The Social Impact of AIDS in the United States

The Social Impact of AIDS in the United States
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 1993-02-01
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0309046289

Europe's "Black Death" contributed to the rise of nation states, mercantile economies, and even the Reformation. Will the AIDS epidemic have similar dramatic effects on the social and political landscape of the twenty-first century? This readable volume looks at the impact of AIDS since its emergence and suggests its effects in the next decade, when a million or more Americans will likely die of the disease. The Social Impact of AIDS in the United States addresses some of the most sensitive and controversial issues in the public debate over AIDS. This landmark book explores how AIDS has affected fundamental policies and practices in our major institutions, examining: How America's major religious organizations have dealt with sometimes conflicting values: the imperative of care for the sick versus traditional views of homosexuality and drug use. Hotly debated public health measures, such as HIV antibody testing and screening, tracing of sexual contacts, and quarantine. The potential risk of HIV infection to and from health care workers. How AIDS activists have brought about major change in the way new drugs are brought to the marketplace. The impact of AIDS on community-based organizations, from volunteers caring for individuals to the highly political ACT-UP organization. Coping with HIV infection in prisons. Two case studies shed light on HIV and the family relationship. One reports on some efforts to gain legal recognition for nonmarital relationships, and the other examines foster care programs for newborns with the HIV virus. A case study of New York City details how selected institutions interact to give what may be a picture of AIDS in the future. This clear and comprehensive presentation will be of interest to anyone concerned about AIDS and its impact on the country: health professionals, sociologists, psychologists, advocates for at-risk populations, and interested individuals.

Critical Medical Anthropology

Critical Medical Anthropology
Author: Jennie Gamlin
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 314
Release: 2020-03-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1787355829

Critical Medical Anthropology presents inspiring work from scholars doing and engaging with ethnographic research in or from Latin America, addressing themes that are central to contemporary Critical Medical Anthropology (CMA). This includes issues of inequality, embodiment of history, indigeneity, non-communicable diseases, gendered violence, migration, substance abuse, reproductive politics and judicialisation, as these relate to health. The collection of ethnographically informed research, including original theoretical contributions, reconsiders the broader relevance of CMA perspectives for addressing current global healthcare challenges from and of Latin America. It includes work spanning four countries in Latin America (Mexico, Brazil, Guatemala and Peru) as well as the trans-migratory contexts they connect and are defined by. By drawing on diverse social practices, it addresses challenges of central relevance to medical anthropology and global health, including reproduction and maternal health, sex work, rare and chronic diseases, the pharmaceutical industry and questions of agency, political economy, identity, ethnicity, and human rights.

HIV in China

HIV in China
Author: Jing Jun
Publisher: UNSW Press
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2010-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 1742240062

The result of collaboration between the University of New South Wales and the Tsinghua University in Beijing, this unique chronicle maps some of the most important social, political, and cultural characteristics of the HIV epidemic in China. Demonstrating that the epidemic was propelled by three main economic drivers--the blood trade, the drug trade, and the sex trade--this informative compilation of essays uncovers the hidden truths about the spread of HIV and analyzes its social impacts.

Democracy and the Left

Democracy and the Left
Author: Evelyne Huber
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 363
Release: 2012-09-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0226356558

Although inequality in Latin America ranks among the worst in the world, it has notably declined over the last decade, offset by improvements in health care and education, enhanced programs for social assistance, and increases in the minimum wage. In Democracy and the Left, Evelyne Huber and John D. Stephens argue that the resurgence of democracy in Latin America is key to this change. In addition to directly affecting public policy, democratic institutions enable left-leaning political parties to emerge, significantly influencing the allocation of social spending on poverty and inequality. But while democracy is an important determinant of redistributive change, it is by no means the only factor. Drawing on a wealth of data, Huber and Stephens present quantitative analyses of eighteen countries and comparative historical analyses of the five most advanced social policy regimes in Latin America, showing how international power structures have influenced the direction of their social policy. They augment these analyses by comparing them to the development of social policy in democratic Portugal and Spain. The most ambitious examination of the development of social policy in Latin America to date, Democracy and the Left shows that inequality is far from intractable—a finding with crucial policy implications worldwide.

Imperialism, Neoliberalism And Social Struggles in Latin America

Imperialism, Neoliberalism And Social Struggles in Latin America
Author: Richard Alan Dello Buono
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 398
Release: 2007
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9004153659

This collection focuses on the social consequences of neoliberal crises in Latin America. It includes a critical yet sympathetic analysis of ruling leftist governments in the region and discusses the larger constraints facing organized attempts to politically transform the Americas.

Conditional Cash Transfers in Latin America

Conditional Cash Transfers in Latin America
Author: Adato, Michelle
Publisher: Intl Food Policy Res Inst
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2010-12-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0801894980

Conditional cash transfer programs (CCTs)—cash grants to poor families that are conditional on their participation in education, health, and nutrition services—have become a vital part of poverty reduction strategies in many countries, particularly in Latin America. In Conditional Cash Transfers in Latin America, the contributors analyze and synthesize evidence from case studies of CCTs in Brazil, Honduras, Mexico, and Nicaragua. The studies examine many aspects of CCTs, including the trends in development and political economy that fostered interest in them; their costs; their impacts on education, health, nutrition, and food consumption; and how CCT programs affect social relations shaped by gender, culture, and community. Throughout, the authors identify the strengths and weaknesses of CCTs and offer guidelines to those who design them.

Representations of HIV/AIDS in Contemporary Hispano-American and Caribbean Culture

Representations of HIV/AIDS in Contemporary Hispano-American and Caribbean Culture
Author: Gustavo Subero
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2016-04-08
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317066014

Exploring the mechanisms and strategies used in different cultures across Hispano-America and the Caribbean to narrativise, represent and understand HIV/AIDS as a social and human phenomenon, this book examines a wide range of cultural, artistic and media texts, as well as issues of human phenomenology, to understand the ways in which HIV positive individuals make sense of their own lives, and of the ways in which the rest of society sees them. Drawing on a variety of cultural texts from cinema, television, photography and literature, the author considers the manner in which contemporary cultural forms have shaped a body of public opinion in response to the social and cultural impact of HIV/AIDS, re-interpreting the condition in the light of advances in treatment. With attention to both the temporality and spatiality of production, this book examines whether heterosexual and homosexual, and masculine and feminine bodies are narrativised in the same manner, considering the question of whether representations foster discrimination of any kind. The book also asks whether representations across Latin America are homogenous or varied according to national, social or cultural context, and explores the commonalities between the representations of HIV/AIDS in Hispano-America and the Caribbean and other global narratives. A detailed study of the various representations of HIV/AIDS and the construction of public opinion, this book will appeal to scholars of cultural, media and film studies, the sociology of health, the body and illness, and Latin American and Caribbean Studies.

Children and Young People Living with HIV/AIDS

Children and Young People Living with HIV/AIDS
Author: Pranee Liamputtong
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 512
Release: 2016-06-14
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3319299360

This book focuses on the issues encountered by children and young people who are living with HIV/AIDS. It examines their lived experiences associated with HIV/AIDS, and studies groups of children and youngsters from around the globe. Connecting empirical information with real-life situations, the book brings together results from empirical research that relates to these children and young people. Its chapters can be used as evidence for health care providers to implement socially and culturally appropriate services to assist individuals and groups of children and young people who are living with HIV/AIDS in many societies. Many of these young people are from the most marginalized and vulnerable groups; and many have been orphaned by the death of their HIV-positive parents. Marginalized young people such as refugees, migrants and street children are most at risk due to the use of illicit drugs, their exposure to unprotected sex (in exchange for food, money and protection), and stigma associated with their marginalized lives. The impact that HIV/AIDS has on the opportunities for these young people to be able to lead healthy adult lives is considerable. This book gives a voice to these children and young people and advances our understanding of their lived experiences and needs.

Communities in Action

Communities in Action
Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 583
Release: 2017-04-27
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0309452961

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

The Politics of Sexuality in Latin America

The Politics of Sexuality in Latin America
Author: Javier Corrales
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
Total Pages: 473
Release: 2010-05-24
Genre: History
ISBN: 0822973715

The city of Buenos Aires has guaranteed all couples, regardless of gender, the right to register civil unions. Mexico City has approved the Cohabitation Law, which grants same-sex couples marital rights identical to those of common-law relationships between men and women. Yet, a gay man was murdered every two days in Latin America in 2005, and Brazil recently led the world in homophobic murders. These facts illustrate the wide disparity in the treatment and rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) populations across the region. The Politics of Sexuality in Latin America presents the first English-language reader on LGBT politics in Latin America. Representing a range of contemporary works by scholars, activists, analysts, and politicians, the chapters address LGBT issues in nations from Cuba to Argentina. In their many findings, two main themes emerge: the struggle for LGBT rights has made significant inroads in the first decade of the twenty-first century (though not in every domain or every region); and the advances made were slow in coming compared to other social movements. The articles uncover the many obstacles that LGBT activists face in establishing new laws and breaking down societal barriers. They identify perhaps the greatest roadblock in Latin American culture as an omnipresent system of "heteronormativity," wherein heterosexuality, patriarchalism, gender hierarchies, and economic structures are deeply rooted in nearly every level of society. Along these lines, the texts explore specific impediments, including family dependence, lack of public spaces, job opportunities, religious dictums, personal security, the complicated relationship between leftist political parties and LGBT movements in the region, and the ever-present "closets," which keep LGBT issues out of the public eye. The volume also looks to the future of LGBT activism in Latin America in areas such as globalization, changing demographics, the role of NGOs, and the rise of economic levels and education across societies, which may aid in a greater awareness of LGBT politics and issues. As the editors posit, to be democratic in the truest sense of the word, nations must recognize and address all segments of their populations.