1,720,964 research outputs found
Exposing quality of life and deadly health disparities: Using research to change health care policy
Full text linkSession presented on Friday, July 25, 2014:
At this meeting in Hong Kong, Dr. Carol Ferrans will be inducted into the International Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame of Sigma Theta Tau International. The purpose of this presentation is to trace her research trajectory from its earliest beginnings in quality of life and health disparities, over 30 years, including how she used research findings as a tool to strategically to shape and create changes in healthcare policy and legislation. Since the early 1980s when quality of life was a new concept, she has been an advocate for the voice of the patient in QOL assessment, developing a conceptual framework for QOL and instrument to capture the patient\u27s viewpoint. The Ferrans and Powers Quality of Life Index (QLI) was introduced in 1985 and since then has been translated into 21 languages and used in 30+ countries, in every continent except Antarctica. To date, 48 published studies provide support for the instrument\u27s reliability and validity, and 27 intervention studies have demonstrated its sensitivity in detecting change in QOL. More than 250 studies using the QLI have been published to date by nurses, physicians, psychologists, physical therapists, and other health care professionals. It is one of the most popular instruments for cardiac rehabilitation and pulmonary rehabilitation programs across the USA. Dr. Ferrans\u27 program of research also has focused on understanding and reducing disparities in cancer. In 1987 Dr. Ferrans conducted one of the earliest comparisons of QOL of African American and white breast cancer survivors, and reported various psychological sequelae of surgery, including significant depression persisting years after treatment. Building on this work, Dr. Ferrans conducted a study with 16 participating institutions across the country, examining the barriers to participation in cancer screening, long-term effects of cancer, and QOL of African American survivors of breast, colon, and prostate cancer. In her next study, Dr. Ferrans examined the factors contributing to late-stage diagnosis of breast cancer in economically disadvantaged African American and Hispanic women. She found that delay in seeking diagnosis of a suspicious breast symptom was twice that previously reported in the literature, and that cultural beliefs and fear were major contributing factors. Next, she developed an instrument that correctly identified cultural beliefs contributing to later stage of breast cancer at diagnosis for African American and Hispanic women. Her team\u27s published findings were cited by the American Cancer Society in their 2011 guidelines for breast cancer screening. Dr. Ferrans then developed a short film on DVD to address these beliefs, which was endorsed by the American Cancer Society. Evaluation of the DVD demonstrated that cultural beliefs could be changed in a single viewing. Dr. Ferrans currently has reached more than 8,500 women with the DVD. Her research and advocacy work culminated in the creation of the Illinois Reducing Breast Cancer Disparities Act, designed to improve access to screening and the quality of mammography throughout Illinois. This work provides a model for the effective dissemination of research findings to create wide-ranging changes in health care and policy
Health volunteerism and improved cancer health for Latina and African American women and their social networks: Potential mechanisms
No full textHealth volunteerism has been associated with positive health outcomes for volunteers and the communities they serve. This work suggests that there may be an added value to providing underserved populations with information and skills to be agents of change. The current study is a first step toward testing this hypothesis. The purpose is to identify how volunteerism may result in improved cancer health among Latina and African American women volunteers. A purposive sample of 40 Latina and African American female adults who had participated in cancer volunteerism in the past five years was recruited by community advocates and flyers distributed throughout community venues in San Diego, CA. This qualitative study included semi-structured focus groups. Participants indicated that volunteerism not only improved their health, but also the health of their family and friends. Such perceptions aligned with the high rates of self-report lifetime cancer screening rates among age-eligible patients (e.g., 83-93%:breast; 90-93%:cervical; 79-92%:colorectal). Identified mechanisms included exposure to evidence-based information, health-protective social norms and support, and pressure to be a healthy role model. Our findings suggest that train-the-trainer and volunteer-driven interventions may have unintended health-protective effects for participating staff, especially those from the current study’s populations
Effectiveness of a Structured Communication Program for Family Members of Patients in an ICU
No full textChanging cultural beliefs contributing to breast cancer deaths
Full text linkSession presented on Sunday, July 27, 2014:
Purpose: Chicago has one of the largest disparities in breast cancer mortality in the nation, with African American death rates twice that of Caucasians at its peak. Previous work of our team showed that the cultural beliefs we identified were associated with (1) longer delays after finding a suspicious breast symptom, (2) later stage of breast cancer at diagnosis, and (3) longer delays between diagnosis and the start of treatment for African American women. The purpose of this study was to determine whether cultural beliefs about breast cancer could be changed by viewing a short film on DVD followed by at question and answer session, which would provide a simple, cost-effective technique that could be widely disseminated.
Methods: A 14-minute film on DVD was produced, in which five African American cancer survivors address the cultural beliefs identified in our earlier work, speaking compellingly in their own words. A pretest-posttest design was used to evaluate the DVD, with 260 African American women participating in community settings. Cultural beliefs were evaluated by questionnaire before and after watching the DVD, and again after a question and answer period led by an African American nurse, all in one continuous session lasting 90 minutes.
Results: Changes in beliefs were found for the entire intervention (DVD plus Q&A), with the largest change occurring after watching the DVD, as shown by logistic regression (p \u3c.0001). Significant changes were found for total cultural belief scores, as well as specific beliefs. One of the most important beliefs that increased was endorsement of idea that breast cancer can be cured if treated correctly, even for poor women. There was a decrease in the belief that breast cancer would grow faster if it were cut open in surgery. Examples of faith-based beliefs that changed were faith in God can protect you from breast cancer and prayer can make breast lumps disappear. Ninety-nine percent considered the DVD to be worth watching, and 79% stated that it helped them decide to get screened for breast cancer (other women reported that they were already participating in screening).
Conclusion: This is the first study we are aware of that demonstrated that cultural beliefs about breast cancer can be changed by viewing a short film on DVD. This DVD provides a simple, cost-effective technique that can be easily used for wide dissemination, with the goal of reducing disparities in breast cancer mortality. Our team is currently conducting a dissemination project focused on the south side of Chicago with the DVD. To date more than 8,500 women have participated in the project. The film has been endorsed by the American Cancer Society and was selected for a national Telly Award
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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