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COVID-19 prediction models are characterized by uncertainties due to fluctuating parameters, such as changes in infection or recovery rates. While deterministic models often predict epidemic peaks too early, incorporating these fluctuations into the SIR model can provide a more accurate representation of peak timing. Predicting R0, the basic reproduction number, remains a major challenge with significant implications for government policy and strategy. In this study, we propose a tool for policy makers to show the effects of possible fluctuations in policy strategies on different R0 levels. Results show that epidemic peaks in the United States occur at varying dates, up to 50, 87, and 82 days from the beginning of the second, third, and fourth waves. Our findings suggest that inaccurate predictions and public health policies may result from underestimating fluctuations in infection or recovery rates. Therefore, incorporating fluctuations into SIR models should be considered when predicting epidemic peak times to inform appropriate public health responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1973, a Toronto magazine published the photographic book Open Passport by Montréal photographer John Max. A formally innovative narrative sequence about the dissolution of an artist's marriage, it has been a touchstone of Canadian photography since its publication. Simultaneously autobiographical, fictional, and experimental, Open Passport is a unique response to the representations of self and subjectivity in American photography of the 1970s, which championed the idea of photographers as authors and the book as privileged support for their images. Initially produced as an exhibition accompanied by a slideshow, Open Passport is a work that uses multiple supports for disseminating a photographic narration about the self. Using previously unavailable materials from John Max's archives, this article argues that these different supports should be considered as multiple variants of a single work, which upsets the hierarchical logic distinguishing original works from adaptations or derived works. This has important methodological consequences for the emerging field of photobook studies, which has given primacy to the history of books over that of exhibitions. The notion of performance is used to explain the relationship between the work and its supports, showing in turn the importance of the processes of editing and sequencing in the definition of the photographic work of art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contrasting health care structures, we each served as caregivers to elderly parents where a shared and unexpected theme in our experiences was the substantial burden of negotiating and managing long-term care (LTC) services within our respective health and social care systems. In this article, we introduce and elucidate an under recognized source of caregiver burden in the United States and Canada: the structural burden of caregiving. We draw on shared and unique experiences cross-nationally, along with the literature, to illustrate that (a) today's caregiving is increasingly characterized by interactions with formal health and social systems in negotiating and managing services, (b) these systems are hampered by discontinuous and fragmented care which increase caregiver stress, and (c) this structural burden likely exacerbates inequity for both care recipients and caregivers. In conclusion, we call for theoretical models of caregiving to highlight health and social systems as creating burden and for measurement of caregiver burden to explicitly consider the time and stress stemming from interactions with formal health and social systems. Finally, we call for future policy evaluation to incorporate structural burden as an additional outcome in considering changes to LTC provisions and funding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using prospective cohort data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, this study examines the extent to which health insurance coverage and the source of that coverage affect adult health. While previous research has shown that privately insured nonelderly individuals enjoy better health outcomes than their uninsured counterparts, the same relationship does not hold for those publicly insured through programs such as Medicaid. Because it is unclear whether this finding reflects a true causal relationship or is in fact due to selection bias on socioeconomic status and health, previous estimates of the contribution of health insurance to inequities in health may have been biased. This study attempts to disentangle these competing hypotheses of causation or selection bias by using fixed effects models with sibling clusters to corroborate--or contradict--the results of a conventional OLS regression. By controlling for unobserved factors shared by siblings, such as parental genetic influences, sibling models estimate health insurance effects that are less affected by selection bias. Findings suggest that, among the US. birth cohorts of 1957 to 1961, the negative relationship between public health insurance and health is not causal, but rather due to prior health and socioeconomic status. Conversely, the lack of health insurance coverage has a strong cumulative negative impact on adult health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Partnered individuals live longer, healthier lives. In explaining this association, processes involving both social causation (in which partnership provides health benefits to individuals) and health selection (in which those who find partners were healthier than those who do not) have been invoked. Since much of this literature is focused in the U.S., comparative studies of the potential impact of policy on the causation and selection components of this association have been scant. Using comparable data from the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics (N = 25,862, followed from 1984 to 2005) and the Canadian Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (N = 15,632, followed from 1999 to 2005), we test the selective and causal relationships evident during entrance into partnership. We use fixed change-point analysis with multilevel models to fit trajectories of change in both the U.S. and Canada. In Canada, partnership benefits were evident, while health selection was limited. In contrast, in the U.S., health selection was prominent in both men and women, but partnership benefits were not significant. We argue that the differences in the extent of defamilialization of social policy between the two countries may impact the way and extent to which people choose partners and benefit from those partnerships. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The existence of a direct effect of early socioeconomic position (SEP) on adult mental health outcomes net of adult SEP is still debated. This question demands the explicit modeling of pathways linking early SEP to adult SEP and mental health. In light of this background, we pursue two objectives in this study. First, we examine whether depressive symptoms in adulthood can be fit in a trajectory featuring both an intercept, or baseline range of depressive symptoms that varied between individuals, and a slope describing the average evolution of depressive symptoms over the years. Second, we estimate the direct and indirect pathways linking early SEP, respondents'' education and adult household income, with a particular focus on whether early SEP retains a significant direct effect on the trajectory of depressive symptoms once adult SEP is entered into the pathway model. Drawing from 29 years of cohort data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, a survey that has been following a national probability sample of American civilian and military youth (), we used structural equation models to estimate the pathways between parents'' education, respondent''s education, and latent growth curves of household income and depressive symptoms. We found that the effect of parents'' education was entirely mediated by respondent''s education. In turn, the effect of respondent''s education was largely mediated by household income. In conclusion, our findings showed that the socioeconomic attainment process that is rooted in parents'' education and leads to respondent''s education and then to household income is a crucial pathway for adult mental health. These results suggest that increasing educational opportunities may be an effective policy to break the intergenerational transmission of low socioeconomic status and poor mental health. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Central banks usually 'park' their foreign exchange reserves in safe or highly liquid foreign assets. The paper illustrates that when central banks invest instead in risky foreign assets, then domestic banking crises can cause a crisis in the market for the foreign asset and vice versa. The paper takes its motivation from Asian central banks' recent appetite for US government agency-debt securities such as those issued by Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Recent decades have seen a tremendous increase in the complexity of work arrangements, through job sharing, flexible hours, career breaks, compressed work weeks, shift work, reduced job security, and part-time, contract and temporary work. In this study, we focus on one specific group of workers that arguably most embodies non-standard employment, namely temporary workers, and estimate the effect of this type of employment on depressive symptom severity. Accounting for the possibility of mental health selection into temporary work through propensity score analysis, we isolate the direct effects of temporary work on depressive symptoms with varying lags of time since exposure. We use prospective data from the U.S. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79), which has followed, longitudinally, from 1979 to the present, a nationally representative cohort of American men and women between 14 and 22 years of age in 1979. Three propensity score models were estimated, to capture the effect of different time lags (immediately following exposure, and 2 and 4 years post exposure) between the period of exposure to the outcome. The only significant effects were found among those who had been exposed to temporary work in the two years preceding the outcome measurement. These workers report 1.803 additional depressive symptoms from having experienced this work status (than if they had not been exposed). Moreover, this difference is both statistically and substantively significant, as it represents a 50% increase from the average level of depressive symptoms in this population. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Building on a framework suggested by Bongaarts (2001) and using data from the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we describe the correspondence between intended family size and observed fertility for the 1957 to 1961 birth cohorts of U.S. women and men. Over an 18-year period (1982–2000), we show that while aggregate intentions are quite stable, discrepancies are very common at the individual level. Women and men were more likely to err in predicting number of additional births in the period 1982–2000 than to hit their target number. A very strong predictor of over- and underachieving fertility is initial intended parity. Those who intended more than two children tended to have more children than intended. In addition and consistent with life course arguments, those unmarried in 1982, childless in 1982, and (for women) still in school in 1982 were most likely to underachieve their 2000 intended parity (i.e., have fewer children than intended). We conclude by reflecting on how the circumstances that allow discrepancies between intentions and behavior to almost ‘balance’ in the U.S. may cumulate differently elsewhere to produce much lower fertility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades pharmaceutical consumption has skyrocketed, growing from $43 US billion in 1985 to over $1143 billion in 2017. In trying to understand the source of this growth, social scientists have identified the key actors driving medication use and the processes through which they are driving it. However, much less attention has been devoted to understanding the forces that constrain medication consumption. This information is crucial for developing a deeper understanding of medication consumption, one that explains how context mediates the ability of key actors to shape medication consumption. To address this gap, I examine France's low consumption of psychostimulants to treat ADHD symptoms. France is a strategic case to analyze because it diverges dramatically from comparative cases: while 7% of U.S. children are medicated with psychostimulants, the same is true for only 0.2% of French children. To explain the French case I use the theory of countervailing powers. Informed by interviews with key informants, the French medical literature on psychostimulants and secondary sources, I explain how the state, medical experts and consumers have acted as countervailing forces against pharmaceutical interests. In doing so, I provide deeper insight about how context can limit the pharmaceutical industry's power. • Explores a case where pharmaceutical manufacturers are not the dominant player. • Illuminates how state regulators can effectively limit pharmaceutical consumption. • Demonstrates how medical professionals can constrain medication use. • Explains how consumer treatment preferences can undermine industry power. • Highlights synergies that emerge when countervailing forces are aligned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to current US recommendations, the choice to undergo screening for prostate cancer should be an individual one, after considering with a clinician the balance of harms and benefits, and the values and preferences in the decision. Social relationships may influence such a decision. The purpose of this scoping review was to map the evidence on the association between social relationships and prostate cancer screening in the epidemiological literature and to highlight gaps in knowledge. We performed a systematic search of all relevant articles published up to February 1st 2021. We used variations in search terms related to prostate cancer screening, as well as indicators of social relationships. From the 908 records identified, 19 studies, published in 2007-2020, were included. The most common indicator of social relationships was marital status. Overall, married men or men with a partner had a higher screening uptake. Church attendance, based on studies conducted in the United states, was also associated with screening. We found little evidence linking screening with parenthood status or perceived social support. The overall evidence points to a potentially causal association between social relationships and men's decision to undergo prostate cancer screening. More research is needed on the underlying mechanisms and on the potential barriers and facilitators for screening. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has shown great heterogeneity between regions of countries, e. g., in the United States of America (USA). With the growing of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, there is a need to better highlight the variability in the trajectory of this disease in different worldwide geographic areas. Indeed, the epidemic trends across areas can display completely different evolution at a given time. Geo-epidemiological analyses using data, that are publicly available, could be a major topic to help governments and public administrations to implement health policies. Geo-epidemiological analyses could provide a basis for the implementation of relevant public health policies. With the COVID-19 pandemic, geo-epidemiological analyses can be readily utilized by policy interventions and USA public health authorities to highlight geographic areas of particular concern and enhance the allocation of resources., Competing Interests: The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2022 Vallée.)

The discordance between fertility intentions and outcomes may be associated with mental health in the general population. This requires data directly linking individuals' fertility intentions with their outcomes. This study brings together two streams of research on fertility and psychological distress to examine whether unintended childlessness and unplanned births are associated with psychological distress, compared with intended childlessness and planned births. We also examine whether unintended childlessness and unplanned births are differently associated with distress at two stages of the individuals' life course: in early and late 30s. As women are more directly affected by the decline in fertility with age and the experience of motherhood is more central to women's identity, we also examined gender differences in these associations. Thus, we examined the association between four possible fertility events (planned and unplanned births, intended and unintended childlessness) and psychological distress of men and women, at two different stages over the life course (early and late 30s). We used longitudinal data from the US National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1979 (N=2524) to link individuals' fertility intentions and outcomes to evaluate the association of depressive symptoms (CES-D) with four possible fertility events occurring in two-year intervals, for men and women separately. Contrary to our first hypothesis, unintended childlessness and unplanned births were not associated with psychological distress for women. Among men, only unplanned births in their early 30s were associated with increases in psychological distress. We did not find support for our second hypothesis that unintended childlessness and unplanned births have a different association with psychological distress for men and women and as a function of the stage of life. These findings are discussed in the context of previous literature in this area.