The Persisting Importance of Rhetoric and Equity in Health Policy and Outcomes.

This editorial considers the persisting importance of rhetoric and equity in health policy analysis, implementation, and outcomes. It argues that employing social determinants of health, and intersectional and rhetorical frames, can improve life and health outcomes, as measured by morbidity and mortality. The pertinence of these frames with regard to the crises brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic is discussed, and the plan for a special issue on disparties and COVID-19 is announced.

Mothers' beliefs about indigenous and traditional food affordability, availability and taste are significant predictors of indigenous and traditional food consumption among mothers and young children in rural Kenya.

Objective: To examine mothers' and young children's consumption of indigenous and traditional foods (ITF), assess mothers' perception of factors that influence ITF consumption, and examine the relationship between perceived factors and ITF consumption.

Design: Longitudinal study design across two agricultural seasons. Seven-day FFQ utilized to assess dietary intake.

Reproductive policy and the social construction of motherhood.

Background: Reproductive technologies allow women to embrace or forgo motherhood, but a woman's ability to make autonomous reproductive choices depends on access to these technologies. In the United States, public policies — laws, regulations, appropriations, and rulings — have either broadened or narrowed this access.

Question: Have U.

What's the matter with Kansas? Legislative debates over stem cell research in Kansas and Massachusetts.

This paper examines the contextual factors shaping legislative debates affecting stem cell research in two states, Kansas and Massachusetts, which both permit therapeutic cloning for stem cell research but markedly vary in their legislative approach to the issue. In Kansas, restrictive legislation was proposed but effectively blocked by research proponents, while in Massachusetts permissive legislation was successfully implemented under the auspices of an act to promote stem cell research. The importance of university and industry involvement is highlighted in each case, as are the roles of enterprising and persistent policy entrepreneurs.

Demographic profile of states with human cloning laws: morality policy meets political economy.

This analysis seeks to identify factors that may shape the policy stance - whether restrictive or permissive - that each state in the United States with a human cloning law in place takes toward human therapeutic cloning. The investigation also considers if cloning policy is more the product of morality politics or political economy. Results show that among states with human cloning policies in place, those with a greater biotechnological capacity, more permissive abortion laws, fewer Evangelical Protestants, and higher political liberalism rankings are more likely to have permissive cloning laws.