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In relation to health promotion and education, the use of post-positivist and constructivist approaches has been gathering strength in recent years. Despite this emerging tradition, little has been done to explore what this sort of approach actually represents, particularly in terms of health promotion in schools, professional organizations and wider society. Acknowledging this, it is suggested that more researchers in this area should be adopting qualitative approaches--including semi-structured interviews, focus groups, story/dialogue workshops and developmental schemes of health education--in order to uncover the hidden meaning of "health promotion", particularly in the school context. This paper therefore attempts to challenge the idea that traditionalist paradigms of positivist research are capable of appropriately representing the nature and complexity of the health promotion issues. In this paper, methodological and theoretical frameworks that can enable researchers to understand health promotion from the perspective of students, teachers and school "stakeholders" are suggested. Particular attention is given to a discussion of the potential value of designing and implementing programmes of health education or promotion using a critical pedagogical approach within schools in the UK. It is argued that programmes using a critical pedagogical and reflective approach, and which are aimed at social transformation, would be of enormous benefit to both researchers and educational/health professionals who are seeking to understand the complexity of health promotion issues from the perspective of children and adolescents.

This paper is the third in a series of narrative reviews challenging core concepts in oral health research and practice. Our series started with a framework for Inclusion Oral Health. Our second review explored one component of this framework, looking at how intersectionality adds important complexity to oral public health. This current manuscript drills into a second component of Inclusion Oral Health, exploring how labels can lead to 'othering' thereby misrepresenting populations and (re)producing harms. Specifically, we address a common oral public health label: vulnerable populations. This term is commonly used descriptively: an adjective (vulnerable) is used to modify a noun (population). What this descriptor conceals is the 'how,' 'why,' and 'therefore' that leads to and from vulnerability: How and why is a population made vulnerable; to what are they vulnerable; what makes them 'at risk,' and to what are they 'at risk'? In concealing these questions, we argue our conventional approach unwittingly does harm. Vulnerability is a term that implies a population has inherent characteristics that make them vulnerable; further, it casts populations as discrete, homogenous entities, thereby misrepresenting the complexities that people live. In so doing, this label can eclipse the strengths, agency and power of individuals and populations to care for themselves and each other. Regarding oral public health, the convention of vulnerability averts our research gaze away from social processes that produce vulnerability to instead focus on the downstream product, the vulnerable population. This paper theorizes vulnerability for oral public health, critically engaging its production and reproduction. Drawing from critical public health literature and disability studies, we advance a critique of vulnerability to make explicit hidden assumptions and their harmful outcomes. We propose solutions for research and practice, including co‐engagement and co‐production with peoples who have been vulnerabilized. In so doing, this paper moves forward the potential for oral public health to advance research and practice that engages complexity in our work with vulnerabilized populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study is done on the Women's Interagency HIV Study to examine fat distribution in a well-characterized cohort of HIV-positive and HIV-negative women in the United States. The results showed that most of the both HIV-positive and HIV-negative women were overweight.

The study regarding whether conjugated equine estrogen (CEE) alters global cognitive function in older women are determined and its effect with CEE plus medroxyprogestrone acetate (CEE plus MPA) are compared. For women aged 65 years or older, hormone therapy had an adverse effect on cognition, which was greater among women and lower cognitive function at initiation of treatment.