A community-based study of abscess self-treatment and barriers to medical care among people who inject drugs in the United States.

Skin and soft tissue infections (SSTIs) are the most common medical complication of injection drug use in the United States, though little work has been done assessing SSTI treatment among people who inject drugs (PWID). We examined past-3-month abscess characteristics, treatment utilization, and barriers to medical treatment among N = 494 community-recruited PWID. We used descriptive statistics to determine the frequencies of self-treatment and medical treatment for their most recent past-3-month abscess as well as barriers to seeking medical treatment.

The Significance of Harm Reduction as a Social and Health Care Intervention for Injecting Drug Users: An Exploratory Study of a Needle Exchange Program in Fresno, California.

Infectious disease remains a significant social and health concern in the United States. Preventing more people from contracting HIV/AIDS or Hepatitis C (HCV), requires a complex understanding of the interconnection between the biomedical and social dimensions of infectious disease. Opiate addiction in the US has skyrocketed in recent years.

Objective evidence of severe disease: opioid use in chronic pain.

Treating chronic pain presents numerous challenges. First, assessing patients with chronic pain is complicated by the lack of objective measures of pain itself. Chronic pain guidelines already developed by national organizations rely on careful history taking rather than objective measures.

Trends in rural and urban deliveries and vaginal births: California 1998-2002.

Context: Pregnant women in rural areas may give birth in either rural or urban hospitals. Differences in outcomes between rural and urban hospitals may influence patient decision making.

Purpose: Trends in rural and urban obstetric deliveries and neonatal and maternal mortality in California were compared to inform policy development and patient and provider decision making in rural health care settings.