When Diversity is Not Enough: An Intersectional Examination of How Juvenile Legal System Actors of Color Experience the System's Welfare Mandate for Girls of Color

System actors of color are considered a key intervention to reduce disparities in the juvenile legal system precisely because they share intersectional experiences of oppression similar to those experienced by system-involved youth. In this study, we interrogate the assumption that diversifying the workforce can remedy intersectional disparities in youth outcomes. Grounded in intersectionality, we analyzed semi-structured interviews with 17 (12 women, five men) actors of color-eight at the frontline, five at the mid-level, and four at the top level. Specifically, we examined their narratives of lived oppressions, juxtaposed these narratives with their articulations of how well the system meets its welfare mandate, and examined actors' sense of their ability to contribute to girls' welfare, attending especially to how these experiences vary by their positions in the system's hierarchy. Our findings suggest that actors of color indeed share experiences of oppression as system-involved youth, particularly along axes of race and gender. Further, across all levels of institutional positionality, actors articulate a disjunction, revealing the system's accountability to bureaucratic and funding structures rather than girls; they respond to this disjunction through resistant actions-with different degrees of effectiveness-anchored in accountability to girls, and by envisioning how, given their roles and relative power, the system can meet its social welfare mandate.

Social capital, population health, and the gendered statistics of cardiovascular and all-cause mortality

Scholars in the field of population health need to be on the constant lookout for the danger that their tacit ideological commitments translate into systematic biases in how they interpret their empirical results. This contribution illustrates this problematic by critically interrogating a set of concepts such as tradition, trust, social capital, community, or gender, that are routinely used in population health research even though they carry a barely acknowledged political and ideological load. Alongside this wider deconstruction of loaded concepts, I engage critically but constructively with Martin Lindström et al.'s paper “Social capital, the miniaturization of community, traditionalism and mortality: A population-based prospective cohort study in southern Sweden” to evaluate the extent to which it fits with other empirical findings in the extant literature. Taking as a point of departure the intriguing finding that social capital predicts cardiovascular and all-cause mortality only for men, but not for women, I argue that future research on the nexus of social capital, health, and mortality needs to frame gender not only as a demographic and statistical variable, but also as an ontological conundrum and as an epistemological sensibility.

Life in a slum neighborhood of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: morphological facts and their dysfunctions

Objectives

(1) To explore morphological facts that typically characterize life in Setegn Meda slum neighborhood. (2) To identify dysfunctions of those morphological facts. (3) To discuss some of the differences and similarities between the study area and other forms of a slum in Addis Ababa as outlined by Alemayehu (2008) based on selected morphological facts.

Methods

The study adopted a qualitative case study research design rooted in a pragmatic constructivist approach to a case study. Information was gathered through semi-structured interviews and field observation, and then analyzed using a deductive thematic analysis technique.

Results and conclusion

This study found that the morphological facts that typically characterize life in Setegn Meda slum neighborhood are: Dilapidated Housing; Limited Access to Infrastructure; Congested Settlement; Positionality; and Being a Slum as a relational Construct. This study also found that these morphological facts have their inherent dysfunctions: Physical Health Risk; Psychological Distress; Economic Cost; and Social Cost. Results further show that the dysfunctions of some morphological facts have a gender dimension where women suffer more. The difference and similarities between the study area and other forms of a slum in Addis Ababa as outlined by Alemayehu (2008) were discussed based on selected morphological facts. The discussion suggests that let alone the homogeneity of slums at the global level, slums are rather heterogamous even at a national/local level. The discussion has also highlighted that the classification of slums in Addis Ababa as proposed by Alemayehu (2008) for one thing is not exhaustive and needs some modifications.

Implications

The study is expected to hold significance both at empirical and theoretical levels. Some of the empirical significances of this study are: it challenges the conventional categorization of slums in Addis Ababa; it provides a thick description of morphological facts in a slum neighborhood and their dysfunctions to the inhabitants, and it brings the gender dimension of dysfunctions of morphological facts to the audience. Whereas, the theoretical significance could be drawn from how the study tried to make functionalism theoretically useful to the study of a slum habitat.

Responsible innovation in synthetic biology in response to COVID-19: the role of data positionality

Synthetic biology, as an engineering approach to biological systems, has the potential to disruptively innovate the development of vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics. Data accessibility and differences in data-usage capabilities are important factors in shaping this innovation landscape. In this paper, the data that underpin synthetic biology responses to the COVID-19 pandemic are analyzed as positional information goods-goods whose value depends on exclusivity. The positionality of biological data impacts the ability to guide innovations toward societally preferred goals. From both an ethical and economic point of view, positionality can lead to suboptimal as well as beneficial situations. When aiming for responsible innovation (i.e. embedding societal deliberation in the innovation process), it is important to consider hurdles and facilitators in data access and use. Central governance and knowledge commons provide routes to mitigate the negative effects of data positionality.

Implementing Community-Based Participatory Research with Communities Affected by Humanitarian Crises: The Potential to Recalibrate Equity and Power in Vulnerable Contexts

Worldwide, over 70.8 million people are forcibly displaced from their homes as a result of persecution, conflict, violence, or human rights violation. In humanitarian crises, protection and the provision of basic needs are often prioritized. Research may be seen as opportunistic. However, without documenting and researching humanitarian responses, knowledge is not shared and does not accumulate, limiting the application of evidence-based interventions where they are most needed. Research in humanitarian crises is complex, both ethically and methodologically. Community-engaged research, and specifically community-based participatory research (CBPR), can address some of the challenges of research in these settings. Using case studies of research we have conducted with communities affected by humanitarian crises, we highlight challenges and opportunities of the application of the ten core principles of CBPR in humanitarian settings. Despite some challenges and barriers, CBPR is a highly effective approach to use when engaging these populations in research. We argue that the application of CBPR in these settings has the potential to recalibrate the scales of equity and power among vulnerable populations.

She knows that she will not come back: tracing patients and new thresholds of collective surveillance in PMTCT Option B

BACKGROUND

Malawi, Uganda, and Zimbabwe have recently adopted a universal 'test-and-treat' approach to the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV (Option B+). Amongst a largely asymptomatic population of women tested for HIV and immediately started on antiretroviral treatment (ART), a relatively high number are not retained in care; they are labelled 'defaulters' or 'lost-to-follow-up' patients.

METHODS

We draw on data collected as part of a study looking at ART decentralization (Lablite) to reflect on the spaces created through the instrumentalization of community health workers (CHWs) for the purpose of bringing women who default from Option B+ back into care. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with CHWs who are designated to trace Option B+ patients in Uganda, Malawi and Zimbabwe.

FINDINGS

Lost to follow up women give a range of reasons for not coming back to health facilities and often implicitly choose not to be traced by providing a false address at enrolment. New strategies have sought to utilize CHWs' liminal positionality - situated between the experience of living with HIV, having established local social ties, and being a caretaker - in order to track 'defaulters'. CHWs are often deployed without adequate guidance or training to protect confidentiality and respect patients' choice.

CONCLUSIONS

CHWs provide essential linkages between health services and patients; they embody the role of 'extension workers', a bridge between a novel health policy and 'non-compliant patients'. Option B+ offers a powerful narrative of the construction of a unilateral 'moral economy', which requires the full compliance of patients newly initiated on treatment.

Flexible positions, managed hopes: the promissory bioeconomy of a whole genome sequencing cancer study

Genomic research has rapidly expanded its scope and ambition over the past decade, promoted by both public and private sectors as having the potential to revolutionize clinical medicine. This promissory bioeconomy of genomic research and technology is generated by, and in turn generates, the hopes and expectations shared by investors, researchers and clinicians, patients, and the general public alike. Examinations of such bioeconomies have often focused on the public discourse, media representations, and capital investments that fuel these "regimes of hope," but also crucial are the more intimate contexts of small-scale medical research, and the private hopes, dreams, and disappointments of those involved. Here we examine one local site of production in a university-based clinical research project that sought to identify novel cancer predisposition genes through whole genome sequencing in individuals at high risk for cancer. In-depth interviews with 24 adults who donated samples to the study revealed an ability to shift flexibly between positioning themselves as research participants on the one hand, and as patients or as family members of patients, on the other. Similarly, interviews with members of the research team highlighted the dual nature of their positions as researchers and as clinicians. For both parties, this dual positioning shaped their investment in the project and valuing of its possible outcomes. In their narratives, all parties shifted between these different relational positions as they managed hopes and expectations for the research project. We suggest that this flexibility facilitated study implementation and participation in the face of potential and probable disappointment on one or more fronts, and acted as a key element in the resilience of this local promissory bioeconomy. We conclude that these multiple dimensions of relationality and positionality are inherent and essential in the creation of any complex economy, "bio" or otherwise.