Paul Bruder

Organ Donation among African Americans: Opportunities for Increasing Donor Rates

n the United States the number of African American organ donors continI ues to be low relative to the demand for transplantable human organs. In 1999, for example, African Americans constituted 1 1.2 percent of all cadaveric donors (UNOS 2001a). Yet, in that same year African Americans comprised 25.5 percent of those on the National Transplant Waiting List (UNOS 2001b). Thus, there exists an acute shortage of organs suitable for matching to African Americans needing transplants. This shortage is particularly severe with regard to kidneys: African Americans constitute more than

In Context Healthcare and Public Policy: Verbal Abuse of Female Nurses: An American Medical Form of Gender Apartheid?

My interest in nurse-experienced workplace violence began last August after I was assaulted at work. I was working in a busy recovery room and an angry colleague began yelling at me in front of a frightened mother and her two-year-old boy. While still yelling he jabbed me in the chest with his fingers and pushed me backwards. Nurses will not be surprised to hear that this colleague was a physician. -Carrie Lybecker’

Patterns of Health and Illness: Using the Critical Medical Anthropological Approach to Study the Effects of Poverty on Health

Abstract This article reviews briefly the literature both supporting and contradicting the theory that there is a positive association between poor physical and mental health and low income. The article then proposes a) the use of the critical medical anthropological model to explore the relationship between health and economic status and b) making a more intense inquiry in the contextual field of decision making from the perspective of persons in lower socioeconomic classes. The article concludes with the assertion that any democratic system has a payoff for the decision makers (i.e., the involved and voting electorate) and that the existing system, regardless of the degree to which it may be criticized, is paying off for the dominant power structure.

In Context: Healthcare and Public Policy: Patterns of Health and Illness: The Effects of Poverty on Health

he current policy debate on the relationship between socioecoT nomic status and personal health centers on two issues. The first is the relationship between health and wealth. The second concerns improving health status regardless of that relationship. Most policy analysts are divided among the following three opinions regarding the relationship between socioeconomic status and personal health: . Persons of low socioeconomic status tend to have poorer health. That is, there is an association between health and low socioeconomic status. . Low socioeconomic status contributes to poor health; thus, there is a causal relationship between the two. (The counterargument to this is that people who have poor health tend to be in the lower socioeconomic status-a social Darwinism approach that remains alive and well today.)

In Context: The Cosmic Muffin Hypothesis: Implications for Public Policy

he Mosaic quote above provides two key dilemmas confronting T makers of public policy: First, how is it possible to justly resolve issues involving the distribution of the world’s assets when we recognize that we live in a world made up of “us” and “them”? Second, how do we deal with our own society’s poor, as well as the global society’s poor, when even as we are enjoined to have no poor among us, we recognize-inevitably it seems-that the poor we shall “always have with [us]”? In toying with those questions, let me suggest an approach which may provide insight. It begins with a notion that I refer to as the cosmic mufin hypothesis.

The Turkish healthcare system. Can the United States learn from the Ottoman legacy

Can the United States, in its continuing search for means to improve patient care while decreasing costs, learn from Turkeys healthcare system? There is a strong emphasis on preventive healthcare in Turkey that makes the system there worth examining.

Administrators and patients: using the personal touch.

Although rarely discussed in management training, taking the time for a handshake or gentle touch on a patients arm can yield multiple benefits for the administrator. The patients confidence in the facility is increased, and the administrator is reminded that the patient is the true bottom line of the hospital. Moreover, both are reassured that, at the other end of the chain of service, there is another human being.

Economic health: the key ingredient in the personal health of global communities.

f the readership of Havital Topics is composed of practitioners, consultants, and academics, then the introductory quote from Paulo Freire’s Pcdagagy ofthc Opprcsscd is relevant to all of us. After all, look at the transformations wrought by academics-and their students-in the 1960s, through the civil rights movement and protests against American involvement in Vietnam. I should confess that at that time I was neither an academic nor a social activist-at least not a radical anti-establishmentarian. I was in the Navy and served three tours of duty in Southeast Asia, one in Vietnam. So, as you might expect, I was not in complete agreement