Showing papers in "Social Science & Medicine in 2018"

TL;DR: Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) are increasingly popular in the social sciences, not only in medicine as discussed by the authors, and they can play a role in building scientific knowledge and useful predictions but they can only do so as part of a cumulative program, combining with other methods, including conceptual and theoretical development, to discover not 'what works', but 'why things work'.

TL;DR: How, where, and to what benefit the 'therapeutic landscapes' concept has been applied to date, and how such applications have contributed to its critical evolution as a relevant and useful concept in health geography are explored.

TL;DR: It is argued that pursuing multi-sectoral, multi-level, and multi-outcome research will strengthen and advance the existing evidence base on immigration policy and Latino health.

TL;DR: Analysis of public opinion about vaccination policies suggests that Dunning-Kruger effects can help to explain public opposition to vaccination policies and should be carefully considered in future research on anti-vaccine policy attitudes.

TL;DR: The findings add to the growing literature that women of color experience discrimination, racism and disrespect in healthcare encounters and that they believe this affects their health and that of their infants.

TL;DR: It is demonstrated how integrating intersectionality with institutional approaches allows for the study of institutions as heterogeneous entities that impact on the production of social privilege and disadvantage beyond just socioeconomic (re)distribution.

TL;DR: The results suggest that walking behavior is at least as strongly affected by eye-level street greenery as by parks, and implicitly support the health benefits of urban greenspaces via walking and physical activity.

TL;DR: This study combines data from the parents and children of the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to address two specific research aims, and finds that differential exposure to unfair treatment explains a substantial proportion of the Black/ white, but not the Hispanic/White, gap in self-rated health among this nationally representative sample of upwardly mobile young adults.

TL;DR: This introduction will synthesize the ways in which this collection advances understanding of the importance of cultural and structural racism for racial health inequalities, and synthesizes the evidence from conceptual and empirical models that indicate structural racism as the actualization of cultural racism.

TL;DR: This work analyzes the predictors of three specialized outcomes related to immigrants' psychological wellbeing-distress, negative emotions, and deportation worry before and after a transition from undocumented to lawfully present status to demonstrate the positive emotional consequences of transitioning out of undocumented status for immigrant young adults.

TL;DR: Whether the race and skin tone depicted in images in textbooks assigned at top medical schools reflects the diversity of the U.S. population is considered, which suggests that racial inequities are embedded in the curricular edification of physicians and patients.

TL;DR: Perceptions of the contribution of social and behavioural risk factors to life expectancy within the community at large are examined to suggest that while people generally underestimate the importance of social factors for health this also varies as a function of demographic and ideological factors.

TL;DR: The bottom-up use of mobile phones has been evolving to fill the gaps to augment primary care services in South Africa; however, barriers to access remain, such as poor digital infrastructure and low digital literacy.

TL;DR: Spatial access to primary health care is better in southeastern Sicuan compared to northwestern Sichuan in terms of shorter travel time, higher spatial accessibility, and lower inequity, and social development indexes all showed significant correlation with county averaged spatial accessibilities/Gini Coefficient.

TL;DR: Findings indicate a prominent role for non-conscious processes in determining health behavior and inclusion of past behavior in RAA tests is important to yield precise estimates of model effects.

TL;DR: The theory of syndemics is related to other established social science and public health theories of disease distribution, possible sources of conceptual and empirical confusion are identified, and concrete suggestions for how to validate the theory using a mixed-methods approach are provided.

TL;DR: The criminalisation of wild meat consumption fuelled fears and rumours within communities under considerable strain from the health, social, and economic effects of the epidemic, entrenching distrust towards outbreak responders and exacerbating pre-existing tensions within villages, which are instructive for public health emergency response and preparedness.

TL;DR: The combination of group-level risk factors and in-depth personal insights provided by this mixed-methodology may be useful to develop strategies that address social isolation and loneliness in older communities.

TL;DR: The association between childhood and adulthood park availability and change in the Moray House Test Score from age 70 to 76 was strongest for women, those without an APOE e4 allele (a genetic risk factor), and those in the lowest socioeconomic groups.

TL;DR: A qualitative synthesis of study findings indicated that educational attainment has an effect on the majority of health outcomes-most beneficial, some negative-while the meta-analysis demonstrated small beneficial effects for mortality, smoking, and obesity.

TL;DR: Smokers who reported stronger negative emotions were more likely to make quit attempts at follow-up and promote attention to warnings and behavioral responses that positively predict quit attempts.

TL;DR: It is believed that improving analysis and reporting of incomplete data will make reproducibility and replicability efforts easier and provide a brief checklist of recommendations which could be used by members of the scientific community, including practitioners, journal editors, and reviewers to set higher publication standards.

TL;DR: The need for public health strategies to consider community, interpersonal, and structural dimensions across intersecting, interdependent identities to promote the wellbeing among women living with HIV and to reduce social structural and health disparities is highlighted.

TL;DR: Results of unconditional multilevel logistic regression models indicated that individual perceptions and the collective community phenomena were equally strong predictors of women's risk of IPV and should be taken into consideration when planning interventions.

TL;DR: A symbiotic relationship between complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and rejection of, or hesitancy towards, vaccination is elucidated and pro-vaccination health professionals, policymakers and information-providers seeking to address the role of CAM in vaccine rejection face significant challenges.

TL;DR: This study provides evidence for the utility of an Internet query-based measure as a proxy for racism at the area-level in epidemiologic studies, and is suggestive of the role of racism in contributing to poor birth outcomes among Blacks.

TL;DR: The results suggest that certain green space elements, such as natural sights, may be beneficial to neighborhood social capital of older adults, however, other types of green space may be less advantageous to older adults who perceive their neighborhoods as unsafe for pedestrians.

TL;DR: Important research that answers the question of how human beings can have longer, happier lives is reviewed and trends in health psychology are highlighted, featuring articles in Social Science & Medicine as well as other related literature.

TL;DR: In both settings, women experienced similar forms of violence, including emotional, physical, sexual, and economic, although from different perpetrators, and four overlaps are identified between them.

TL;DR: Developing an explanatory model, which is labeled the Transdisciplinary Model of Health Decision-Making, it is posited that contextual factors determine the costs and benefits of ART; patients perceive this context and form an intention whether or not to start; and these intentions may be translated into actions.