the local suicide rate attributable to a barrier. All previous studies are case studies of particular sites, and thus have limited statistical power and ability to control for confounding factors, which may obscure the true relationship between barriers and the suicide rate. This study addresses these concerns by examining the relationship between large, well-known bridges (“local landmark” bridges) of the type that are often used as suicide-jumping sites and the local suicide rate, an approach that yields many more cases for analysis. If barriers at suicide-jumping sites decrease the local suicide rate, then this implies that the presence of an unsecured suicide-jumping site will lead to a higher local suicide rate in comparison to areas without such a site. The relationship between suicides and local landmark bridges is examined across 3116 US counties or county equivalents with negative binomial regression models. I found that while exposure to local landmark bridges was associated with an increased number of suicides by jumping, no positive relationship between these bridges and the overall number of suicides was detected. It may be impossible to conclusively determine if barriers at suicide-jumping sites reduce the local suicide rate with currently available data. However, the method introduced in this paper offers the possibility that better data, or an improved understanding of which potential jumping sites attract suicidal individuals, may eventually allow researchers to determine if means restriction at suicide-jumping sites reduces total suicides. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper contributes an empirically-based analysis of how women negotiate reproductive desires and constructions of risk in light of genetic information for a single-gene disorder with known inheritance patterns. Fragile X syndrome (FXS) is the most common cause of inherited intellectual disability and female carriers have a 50% probability with each pregnancy of transmitting the FX gene. We present data from interviews conducted with 108 mothers across the U.S. who participated in a longitudinal, mixed methods study on family adaptations to FXS and who have at least one child with FXS. Women’s accounts of their reproductive desires, actions, and reasoning indicate that the known 50% risk of transmitting the FX gene was a powerful deterrent to attempting to have more children through unmediated pregnancy. The majority (77%) decided not to have any more biological children after carrier diagnosis. This decision often required revising previous plans for how many children they would have, how and when they would have them, and what kind of mothers they would be. However, genetic risk was not a primary consideration in the reproductive calculations of 22 women who chose to continue planned and unplanned unmediated pregnancies. Though women’s reproductive negotiations are constrained by medical discourse and practices, they are also unpredictable and emerge out of lived experiences and sometimes ambivalent ways of reckoning. While increased availability and accuracy of genetic information and testing contribute to certain forms of family planning that prioritize genetic risk management, we also find that some families call upon alternative understandings and desires for making a family to articulate genetic risk and negotiate their reproductive futures. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper develops the concept of “biosecuritization” to describe new instantiations of the technological imperative in healthcare. Many discourses and practices surrounding hospitals’ new investments in information and communication technologies tend to revolve around security provision. Oftentimes, however, scenarios of extreme and exceptional circumstances are used to justify the implementation of identification and tracking technologies that may be more about managerial control than patient care. Drawing upon qualitative research in 23 U.S. hospitals from 2007 to 2009, our analysis focuses on hospitals’ deployment of identification and location technologies that manage patients, track personnel, and generate data in real-time. These systems are framed as aiding in the process of managing supplies and medications for pandemic flu outbreaks, monitoring exposure patterns for infectious diseases, and helping triage or manage the location and condition of patients during mass casualty disasters. We show that in spite of the framing of security and emergency preparedness, these technologies are primarily managerial tools for hospital administrators. Just as systems can be used to track infection vectors, those same systems can be used on a daily basis to monitor the workflow of hospital personnel, including nurses, physicians, and custodial staff, and to discipline or reward according to performance. In other words, the biosecuritization modality of the technological imperative leads to the framing of medical progress as the “rationalization” of organizations through technological monitoring, which is intended to promote accountability and new forms of responsibilization of healthcare workers. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper poses three questions: (1) Does mortality from natural causes spike around Christmas and New Year? (2) If so, does this spike exist for all major disease groups or only specialized groups? (3) If twin holiday spikes exist, need this imply that Christmas and New Year are risk factors for death? To answer these questions, we used all official U.S. death certificates, 1979–2004 (n = 57,451,944) in various hospital settings to examine daily mortality levels around Christmas and New Year. We measured the Christmas increase by comparing observed deaths with expected deaths in the week starting on Christmas. The New Year increase was measured similarly. The expected number of deaths was determined by locally weighted regression, given the null hypothesis that mortality is affected by seasons and trend but not by holidays. On Christmas and New Year, mortality from natural causes spikes in dead-on-arrival (DOA) and emergency department (ED) settings. There are more DOA/ED deaths on 12/25, 12/26, and 1/1 than on any other day. In contrast, deaths in non-DOA/ED settings display no holiday spikes. For DOA/ED settings, there are holiday spikes for each of the top five disease groups (circulatory diseases; neoplasms; respiratory diseases; endocrine/nutritional/metabolic diseases; digestive diseases). For all settings combined, there are holiday spikes for most major disease groups and for all demographic groups, except children. In the two weeks starting with Christmas, there is an excess of 42,325 deaths from natural causes above and beyond the normal winter increase. Christmas and New Year appear to be risk factors for deaths from many diseases. We tested nine possible explanations for these risk factors, but further research is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Teams are an integral component of quality improvement efforts in healthcare organizations. Quality improvement teams may involve persons either from the same or different disciplines. In either case, the selection of team members may be critical to the team’s success. However, there is little research to guide selection of team members for quality improvement teams. In this paper, we use tools from social network analysis (SNA) to derive principles for the design of effective clinical quality improvement teams and explore the implementation of these principles using social network data collected from the inpatient general medicine services at a large academic medical center in Chicago, USA. While the concept of multidisciplinary teams focuses on the importance of the professional background of team members, SNA emphasizes the importance of the individual and collective connections of team members, both to persons outside the team and to each other. SNA also focuses on the location of individuals and groups between other actors in the flow of information and other resources within larger organizational networks. We hypothesize that external connections may be most important when the collection or dissemination of information or influence are the greatest concerns, while the relationship of team members to each other may matter most when internal coordination, knowledge sharing, and within-group communication are most important. Our data suggest that the social networks of the attending physicians can be characterized sociometrically and that new sociometric measures such as “net degree” may be useful in identifying teams with the greatest potential for external influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: While there is a growing interest in the development of cancer control intervention initiatives, there continues to be a need to understand how the nuances of different Latino cultures translate to opportunities and barriers for access to cancer screening and care. The diversity by country of origin for Latinas in the United States is often overlooked in cancer control initiatives, and the application of qualitative research can expose processes of inequity and cultural variation to improve these initiatives. This paper presents an interpretation of diverse Latina immigrants’ perceptions, experiences and knowledge about breast and cervical cancer screening and demonstrates the use of the PEN-3 model to analyze these data to develop an effective outreach intervention. We conducted 13 focus groups consisting of a total of 112 Latinas in New York City (nine groups) and rural and urban sites in Arkansas (four groups) in 2003 through 2004. Through nonprobability theoretical sampling, we included women from Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Mexico in New York and recent Mexican immigrants in Arkansas. Findings demonstrated that country of origin and current geographic residency in the U.S. were significant determinants of women’s perspectives on community-based religious organizations, knowledge of anatomy, experiences with the medical system, and access to services which are essential factors to consider in developing effective cancer control interventions. Although breast and cervical cancer are considered women’s health issues, they cannot be addressed outside the sociopolitical structures of local communities, especially for the most recent immigrant women. Applying the PEN-3 framework to these data demonstrated a valuable method to interpret and transform qualitative data into intervention content and structure that responds to characteristics and perspectives within diverse Latino communities, such as gender relations, religious affiliations and experiences. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Evidence suggests variability in adult obesity risk at a small-scale geographic area is associated with differences in neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES). However, the extent to which geographic variability in child obesity is associated with neighborhood SES is unknown. The objective of this paper was to estimate risk of child obesity associated with multiple census tract SES measures and race within a large urban U.S. county. Height, weight, age, sex, medical insurance type and census tract residence were obtained for 6–18 year old children (n =8616) who received medical care at a health plan in King County, Washington, in 2006. Spatial analyses examined the individual risk of obesity (BMI≥95th percentile) with 2000 US census tract measures of median household income, home ownership, adult female education level, single parent households, and race as predictors. Conditional autoregressive regression models that incorporated adjacent census tracts (spatial autocorrelation) were applied to each census tract variable, adjusting for individual variables. We found that in adjusted spatial models, child obesity risk was significantly associated with each census tract variable in the expected direction: lower household income, lower home ownership, and for each 10% increase in less educated women, and single parent households, as well as non-white residents. In a spatial model including all variables, the SES/race variables explained approximately 24% of geographic variability in child obesity. Results indicated that living in census tracts with social disadvantage defined by multiple different measures was associated with child obesity among insured children in a large U.S. urban county. These results contribute new information on relationships between broader social and economic context and child obesity risk using robust spatial analyses. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In this paper, we study the impact of obesity on labor market decisions of older working age adults in USA. Labor market outcomes are defined as any one of three: working; not working due to a disability; or not working due to an early retirement. Based on existing medical literature, we deduce that obesity can largely impact labor market decisions directly through impairment of bodily functions and indirectly by being a risk factor for various diseases like hypertension, arthritis, etc. We use data from the US Health and Retirement Study on older adults who were no more than 64 years of age in 2002. In our modeling effort, we employ two estimation strategies. We first estimate a model in which employment outcome in 2002 is a function of weight status in 1992. In the second strategy, controlling for time-invariant individual heterogeneity, we first consider the impact of obesity on bodily impairments and chronic illnesses; then, we consider the impact of such impairments and illnesses on labor market outcomes. Our results indicate that, for men, obesity class 2 and 3 increases both the probability of taking an early retirement and the incidence of disability by 1.5 percentage points. For women, we find that obesity class 2 and 3 increases the probability of taking an early retirement by 2.5 percentage points and the incidence of disability by 1.7 percentage points. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In this paper, I argue that pregnant women confront a “double-bind” in complying with medical directives to report pregnancy symptoms: the combination of the routinization of prenatal care, understandings of fetal subjectivity, and the cultural discourse of maternal sacrifice create a situation in which women are at risk of failing as either as good patients, good mothers, or both. Longitudinal, in-depth interviews were conducted with 64 pregnant women in the New York metropolitan area. I found that health care providers make women’s embodied experiences a priority of surveillance, connecting symptoms to fetal well-being and emphasizing timely reporting of these symptoms to medical authorities. I found that women generally accepted this connection between symptoms and fetus, but were often perplexed as to which symptoms they needed to communicate to their providers when time constraints on routine prenatal appointments limited women’s ability to comply fully. Women also reported cultural pressures to “suffer nobly” the symptoms of pregnancy, no matter how uncomfortable. As a result, women found themselves with considerable responsibility for identifying problems in their pregnancies, with no clear way to adhere to the multiple and sometimes opposing mandates for managing symptoms they encountered. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Childhood psychological conditions including depression and substance abuse are a growing concern among American children, but their long-term economic costs are unknown. This paper uses unique data from the US Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) following groups of siblings and their parents for up to 40 years prospectively collecting information on education, income, work, and marriage. Following siblings offers an opportunity to control for unobserved family and neighborhood effects. A retrospective child health history designed by the author was placed into the 2007 PSID wave measuring whether respondents had any of 14 childhood physical illnesses or suffered from depression, substance abuse, or other psychological conditions. Large effects are found on the ability of affected children to work and earn as adults. Educational accomplishments are diminished, and adult family incomes are reduced by 20% or $10,400 per year with $18,000 less family household assets. Lost income is partly a consequence of seven fewer weeks worked per year. There is also an 11% point lower probability of being married. Controlling for physical childhood diseases shows that these effects are not due to the co-existence of psychological and physical diseases, and estimates controlling for within-sibling differences demonstrate that these effects are not due to unobserved common family differences. The long-term economic damages of childhood psychological problems are large—a lifetime cost in lost family income of approximately $300,000, and total lifetime economic cost for all those affected of 2.1 trillion dollars. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In this paper, we employ a classical experiment to determine if welfare reform causes poor women to experience increased levels of clinical anxiety and depression. We organize our analyses around the insights provided by lifestyle change and ecosocial theories of illness. Our data come from the New Jersey Family Development Program (FDP), one of the most highly publicized welfare experiments in the U.S. A sample of 8393 women was randomly assigned into two groups, one which stressed welfare-to-work and the other which offered traditional welfare benefits. These women were followed from 1992 through 1996 and information on clinical diagnoses was collected quarterly from physician treatment claims to the government Medicaid program. Our intention-to-treat estimates show that for short-term welfare recipients FDP decreased the prevalence of anxiety by 40% and increased depression by 8%. For black women both anxiety and depression diagnoses declined while Hispanic women experienced a 68% increase in depression. We discuss several public policy implications which arise from our work. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]