Suchergebnisse

Between 2007 and 2009, we created a research-based community partnership to identify and assess the health care needs of Latino1 families in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina. This report presents the survey and focus group findings for 159 Latinos concerning their views of health care services and barriers to accessing resources. Only 20 percent of the sample reported health as a major concern in their daily lives; however, notable proportions accessed health care within the last year through free or reduced-fee clinics (36%), hospital emergency rooms (25%), and individual doctors (18%). Most (82%) reported cost of care as the most significant barrier to accessing health care along with language fluency and facing discrimination. Many suggested they waited to seek care until symptoms worsened; hence the high number of hospital visits. Most (82%) did not have any health insurance. However, based on the focus groups, respondents felt that once a serious disease afflicted them, only faith and family could help them, as accessing American health care was a luxury they could not afford.

The authors examine the history of women's education and the rise of the modern nation-state. The paper seeks to correlate advances in women's education to the rising status of nations within the global state system. It does this through a historical and a cross-sectional analysis of women's education and national rankings in terms of such indicators as GDP, public health, rates of crime, technological innovation and government stability. The authors argue that the ability of a nation to compete within the global system is directly tied the educational attainment of its female population. We also put forth strategies that may be used to increase a government's willingness to invest in the education of its female population.

Nationally, less than 50 percent of children reenroll in the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), a program for children from families with incomes too high to qualify for Medicaid, but too low to afford private health insurance. To identify why, we surveyed parents who disenrolled children from a North Carolina program in 2004. Seventy-two percent of the respondents knew that their children were disenrolled and 28 percent did not know. The most common reasons parents reported for not reenrolling their children were that they never received the reenrollment forms, or they submitted their forms late. Most said they would pay out of pocket now to purchase health care services for their children. Most respondents took their children to see a provider while enrolled in SCHIP in the last year, and most were satisfied with the care received. We conclude that the goal of increasing children's reenrollment in public health insurance programs requires an improvement in health insurance information, an increase in trust in our social and health institutions, and a reorganization of the reenrollment process.

In the fall of 2000 the Department of Sociology at North Carolina State University (NCSU) implemented a Phase IV Preparing Future Faculty (PFF) initiative. The goal of this program was (and is) to ensure that doctoral students anticipating entry into a professional position be prepared for all expectations associated with faculty life in a wide variety of college and university placements. NCSU's program combined in-house research mentoring opportunities as well as off-campus mentoring relationships with faculty at other schools to explore the teaching and service responsibilities of junior faculty members. An evaluation committee assessed the effectiveness of this new initiative. Data were collected using several methods, including surveys, interviews, and focus groups. The committee found the PFF program to be a welcome addition to graduate training; however, the NCSU program experienced struggles that provide insight for other schools that may wish to start a PFF program of their own.

This successor to the well-known Using Sociology covers standard topics found in any sociology textbook. Doing Sociology walks lay readers through the steps of doing real-life sociological practices as conducted by experts in the field. Readable, relevant, and accessible, it is an invaluable resource as a standalone course reader or as a supplement to a traditional textbook.