health

Incarcerated Women and the Transition to Adulthood

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Enactment of adult roles such as parenthood, marriage, and employment has been tied to desistance (the slowing down or cessation of offending behavior) but little is known about how incarcerated women conceptualize these roles in the first place. Drawing on 35 in-depth interviews with incarcerated women, supplemented by mail correspondence with a sub-sample of these women, I explore how incarcerated women interpret their early life-course experiences when reflecting on their transition to adulthood and, subsequently, their views on adult roles and responsibilities. The women’s narratives indicate that early experiences with trauma, along with premature entries into adult roles, result in a difficult transition to adulthood. I argue that women’s accelerated transitions to adulthood shape their views on adult roles, pointing to a need to incorporate discussions of age-normative timetables in efforts to assist at-risk and incarcerated women.

Understanding the Role of Provider Racial Bias in Medical Training and Clinical Decision Making

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Medical students are often taught to associate race with disease as a method to diagnose and prescribe appropriate medical treatment. Unfortunately, this often leads to inaccurate and misleading assumptions related to race being used in medical decision-making. The role of provider bias and stereotyping in the clinical decision-making process have been extensively studied and suggested as possible contributors to racial health disparities experienced by Black men. Evidence also suggests that current cultural competency programs in medical school are non-inclusive and ineffective. In this brief, I outline a three-tiered approach to address provider bias and ensure that all students are exposed to racial bias training. Intentional efforts to address bias at the institutional level can influence the culture of medical education. Efforts by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) can serve as the model to better serve all communities.

The Importance of Anticipatory Stress in the Lives of People in Same-Sex Relationships

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Fears about the future, like other types of stress, can diminish well-being and increase anxiety. Minority populations uniquely anticipate challenges and hardships based on the stigmatization of themselves or of their relationships. Policymakers should not simply react to what is known to be stressful in the moment; they should also seek deeper understandings of stress experience within life course contexts, including the stress that people anticipate. Indeed, existing data suggest there may be public health benefits associated with policy changes that reduce the impact of “stress that awaits.” For example, the legal recognition of same-sex relationships is associated with better mental health among sexual minority persons—even if they did not get married. Still, some anticipate that the legal recognition of same-sex marriage will be reversed in the future, and this possibility can be a source of stress as well. By identifying anticipatory stressors, we expand our knowledge of people’s stress universes and better account for the cumulative stress burden that can lead to greater health disparities.

Criminal and Immigration Laws Shape Health Outcomes of Racial and Ethnic Minorities

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Over the last several decades, criminal and immigration laws in the United States have disproportionately burdened marginalized racial and ethnic minorities such as African Americans and Latinos. This policy brief reviews the sociological and public health research on the health effects of various criminal and immigration laws, policies, and practices. We argue that scholars and policy makers should understand the law as a fundamental cause of health disparities operating through two broad mechanisms: (1) primary effects on those who hold a stigmatized legal status; and (2) spillover effects on racial and ethnic in-group members, regardless of their own legal status.  We conclude that the massive expansion of punitive legal control should be treated as a public health crisis. To address this, policy should reduce the material and stigmatic burdens of criminal and immigration statuses on those directly impacted, as well as their legally-unmarked families and communities.