Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
Pivot Concepts:   Target Concepts:
Query: UMLS:C0019693 (HIV)
 170,526 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Women represent an increasing proportion of AIDS cases and anecdotal reports suggest some face substantial risks when others learn they are HIV-positive. The purpose of this paper is to describe women's fears and experiences regarding disclosure of their HIV status. Fifty HIV-positive women, ages 16-45 from urban teaching hospital outpatient clinics, were interviewed using an in-depth, qualitative interview. Eighty-six percent of the women were African American and 56% were current or former IVDU. At the time of the interview, 88% of the women had known their HIV status for a year or more. All but one woman had disclosed her HIV status to at least one person and 82% had disclosed to multiple people. Although two-thirds of the women had been afraid to disclose to others because of concerns about rejection, discrimination or violence, three-quarters of the sample reported only supportive and understanding responses to their disclosure. One-quarter of the sample reported negative consequences of disclosure, including rejection, abandonment, verbal abuse and physical assault. Disclosure-related violence was discussed by nine women (18%): two who feared violence were relieved to find a supportive response; four chose not to disclose their status because they feared violence; and three women were verbally or physically assaulted. Fear of mistreatment figured prominently in decisions about disclosure among this sample. That many women found supportive and understanding responses is encouraging. However, there were sufficient examples of negative consequences, including violence, to suggest individualized approaches to post-test counseling, enhanced support services for HIV-positive women, and public education to destigmatize HIV-disease.
 ...
PMID:Women's disclosure of HIV status: experiences of mistreatment and violence in an urban setting. 927 81

Primary health care (PHC), the major strategy in the effort to reach the goal of "Health for All by the Year 2000," depends upon community participation and engenders community empowerment. Thailand's PHC system, one of the oldest and most successful in the world, grew from a 1966 pilot program to a full-fledged program of universal health care in 1980. Community health workers, known in Thailand as village health volunteers (VHVs), are an essential part of the PHC model as they link the community to the organized health system. The VHVs must fulfill certain criteria and undergo training to fulfill their health promotion and disease prevention functions. An ethnographic field study was undertaken in a rural Thai village in 1994 to determine 1) how VHVs view their role, 2) how villagers view the VHVs' role, and 3) if VHVs and the current PHC model leads to universal access to health care. Data were collected via focus groups, semi-structured interviews with VHVs and villagers, and observations during a 2-week period. It was found that the VHVs believed their role to be vitally important but found it difficult to obtain continuing education. Increasing urbanization, however, led most villagers to bypass the VHVs and seek health care in a neighboring city. Villagers reported minimal use of VHVs, and most could not identify the VHVs, depending instead upon self-treatment and self-referral. While this study is preliminary only, it was concluded that the role of the VHVs has diminished in importance and should be adapted to address evolving social problems resulting from urbanization such as 1) the impact of migration on family structure, 2) intergenerational discord, 3) risk factors associated with old age, 4) increased exposure to sexually transmitted diseases and HIV/AIDS, 5) widening economic disparities, and 6) increasing domestic and social violence.
 ...
PMID:The changing role of village health volunteers in northeast Thailand: an ethnographic field study. 930 59

Using peers as case managers in dealing with current and chronic public health problems such as substance abuse, gang violence, or the HIV/AIDS crisis has been shown to improve outreach efforts, monitoring, and outcomes in hard-to-reach populations. This article focuses on a case management strategy that uses peer modeling interventions to assist people in renegotiating their present life circumstances. Peer modeling engages peers of the client population as case managers and employs group-mediated, social control intervention strategies in the community to bring about positive changes in lifestyle and living conditions. The peer approach is an enhanced version of case management, utilizing the core activities of outreach, assessment, planning, linking, monitoring, and advocacy but adding peer-led, skill-based training activities, coupled with a system of positive incentives designed to encourage a more healthful lifestyle. To clarify this enhanced approach to case management, the authors present a matrix to illustrate how key case management activities might be enhanced through peer modeling interventions. We conclude by suggesting the circumstances in which an organization responsible for service delivery might consider using peer modeling in addressing difficult public health problems, and we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of such a strategy.
 ...
PMID:Peer intervention in case management practice. 933 23

Parents play a primary role in the health and health education of their children. In particular, parent involvement in planning and promoting adolescent immunization campaigns is critical to successful efforts. Parents serve as their children's primary educators on health issues, but where can they get accurate health information? To help guide local PTA units in their programmatic efforts, the National PTA maintains positions and policy statements on multiple health issues: alcohol and other drug abuse; emergency preparedness; environmental issues; family life education; firearm safety; HIV prevention; health screenings; immunization (measles, mumps, rubella, and hepatitis B); lead poisoning; nutrition; protective helmet use; sexual assault prevention; TB testing; tobacco use and access; violence prevention; and youth suicide prevention. Likewise, the school-home partnership is key to promoting the health of adolescents. Comprehensive school health programs and integrated services are necessary to support parent and community efforts to promote adolescent health issues, including immunization programs. Techniques for effective parent involvement, based on the National Standards for Family/Parent Involvement issued by the National PTA January 1997, are discussed.
 ...
PMID:Parent involvement in health concerns for youth: the issue of adolescent immunization. 935 87

Health care trends during the past decade, such as managed care and reduced hospital length of stay, have made home health a growing opportunity for professional nurses. The shift of persons with chronic illness from institutions to homes and communities has required community level approaches to support these clients and their caregivers. Health and social problems, such as teen pregnancy, HIV infection, and violence, have resulted in health education and health promotion efforts that target vulnerable populations. At the same time, limits on resources and reimbursement have restricted service delivery in many communities, both for long-term care of the chronically ill and to support health education and promotion programs.
 ...
PMID:Parish nursing. Opportunities in community health. 936 72

Gender-based violence, only recently emerging as a pervasive global issue, contributes significantly to preventable morbidity and mortality for women across diverse cultures. Existing documentation suggests that profound physical and psychological sequelae are endemic following intimate partner violence. The presentation of domestic violence is often culture specific. A new lexicon, prompted by the expansion of human rights analysis, describes particular threats to local women including dowry deaths, honor murder, saiti, and disproportional exposure to HIV/AIDS as well as globally generic perils including abuse, battering, marital rape, and murder. While still fragmentary, accruing data reveal strengthening associations between domestic violence and mental health. Depression, stress-related syndromes, chemical dependency and substance (ab)use, and suicide are consequences observed in the context of violence in women's lives. Emerging social, legal, medical, and educational strategies, often culture specific, offer novel local models to promote social change beginning with raising the status of women. The ubiquity, gravity, and variability of domestic violence across cultures compel additional research to promote the recognition, intervention, and prevention of domestic violence that are both locally specific and internationally instructive.
 ...
PMID:Domestic violence and mental health: correlates and conundrums within and across cultures. 938 Dec 30

In-depth interviews were conducted with 24 purposively selected female sex workers who were perceived to be vulnerable to risks associated with their lifestyle and occupation. Brothel workers were found to be considerably less exposed to risk than the women working on the streets. Client resistance was the major obstacle to women maintaining safe sex practices. Physical threats and coercion from clients, the absence of legal protection for street workers, the workers' extreme social isolation and lack of community support added to the difficulties experienced by women in their attempts to insist on condoms for all sex services. Youth, homelessness and heavy drug use had contributed to women being at times even more vulnerable because they had less capacity to manage situations of potential violence or STD risk. Whether through sex work or in their private relationships, HIV remains a risk for some of these women. This study highlights the dangers associated with illegal sex work. While decriminalization of prostitution would reduce some of the dangers to which women were exposed and increase women's capacity to insist on safe sex practices, it is also important for community education programmes to address men's failure to accept responsibility for condom use when seeking the services of sex workers.
 ...
PMID:Vulnerability on the streets: female sex workers and HIV risk. 940 96

The narrative case analysis of HIV infection in a battered woman, taken from a qualitative study of women's experiences living with HIV/AIDS, conveys unusual insights into the context of violence that surrounded this woman's exposure to HIV. In her narrative, she describes the complex web of abuse she lived with day-to-day and the road she travels with AIDS as a result. Her abuse perpetrator infected her with HIV, and the whole atmosphere of violence, annihilation of self-worth, and oppressive restrictions likely contributed to the late-stage identification and treatment of her HIV-related disease. The discussion explores how domestic violence may place battered women at increased risk of becoming HIV infected. Clinical recommendations suggest that efforts to stop the battering of women and to prevent the spread of HIV in women must be combined to offer effective protection for women.
 ...
PMID:Narrative case analysis of HIV infection in a battered woman. 947 91

Neuropsychiatric disorders make up a large proportion of medical conditions causing disability and death worldwide. This paper reviews the most significant neurological disorders, emphasizing the preventability of most of them. The worldwide impact of cerebrovascular disease, protein-energy malnutrition causing cognitive impairment, tetanus, dementia, meningitis, and epilepsy is summarized. The burden of neurological dysfunction as a complication of tuberculosis, measles, road accidents, congenital anomalies, malaria, falls, war, violence, alcohol, HIV, diabetes, syphilis, and rheumatic heart disease might also be lessened by preventive measures. As in other health problems, major risk factors are poverty, poor access to health care, and social instability.
 ...
PMID:Preventable neurological diseases worldwide. 959 82

Focus group discussions and in-depth interviews conducted in Cape Coast, Ghana, revealed significant obstacles to condom use among single women 18-25 years of age. Most female respondents were self-employed small-scale traders with low incomes, while male participants tended to be clerks or fishermen. In this society, men are considered the source of economic and physical power and in a position to demand sexual favors. Material recompense (e.g., money, food, or clothing) for premarital sex is standard practice outside the commercial sex work establishment and women often switch rapidly from relationship to relationship in search of a more materially rewarding arrangement. Such behavior is condoned--often encouraged--by young women's mothers. Condom use is rare and associated with infidelity. Thus, Ghanaian women face the dilemma of choosing between economic survival and unsafe sex. Since men perceive condoms as reducing sexual sensitivity, they are unlikely to remain with a partner who insists on condom use. Moreover, sexual relationships are embedded in an atmosphere of fear of violence. If women are to insist on condom use, they must believe the risk of HIV infection is not adequately compensated by the material gains received from the sexual encounter. It is recommended that community-level HIV preventive interventions target men with messages about the importance of trying condom use. Ultimately, however, reconstruction of gender-based power relationships and improvements in women's economic status are essential to reduce women's dependence on sexual networking.
 ...
PMID:Condom use in sexual exchange relationships among young single adults in Ghana. 972 83


<< Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next >>