Family planning needs and behavior of Mexican American women: a study of health care professionals and their clientele

"A random sample of Mexican American women and a sample of family planning health care professionals, both from two major southwestern cities in the United States, were compared in terms of their reports of birth control methods used, problems in obtaining family planning services, and values involved in making fertility-related decisions, within the Mexican American population.... While there were points of agreement between the two samples, discrepancies were found in reports of problems in obtaining family planning services, fertility-related values, and in the acceptability of female sterilization as a birth control method. It was concluded that family planning professionals in these service areas tend to stereotype Mexican American women, and may not yet realize that the family planning attitudes and behavior of these women are probably changing in significant ways." (SUMMARY IN SPA)     

Family Planning and Maternal Health Care in Egypt

No abstract available for this article.     

Family participation in the care of patients in public health disasters

The ethical implications of disaster planning garner increasing scrutiny. The role of families in disaster efforts is a topic that requires additional ethical examination. This article reviews the potential roles for families before and during disasters, with particular attention to the impact on children and vulnerable elderly patients. The potential positive and negative impact of family participation in different aspects of healthcare and disaster efforts is assessed.     

Family therapy in primary health care: Skills training and outcome evaluation

Some of the theoretical tenets of family therapy such as emphasis on the activation and utilization of existing family resources and the importance it accords to context appear to have a good fit with primary health care's commitment to empowering individuals in their struggle against ill health and the circumstances in which it occurs. This paper explores the possibility of teaching a problem-solving approach to family therapy to nurses in a South African primary health care system. Training consisted of conceptual, pragmatic, and self-growth exercises, and trainees' conceptual and performance skills were compared to the skills of a group of untrained nurses.We thank Bukelwa Selema, co-trainer on the program, for her contributions to joining effectively with the nurses and enriching the experiential process. We also thank Dr. P.J. Beukes, Dr. J.H. Olivier, Dr. G.M. Louw, Matron L.C. Langley and other staff in the Soweto primary health care system for their support. In particular, we are grateful to nursing sisters Martha Nkoane and Millicent Matomela, who roleplayed clients on the videotaped training modules. We are also grateful to Edcent Williams, who was one of the videotape raters, and Mike Spruce, Ricky Snyders, Nico Cloete, Ricky Mauer, and Brenda Radebe for their inputs at various stages of designing and implementing the programme.     

Relationship between maternal aggression and maternal care in the rat

Aggression among female rats is almost entirely confined to the period of late pregnancy and lactation. Behaviorally it is similar to the aggression of males including piloerection and lateral attacks, but it differs in its function. Unlike male aggression which serves to establish a social hierarchy and a territory, i. e., is competitive, maternal aggression is protective, i. e., it serves to prevent predation of the mother's offspring. In this respect it is closely related temporally and causally to maternal care; if the offspring are removed maternal aggression wanes almost immediately–its function no longer exists! Studies on aggression by mothers, among rats, from the author's laboratory are reviewed and comparisons made with maternal care. As noted, maternal aggression and maternal care are closely related during the cycle of maternal behavior and they share a similar hormonal basis and possibly the effect of uterine stimulation, but maternal care requires prolactin and the decline of progesterone while maternal aggression appears independent of pituitary hormones and does not require a decline in progesterone. Maternal aggression like maternal care appears to be organized into a hormonal phase, during pregnancy, parturition, and for about a week postpartum and a nonhormonal phase thereafter. Bilateral radiofrequency lesions of the lateral midbrain peripeduncular nucleus (PPN) produce deficits in maternal aggression if made on lactation day 7 (L7), but not earlier, without producing significant deficits in maternal behavior. Experiments showed that the PPN does not mediate hormonally stimulated maternal aggression; it appears to mediate only nonhormonally stimulated maternal aggression. Studies on the role of pregnancy hormones on long-term retention of maternal aggression and the role of olfaction in maternal aggression are also reviewed. © 1994 Wiley-Liss, Inc.     

Family planning of Portuguese immigrants and integration in Belgium

A substantial immigration of Portuguese and other foreign nationals to Belgium due to a favorable immigration policy guides this investigation to focus on this group in order to study the influence of the acculturation experience on birth-control practices. Choosing a sample of 100 married women within a group of 998 Portuguese immigrants in an urban municipality in Brussels, the study sets out specifically to investigate whether these immigrants adopt attitude patterns of the receiving social group or if they preserve the customs of their original community. The hypothesis held by the study was that the better the woman's integration into Belgian society, the larger her knowledge and acceptance of contraceptives would be. The study found that the majority of interviewed immigrants remained poorly integrated into the Belgian society, and that the transition from a traditional to an industrial society had not included great changes in attitudinal behavior which would facilitate social and cultural integration into the new society. In terms of attitudes toward contraception, negative behavior was observed to be linked not to levels of acculturation, but rather to lack of information. Though the majority of respondents expressed desires for controlled fecundity even when still in Portugal, those who came to Belgium with no previous knowledge or desires admitted to having felt the need for contraceptive practice. The crucial factor in acceptance of modern contraceptive practices is singled out as one of communication. Access to information about contraception is readily available in the Belgian society. The information actually obtained by the women, however, depended on their access to informational channels, the circumstances through which they got in touch with such sources, and their problems with a language barrier when relying on the media through which contraceptive knowledge was made available.     

Effects of septal-forebrain lesions on maternal aggression and maternal care

Septal-forebrain lesions significantly increased the defensive reactions of lactating Long-Evans rats (n = 13) relative to nonlesioned control females. The lesions greatly enhanced defensive behaviors on a number of standard tests (e.g., responsiveness to humans and anesthetized conspecifics) while abolishing aggression toward intruding male conspecifics. The lesions also produced a striking disruption in maternal behavior as evidenced by absence of nest building, reduced litter weights, failure to retrieve, lick, or nurse pups, and increased cannibalization. While these results cannot be interpreted as indicating that maternal aggression is equivalent to offense, they are congruent with such a view. Certainly they are not supportive of a view that maternal aggression is primarily defensive. The lesion-induced abolition of maternal attack may have resulted from an inhibition of offensive tendencies by heightened defensiveness and/or reduced pup stimulation. There was no evidence that the lesion-induced impairment in maternal behavior resulted from a failure to sequence the individual behavioral acts comprising maternal behavior. Rather, all features of maternal care seemed to be greatly attenuated.     

Establishing the first institutional animal care and use committee in Egypt

Background

Although animal research ethics committees (AREC) are well established in Western countries, this field is weakly developed and its concept is poorly understood in the Middle East and North Africa region.

Objective

Our main objective was to introduce the concept and requirements of ethical approaches in dealing with experimental animal in research and teaching in Egypt.

Methods

Due to its very recent inception, Cairo University, Faculty of Science IACUC decided to operate in accordance with Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals 8th Edition 2011 (the Guide) since Egypt has not yet compiled its own guide.

Results

Fifty protocols were reviewed in 2013–2014. Only ten protocols were reviewed in 2013, but in 2014, forty protocols were reviewed. In 2013 all protocols were approved and in 2014, number of approvals were 35, the number of deferrals were 4, and one refused protocol. Master’s theses (MSc) research protocols constituted the majority of the total reviewed protocols. This is attributed to the decision of the Board of the Faculty of Science, Cairo University in September, 2013 that the approval of the IACUC is mandatory before conducting any research involving animals or theses registration.

Conclusion

The first IACUC was established in the Cairo University, Faculty of Science, since 2012. The challenges encountered by the committee were diverse, such as the absence of laws that control the use of animal models in scientific research, lack of guidelines (protocols for experimental animals in research) and, mandatory ethical approval for any experimental animal research.

     

Psychology,health and health care

This article traces the development of the World Health Organization's emphasis on psychological and behavioural factors in health and notes its encouragement of recognition of these factors by member states. The article further outlines the reasons for this increasing recognition and stresses the important role of psychological and behavioural factors in the maintenance of health and prevention of illness.     

Adolescent health care in Brazil

The period of youth and adolescence has been shown to have continuous demographic growth in the developing world. Young nations thus have to contend with the specific health needs of teenagers and young adults. This is illustrated by an analysis of the health-care needs of Brazilian adolescents. The issues highlighted here are adolescent morbidity and mortality, current delivery of adolescent health care, and future directions of adolescent programs in Brazil.     

Ethics in health care and medical technologies

In this paper a case is used to demonstrate how ethical analysis enables health care professionals, patients and family members to make treatment decisions which ensure that medical technologies are used in the overall best interests of the patient. The claim is made and defended that ethical analysis can secure four beneficial outcomes when medical technologies are employed: (1) not allowing any medical technologies to be employed until the appropriate decision makers are identified and consulted; (2) insisting that medical technologies be employed not merely to promote the medical interests of the patient but rather on the basis of their ability to contribute to the overall well-being of the patient; (3) challenging caregivers to reflect on the dynamic interplay between their conscious and unconscious values and consequent determinations of what is in the patient's best interests; and (4) providing a justification for selected interventions which makes possible rational dialogue between caregivers espousing different viewpoints about treatment options.     

Conscientious objection in health care

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics -