Plos One
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Although women's empowerment has gained attention over the last two decades, our understanding of the associations between different dimensions of women's empowerment and different children's health outcomes is limited. This study aims to measure the extent of women's empowerment and to examine its associations with the children's health status in Ethiopia. Data were obtained from the 2016 Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey (EDHS). ⋯ All aspects of women's empowerment are not related with children's health indicators. Women's empowerment dimensions related with child health have a varying degree of association with the different children's health indicators. Gender-specific policies focusing on increasing women's access to education, media, information, and promoting saving and their participation in the household decision making are some of the strategies for improving their children's health and wellbeing.
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Injury compensation claimants use legal services to help them navigate compensation schemes, including accessing benefits and resolving disputes. Little is known, however, about the extent of lawyer use by compensation claimants, including changes over time. ⋯ The analysis identifies a significant increase in the use of lawyers in the scheme, and explores possible explanations. This study provides critical insights into lawyer use in compensation settings: the steep increase in lawyer involvement has both access to justice and financial implications for compensation schemes, given the associations between lawyer use, claimant outcomes, and long-term scheme viability.
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Fecal colonization by carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) can be the main reservoir for transmission of these resistant organisms especially in the Intensive Care Units (ICUs). ⋯ The prevalence of CRE colonization in the 2 hospital ICUs was relatively high and the emergence of blaOXA-181-mediated CRE is a cause for concern as there is the possibility of rapid horizontal spread among hospital patients in Kuwait. Active surveillance of CRE in the ICUs is highly recommended to stem its spread.
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The general public is subject to triage policies that allocate scarce lifesaving resources during the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the worst public health emergencies in the past 100 years. However, public attitudes toward ethical principles underlying triage policies used during this pandemic are not well understood. Three experiments (preregistered; online samples; N = 1,868; U. ⋯ Lastly, support for utilitarian allocation varied when saving the greatest number of lives resulted in disadvantage for at-risk or historically marginalized groups. Specifically, participants expressed higher levels of agreement with policies that shifted away from maximizing benefits to one that assigned the same priority to members of different groups if this mitigated disadvantage for people of color. Understanding these attitudes can contribute to developing triage policies, increase trust in health systems, and assist physicians in achieving their goals of patient care during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), the respiratory disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), was first identified in Wuhan, China and has since become pandemic. In response to the first cases identified in the United States, close contacts of confirmed COVID-19 cases were investigated to enable early identification and isolation of additional cases and to learn more about risk factors for transmission. Close contacts of nine early travel-related cases in the United States were identified and monitored daily for development of symptoms (active monitoring). ⋯ The results from these contact tracing investigations suggest that household members, especially significant others, of COVID-19 cases are at highest risk of becoming infected. The importance of personal protective equipment for healthcare workers is also underlined. Isolation of persons with COVID-19, in combination with quarantine of exposed close contacts and practice of everyday preventive behaviors, is important to mitigate spread of COVID-19.