I haven’t been able to post here much lately because of work and life and whatnot, but after the Medical Library Association conference (#mlanet12) wraps up next week, things should loosen up a bit.

This year, MLA, the  professional association for medical librarians, is having its annual conference in Seattle, WA. I’ve never been there and am looking forward to it. At the conference, I’m presenting in a section on building successful collaborations, facilitating a roundtable on librarian involvement in systematic reviews, attending the government relations committee meeting as a member, and am serving as an official conference blogger. My posts on things seen and learned in the conference exhibit hall – my area of coverage – will be up here. Oh, yeah, I’m also attending a tweet up and participating in a zombie hunt, and hoping to see some old friends while I’m there.

I’ve also had recent posts up at Our Bodies Our Blog, on long-term bisphosphonate use, a recent CDC report on teen girls’ sexual activity and use of contraceptives, and recent research into progesterone-alone for menopausal hot flashes. There’s something I’m enthused about coming out of OBOS soon, and after MLA wraps up I’ll share that here as well, but watch the site and blog for news.

I’m also hitting the one-year mark now on being car-free in Nashville, TN. I have it in mind to do one or more posts on that experience soon, as well. Thankfully, I’ll be off work and home for 5 days after returning from the conference, during which there will be some blogging and probably a lot of Diablo III and WoW.

Oh, and lest anybody get any ideas about my being out of town – the house will be guarded by the spouse, the attack kitties, and the huge dog seen in the top left.

Filed under: Events & Observances, Miscellaneous

and if you don’t like abortion
don’t have an abortion!
and teach your children
how they can avoid them
but don’t treat all women
like they are your children
compassion has many faces, many names
and if men can kill
and be decorated instead of blamed
then a woman called upon to mother
can choose to refrain

This is from the newest album, ¿Which Side Are You On?. The full lyrics of this song have some women-as-mothers stuff that the Little Folksinger has been on about since she had her own child, and which I’m not particularly fond of. Regardless, I think this is still her best album in years.

The post title is a nod to “Feel Good Friday,” for which some people post music.

Filed under: Access, Rights, & Choice, Events & Observances

The theme for this year’s Blog for Choice Day is: “What will you do to help elect pro-choice candidates in 2012?”

I have to confess, I’m extremely bad about helping people get elected. I will write blog posts and letters to elected officials all day long, but have not historically been very active in either donating to candidates/causes or taking actions like canvassing on their behalf. This year, taking in-person action might be even more difficult due to living car-free, but I’m alarmed enough by the apparent uptick in anti-choice legislative activity that I think I need to do better and more.

I’m also going to need to focus some of that attention more specifically at the local level. It seems somewhat easier to get the word out about national threats, and there’s a bigger pool of people who can raise objections. So many serious effects on choice happen at the state level, though. This is where waiting periods, forced ultrasounds, forced delivery of medically inaccurate warnings, and other unnecessary restrictions happen.

In my own state of Tennessee, a bills is in a subcommittee to require any abortions past “viability” to occur in a hospital. There’s also a bill to move up the effective date of a law that would forbid the use of telemedicine for abortion. An obvious question is “how do you do surgery without your hands on a patient?” The answer is that this is already being researched and done for other surgeries.

But what we’re really talking about for abortion right now is something more like having a videoconference, with a patient who is getting a medication abortion, and using that technology to talk to them about their wishes and consent, how to properly take the medicine, and any potential complications to watch out for. It’s something a doctor or nurse practitioner can do from any connected location, potentially having other nurses, medical students, etc. do any needed vital sign checking and form-signing in person. It’s something that’s considered very safe.

It’s something that could really help women in rural/remote locations, and across states with few abortion providers, by increasing the geographic range a provider might be able to reach. In some states, a single provider has been known to fly in from out of state one day a week; telemedicine could seriously relieve this logistical problem and relieve provider shortages for the cases in which medication abortion is appropriate and desired.

And the state legislature is the place to prevent it, if you don’t want providers using new technologies to provide women with increased access to legal medical care.

The bill to forbid telemedicine for abortion in Tennessee passed last year. I pay attention to these things, and I’m pretty sure I missed it. And now they’re trying to make it take effect this year instead of next year.

They’re making it illegal for your physician, if he or she thinks it’s appropriate, to advise you on taking a pill via a videoconference. Where you can talk to and see one another, and your provider can use her/his judgment about your care while talking with you. And it’s only abortion that is being targeted; nobody is trying to forbid providers from delivering other legal care in this way.

So, Tennessee, can we start here? Let’s make sure the bill to move up this interference doesn’t pass, and then we can see what we can do about getting rid of the original, and supporting in real ways politicians who stand against such nonsense.

See my Blog for Choice day posts going back to 2007, and NARAL’s list of participating blogs for this year.

Filed under: Abortion, Access, Rights, & Choice, Events & Observances, Government, Laws, Legislation, & Courts

Today marks Transgender Day of Remembrance, which is “set aside to memorialize those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice.”

Transgender people face increased risks of violence and other adverse effects of discrimination. According to a recent report [PDF]:

• The report’s sample was nearly four times more likely to have a household income of less than $10,000/year compared to the general population.
• “Over one-quarter (26%) reported that they had lost a job due to being transgender or gender non-conforming and 50% were harassed.”
• “41%…reported attempting suicide compared to 1.6% of the general population, with rates rising for those who lost a job due to bias (55%), were harassed/bullied in school (51%), had low household income, or were the victim of physical assault (61%) or sexual assault (64%).”
• “One-fifth (19%) reported experiencing homelessness at some point in their lives because they were transgender or gender nonconforming; the majority of those trying to access a homeless shelter were harassed by shelter staff or residents (55%), 29% were turned away altogether, and 22% were sexually assaulted by residents or staff.”

This page provides some ideas for actions you can take to support the human rights and safety of transgender people. What the statistics above – and the action suggestions focusing on schools, police, prisons, housing, and healthcare – make clear is how anti-transgender hatred and discrimination affects every part of life for a transgender person. How inescapable the possibility of being crushed in everyday life might seem, and how such pervasive oppression deserves my and our attention.

The names of the people being remembered this year (since last Nov 20) are:
Luisa Alvarado Hernandez  (Comayaguela City, Honduras)
Lady Oscar Martinez Salgado (Tegucigalpa, Honduras)
Reana ‘Cheo’ Bustamente (Tegucigalpa, Honduras)
Génesis Briget Makaligton (Comayagüela City, Honduras)
Krissy Bates (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Fergie Alice Ferg (San Pedro Sula, Honduras)
Tyra Trent (Baltimore, Maryland)
Priscila Brandão (Belo Horizonte, Brazil)
Marcal Camero Tye (Forrest City, Arkansas)
Shakira Harahap (Taman Lawang, Jakarta, Indonesia)
Miss Nate Nate (or Née) Eugene Davis (Houston, Texas)
Lashai Mclean  (Washington, D.C.)
Didem  (Findikzade, Istanbul)
Camila Guzman (New York, New York)
Gaby (Jalisco, Mexico)
unidentified male dressed in women’s clothes (Paris, France)
Gaurav Gopalan (Washington, D.C.)
Name Unknown (Gaziantep, Turkey)
Shelley Hilliard (Detroit, Michigan)
Jessica Rollon (Bergamo, Italy)
Astrid Carolina López Cruz (Madrid, Spain)
Cassidy Nathan Vickers (Hollywood, California)

See also: Natalie’s post at skepchick.

Filed under: Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Events & Observances

Some things that caught my attention this week, with bonus “this week in misogyny” content.

I don’t know how many people noticed, and I assume it won’t go anywhere, but Michele Bachmann introduced a forced ultrasound for abortion bill in the House. It’s been sent to the Subcommittee on Health.

The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy has launched a new website, Bedsider, about birth control and says it’s intended for women ages 18-29 years. I haven’t looked through it thoroughly, but it includes comparisons of different methods of preventing pregnancy by factors like cost, immediacy, STI prevention, ease of getting and using the method, ease of hiding it from a partner, and degree of mistake-proofed-ness. It is focused through a pregnancy prevention lens, so the site is focused on penis-in-vagina sex, not other forms of sex or prevention. I haven’t reviewed the site thoroughly, but let me know what you think. Some of the language seems a little, uh, teen magazine-y for my tastes and for a target audience that is actually made up of adults, but perhaps it’s my advanced age talking there (early 30s).

Over at OBOS, between C and I we’ve covered Mississippi, personhood, and reproductive justice, and new research on in vitro fertilization and ovarian cancer risks.

The CDC released the final data on 2009 births [PDF] in the United States. It’s full of data on the number of births, birth rates by things about women, like their age and marital status, and rates of cesarean (another all-time high), low birth weight, preterm, and out of hospital births. [hat tip to Jill]

Jaclyn Friedman, who I met briefly at the Our Bodies Ourselves 40th, has a new book out, What You Really, Really Want: The Smart Girl’s Shame-Free Guide to Sex and Safety. I haven’t read it yet, but there’s a Twitter chat happening at 9pm Eastern tonight using the hashtag #shamefreesex.

B points out the ridiculousness of news coverage taking the “vodka-soaked tampon” story seriously. Notably, liquid-soaked tampons expand and are not exactly convenient for insertion. Aside from which, alcohol+mucous membranes would probably hurt. And the likelihood of it being widespread for teenage boys to be inserting said vodka-soaked tampons rectally is just absurdly small. And then there was the follow-up to B’s post, which takes a quick downward spiral in the comments to “if we take your picture without permission but link to you, you should be glad of the traffic”-land.

The FDA released a new statement on Makena, a drug intended to help prevent preterm birth. It has been the subject of controversy because versions of the same ingredient in Makena has been available for pretty cheap through compound pharmacies for a long time. FDA’s approval of Makena with it’s extremely high price, have generated strong reactions and concerns about access. The FDA’s new statement basically says, “The company that makes Makena says those vastly cheaper compound pharmacy products vary in their strength and purity, so we’re going to look into it.”

The agency also approved the first therapy derived from cord blood cells.

Jill at Feministe had a note left in her suitcase by the TSA when she checked what she’s referring to as a “personal item.” A note that read, “get your freak on girl.” Jill follows up that the TSA agent who left that note has been suspended, and Jill responds to the lack of response to the real problem here: “…I get no satisfaction in hearing that someone may be in danger of losing their job over this. I would much prefer a look at why ‘security’ has been used to justify so many intrusions on our civil liberties, rather than fire a person who made a mistake.”

This week, the CDC is running a campaign focused on the smart and appropriate use of antibiotics. Go to the website to learn more about why you don’t always need antibiotics and why it’s bad for all of us to use too many.

Transgender Day of Remembrance is coming up on November 20th.

The Abortioneers ask when to speak up, when to keep your mouth shut, and how to know the difference.

The fact that women prisoners often get shackled during labor is discussed at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, in an interview with a fiction writer who covered this practice in a book.

Sometime this week, I stumbled across #occupyhealthcare and the accompanying website. The contributors seem to be mostly healthcare providers and adjacents, focused on increasing access to healthcare.

The government has issued a “Leading Health Indicators App Challenge,” soliciting developers to create apps that promote the use of key measures of health (“indicators”) to improve the health of communities.

The Census released new data with the headline, “Half of First-Time Mothers Receive Paid Leave, Census Bureau Reports.” Before you get too excited, “paid” leave included not just official paid maternity leave, but using up your own existing balance of paid sick and/or vacation leave, if you’re fortunate enough to have that. They also noted that women who got some type of paid leave were *more* likely to return to work within 3-5 months, making me wonder if they are often returning to work when they exhaust their reserves of paid sick or other time. Then there’s this limitation: “Given that FMLA and other leave policies in the United States do not allow for leave for more than 12 weeks, it is not entirely surprising that new mothers return to work relatively soon.”

ePatientDave writes about how impossible to understand an “explanation of benefits” document can be and how we’re prevented from stopping errors and reducing costs because of this lack of transparency.

This week in misogyny:
Rick Perry’s “departments I would close” gaffe has received most of the news coverage, but in the same GOP candidate debate, Herman Cain referred to Representative/former Speaker Nancy Pelosi as “Princess Nancy.” He or his team reiterated this remark on Twitter, before offering the fauxpology that he “probably shouldn’t have” made the remark, but “was trying to make a point.” A point that required a gendered diminishing and dismissal of a powerful woman politician, apparently. I guess he thought he had built up too much goodwill with women over the course of his sexual harassment scandal.

Using the #mencallmethings hashtag (which Sady Doyle apparently started), feminist women bloggers took to Twitter to talk about some of the vile things that have been said to them in the course of their writing, including rape and death threats. I contributed a rape threat I received through the comments here because I had the temerity to dislike a rape joke on tv. Just another humorless feminist who deserved threats of violence because of it, right? @metalmujer and others pointed out that the hashtag itself would be better focused on misogyny rather than “men.” Yes, most of the excessively hateful and threatening remarks I’ve been subjected to have been made by men, but the problem is not something about all men, it’s the misogyny these particular men have carried out and a culture that encourages them to do so.

I also keep seeing this image on Facebook intended at a critique of dubstep and its fans. I don’t have an opinion one way or the other about the actual quality of dubstep or its fans over time, but I do know that when the main critique is presented as “it was good when it was a bunch of men standing around, now it sucks and is by/for little girls,” that’s misogyny.

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Birth, Contraception, Drugs, Events & Observances, Government, Laws, Legislation, & Courts, Miscellaneous, News Round-Ups, Sex & Sex Education, Web Resources

SlutWalks are marches protesting the blaming of victims of sexual assault, often with tired refrains about whether women were “asking for it,” such as by what they wore or looking like a “slut.”

While the anti-victim-blaming message is a good one, the walks not uncontroversial or unproblematic – I found this Open Letter from Black Women to the SlutWalk particularly compelling. In it, anti-violence advocates make clear that naming oneself “slut” is an action of privilege, one that is not safe for many or most women of color and which flies in the face of a long legacy of work against attitudes, languages and actions that sexually objective and violate women of color.

From the letter:

As Black women and girls we find no space in SlutWalk, no space for participation and to unequivocally denounce rape and sexual assault as we have experienced it. We are perplexed by the use of the term “slut” and by any implication that this word, much like the word “Ho” or the “N” word should be re-appropriated. The way in which we are perceived and what happens to us before, during and after sexual assault crosses the boundaries of our mode of dress. Much of this is tied to our particular history. In the United States, where slavery constructed Black female sexualities, Jim Crow kidnappings, rape and lynchings, gender misrepresentations, and more recently, where the Black female immigrant struggle combine, “slut” has different associations for Black women. We do not recognize ourselves nor do we see our lived experiences reflected within SlutWalk and especially not in its brand and its label.

As Black women, we do not have the privilege or the space to call ourselves “slut” without validating the already historically entrenched ideology and recurring messages about what and who the Black woman is. We don’t have the privilege to play on destructive representations burned in our collective minds, on our bodies and souls for generations. Although we understand the valid impetus behind the use of the word “slut” as language to frame and brand an anti-rape movement, we are gravely concerned. For us the trivialization of rape and the absence of justice are viciously intertwined with narratives of sexual surveillance, legal access and availability to our personhood. It is tied to institutionalized ideology about our bodies as sexualized objects of property, as spectacles of sexuality and deviant sexual desire. It is tied to notions about our clothed or unclothed bodies as unable to be raped whether on the auction block, in the fields or on living room television screens. The perception and wholesale acceptance of speculations about what the Black woman wants, what she needs and what she deserves has truly, long crossed the boundaries of her mode of dress.

I would encourage you to read and think about the entire letter.

A Nashville, TN SlutWalk happened last weekend. I didn’t attend, and didn’t have to make a decision about whether to attend, by way of being out of town for the Our Bodies Ourselves 40th anniversary symposium. One website has some compelling photos from the event. In checking out the photos post-event, I was particularly taken by an image of a walker with a sign reading, “I was 4 years old and wearing overalls and tennis shoes. Clothes are irrelevant. Rapists cause rape.” Another woman held a sign reading, “This is what I was wearing when I was assaulted. Was I asking for “it” too?” Yes, there are a lot of apparently white women in full set of photos. The problematic aspects aren’t erased, but I wanted to point to a couple of images I found powerful from the event. Imagine how much more powerful they could be if all women felt included in visible actions against sexual assault.

Also in Nashville, there is coverage at the local alt weekly’s blog of some of the vile comments left on stories about the event. Comments that blame victims for “tempting” violence, that encourage women to change their dress so “he might choose a different target.” Ugh. As a reminder, let me point everyone to these excellent tips on how to prevent rape and sexual assault (origin unknown to me). For example:

If a woman is drunk, don’t rape her.
If a woman is walking alone at night, don’t rape her.
If a women is drugged and unconscious, don’t rape her.
If a woman is wearing a short skirt, don’t rape her.

The usual tips to dress a certain way, be in certain places, etc. aren’t intended to stop rape – they’re intended to make women feel that there is something they can do to encourage rapists to pick a different victim, and that they’ve done something wrong if a rapist picks them.

Please be aware that comments here are moderated and anyone suggesting that women “ask for it” or that anyone except rapists is responsible for rape will be deleted/unpublished.

Filed under: Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Events & Observances

SlutWalks are marches protesting the blaming of victims of sexual assault, often with tired refrains about whether women were “asking for it,” such as by what they wore or looking like a “slut.”

While the anti-victim-blaming message is a good one, the walks not uncontroversial or unproblematic – I found this Open Letter from Black Women to the SlutWalk particularly compelling. In it, anti-violence advocates make clear that naming oneself “slut” is an action of privilege, one that is not safe for many or most women of color and which flies in the face of a long legacy of work against attitudes, languages and actions that sexually objective and violate women of color.

From the letter:

As Black women and girls we find no space in SlutWalk, no space for participation and to unequivocally denounce rape and sexual assault as we have experienced it. We are perplexed by the use of the term “slut” and by any implication that this word, much like the word “Ho” or the “N” word should be re-appropriated. The way in which we are perceived and what happens to us before, during and after sexual assault crosses the boundaries of our mode of dress. Much of this is tied to our particular history. In the United States, where slavery constructed Black female sexualities, Jim Crow kidnappings, rape and lynchings, gender misrepresentations, and more recently, where the Black female immigrant struggle combine, “slut” has different associations for Black women. We do not recognize ourselves nor do we see our lived experiences reflected within SlutWalk and especially not in its brand and its label.

As Black women, we do not have the privilege or the space to call ourselves “slut” without validating the already historically entrenched ideology and recurring messages about what and who the Black woman is. We don’t have the privilege to play on destructive representations burned in our collective minds, on our bodies and souls for generations. Although we understand the valid impetus behind the use of the word “slut” as language to frame and brand an anti-rape movement, we are gravely concerned. For us the trivialization of rape and the absence of justice are viciously intertwined with narratives of sexual surveillance, legal access and availability to our personhood. It is tied to institutionalized ideology about our bodies as sexualized objects of property, as spectacles of sexuality and deviant sexual desire. It is tied to notions about our clothed or unclothed bodies as unable to be raped whether on the auction block, in the fields or on living room television screens. The perception and wholesale acceptance of speculations about what the Black woman wants, what she needs and what she deserves has truly, long crossed the boundaries of her mode of dress.

I would encourage you to read and think about the entire letter.

A Nashville, TN SlutWalk happened last weekend. I didn’t attend, and didn’t have to make a decision about whether to attend, by way of being out of town for the Our Bodies Ourselves 40th anniversary symposium. One website has some compelling photos from the event. In checking out the photos post-event, I was particularly taken by an image of a walker with a sign reading, “I was 4 years old and wearing overalls and tennis shoes. Clothes are irrelevant. Rapists cause rape.” Another woman held a sign reading, “This is what I was wearing when I was assaulted. Was I asking for “it” too?” Yes, there are a lot of apparently white women in full set of photos. The problematic aspects aren’t erased, but I wanted to point to a couple of images I found powerful from the event. Imagine how much more powerful they could be if all women felt included in visible actions against sexual assault.

Also in Nashville, there is coverage at the local alt weekly’s blog of some of the vile comments left on stories about the event. Comments that blame victims for “tempting” violence, that encourage women to change their dress so “he might choose a different target.” Ugh. As a reminder, let me point everyone to these excellent tips on how to prevent rape and sexual assault (origin unknown to me). For example:

If a woman is drunk, don’t rape her.
If a woman is walking alone at night, don’t rape her.
If a women is drugged and unconscious, don’t rape her.
If a woman is wearing a short skirt, don’t rape her.

The usual tips to dress a certain way, be in certain places, etc. aren’t intended to stop rape – they’re intended to make women feel that there is something they can do to encourage rapists to pick a different victim, and that they’ve done something wrong if a rapist picks them.

Please be aware that comments here are moderated and anyone suggesting that women “ask for it” or that anyone except rapists is responsible for rape will be deleted/unpublished.

Filed under: Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Events & Observances

This Saturday, Our Bodies Ourselves will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the publication of the original book on women’s bodies and health, editions of which have informed and inspired women ever since.

To mark this milestone, the organization is holding a free public symposium this Saturday at Boston University, with speakers including Loretta Ross of SisterSong, Jacyln Friedman of Women, Action, & the Media, Bylle Avery of the Black Women’s Health Imperative, and OBOS’s own Judy Norsigian. There will also be panels on OBOS’s global initiatives, activism, and change, and partners from 12 countries there to “share their extraordinary journeys transforming ‘Our Bodies, Ourselves’ for their own countries.” Last but not least, the 40th anniversary edition of the landmark book will be released on the day of the event.

I’m super-excited.

Realizing that everybody who might be interested in these sessions – which include a great deal of representation of OBOS’s global partners – might not be able to attend, the event will be live-streamed online starting at 9am on Saturday.

If you’re following along at home and want to tweet about it, the hashtag we’re using is #obos40. There will be a post-event round-up at Our Bodies Our Blog.

Filed under: Events & Observances, Global Issues, Women’s Health

BeauSoleil

Last weekend, I attended the National Folk Festival in Nashville, TN, where it will be hosted for two additional years. I truly enjoyed the event, seeing and hearing music performed by old time, mariachi, Kurdish, Japanese, breakdance, cajun, New Orleans jazz, and other bands, along with the Fisk Jubilee Singers and Lloyd Arneach (a Cherokee storyteller). I heard good music, had good (festival) food, and had an excellent time.

That said, two health-related items came to my attention. First, I would like to suggest that first aid folks at outdoor events add extra sunscreen to their supplies. Overheating and dehydration is an obvious concern at an outdoor festival, but sunburn is another, if less acute, health hazard. I stopped by the first aid tent to see if they had any sunscreen after I’d been outside for a few hours and realized I needed more protection. I should have brought my own as well on that 100 degree sunny day, but I think making it available for people to reapply at day-long events is a good idea. The person I talked to at the tent seemed to think so, too.

Don Vappie & The Creole Jazz Serenaders

Second, while festival sponsors seemed to be mostly arts/culture organizations, local radio, lawyers, banks, and so on – the mix you’d expect – one tent in particular was sponsored by Altria, and visibly marked with numerous sponsorship signs listing Philip Morris, Smokeless Tobacco, et al. That tent was the Jefferson Street tent.

For those who don’t know Nashville, Jefferson Street is a historically Black part of town. It runs past Meharry Medical College and Fisk University, then TSU, all HCBUs. It’s home to an annual jazz and blues festival. This page from the Jefferson Street Merchants provides a brief history of the area, further emphasizing the close association between this part of Nashville and our city’s Black population. The Jefferson Street stage was the closest at the festival to Jefferson Street itself by a long shot.

Well, so what? Black and white Americans smoke about the same rate, but Black smokers are a greater risk of lung cancer and suffer disproportionately from smoking-related adverse health effects. Tobacco companies have also targeted their advertising to Black communities, attempting to recruit more of these smokers – one study found “2.6 times more tobacco advertisements per person in areas with an African American majority compared to white-majority areas.” As the American Lung Association explains:

African American communities have been bombarded with cigarette advertising. Since the signing of the Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) in 1998 through 2005, the average youth in the United States is annually exposed to 559 tobacco ads, every adult female 617 advertisements, and every African American adult 892 ads. Money spent on magazine advertising of mentholated cigarettes, popular with African Americans, increased from 13 percent of total ad expenditures in 1998 to 49 percent in 2005.

The former Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company (now part of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company) ran a campaign for Kool cigarettes aimed at black youths in 2006 that featured hip-hop DJ competitions, themed cigarette packs, and was billed as a “celebration” of hip-hop music and culture.

Long story short, having the “Jefferson Street” stage visibly sponsored by big tobacco was unseemly and gross, in the context of both the location and the deliberate targeting of Black communities to encourage smoking.

Filed under: Advertising/Marketing, Cancer, Ethics, Events & Observances, Miscellaneous

I haven’t done one of these in a while, having been distracted by the heat, the carless situation, dad’s cancer, mom’s hip replacement re-replacement, work, leveling my first character in Warcraft (now a level 71 undead frost mage – I don’t want to duel you!), and life in general. Tonight, though, I’m at my parents’ house (sitting with mom after said re-replacement), in a town with <30 thousand people that gets really, truly dark at night, World of Warcraft won't run on this computer, and I think I've reached the end of the internet. Might as well do something.

The FDA has issued a warning not to use emergency contraception labeled as Evital. The agency says,

These products may be counterfeit versions of the “morning after pill” and may not be safe or effective in preventing pregnancy. Evital has not been approved by the FDA for use in the United States. This potentially ineffective and suspect counterfeit emergency birth control may also be in distribution in some Hispanic communities in the United States.

The FDA announcement linked above has an image of the packaging for the drug in question and further details.

The FDA is also proposing guidelines for mobile medical apps (like you use on a smart phone). I haven’t fully parsed the implications of the proposal yet, but public comment is being accepted through October 19.

CNN has a piece on breast ironing in Cameroon. This is not a custom I know much about, and I’m always hesitant to jump in where I know so little, but I feel comfortable saying that this must be a painful procedure that doesn’t achieve the apparently desired goal of preventing sex ad pregnancy.

The New York Times talks about Title IX, the law requiring that women and girls have equal access to participation in school sports, focusing on a lack of investigation and enforcement when schools are thought to not be following the law.

Washington became the first state to specifically provide for offspring from donated eggs and sperm to access the donors’ medical history and names once the offspring turn 18. This is an issue I’ve written a tiny bit about at Our Bodies Our Blog.

Shockingly, Bill O’Reilly is kind of an uninformed jerk about unintentional pregnancy and birth control. The professional blowhard stated that “Many women who get pregnant are blasted out of their minds when they have sex and are not going to use birth control anyway.” Right. Half of all pregnancies in this country are unplanned, and it’s obviously just because women are too drunk and high to use contraception. A lot of attention has been paid to this comment, but O’Reilly also stated in the same segment that HHS should pay for “everybody’s birth control, all the women in the world, or here in the United States, or maybe both.” Yeah, we’re going to pay for birth control for *all the women in the world* – even those women in the many countries with lower rates of teen and unplanned pregnancy. Sure, that seems likely and logical and fact-based, doesn’t it? *headdesk* Media Matters has more, including response from the National Women’s Law Center.

C-section rates apparently hit an all-time U.S. high of 34%. I feel like “new high” is the news we get every year now on c-sections.

Al Jazeera English has a short piece on the ethics of clinical pharmaceutical research in India, where research participants may not clinically benefit from drugs being tested and may be vulnerable to exploitation.

Max Barry has a nice piece about gender through the lens of how we gender animals and the gender of Smurfs.

Kari Paul at the Ms. Blog explores the topic of sexual assault on campuses and the lack of arrests or serious addressing of this problem.

Connecticut added gender identity and expression to the state’s anti-discrimination laws. Good job, Connecticut!

Anita Sarkeesian talks about the “mystical pregnancy trope,” especially in sci fi/fantasy, in which women are used for their reproductive capacity and often forcibly impregnated. I hadn’t really noticed it as much as I should, maybe you haven’t either – check out the video (via Sociological Images).

Hey, it’s World Breastfeeding Week.

Honestly, I can watch True Blood as a bit of fluff and as somebody who likes to see on-screen adaptations of books. There are a lot of problems with it. Watching tonight’s episode, I really wondered how many gratuitous rape scenes one show can possibly have, especially after Alan Ball’s comment on the serial rape of Jason that he’s basically getting what he deserved for his sexual history. Feminist Frequency also has some TB commentary and links to more.

Relatedly but not surprisingly, the blogger at The Frisky wrote critically today about how True Blood handles rape, and the very first comment is of the “relax/don’t watch then” variety. Don’t worry your pretty little head! *predictable-but-disappointing-argh*

I’m proud of our Nashville students who came out to protest stupid, offensive, and mean “don’t say gay” legislation in Tennessee.

Apparently one place in Minnesota has similar “don’t say gay” rules in its schools; CNN covered the issue and the National Center for Lesbian Rights has a letter you can sign onto to express your support for students in the affected school district who are trying to change the policy.

The CDC is talking about antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea.

Somebody threw a Molotov cocktail into a Planned Parenthood of North Texas clinic. The clinic provides health care, including birth control and screenings, but doesn’t even provide abortions. Alex Pareene at Salon’s War Room points out that nobody seems to care about this form of domestic terrorism.

Last but not least, everybody wish Hilary luck on her last board exam and subsequent residency application process.

1) It’s the attack kitty edition because, in noting on Facebook that I am away from home, I told the Internet not to get any ideas – the house is guarded by the spouse, attack kitties, and weirdly commandable suits of armor.
2) Yes, I suspect there are some conversations we could have about gender and Warcraft. If you want to talk about that, we can do so in the comments.

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Birth, Breastfeeding, Contraception, Drugs, Ethics, Events & Observances, Global Issues, Government, Infectious Diseases, Laws, Legislation, & Courts, Miscellaneous, News Round-Ups, Pregnancy, Products, Technology, & Devices

Today marked the release of the 2011 Tennessee Women’s Health Report Card, a publication which provides a snapshot of the health status of women in our state, and the disparities they experience. It’s a handy resource for anyone interested in making a case – or understanding the need – for improved health services and community programs, and includes statistics that clearly illustrate some of the challenges we face.

Among them:

• 18.4% of us – or almost 1 in 5 – smoked while we were pregnant. The rate is highest (21.4%) among white women, and lower among African American (10.3%) and Hispanic (2.4%) women.
• African American women experience tremendous disparities in their infant mortality rate, with 16 infant deaths per 1,000 live births, compared to 6 for white women and 6.6 for Hispanic women.
• About a third of us have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, are obese, and do not “engage in leisure time activity,” or exercise.
• 16.9% of us live below the poverty line, with disparities here as well – 13.9% of white women, 28.2% of African American women, and 42.1% of Hispanic women meet this depressing criteria.

I would encourage to take a look at the full report [PDF], especially if you are interested in working to improve the health of women and Tennesseans. Just browsing the statistics on reproductive health, sexually transmitted infections, causes of death, risky behaviors, preventive health practices (like cancer screening), and barriers to health care is sure to give you ideas for possible actions to take in your family, neighborhood, county, and state.

This year, I had the privilege of attending the release event for the report at the downtown branch of the Nashville Public Library, and so got to hear some really smart and engaged folks speak about the report and its implications for our communities. Action, or what we do in response to this report, was a major theme.

First up, Dr. Katherine Hartmann of Vanderbilt made a clear call to action, stating that this must be the year we look at this report and say, this is not just public health data, it’s us and our families, and represents many challenges that we must address.

Next, Dr. Jeffrey Balser of Vanderbilt, noted the responsibility of large employers in contributing to the health of their employees and, by extension, the community. He challenged people in places of authority to do active and visible things to improve the health of those around them.

Third up, Dr. Charles Mouton of Meharry Medical College observed that some of his peers have grown weary of hearing about health diaparities and how we have failed to fully addreas them. He then challenged us all to work to eliminate them, calling it our duty to the women this report card represents to eliminate those disparities. He asked the audience to look at the report card as a roadmap for where we have not done well, and where we can and should work to improve health care and access to care for all Tennesseans.

Next, Dr. Stephaine Hale Walker of Vanderbilt began with a review of the good and bad grades on the report card, noting the good news that deaths from diabetes continue to decline, more than 80% of women over 50 had a mammogram in the last two years, and deaths from colorectal cancer are at a low. She also noted that stroke and heart disease rates are very slowly showing trends toward improvement.

The bad news, as we’ve touched on, is that disparities continue for many health issues, such as our African American women being at a much higher risk of having a very low birthweight infant, having an infant die before its first birthday, dying from cervical or breast cancer, or having a sexually transmitted infection. Likewise, social barriers such as poverty, unemployment, and lack of healthcare coverage continue to challenge us.

From there, Dr. Hale Walker moved to an inspiring discussion of the need to ask ourselves “now what?” We can’t just talk about these problems, she said, we need to ask what we can do to be part of the solution, form collaborations, and act to make change.

As an example of her own committment to acting for change, Dr. Hale Walker spoke about the Full Circle organization which works to connect people with the great organizations in Nashville offering free and sliding scale healthcare resources. She also is married to Bishop Joseph Walker of prominent Mount Zion Baptist Church, where the church has implemented the ChurchFit program to provide access to fitness classes to the member community, and health education programs on a variety of topics, partially inspired by the statistics in the 2009 edition of the report card. I had the opportunity to speak to one of Mount Zion’s congregants at the reception after the report release, and found her attitude, story, and words inspiring and motivating as well. Stories shared by other women in conjunction with the report are available on this page.

Finally, Commisioner Susan Cooper of the Tennessee Department of Health spoke, calling for us to be smarter about how we spend our resources, and to focus them in areas of highest risk. She reminded us that significant improvements are not going to happen overnight or on their own, and require time and dedicated action. She highlighted state programs acting to make a difference, like the tobacco Quit Line, and Get Fit Tennessee, the website of which includes a free healthy cookbook I need to check out.

Cooper asked us to think about small personal changes we can make, but to also think about policy. Her vision of policy extends beyond whatever the legislature is or isn’t doing – we are asked to think about how university, urban design, and other policies affect the health of our community, and to ask for these policies to be formed in ways that promote our health.

All of this is a very long-winded way of saying – I left today’s report card launch inspired, and hope seeing the disparities and room for major improvement of the full report inspires you, too.

*Disclosure: Vanderbilt is my larger place of work, and people I’ve worked with worked on this report.

Filed under: Birth, Cancer, Events & Observances, Heart Health, Infectious Diseases, Mental Health, Pregnancy, Women’s Health

The New England Journal of Medicine published a freely available Clinical Practice article, “Care of Transsexual Persons.” It covers hormones, surgery, and adolescents. Note that it does use the problematic gender identity “disorder” language as included in the DSM and it also promotes the standard psychological counseling hoops that transgender persons must jump through prior to obtaining treatment – Julia Serano‘s “Whipping Girl” provides a good primer on why those hoops can be problematic. It might be worth checking out what kinds of materials health care providers are seeing regarding these topics, including how they’re problematic.

Relatedly, there’s a possibility that “gender identity disorder” will be renamed “gender incongruence” in the DSM-V.

Laura Chapin at a US News politics blog asks why anti-choice extremism is so commonplace and continuous threats against providers are considered acceptable:

It’s the acceptance of a level of hatred directed at women, especially poor women, seeking reproductive healthcare and abortions. And it’s the acceptance of threats and violence directed at the doctors, staff, and healthcare workers trying to provide it to them.

The Boston Globe has a very brief story illustrating the problem of giving obesity too much focus and attention when diagnosing a patient.

In The Crocodile Tears of Anti-Choice Billboarders, Gaylon Alcarez outlines the failures and disingenuousness of anti-choice billboards targeting Black women. Just read it.

Relatedly, NARAL and SisterSong have partnered to fight such billboards in Texas.

The CDC notes April as STD Awareness Month (can we get that changed to STI?), including some resources for providers and for finding testing.

Studies presented at meetings always have the caveat that they need to be peer-reviewed and have the methods and data published in order for the public to fully review and understand them. However, I wanted to note this recent news item:

New Orleans residents were found to have three times the rate of heart attacks four years after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina than before the storm and levee break that flooded the city, according to a study presented at a major heart meeting on Sunday.

I’ll be interested to see the paper when published; the news item focuses on psychiatric illness, stress, and employment, but I wonder how much people with more financial resources leaving the area and access to care generally play a role.

Via TransTalk, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Recommended Actions to Improve the Health and Well-Being of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Communities, which includes a summary of actions taken and recommendations for future actions. What do you think? Will this make a difference? Have they focused the right way?

The Institute of Medicine released a new report, The Health of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People: Building a Foundation for Better Understanding. It’s freely available if you read the PDF online; I haven’t read it yet, so I can’t vouch for how truly inclusive or useful it is.

Note to self: don’t ever move to the Dakotas. Most recently, North Dakota approved abstinence-only sex education.

A worthy rant from tigtog at Hoyden: Don’t mistake expressing contempt for taking offense.

Via Siobhan (who I’ll get to see at a health literacy conference in May – yay!) at BHIC, HHS Launches New Consumer-Focused Immunization Website. The new site is vaccines.gov.

Shameless Self-Promotion: at work, we’re posting staff profiles to our Facebook page leading up to an open house event; here’s mine. I’d appreciate if any personal comments were left here or on my own Facebook page instead of there.

Unrelated to health, except for the insurance aspect: an employer of 500+ people in my hometown is closing. The employees (largely hourly, relatively low wage) of this furniture factory were called together and basically told that – in addition to the upcoming closing – their health insurance was ending effective immediately. If that doesn’t illustrate a major problem with employer-based insurance, I don’t know what does. The county already has an unemployment rate over 10% so I expect those folks will have a hard time finding work; the company had been in town for more than 70 years.

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Events & Observances, Heart Health, Infectious Diseases, Laws, Legislation, & Courts, Libraryland, News Round-Ups, Sex & Sex Education, Shameless Self-Promotion, Web Resources

I have notes from at at least three lectures I need to write up here; this is the first, on homelessness and health. Upcoming posts when I get a chance to process my notes will cover a talks by Bishop Gene Robinson, on adolescent hormone therapy for trans youth, and on taking a sexual history. The post below is from a talk I attended on February 2, 2011.

As part of the larger workplace’s Health Disparities Week 2011, I attended a lecture by Robertson Nash, MBA, MSN, ACNP, BC entitled “Homelessness and Poverty: Suffering in Nashville.” Nash is a nurse practitioner and has worked with homeless populations in Nashville in various capacities; his talk emphasized the causes and cycle of homelessness, and focused somewhat on breaking down people’s assumptions on what causes homelessness and what homeless people need from clinical care providers and others.

Nash began with this powerful statement: “Social marginalization produces measurable harm to human health.” That was our first clue that Nash was not going to let us off easy for our contributions to homelessness through our participation in larger social choices and biases.

He presented photos of makeshift shelters set up by homeless people within a mile or two of our comparably very wealthy and privileged campus population, and noted that you do not have to travel the globe to find people suffering. He introduced attendees to concepts of absolute and relative poverty, the living wage, problems with how local homeless population counts are done, and types of homelessness (transitional, episodic, and chronic).

I haven’t found the study yet, but Nash noted that the Peabody school did a study in the past few years and found that about $10K was being spent each year per chronically homeless while that person was still on the streets, and that these expenditures were more than what it would cost to house somebody. He also explained his belief, however, that simply providing housing is not an easy fix for homelessness, because it ignores the complexity of the problem, and can take people out of their cultures (including the “culture of homelessness”) and communities and dump them into isolation without the skills to succeed and thrive.

Nash then offered a fishbowl analogy to critique our society and our current approach to homelessness. He said that in the homeostatic approach, you get healthy fish by focusing on the health of the fish in the tank, but in an allostatic approach, you get healthy fish by looking at the fishbowl and how the environment and stress in that environment affects health. He then introduced the concept of the allostatic load, chronic stress and what it does to people over time.

Nash explained that our society is currently homeostatically oriented, that we are currently more interested in making sure myth of equal opportunity is upheld rather than focusing on equal outcomes for people, that we’re focused on getting people to the starting line, and then they’re on their own – we perpetuate a belief that if a person succeeds they did it on their own, and if they didn’t, then there is something wrong with the individual (not with society or the environment – the fishbowl).

As he explained, you have to take care of the aquarium, because the fish will die if you don’t. If you have a toxic environment, toxic responses are all you can expect.

In homelessness, these toxic responses can include persistent mental illness, substance abuse, lack of access to income, and the giving up of hope. Nash stated that people can become lost, and become “unmotivated by the rewards of normative behavior.” These responses can perpetuate the problem, such as when substance abuse leads to destruction of family bonds and bridges to institutional resources. Nash described these issues as parts of a cycle of chronic homelessness, including:
a) hopelessness,
b) the experience of social isolation, trauma, and abuse,
c) depression, substance abuse, crime, and prostitution
Nash explained that a person can enter the cycle at any of those three points, and that once you get in it is self-reinforcing.

Nash also took a minute to speak about incarceration as a gateway to homelessness, including the “war on drugs” and racially driven aspects of our criminal “justice”/incarceration system in this country. He noted the serious racial disparities in who gets arrested for, charged with, and incarcerated for crimes in America, and the miserable job we do at reintegrating people into society post-incarceration.

Transitioning more to physical health issues, Nash talked about human beings as highly social animals with a highly developed need to belong in groups, and bodies that respond in predictable ways to social isolation with direct negative effects on our health. He argued, compellingly, that we have to move beyond biomedical model into a biopsychosocial model that recognizes the fishbowl. In other words, we can’t just look at individuals and their current health needs that we can treat with a pill or procedure – we have to look at the social structure and environment they inhabit and effect structural changes. He also spoke of specific physiologic effects of the types of stressers experienced by homeless people, including increases in glucose and cortisol, risks for hypertension, high cholesterol, and higher levels of clotting factors. Nash explained that homeless individuals may get some of these problems treated on a short term basis when they enter the healthcare system due to an emergency, but basically made the point that this ends up being short-term help for long-term, bigger problems. Or, as he put it -”if you’re homeless and are lucky enough to get by a bus you might get thirty days of lisinopril and no more treatment until you get hit by the bus again.” Shelter diets were described as “miserable,” with Nash having no love for people who – in donating substandard food to shelters – “give food they won’t eat to other people and then pat themselves on the back for it.”

As a bigger picture concern, Nash hammered home the problem of having no safe space within which to understand life as having a purpose greater than daily survival. To make this understandable to the largely privileged audience, he explained that when your next sandwich is an all-consuming thought, you can’t make a five year plan, read great books, think great thoughts, and make plans. In other words, privileges that those in the audience take for granted every day are completely inaccessible.

Finally, Nash outlined many of the barriers the medical system itself creates for homeless people seeking care. He asked us to think through a model clinic visit, in which the patient makes an appointment, shows up at clinic, understands the diagnosis and instructions, takes a prescription to a pharmacy, takes the medication, and then gets better or maintains/improves chronic illness, and the provider gets paid. Beyond the simplistic “affording it,” he noted the following problems a homeless individual may experience:
-lack of access to a phone to make an appointment, or a social worker may have made the appointment;
-lack of shared goals for care – there is no compelling reason to focus on common medical goals like improving glucose by ten points; people trying to get their next sandwich could not care less about their BMI;
-no transportation to get to the doctor or to a pharmacy, and no money for copays for medicine (Nash noted that while, for example, Publix gives away free antibiotics, they’re a suburban chain so their free antibiotics is mitigated by the fact that people in urban areas can’t get there);
-medication is easily lost or stolen in a shelter.

Nash emphasized that what we take for granted as straightforward can actually be very complicated.

The following advice was offered to future medical providers:
-know youself..authentic empathy is important but you cannot get lost in the suffering of other individuals if you want to take care of them;
-do not infantilize or enable patients;
-understand that each persons disease is their own and they are free to make both tragic or heroic decisions, and to face the consequences of those decisions (presumably within the confines of their ability to freely choose);
-move slowly and intentionally toward goals..don’t over promise and underdeliver as your failure reinforces the lack of trust
-empower patients with small goals;
-clearly accept blame for mistakes – doing so deflects cynicism;
-model with intention the kinds of socially normative behaviors you wish patients to use in their own lives – be honest, caring, and open;
-understand that just because you wrte the prescription does not mean the patient can afford it, aquire it, keep it, and understand why to take it and key side effects to look for.

Healthcare issues for homeless people – or the issues of homeless people in general – are not something I currently know much about, but I was glad to be able to attend Nash’s talk, and to share some of the ideas he presented here.

Filed under: Access, Rights, & Choice, Events & Observances, Health

I just realized last night that I haven’t actually posted anything here since last Sunday’s round-up. In usual blogger style, I’m going to say how busy I’ve been. This week has been pretty packed at work, including work related to another women’s health topic comparative effectiveness review that might get done. I also found out that I get to go to the IHA health literacy conference this year, which I’m really excited about – but that of course took some unexpected time making arrangements and working with colleagues on a poster abstract.

At home, I’m currently reading “The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex,” which I’m finding pretty compelling, and which talks about the ways in which dependence on foundation funding stifles organizations (especially social justice orgs) from doing what actually needs doing in their communities and effecting real change. In an odd coincidence, the Friday lecture I attended at work this week was on tips for obtaining foundation grants. Ha.

I also read the last volume of Y The Last Man (although I skipped book 9 because the library can’t seem to find it…it’s been “on search” for two weeks). People, the monkey made me cry. *embarrassing*

The spouse and I also built a computer together this week. For various work and home reasons, it’s running Windows 7 rather than being a hackintosh or something else interesting. It was a fun nerd project though, and a long overdue replacement for the Mac laptop bought ~2002 that is making ominous noises. I’m trying to get by with OpenOffice, installed the protein FoldIt game, and have set up a character in World of Warcraft. Let’s hope that last doesn’t lead to even fewer posts.

Over at Our Bodies Our Blog, I actually have a couple of new posts. One is on some recent attention to the potential (although relatively low) risk of atypical fractures in some long-term users of bisphosphonates (like Boniva and Fosamax), drugs intended to reduce hip fractures in folks with osteoporosis.

The second is on the U.S. Justice Department’s new task force to address violence against American Indian women. While this violence needs attention, I express my skepticism of a police/state/Justice Department solution and include an INCITE! report on police violence against Native women, especially violence against trans women. There are also links to recent news about violence against/disappearance of Native women in Canada. (Note: I checked several sources on the preference for “American Indian” over “Native American,” and AI seemed to win out, but I’m willing to be corrected.)

People are also sharing their OBOS Stories in anticipation of the 40th anniversary edition; please share yours if you have a tale of receiving or reading the book, in any edition.

For those who have inquired, my dad has finished his chemotherapy and has started some different chemo with radiation. They’re in east Tennessee and he missed an appointment last week when Knoxville was experiencing flash floods – I’m glad they were not caught out in it. Radiation is going to suck, but the doctors still seem optimistic about dad’s treatment. Thanks for your thoughts.

Filed under: Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Cancer, Events & Observances

At 8:00 pm this Saturday, February 5th, the Student National Medical Association and Vanderbilt School of Medicine V-Day Committee will present a performance of The Vagina Monologues at Sarratt Cinema. A silent auction will be held to benefit the Shade Tree Clinic, a community free clinic run by Vanderbilt medical students.

The production closes out Vanderbilt’s Health Disparities Week 2011. According to the website:

The proceeds from this production of The Vagina Monologues will benefit women of our city, country, and world. We are proud to support future Shade Tree Women’s Health initiatives, the VDAY Campaign, and women in the world suffering from HIV/AIDS.

Filed under: Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Events & Observances

“Library Day in the Life” is an annual event in which librarians use Twitter, blog posts, and other avenues to share a bit about their daily work. It’s rather misnamed, as it has now become a week-long observance, but the idea is to better share the variety of services provided by and activities performed by librarians. This week was the 6th observance of LDitL, hence the #libday6 hashtag you may have seen on Twitter this week.

My own #libday6 tweets, in reverse chronological order, and with some notes in brackets:

rachel_w: Yes, you can have food in (certain areas of) this library – someone right now has a loaf of bread & jar of PB, is chowing down. #libday6

rachel_w: Earlier in wk: added items to MLA gov’t relations committee blog, participated in intern’s training verification, project planning #libday6

rachel_w: Talking to biomedical researchers this morning about library tools and services, then some web updates, and more EPC lit search #libday6
[the talk included NIH public access compliance, chat help through Meebo, our installation of the PolyMeta search tool and embedded PubMed search tool, finding e-resources, making online training requests, genetics/biochem assistance, and more]

rachel_w: getting data from ClinicalTrials.gov into Word table I have to use all the time would be so much easier w/ an @EndNoteBlog filter #libday6
[I asked an EndNote rep about please, please! adding a ClinicalTrials.gov filter at MLA last May. We still don't have one. I will keep trying.]

rachel_w: heard from science2.0 online group that important website was down, whois no help, found cached version for info & contacted them. #libday6
[this was the PRISMA Statement site; they responded promptly, and the site is back up]

rachel_w: Today: prepping for Fri talk to researchers on lib resources/services, more work on AHRQ EPC topic triage lit searching. #libday6
[the talk went well - had good audience questions and let people know about many library services that I don't think they knew how to fully take advantage of]

rachel_w: Yesterday: attended staff CE session where we worked w/ entrez gene, pharmGKB, PubMed & dbSNP to find gene, associated drug effects #libday6
[welcome to the new medical librarianship]

rachel_w: Came in early for great meeting with certified diabetes educators #libday6

rachel_w: Feedback given to one trainee on a learning exercise, still wading through sources for review of a screening/treatment topic #libday6
[can't really talk about this last one yet, but it *is* a women's health topic]

rachel_w: now to continue on topic triage work for AHRQ EPC systematic review topic, seeing what lit already exists #libday6

rachel_w: also sent poster made by @knilob for new patient health info service up the chain for approval #libday6
[one of the last things before we launch a new service]

rachel_w: So far: reviewed new colleague’s search strategy work; outlined friday talk to researchers on new library site/resources/services #libday6

Of course, there is more that I was up to in my medical library this week than I chose to or am able to share, but I think you can get the idea. Some things I also did and can share were to attend emergency medicine’s weekly case conference (I’m their librarian at present), provided a trainee with some feedback on her search strategies, met with other trainees about their progress on their learning plans (we have very structured staff training to make sure everybody gets to the same baseline), took some surveys to help inform a colleague’s research, and updated some of our web content on copyright and starting points for funding sources.

Like many other librarians, I also spent at least a minute delighting in this post by Wil Wheaton, “librarians are awesome.”

For a look at what other librarians are up to, check out this list of #libday6 participants and #libday6-tagged tweets.

Filed under: Events & Observances, Health, Libraryland

Yesterday was the sixth annual Blog for Choice day – officially, I missed it, but I think the issues raised in yesterday’s post on the Kermit Gosnell abortion clinic atrocities are important ones to discuss. Today (the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade), I’m getting with the official program to attempt to answer this year’s theme question: Given the anti-choice gains in the states and Congress, are you concerned about choice in 2011?

Of course. Of course.

Of course I’m concerned at the national level. Efforts to change provisions of health care reform or penalize people and companies when their health insurance covers abortion may have serious effects, and represent further anti-choice efforts to mislead people about “federal funding for abortion.” I hope that most of these attempts will not only pass the House, though, having little chance for real implementation – although we’d have to count on our Democratic Senators voting pretty uniformly for the pro-choice position, and I don’t think we can count on that.

I’m more concerned at the state level. Here in Tennessee, some of the most egregiously anti-choice and anti-woman legislation used to get stuck in committee. This, I’m afraid, will no longer be the case.

Hell, on November 5, 2008, I wrote that pro-choice advocates needed to start paying attention to what was happening in Tennessee, that we were going to need your attention and help. That is only more true now, as Republicans now control the state House, Senate, and Governor’s office. The new Republican House speaker has reworked the committees, assigning Republicans to head all of them, with Glen Casada selected for the Health and Human Services committee – typically one first stop for any abortion-related bills. Casada is currently working to block a non-discrimination ordinance, opposed gay marriage, and pledges to “work to change Tennessee’s laws so that the most innocent have the same constitutional right that you and I have, the ‘right to life.’”

Tennessee anti-choice politicians have been trying to pass a constitutional amendment to state that nothing in our state Constitution protects the right to an abortion for years – of course I’m worried that this will be the period in which they are actually able to do so.

Forced ultrasounds, death certificates for abortion, more restrictive waiting periods and other regulations – I’m guessing it’s all on the table, that our state Republicans would rather work on these anti-choice political “wins” than addressing jobs, education, infrastructure, or other pressing issues. We already get a “D” grade from NARAL Pro-Choice America, which estimates that 94% of our counties already have no abortion provider.

Welcome to Tennessee. Please check your reproductive rights at the state line.

Other participating blogs are listed at http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/get-involved/online-day-of-action/bfcd11-main.html with links to their sites. I will soon be overfeeding my RSS reader with lots of sites I hadn’t seen until now. A couple of posts I liked (after randomly clicking on blogs with intriuing titles and a few familiar ones):

• Ethiopian Feminist: “I feel that the growing influence of the extreme right and related anti-choice gains at the domestic level will soon thereafter have a spill over on international policy.”
• Shark-fu is concerned *and* encouraged
• The Feminist Librarian – how did I not see this blog before now?? “It’s the responsibility of those of us who are pro-choice on abortion and reproductive health to articulate what people do need to follow through on their choices. Because if we don’t, we might have a ‘choice’ … but not much of a chance to act on it.”
• Also, here are my 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010 Blog for Choice Day posts.

Filed under: Abortion, Access, Rights, & Choice, Events & Observances, Government

Each MLK Day, I try to find at least one letter, speech, or other material of Dr. King’s that I’m not familiar with – something beyond the usual “I Have a Dream” speech – and read it. Below is a powerful excerpt of the piece I read this year, via The Martin Luther King, Jr. Institute Research and Education Institute at Stanford.

The context is a larger sermon on peace, stemming from a comment in the local newspaper that “Things are quiet in Tuscaloosa today. There is peace on the campus of the University of Alabama,” after Autherine Lucy was accepted at the University’s first black student but was asked to leave after a violent and threatening response from opponents of desegregation.

But peace is not merely the absence of this tension, but the presence of justice. And even if we didn’t have this tension, we still wouldn’t have positive peace. Yes, it is true that if the Negro accepts his place, accepts exploitation and injustice, there will be peace. But it would be a peace boiled down to stagnant complacency, deadening passivity, and if peace means this, I don’t want peace.

1) If peace means accepting second-class citizenship, I don’t want it.
2) If peace means keeping my mouth shut in the midst of injustice and evil, I don’t want it.
3) If peace means being complacently adjusted to a deadening status quo, I don’t want peace.
4) If peace means a willingness to be exploited economically, dominated politically, humiliated and segregated, I don’t want peace. So in a passive, non-violent manner, we must revolt against this peace.

29 March 1956, “When Peace Becomes Obnoxious,” Sermon Delivered on 18 March 1956, Louisville, Ky.

Relatedly, here’s Jay Smooth’s ever popular “Ten OTHER Things Martin Luther King Said:”

[I didn't find a transcript available]

Filed under: Access, Rights, & Choice, Events & Observances

A few stories that have caught my attention over the last week:

Unlike many people, the larger workplace does not have MLK Day tomorrow as a holiday. I’m going to two lectures at work, though – the first is from Robert L. Satcher, Jr., physician and astronaut, on “Fulfilling the Dream: Minorities in Biosciences.” The second will be Julian Bond, civil rights activist, on “The Road to Freedom: From Alabama to Obama.” The Julian Bond talk is free and open to the public but tickets are required; on Friday the Sarratt box office still had tickets.

The CDC released their first report on health disparities and inequalities. It provides data on a number of issues and disparities, including exposure to air pollution, health insurance coverage, infant deaths, inadequate and unhealthy housing, preterm births, homicide, and many others.

This NPR bit on buildings and building standards in Haiti (as related to earthquakes and their damage) has a striking line in it from a seismologist working in the region: “poverty and corruption kill [because they undercut construction standards, he says. People cheat.]” It’s such a clear example of the truth of that statement, I felt the need to mark it.

Relatedly, MADRE has released a new report on sexual violence in camps in Haiti one year after the country’s devastating earthquake.

The 2011 standards of medical care for diabetes from the American Diabetes Association came out this month in the journal Diabetes Care.

A Canadian publication brought attention to the practice of pelvic exams done on anesthetized women without their knowledge or consent. Here in the U.S., there was some controversy over this practice a few years back, resulting in some institutions changing their practices, but it still happens and I’m mulling over whether it would be possible to get state and/or federal laws passed banning the practice outright.

Report: Drug-Sniffing Dogs Are Wrong More Often Than Right. In short, in Chicago, dogs were way over-alerting their handlers, and at least one expert thinks it might be because of the behavior of those handlers. According to the story:

…officers found drugs or paraphernalia in only 44 percent of cases in which the dogs had alerted them. When the driver was Latino, the dogs were right just just 27 percent of the time.

The obvious concerns here about racial profiling and unjustified searches are discussed in the full article from the Chicago Tribune.

The American College of Nurse-Midwives is holding their annual video contest, and is accepting video submissions supporting midwifery or on becoming a midwife through March 31.

This piece describes some of the barriers to safety and freedom faced by immigrant women who are abused and are in the U.S. without legal documentation.

Jodi Jacobson at RH Reality Check writes about The Pregnancy Police and Citizens’ Arrests of Pregnant and Nursing Women. In Tennessee, a woman who abused cocaine during her pregnancy, and whose infant was found to have cocaine its system, is being charged with aggravated child abuse.

A trans woman was murdered in Minneapolis. OutFront Minnesota has info on the planned vigil and anti-violence efforts.

Pam at Pam’s House Blend has links to info and commentary on the gruesome story of videos sent to the LAPD which depict men sexually assaulting several disabled women.

Angry Asian Man has a nice round-up of posts by Asian authors with critical responses to the “tiger mother/Chinese mother” thing. Amy Chua herself has claimed that the WSJ misrepresented her work in the controversial parenting article.

Jill at Feministe points to a story of an Idaho pharmacist who refused to fill a prescription written by a Planned Parenthood nurse practitioner unless the NP would disclose whether the drug was needed for abortion-related follow-up care.

The sixth annual Blog for Choice day is coming up this Friday, January 21. The theme for this year is: Given the anti-choice gains in the states and Congress, are you concerned about choice in 2011?

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Drugs, Ethics, Events & Observances, Global Issues, Midwifery, Miscellaneous, News Round-Ups, Pregnancy

First things first: the Senate voted on Saturday to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. Hurray! The roll call vote for all of the Senators is here, reflecting the 65 votes for repeal and 35 votes against. The votes for repeal came almost exclusively from Democrats, with just eight Republicans voting yes. My own Senators, Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander, were unsurprisingly among the Republicans who voted against repeal; I’m disappointed in them for voting their party and their prejudice to be on the wrong side of history, the wrong side of human rights and dignity.

The repeal will not become active for at least 60 days; HRC has a Pathway to Final Repeal document [PDF] that explains the necessary next steps, and warns service members about the interim:

The Human Rights Campaign issues this critical warning to service members: Repeal of DADT is not effective immediately and service members are still at risk of being discharged on the basis of their sexual orientation until certification occurs and 60 days have passed.

Also, as @polerin was clearly pointing out yesterday, the repeal of DADT does not protect trans service members, and passage of ENDA is still needed to protect trans workers everywhere. Trans Talk has a copy of a statement on this issue from the Transgender American Veterans Association.

Of course, the Senate also failed to pass the DREAM Act, which would have provided some avenues to education and citizenship for young immigrants brought here as children. I keep reading the “DREAM Act defeated” headlines as “DREAM Act deferred…”

In other news, Kate Harding has a completely amazing post, Some Shit I’m Sick of Hearing Regarding Rape and Assange. You really just need to read it if you have heard the commentary that Wikileaks’ Assange *just* didn’t use a condom, are tired of that commentary, or don’t yet understand what’s so problematic about that line of Assange defense. It’s a crash course in recognizing and combating rape apology.

Relatedly, Sady of Tiger Beatdown has had some internet drama related to Michael Moore’s reaction to the Assange situation and his minimizing comments related to the rape accusations – Sady has been demanding that rape victims’ stories not be thrown under the bus of Wikileaks worship. It involves a Keith Olbermann Twitter flounce. Thanks to Sady for tirelessly afflicting the powerful. Just go catch up over there. Kate Harding has also posted her support in Why I’m On Board With #mooreandme.

I just finished reading “Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity,” a collection of essays on passing, gender, race, and identity. Some of the essays are better than others, but the whole book is worth a read for an interesting meditation on dominant narratives, the ways in which so many individuals don’t perfectly fit our assumptions about who/what people are, and how we create and convey our identities along the way.

I have issues with this story and the reactions it has generated that probably need to be explored in a longer post. I never saw the “Is She A Hero Or A Danger?” language CNN purportedly used to discuss this woman who had a home VBAC after three cesareans (VBA3C); that’s not the headline now, but I think the answer is probably “neither,” and “these are the very cases against which we test our principles about what a woman can and cannot be compelled to do with her body for the sake of another person’s body.”

New sexually transmitted infection treatment guidelines are out from the CDC; they also include screening and prevention recommendations.

Renee at Womanist Musings shares a video about images of women in advertising.

Cara at The Curvature points to a local story I’d missed: Nashville Police Officers Charged With Domestic Violence Get to Keep Their Jobs. Ugh. This reminds me that I need to contact Nashville police to follow up on an incident of police action I witnessed/reported.

In other local news, the story of Coach Howe’s dismissal from Belmont University because of her sexual orientation made the New York Times. For ongoing coverage, the Belmont Vision student newspaper and Pith in the Wind (blog of the local alt-weekly) seem to be doing the best job.

At Feministe, Hospital saves woman’s life; is told by Catholic leadership not to do it again, Oops, I forgot to have babies!, and two posts related to the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers – It’s not just violent clients who abuse sex workers, and Whore Stigma Makes No Sense.

RHRC is also hosting a series to explore and combat violence against sex workers.

Perhaps I’m entirely too skeptical, but I find it hard to buy this official story that the 36 LGBT books damaged with urine in a Harvard library were “accidentally” damaged by a staff member who just *happened* to spill a nearby open bottle of urine on said books. I’m a librarian, and a spilly/messy one at that, but this really strains my credulity.

As always, please check out Our Bodies Our Blog – this week we’ve been talking about genetic testing and privacy, and Avastin.

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Birth, Ethics, Events & Observances, Government, Infectious Diseases, Libraryland, Miscellaneous, News Round-Ups, Pregnancy, Reviews

Some of my recent posts at Our Bodies Our Blog are highlighted below. Don’t forget the upcoming 40th anniversary of the landmark book; a new edition will come out next year to celebrate the milestone! In the meantime, catch up with health news and commentary over at http://www.ourbodiesourblog.org

Election-Related Repro Rights Round-Up – a collection of commentary from reproductive rights advocates on what the recent election may mean for women.

NPR Takes on Pink Ribbon Fatigue: Views from Komen, Breast Cancer Action – NPR talked to a representative of Breast Cancer Action, which has criticized pink ribbon campaigns for breast cancer, and a representative of Komen, which kind of thrives on them.

Meeting Dispatch: Resources from the CUE/Cochrane/Campbell Colloquium – Includes links to plenary session videos from speakers including Susan Love and former Rep. Patricia Schroeder, as well as online resources for health information.

Letters Respond to Lancet Home Birth Editorial With Feminist Perspective – snippets from letters responding to an editorial that proclaimed that “Women have the right to choose how and where to give birth, but they do not have the right to put their baby at risk.” Oh hell yeah we do. Ahem.

And also, from our fearless leader Judy Norsigian: Share Your Story: What Have You Learned About Your Body from a Women’s Health Nurse-Practitioner Or Other OB-GYN Clinician? – a call for clinicians to share their stories of educating women about their bodies, and for women who have benefited from clinicians who really take the time to explain what’s going on with their bodies to tell those stories as well. See the post for further details.

Filed under: Access, Rights, & Choice, Boobs, Cancer, Events & Observances, Government, Miscellaneous, Web Resources, Women’s Health

[cross-posted from Our Bodies Our Blog]

At the recent Consumers United for Evidence-based Healthcare Advocacy Summit and joint colloquium of the Cochrane and Campbell Collaborations (#ccckeystone), I met many interesting people with fond memories of their first experiences with the “Our Bodies, Ourselves” book. I loved hearing these stories, about how a small group of friends used the book to perform self-exams, how it motivated women to advocate for themselves or become active in women’s health and rights, and the many other ways in which the landmark book has inspired so many people.

Believe it or not, 2011 is the 40th anniversary of the first edition of the book. As part of the celebration, OBOS is releasing a new edition of the book and hosting a symposium that will bring together women who are culturally adapting and transforming “Our Bodies, Ourselves” into different formats for use in their own countries.

We’ll be writing more about these events over the course of the next year, but for now, we invite you to share your own stories. If you have an OBOS story – however brief, or however “small” it may seem to you – please share it with us. We love to hear them, and plan to use the stories in conjunction with our 40th anniversary celebration and book release next year.

For more information on the upcoming anniversary and book, including how to support the new edition, check out our anniversary page. Also check out our history section for lots of cool and interesting information about how the book came to be and the impact it has had over the years.

Filed under: Events & Observances, Miscellaneous, Women’s Health

A few things of interest:

Nikki has notes from a recent Twitter chat on health literacy, including a bunch of suggested resources on the topic.

PF Anderson points to a great presentation (embedded there) on using social media for sharing family planning messages. It’s a useful introduction to tools like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube with examples of how they’re being used by groups like Planned Parenthood.

A nice response to the ridiculous “i like it…” statuses on Facebook that are inexplicably supposed to make people feel like they’re doing something about women’s health: I like it without pinkwashing

Weight loss drug Meridia was taken off the market, “because of clinical trial data indicating an increased risk of heart attack and stroke.” An FDA person said, “Meridia’s continued availability is not justified when you compare the very modest weight loss that people achieve on this drug to their risk of heart attack or stroke.”

RH Reality Check has good posts on lawsuits resulting from misrepresentations in anti-abortion political ads, and an example of how reproductive choice is not always about abortion.

Last week was National Midwifery Week; there are several relevant posts at Midwife Connection. The whole month is National Medical Librarians Month; I’m kind of bummed that there seem to only be websites for librarians (posters and materials to use), rather than a central site/page/anything that promotes the month to *non-librarians.* Maybe I should volunteer for that.

Science & Sensibility has a thing about emergency funds for pregnant women on bedrest who are experiencing financial difficulties because of the bedrest – such as being fired from their much-needed jobs.

Some high school girls decided to organize a campaign in their school for girls to not wear make-up one day each week as an empowerment thing. It’s kind of cool. I’ll be over here waiting to see how many expand that to the rest of the week, whether the girls who were already not wearing make-up every day or otherwise conforming to social standards are being embraced or still shunned, and whether anybody is going to ask why girls are expected to wear make-up at all when their male peers obviously aren’t. *one step at a time*

Something I would not have thought of if it weren’t for seeing this post, and that’s what I love about FWD/Forward – discussion of how the switch from physical buttons to touch screens at cash register card self-swipe machines creates difficulties for blind and low-vision consumers.

Via Siobhan at BHIC, info on a new government helpline for folks affected by the oil spill.

Finally, there have been some great videos posted at http://www.youtube.com/itgetsbetterproject, http://www.youtube.com/trevorprojectmedia, and elsewhere to try to combat the bullying and despair lgbt teens experience, particularly in reaction to recent suicides. My favorite thus far is from Sarah Silverman on how kids learn to be so cruel, embedded below. Warning for an f-bomb.

[Relatedly, Renee reminds us that "anti-bullying is not solely the fight of the LGBT community", and Cara talks about anti-trans violence in jail]

Filed under: Abortion, Abuse, Rape, & Safety, Access, Rights, & Choice, Adolescent Health, Body Image & Eating Disorders, Boobs, Cancer, Drugs, Events & Observances, Government, Libraryland, Midwifery, Miscellaneous, News Round-Ups