A systematic review of the literature on weight in sexual minority women.

Background: Over the past 20 years, a growing literature has demonstrated that sexual minority women have greater weight than heterosexual women, prompting concern that they may be at high risk for disparities in physical disorders. In 2008, Bowen et al. published a review of the existing research on sexual minority women and obesity, finding no methodologically strong studies with representative sampling procedures.

Enhancing the public impact of ethnography.

This special issue concludes with pragmatic advice for ethnographers seeking to have an impact on public perceptions of health problems, and to influence public policy. We asked four people with different disciplinary perspectives – an academic anthropologist who launched a popular interest anthropology magazine, a journalist for an internationally cited newswire, a policy maker-cum-visual-ethnographer, and a health official in a national government agency – a single question: What is an immediate step that ethnographers of health might take to affect social change?

Mortality risk in preterm and small-for-gestational-age infants in low-income and middle-income countries: a pooled country analysis.

Background: Babies with low birthweight (<2500 g) are at increased risk of early mortality. However, low birthweight includes babies born preterm and with fetal growth restriction, and not all these infants have a birthweight less than 2500 g. We estimated the neonatal and infant mortality associated with these two characteristics in low-income and middle-income countries.

Using a qualitative approach to develop an evaluation data set for community-based health promotion programs addressing racial and ethnic health disparities.

Racial and ethnic disparities in health have increasingly become a central focus of health promotion efforts. At the community level, however, collecting data and evaluating these programs has been a challenge because of the diversity of populations, community contexts, and health issues as well as a range of capacities for conducting evaluation. This article outlines a qualitative research process used to develop a Web-based standard program performance data reporting system for programs funded by the U.

National mass drug administration costs for lymphatic filariasis elimination.

Background: Because lymphatic filariasis (LF) elimination efforts are hampered by a dearth of economic information about the cost of mass drug administration (MDA) programs (using either albendazole with diethylcarbamazine [DEC] or albendazole with ivermectin), a multicenter study was undertaken to determine the costs of MDA programs to interrupt transmission of infection with LF. Such results are particularly important because LF programs have the necessary diagnostic and treatment tools to eliminate the disease as a public health problem globally, and already by 2006, the Global Programme to Eliminate LF had initiated treatment programs covering over 400 million of the 1.3 billion people at risk.

Medicaid and health information: current and emerging legal issues.

Legal questions are an inevitable byproduct ofsignificant technology change in health care such as that underway as a result of health information technology (HIT). This article examines several important existing and emerging legal questions in a Medicaid context. First, do the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and State Medicaid agencies, have a fiduciary obligation to adopt and fully use health information technology given its potential to improve health care quality while reducing racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in health and health care? Second, how can Medicaid privacy standards be reconciled with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) privacy rule? Third, what actual or perceived legal barriers exist to ensuring that Medicaid information is interoperable with data produced under critical health care, educational, and social programs from which beneficiaries are simultaneously receiving care?