1,720,955 research outputs found
Ethnic differences in the health of women prisoners
No full textOBJECTIVES: The numbers of female and ethnic minority prisoners in the UK are increasing. Despite recent policy initiatives to improve both prison healthcare and the status of women and ethnic minority groups, there are few data with which to inform service development. This is the first study in the UK to examine differences in subjective health status and health behaviours between Black and White female prisoners.STUDY DESIGN: Retrospective secondary analysis of data from the Health of Women in Prison Study by the University of Oxford. The latter was a longitudinal survey.METHODS: Participants were given a questionnaire containing the Short Form 36 (SF-36) and questions about cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, illicit drug use, physical exercise, diet, imprisonment history and ethnicity. Data from Black and White participants were compared. Physical and mental component summary scores from the SF-36 were assessed using the independent t-test for means. Differences in health behaviours between the Black and White women were assessed using a paired samples t-test for continuous variables or Chi-squared test for categorical data.RESULTS: Black women were more likely to have stayed in full-time education for longer and to have been legally employed prior to imprisonment. The average length of their current sentence was significantly higher than that for White women. Black women scored higher in general health perception, but there were no other significant differences in subjective health status. Significantly fewer Black women smoked or drank to excess, or had used drugs in the 6 months prior to imprisonment. Black women ate more healthily, but were more likely to be overweight and to have higher blood pressure than their White counterparts. Both groups, however, demonstrated poor health and health behaviours overall.CONCLUSION: Black women entering prison are more likely to be educated, employed, drug free and, in some ways, healthier than White women. However, all the prisoners, regardless of ethnicity, had poorer levels of mental and physical health than the general population; thus, a need exists for researchers and policy makers alike to examine the health of these groups within and out of prison.</p
Predictors of hepatitis B vaccination in women prisoners in two prisons in England
No full textBackground: Hepatitis B is an important public health issue, especially in the female prison population. The high prevalence in this population is largely accounted for by the high rates of injecting drug use and the fact that these women are more likely to exchange sex for drugs or money and practice unprotected sex. There is a national programme in English prisons to vaccinate everyone against Hepatitis B. This study aimed to investigate whether women who had been in prison before were more likely to have been vaccinated against hepatitis B and whether contact with community services was more likely to predict hepatitis B vaccination.Methods: a questionnaire survey of new entrants into two women's prisons in England.Results: four hundred and eighty seven out of 613 women approached completed the questionnaire and gave complete data on hepatitis B vaccination status, giving a response rate of 79.4%. One hundred and thirty three women (27.3%) had received at least three vaccinations against hepatitis B. Previous imprisonment and intravenous drug use were independent predictors of vaccination. Six months or more in prison greatly increased an individual's odds of being immunized [odds ratio 12.01 (95% confidence interval (CI) 5.53-26.10)]. Registration with a general practitioner (GP), contact with drug or alcohol services and exchanging money or goods for sex were not independently associated with vaccination status.Conclusions: prisons play an important role in the delivery of hepatitis B vaccination. However, this should not prevent providers of health services making greater efforts to engage this marginalized group and to ensure that they receive an appropriate level of healthcare in the community.</p
Looking behind the bars: emerging health issues for people in prison
No full textIntroduction
There are more than 10 million people imprisoned worldwide. These individuals experience a higher burden of communicable and non-communicable disease, mental health and substance misuse problems than the general population and often come from marginalised and underserved groups in the community. Prisons offer an important opportunity for tackling health problems in a way that can deliver benefits to the individual and to the community. This paper focuses specifically on emerging health issues for prisons across the world.
Sources of data
This paper uses sources of international data from published systematic reviews and research studies, the Ministry of Justice for England and Wales, the Prisons and Probations Ombudsmen Review and other United Kingdom government briefing papers.
Areas of agreement
Deaths in custody are a key concern for the justice system as well as the health system
Areas of controversy
Suicide is the leading cause of mortality in prisons worldwide but non-communicable diseases, such as cardiovascular disease, are increasing in importance in high income countries and are now the leading cause of mortality in prisons in England and Wales.
Growing points
The prison population is ageing in most high income countries. Older people in prison typically have multiple and complex medical and social care needs including reduced mobility and personal care needs as well as poor health.
Areas timely for developing research
Further research is needed to understand the complex relationship between sentencing patterns, the ageing prison population and deaths in custody; to model its impact on prisons and healthcare provision in the future and to determine effective and cost-effective models of care.
Research into the health of prisoners is important in improving the health of prisoners but there is considerable variation in quantity and quality between countries. Recent innovations seek to address this disparity and facilitate the sharing of good practice.</p
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
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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