Feb 19, 2015, 2:21 PM, Posted by
Susan Dentzer
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Jul 12, 2013, 9:00 AM, Posted by
Aric Prather
Aric A. Prather, PhD, is an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco and an alumnus of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholars program.
Heart disease accounts for one in every four deaths in the United States—600,000 deaths per year. Prevention and treatment regimens for heart disease include important changes in lifestyle, centering primarily on alterations to diet and physical activity. Interestingly, sleep is rarely part of this discussion.
This is alarming given the growing evidence from large-scale population studies and laboratory-based experiments that demonstrate that sleep plays a larger role in heart health than originally appreciated by the medical community. For example, in a 2003 study, women with established coronary heart disease who reported poor sleep quality were more than 2.5 times more likely to go on to experience a cardiac event than good quality sleepers. Nevertheless, when it comes to asking patients about their sleep, health care providers routinely hit the snooze button.
In an effort to raise the profile of sleep as a risk factor for cardiovascular disease (CVD), my work has focused on investigating the links between sleep and the biological pathways implicated in CVD development and progression. Said another way, much of my research focuses on how sleep disturbance gets under the skin.
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Jun 4, 2013, 4:21 PM, Posted by
Susan Dentzer
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Jan 18, 2013, 9:00 AM, Posted by
Elizabeth Kostas-Polston, Versie Johnson-Mallard
By Elizabeth A. Kostas-Polston, PhD, ARNP, WHNP-BC, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Nurse Faculty Scholar and assistant professor, University of South Florida; and Versie Johnson-Mallard, PhD, MSMS, ARNP, WHNP-BC, RWJF Nurse Faculty Scholar alumna and assistant professor, University of South Florida.
On November 14, 2012, we met a princess. No, we were not at Disneyworld or Disneyland. The princess was beautiful, talented and focused on making a difference in her country for girls and women. The princess’s name is Princess Bajrakitiyabha Mahidol, her Royal Highness of Thailand. We met her when we were invited to Thailand to present at the International Council on Women’s Health Issues (ICOWHI) 19th International Congress on Women’s Health 2012: Partnering for a Brighter Global Future.
During the conference we unveiled our national/international initiative, The Blue Bra Campaign: Leading Global Change in Women’s Health. The Blue Bra Campaign is housed at the University of South Florida College of Nursing, under our leadership. The name for the campaign was inspired from an international event that occurred in 2011, when a young Egyptian woman was beaten, stomped on and nearly stripped while participating in a political demonstration. Aside from the sheer brutality inflicted upon her by Egyptian police, what stood out to millions viewing the nightmare as it unfolded on international television was the young woman’s abaya falling open to reveal a lacey, bright-blue bra. That moment was so unexpected, so shocking—so transforming! The young woman, covered from head to toe in traditional dress, refused to remain invisible demonstrating her femininity through her choice of undergarment—a blue bra!
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Aug 3, 2012, 11:55 AM, Posted by
Roseanna Means
Roseanna H. Means, MD, is the founder of Women of Means, which provides free medical care to homeless women in the Boston area, a clinical associate professor at Harvard Medical School, and an internist on the attending staff at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. She is a 2010 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Community Health Leader.
The prolonged recession of the last four years has hit many people hard. My work is taking care of homeless women, which I have done for the past 20 years. I lead a team of volunteer physicians and part-time paid nurses who provide free walk-in care to women and children in Boston’s shelters. We fill in the gaps left by larger, more bureaucratically rigid systems that put unrealistic and unattainable expectations on those who are disabled by extreme poverty, mental illness, trauma, and cognitive dysfunction.
I designed a program of “gap” care that brings health care to them. We act as the communication and advocacy bridge between the shelter/street world and the hospitals and health centers. Gap care is part of a continuum that I feel has an important role to play in health care access for vulnerable populations.
Here is a glimpse of our work.
Walking into one of the women’s shelters on a recent morning, I see a woman standing glumly in line for coffee, her hands chapped and shaky, her face pale and dry, a blanket heaped around her shoulder, pouring hot liquid into her body before staking out a cot where she can sleep for a few hours, let her guard down, away from the doorway where she was prey to drunk men who jumped her, raped her and stole her stuff.
She is hungover. She drank to escape the horror of having been attacked. She has been on and off the wagon so many times we have all lost count. She’s also been raped and stabbed more times than any of us can remember. She doesn’t go to the police any more. She’s just one more homeless woman who has been raped, a “nobody”; just more paperwork. I give her a hug and remind her that I love her no matter what. I know that she has a library of negative and self-loathing messages in her head. Mine is the one that can break through that chatter and give her a shred of self-respect.
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May 15, 2012, 3:00 PM, Posted by
Elisa Patterson
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office on Women’s Health has designated May 13 to May 19 as National Women’s Health Week. It is designed to bring together communities, businesses, government, health organizations and others to promote women’s health. The goal in 2012 is to empower women to make their health a top priority. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Human Capital Blog is launching an occasional series on women’s health in conjunction with the week. This post is by Elisa L. Patterson, MS, CNM, a fellow with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Nursing and Health Policy Collaborative at the University of New Mexico.
I have been a certified nurse-midwife for almost 19 years. It is an ingrained part of who I am. I have served women of many different ethnic, socioeconomic, and cultural backgrounds. Being a nurse-midwife embraces my duality of being a nurse and a midwife. I am very proud of these credentials.
As I add to my education in a PhD program – through the RWJF Nursing and Health Policy Collaborative at the University of New Mexico College of Nursing – I have found it a challenge to express in my “elevator speech” how these two credentials enhance my abilities to do policy work. I tried starting with what I am doing as a PhD student at the University of New Mexico. But when I say, “I’m also a nurse–midwife,” listeners seem to tag onto that singular piece of information and forget the rest of the conversation. Then, they might share their personal birth story or one that is a fond memory from a close friend. Or, they might ask me if I deliver babies at home.
I have not been able to figure out how to combine the important and, to me, impressive fact that while, yes, I am a nurse-midwife, I am also very capable of conversing about, researching and representing many other issues.
The American College of Nurse-Midwives (ACNM) has a way to help me and other nurse-midwives who face this dilemma. Next month at their annual gathering, a public relations campaign will be presented to the membership. It will include a vision, mission statement, and core values. The ultimate goal is to describe the value of nurse-midwives and, in general, support the provision of high-quality maternity care and women’s health services by Certified Nurse-Midwives.
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