The Impact of Immigration Policy Changes on Preterm Birth Rates in Texas: An Examination of Border and Nonborder Regions.

Background: Our study examined the acute and sustained impact of immigration policy changes announced in January 2017 on preterm birth (PTB) rates among Hispanic and non-Hispanic white women in Texas's border and nonborder regions.

Methods: Using Texas birth certificate data for years 2008 through 2020, we used a multiple group interrupted time series approach to explore changes in PTB rates.

Results: In the nonborder region, the PTB rate among Hispanic women of any race was 8.

The Boundaries of "Good Behavior" and Judicial Competence: Exploring Responsibilities and Authority Limitations of Cognitive Specialists in the Regulation of Incapacitated Judges.

Both law and medicine rely on self-regulation and codes of professionalism to ensure duties are performed in a competent, ethical manner. Unlike physicians, however, judges are lawyers themselves, so judicial oversight is also self-regulation. As previous literature has highlighted, the hesitation to report a cognitively-compromised judge has resulted in an "opensecret" amongst lawyers who face numerous conflicts of interest.

Capacity Evaluation Requests in the Medical Setting: A Retrospective Analysis of Underlying Psychosocial and Ethical Factors.

Background: Psychosocial and ethical variables influence physicians in requesting decision-making capacity (DMC) evaluations. Previous authors have classified certain DMC evaluation requests as "unwarranted" when there is no explicit suspicion or evidence that the patient might lack DMC.

Objective: To explore psychosocial and ethical reasons motivating both "warranted" and "unwarranted" DMC evaluation requests by physicians in the medical setting.

"She Just Doesn't Know Him Like We Do": Illuminating Complexities in Surrogate Decision Making.

When patients are not able to speak for themselves, surrogate decision makers are asked to guide treatment decisions and formulate a plan of care in accordance with what the patients would have wanted. This necessitates an exploration into the patients' views about life and how it should be lived, how the patients constructed their identity or life story, and their attitudes towards sickness and suffering. When an individual appoints a surrogate, such as a healthcare power of attorney, a common presumption is that this designation evinces merit.

In My Best Interest.

Background: Advance directives (ADs) have traditionally been viewed as clear instructions for implementing patient wishes at times of compromised decision-making capacity (DMC). However, whether individuals prefer ADs to be strictly followed or to serve as general guidelines has not been studied. The Veterans Administration's Advance Directive Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care and Living Will (VA AD) provides patients the opportunity to indicate specific treatment preferences and to indicate how strictly the directive is to be followed.

Setting a Minimum Standard of Care in Clinical Trials: Human Rights and Bioethics as Complementary Frameworks.

For the past few decades, there has been intense debate in bioethics about the standard of care that should be provided in clinical trials conducted in developing countries. Some interpret the Declaration of Helsinki to mean that control groups should receive the best intervention available worldwide, while others interpret this and other international guidelines to mean the best local standard of care. Questions of justice are particularly relevant where limited resources mean that the local standard of care is no care at all.