news, new scholarship & more from around the world
It’s time finally to jettison the convenient claim that taxing the rich more would only reduce tax revenue. Above: The consumption patterns of the 1 per cent contribute disproportionately to greenhouse-gas emissions
Social Development Minister Sisisi Tolashe, has called for urgent employment of 55,000 social services professionals to tackle the ongoing problem of gender-based violence, poverty, and crime due to rising social services demands in the country.
The emergence of the neurosurgical patient as a novel clinical entity in the Netherlands was marked by a lingering conflict between neurologists and neurosurgeons, in which both types of specialists sought to assume the clinical and institutional leadership of neurosurgical patient care. In the 1920s and 1930s, neurologists had facilitated the establishment of the first generation of neurosurgeons in the country, and in the process, had managed to clinically and institutionally subordinate neurosurgery to neurology. As the demand for neurosurgical patient care grew, the neurosurgeons began to challenge this hegemonic relationship. The neurologists, however, were unwilling to give up their control, fearing that they would be bypassed in the diagnosis of patients eligible to neurosurgery. These conflicting aims and interests resulted in an intricate demarcation battle, in which the boundary work between neurologists and neurosurgeons was directly played out at the local workplace and at the meetings of the Study Club for Neuro-Surgery, and indirectly at various other sites of contestation, such as medical journals and academic lecture halls, as both parties sought to rally external stakeholders to their cause. During these negotiations, local, national, and international forces increasingly intertwined to shape the particular organization of Dutch neurosurgery in the middle of the twentieth century. By analyzing this multilayered demarcation process, this article draws attention to the complexity of medical boundary work, and to the way in which, despite pervasive international influences, specialist practice was ultimately negotiated at the local and national levels.
In Ecuador, urban farms have long been a way to create sustainable access to food. But they’re also helping women flourish as gardeners and entrepreneurs. Above: Maria Achiña and Alegria Irua are part of a group of local women who till the land beside the neighborhood’s health clinic.
For college freshmen, the first 6 weeks of the school year are typically a vulnerable time for underage drinking due to social pressures, increased freedom, and other factors. Underage and binge drinking are both serious public health problems and are common on many college campuses and in the surrounding neighborhoods. Binge-drinking rates are higher among college students than their noncollege peers.
During the pandemic, myths and misconceptions about sex flourished, said Jessica Wood, who conducts research about those aged 18 to 24 for the Sex Information and Education Council of Canada. Youth turned to each other for information, Wood said, when classes stopped, sexual and reproductive health clinics closed (new window) and school nurses or social workers weren’t available.
Young says that’s an aim of the rules. “You can expect to see higher payment rates that may make it more attractive for providers to come in-network,” Young says, meaning therapists should be getting paid more for insurance-covered visits. “You can also expect to see insurers investing in networks for providers other than physicians,” Young says. That means insurance might cover more mental health providers than they did before, such as non-MD therapists, social workers, or telehealth services.