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8: Healthcare and Empowerment

  • Page ID
    297630
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    Clinical Perspectives

    • As mentioned previously, the following sections include information on clinical perspectives

    Barriers

    • Could at-home STI testing help alleviate challenges with stigma and reduce transmission?

    • Stigmas can contribute to spread of STIs if people associate STIs with sense of morality

    • Violence — use of physical force, power, or coercion to limit or cause harm (health, autonomy, access, relationships with others)
      • Direct — physical force directed at someone; attacking someone personally or using coercion to limit another person
      • Structural — violence embedded in social structures (sociocultural beliefs, rules, and norms)
      • Institutional — form of structural violence that is formally embedded in institutions; ex: inefficient administration of justice, discrimination, authoritarianism
    • A conceptual re-evaluation of reproductive coercion: centering intent, fear and control


    • Post-exposure Prophylaxis (PEP)

      • Short-term treatment for people who have been exposed to HIV in the last 72 hours

      • Timing is important; Take it as soon after exposure as possible (up to 3 days)

      • Take PEP 1-2 times for at least 28 days

    • User guide: https://www.nyc.gov/assets/doh/downloads/pdf/ah/prep-user-guide.pdf   

    • Pre-exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP)

      • Helps lower chances of HIV up to 99% (PrEP + condoms)

      • Must test negative for HIV

      • Ongoing daily pill or shots every other month

      • Regular HIV and STI testing

      • Does not prevent against other STIs


    • Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic (Planned parenthood) in 1916

      • 1950 - began the search for an oral contraceptive method

    • Early experiments with synthetic progesterone

      • Based on Aztec tradition in Mexico – consumption of a certain yam for progestogenic effects (easing pregnancy and menstrual symptoms); consuming at toxic levels for 3-4 days could lead to sterility

      • Wild yam species used to synthesize first oral contraceptive pill 

    • Why are there blood clotting risks for some people?

      • Oral pills have to pass through the liver – there is more of a risk for clotting than there is in methods that are not orally administered


    • Shifts away from the view that health is the absence of disease

      • Wellbeing based on one’s informed decisions

      • Bodily autonomy

      • Ability to live life and achieve goals without health constraints


    • How do biological anthropologists and archaeologists understand intersectional aspects of social identity?

      • Burials may reflect the beliefs and cultural practices of the mourners (not necessarily the person buried)

    • Perspectives of “health” and “stress”

      • Health – holistic state of wellbeing

      • Stress – not necessarily "bad;" homeostatic change in response to environmental pressure

    • Influences:

      • Sanitation

      • Nutrition

      • Life changes

      • Family and community support

      • Genetics

      • Epigenetics

      • Trauma

    • Are individuals who have survived long enough to acquire stress markers on bones inherently “unhealthy”?

      • Their resilience and survivability says something about health…

    • Comparisons with living populations can help inform analyses of skeletal evidence

    • Perhaps beneficial to interpret “health” from individual life-history perspectives rather than deviations from group standards 

    • How might these perspectives influence one’s beliefs about one’s own health?

      • Does one see their health as something that “deviates from the norm,” or do they see it as relative to their own life history and circumstances?


    8: Healthcare and Empowerment is shared under a not declared license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by LibreTexts.

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