Menstruating while homeless: navigating access to products, spaces, and services.

Background: People experiencing homelessness (PEH) in the United States face substantial challenges related to menstruation, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Limited access to period products, heightened stigma, and gynecological challenges contribute to increased hardships for PEH, highlighting the need for improved services and policies to address period equity and overall well-being for this vulnerable population.

Methods: We conducted semi-structured qualitative interviews with PEH (n = 12) and community healthcare and social service providers (e.

"Sometimes I just forget them": capturing experiences of women about free menstrual products in a U.S. based public university campus.

Background: Studies have proven that lack of access to menstruation products negatively affects school attendance, academic performance, and individual health. Implementing "period policies," or programs offering free menstruation products, are becoming popular in schools, businesses, and communities in high-income countries. U.

'Our family picture is a little hint of heaven': race, religion and selective reproduction in US 'embryo adoption'.

People use selective reproductive technologies (SRT) in various family-making practices to assist with decisions about which children should be born. The practice of 'embryo adoption', a form of embryo donation developed by white American evangelical Christians in the late 1990s, is a novel site for reconceptualizing SRT and examining how they function among users. Based on ethnographic research conducted between 2008 and 2018 on US 'embryo adoption', this study provides an anthropological analysis of media produced by and about one white evangelical couple's race-specific preferences for embryos from donors of colour.

"Sometimes you wonder, is this really true?": Clinician assessment of patients' subjective experience of pain.

Background: Pain is a subjective experience that must be translated by clinicians into an objective assessment to guide intervention.

Objective: To understand how patients' subjective experience of pain is translated by primary care clinicians into an objective clinical assessment of pain to effectively guide intervention.

Methods: We conducted nine multidisciplinary focus groups with a combined total of 60 Veteran affair (VA) primary care providers and staff from two large VA medical centers in California and Oregon.

Making the Ethnic Embryo: Enacting Race in US Embryo Adoption.

How are frozen embryos donated for procreation racialized as "ethnic" subjects and what are the political implications of these enactments? Based on ethnographic research within an embryo adoption program in the United States, I examine the practices through which staff and participants produce "ethnicity" in embryos and trace its multiple permutations. Strategies used to stabilize race in embryos also disturb, fracture, and confound the bases for designating race. Analyzing race-making practices in embryo adoption reveals the interplay between practical challenges in assisted family-making practices and their wider political implications for reproductive politics.

"It Encourages Them to Complain": A Qualitative Study of the Unintended Consequences of Assessing Patient-Reported Pain.

Unlabelled: The "Pain as the 5th Vital Sign" initiative intended to address undertreatment of pain by encouraging routine pain assessment and management. In the Veterans Health Administration, routine pain screening has been practiced in primary care for more than a decade, but has not improved the quality of pain management measured using several process indicators, and some have expressed concerns of potentially fostering undesirable use of prescription opioids. We sought to evaluate the consequences of routine pain screening on clinical practice.

A Qualitative Analysis of How Online Access to Mental Health Notes Is Changing Clinician Perceptions of Power and the Therapeutic Relationship.

Background: As part of the national OpenNotes initiative, the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) provides veterans online access to their clinical progress notes, raising concern in mental health settings.

Objective: The aim of this study was to examine the perspectives and experiences of mental health clinicians with OpenNotes to better understand how OpenNotes may be affecting mental health care.

Methods: We conducted individual semi-structured interviews with 28 VHA mental health clinicians and nurses.

Trust in Mental Health Clinicians Among Patients Who Access Clinical Notes Online.

Objective: This study explored patient perspectives of how online access to clinical notes (OpenNotes) within the Veterans Affairs (VA) health care system may affect patients' relationships with their mental health clinicians.

Methods: Semistructured qualitative interviews were conducted with 28 patients receiving VA mental health care who had accessed OpenNotes. Transcripts were coded and analyzed with a constant comparative approach.

Qualitative analysis of US Department of veterans affairs mental health clinician perspectives on patient-centered care.

Objective: Enhanced patient involvement in care has the potential to improve patient experiences and health outcomes. As such, large national and global healthcare systems and organizations, including the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), have made patient-centered care a primary goal. Little is known about mental health clinician perspectives on, and experiences with, providing patient-centered care.

VA mental health clinician experiences and attitudes toward OpenNotes.

Objective: To describe Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) mental health clinician attitudes toward and experiences with OpenNotes (also known as Blue Button), which provides patients direct access to clinical notes online.

Method: A 35-item online survey was administered to 263 mental health clinicians and nurses from one VA Medical Center.

Results: Seventy-nine percent of eligible subjects participated.