http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification 720 https://escholarship.org/uc/ucr_sehe_oapolicydeposits/rss Recent eScholarship items from Open Access Policy Deposits Tue, 16 Jun 2026 05:28:02 +0000 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/59t196m4 Background and Aims: Healthcare workers (HCWs) were pivotal in delivering care during the COVID-19 pandemic, yet vaccination uptake in the United States was lower than anticipated. This study investigated whether economic incentives, paid time off (PTO), raffle entry, or a direct financial incentive could influence vaccine uptake among HCWs exhibiting greater vaccine hesitancy. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional survey in a large integrated safety-net health system. Using an adapted Vaccine Hesitancy Scale (VHS), employees were classified as "more" vs "less" hesitant. For each incentive, respondents indicated whether it would influence their vaccination decision. Multivariable logistic regression estimated associations between demographic (age, gender, race/ethnicity, household income, education, marital status) and employment factors (job type, COVID-19 exposure, pandemic impact on income/employment) and reported influence. Results: Of 684 respondents with complete hesitancy... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/59t196m4 Wed, 6 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Khurana, Dhruv https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3108-9517 Garcia, Lauren Freund, Debbie Firek, Anthony Gatto, Nicole M https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7873-8310 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/75b7j0f8 Parkinsons disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder. Although the precise pathogenetic mechanisms of PD remain undetermined, there appears to be both genetic and environmental factors that contribute to the risk of developing PD. With regard to environmental risk factors, there has been significant interest related to the role of diet, nutrition, and nutrients on the onset and progression of PD. As the current treatments are predominantly focused on symptomatic management, efforts must be directed toward prevention of the PD and identification of potentially modifiable risk and preventive factors. This comprehensive review gives an overview of studies examining the role of micronutrients in PD, and provides guidance on the value of the reported outcomes. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/75b7j0f8 Tue, 14 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000 Sherzai, Ayesha Tagliati, Michele Park, Katherine Gatto, Nicole Pezeshkian, Shant Sherzai, Dean https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3570x4zt Hungry, Thinking with Animals https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3570x4zt Thu, 4 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Simmons, Dana https://orcid.org/0009-0001-3727-0456 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/40p6q0q9 This article examines female sterilisation practices in early twentieth-century Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It argues that the medical profession, particularly obstetricians and psychiatrists, used debates over the issue to solidify its moral and political standing during two political moments of Brazilian history: when the Brazilian government separated church and state in the 1890s and when Getúlio Vargas's authoritarian regime of the late 1930s renewed alliances with the Catholic church. Shifting notions of gender, race, and heredity further shaped these debates. In the late nineteenth century, a unified medical profession believed that female sterilisation caused psychiatric degeneration in women. By the 1930s, however, the arrival of eugenics caused a divergence amongst physicians. Psychiatrists began supporting eugenic sterilisation to prevent degeneration - both psychiatric and racial. Obstetricians, while arguing that sterilisation no longer caused mental disturbances in women,... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/40p6q0q9 Thu, 3 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Roth, Cassia https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8084-3355 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/19q5b681 Abortion in Mexico: A History. By Nora E. Jaffary. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2024. Pp. 180. $99.00 cloth; $25.00 paperback; $25.00 eBook. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/19q5b681 Thu, 13 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Roth, Cassia https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8084-3355 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/85h6x0xc In 1888, Brazil became the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery. Historians have outlined the racialized health disparities of people of African descent in the post-abolition period. Epidemiologists have shown that twenty-first-century health disparities continue to mirror patterns from over a century ago. This cross-sectional analysis quantifies health disparities in a post-abolition maternity hospital using infant birth weight. It relies on hospital records on infants delivered between 1922 and 1926 (n = 2845) at the Maternidade Laranjeiras in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to run linear models assessing differences in infant birth weight by maternal skin color, age, number of pregnancies (parity), and nationality. African ancestry was correlated with lower birth weights. Infants born to Afro-descendant women had birth weights estimated to be 84 g lighter (p-value = 0.002 [95% CI -137, -32]) than infants born to Euro-descendant women.... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/85h6x0xc Thu, 13 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000 Roth, Cassia https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8084-3355 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6445x4wk Despite increasing awareness of the importance of political determinants of health, place-based research has not interrogated one of the most common political statuses: the impact of living in a community without municipal incorporation. In 2010 an estimated 37% of the U.S. population lived in an unincorporated area; despite their ubiquity, unincorporated communities are largely absent from the public health literature. Residents of unincorporated areas typically do not have their own local (e.g., city or municipal) government. This lack of representation leads to political exclusion and diminished access to resources, especially for low-income communities of color, Furthermore, by not disaggregating health data to unincorporated communities, residents are subsumed into county or census tract data that may not be reflective of their community's composition or context. Without jurisdictional distinction in research, there is no accountability for the manufacturing of health inequities... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6445x4wk Wed, 31 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000 Gomez-Vidal, Cristina Gomez, Anu Manchikanti https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9461-4411 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1s0373c5 INTRODUCTION: Investigators have hypothesized that consuming pesticide-contaminated well water plays a role in Parkinson's disease (PD), and several previous epidemiologic studies support this hypothesis. OBJECTIVES: We investigated whether consuming water from private wells located in areas with documented historical pesticide use was associated with an increased risk of PD. METHODS: We employed a geographic information system (GIS)-based model to estimate potential well-water contamination from agricultural pesticides among 368 cases and 341 population controls enrolled in the Parkinson's Environment and Genes Study (PEG). We separately examined 6 pesticides (diazinon, chlorpyrifos, propargite, paraquat, dimethoate, and methomyl) from among 26 chemicals selected for their potential to pollute groundwater or for their interest in PD, and because at least 10% of our population was exposed to them. RESULTS: Cases were more likely to have consumed private well water and to have... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1s0373c5 Sat, 16 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000 Gatto, Nicole M https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7873-8310 Cockburn, Myles Bronstein, Jeff https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2961-8918 Manthripragada, Angelika D Ritz, Beate https://escholarship.org/uc/item/43k9x0qc We and others have suggested that vitamin D receptor gene (VDR) polymorphisms influence susceptibility for Parkinson's disease (PD), Alzheimer's disease (AD), mild cognitive impairment (MCI) or overall cognitive functioning. Here we examine VDR polymorphisms and cognitive decline in patients with PD. Non-Hispanic Caucasian PD patients (n=190) in the Parkinson Environment Gene (PEG) study were successfully genotyped for seven VDR polymorphisms. Cognitive function was assessed with the Mini-Mental State Exam (MMSE) at baseline and at a maximum of three follow-up exams. Using repeated-measures regression we assessed associations between VDR SNP genotypes and change in MMSE longitudinally. PD cases were on average 67.4years old at diagnosis and were followed for an average of 7.1years into disease. Each additional copy of the FokI A allele was associated with a 0.115 decrease in the total MMSE score per year of follow-up (β=-0.115, SE(β)=0.05, p=0.03) after adjusting for age, sex,... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/43k9x0qc Tue, 3 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Gatto, Nicole M https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7873-8310 Paul, Kimberly C Sinsheimer, Janet S Bronstein, Jeff M https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2961-8918 Bordelon, Yvette Rausch, Rebecca Ritz, Beate https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8st6r1r4 Across scientific, medical, legal, political, popular, and religious discourses, the “mother” and the “fetus” are regarded as being separated by a physical boundary. Time and time again, feminist theorists have proposed ways to disband the mother/fetus division derived from Cartesian self/other binarism and individualism. The goal of this article is to introduce and explore an alternative ontology of the pregnant body I call the motherfetus. I follow material feminist Karen Barad (2007) in contending that the “fetus” does not preexist as an object with a distinct agency who interacts with the “mother,” but only materializes through what Barad calls intra-action. I argue that the pregnant body can be reconfigured in such a way that the material distinction between the “mother” and the “fetus” disappears. This endeavor entails re-interpreting material “evidences” provided by twenty-first century technosciences while mobilizing the motherfetus as an apparatus of bodily production.... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8st6r1r4 Wed, 2 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Takeshita, C https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8800-6746 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9fs2b0bh Countering technocracy: “natural” birth in The Business of Being Born and Call the Midwife https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9fs2b0bh Wed, 28 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000 Takeshita, Chikako https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8800-6746 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0pd2b9cd The Living Wage, “That Reproductive Ferment” https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0pd2b9cd Tue, 16 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000 Simmons, Dana https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9r70d2q3 Fresh anxieties and new debts, in response to Jill Morawski’s and Michelle Murphy’s commentaries. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9r70d2q3 Tue, 23 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000 Simmons, Dana https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1vx8j11b This is an attempt to insert the stories we tell about fear and shame into a history of twentieth-century psychology and its obsession with achievement and modernization. It is an attempt to write an affective history of achievement at the turn of the millennium - and to make this feeling history. Impostor Syndrome is a pop-psychological diagnosis, employed to explain the low presence of women in STEM fields, business and academic administration and ’thought leadership’ in the pubic sphere. The article follows the intellectual lineage of two precursors of Impostor Syndrome, Fear of Success and the Impostor Phenomenon. It argues that the grouping of gender/ race/ success/ affect was a keystone of twentieth-century American psychology and development theory. The history of this feeling has consequences for thinking about situated knowledge, realism and epistemic justice. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1vx8j11b Tue, 23 Aug 2016 00:00:00 +0000 Simmons, Dana https://escholarship.org/uc/item/67v1s10f Michelle Murphy. Seizing the Means of Reproduction: Entanglements of Feminism, Health, and Technoscience . viii + 259 pp., illus., bibl., index. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2012. $84.95 (cloth); $23.95 (paper). https://escholarship.org/uc/item/67v1s10f Thu, 21 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000 Takeshita, Chikako https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8800-6746 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4ft9m0v5 Biopolitique du stérilet https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4ft9m0v5 Thu, 21 Jan 2016 00:00:00 +0000 Takeshita, Chikako https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8800-6746 https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3bp6978g INTRODUCTION: A high prevalence of vitamin D deficiency has been reported in Parkinson's disease (PD). Epidemiologic studies examining variability in genes involved in vitamin D metabolism have not taken into account level of exposure to ultraviolet radiation (UVR). We examined whether exposure to UVR (as a surrogate for vitamin D levels) and variations in the vitamin D receptor gene (VDR) are associated with PD. METHODS: Within a geographical information system (GIS) we linked participants' geocoded residential address data to ground level UV data to estimate historical exposure to UVR. Six SNPs in VDR were genotyped in non-Hispanic Caucasian subjects. RESULTS: Average lifetime UVR exposure levels were >5000 Wh/m(2), which was higher than levels for populations in previous studies, and UVR exposure did not differ between cases and controls. Homozygotes for the rs731236 TT (major allele) genotype had a 31% lower risk of PD risk (OR=0.69; 95% CI=0.49, 0.98; p=0.04 for TT vs.... https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3bp6978g Tue, 12 May 2015 00:00:00 +0000 Gatto, Nicole M https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7873-8310 Sinsheimer, Janet S Cockburn, Myles Escobedo, Loraine A Bordelon, Yvette Ritz, Beate