Accommodation or prediction?

This paper reviews 138 empirical quantitative population-based studies of self-reported racism and health. These studies show an association between self-reported racism and ill health for oppressed racial groups after adjustment for a range of confounders. The strongest and most consistent findings are for negative mental health outcomes and health-related behaviours, with weaker associations existing for positive mental health outcomes, self-assessed health status, and physical health outcomes. Most studies in this emerging field have been published in the past 5 years and have been limited by a dearth of cohort studies, a lack of psychometrically validated exposure instruments, poor conceptualization and definition of racism, conflation of racism with stress, and debate about the aetiologically relevant period for self-reported racism. Future research should examine the psychometric validity of racism instruments and include these instruments, along with objectively measured health outcomes, in existing large-scale survey vehicles as well as longitudinal studies and studies involving children. There is also a need to gain a better understanding of the perception, attribution, and reporting of racism, to investigate the pathways via which self-reported racism affects health, the interplay between mental and physical health outcomes, and exposure to intra-racial, internalized, and systemic racism. Ensuring the quality of studies in this field will allow future research to reveal the complex role that racism plays as a determinant of population health.

Empirical Research↗

PubMed2005

Simple empirical method for prediction of impact sensitivity of selected class of explosives.

A new approach is described in this work to predict impact sensitivity of a variety of polynitroaliphatics, polynitroaromatics and the explosives containing N-NO2. This paper introduces some simple correlations for prediction of impact sensitivity of C(a)H(b)N(c)O(d) explosives using a, b, c, d, molecular weight and structure information of the explosive. The new correlations are applied to test different polynitroaromatics, benzofuroxans and nitramines. The results are compared with experimental data and some models of complex quantum mechanics computation. Predicted impact sensitivities for 46 explosives have a root mean square (rms) of deviation from experiment of 24 cm, which show good agreement with respect to measured values as compared to five different quantum mechanical models. Impact sensitivities for 58 polynitroaliphatics and related explosives are also calculated, and have a rms deviation from experiment of 40 cm.

Empirical Research↗

PubMed2005

Introduction: Patient organization movements and new metamorphoses in patienthood.

In this introduction, we examine health activism as one expression of an emergent 'politics of vitality' or flurry of activity around health matters that includes: advances in technoscientific medicine, healthcare restructurings, and a re-thinking of science-society contracts. In querying politicized mobilizations around 'health matters and the mattering of health,' we provocatively entitle our discussion 'patient organization movements'. This marks an invitation to interrogate (in reverse order) each term along the way, pausing in our concluding discussion to turn our attentions to the patient. The figure of the patient is thematized as an historical inscription and a formidable dimension of personhood under modernity/late modernity. Moreover, we argue that conventional categorizations of the patient are undergoing accelerated processes of change at the present time. We characterize three transformational trends: moves to author and authorize patienthood, mutiny from patienthood, and mutations in the category of the patient. Such metamorphoses in patienthood represent both reflections and repercussions--at once consequences and catalysts--of the proposed politics of vitality. We explore the pluralization of the patient's persona via a closer look at the 11 empirical studies of health activism that comprise this collection.

Empirical Research↗