Today, there are a number of efforts to increase health insurance coverage in the state of California. Initiatives include “pay or pay” policies that would increase work-based coverage, and “single payer” approaches that would entail a complete overhaul of the way health care in financed. Regardless of the specific vehicle of insuring the uninsured, a large increase in coverage has important benefits. The primary benefit is, of course, the increase in coverage itself, as the uninsured receive better care and are insured against large out-of-pocket expenditures. However, there are also other economic impacts which have important labor market implications. In this research brief, I provide estimates for two sources of productivity gains from an increase in coverage: reduction in “job lock” and increased labor-force participation due to improved health. Although I do not explicitly model this, such productivity gains can partly “pay for” any added costs that are incurred in extending coverage to the uninsured.

Overall, the fear of losing insurance traps a sizeable number of workers in less productive jobs. In 2002, 2.3% of the workforce – or 179,000 workers – with employment based coverage would have made productivity-improving job changes absent job lock. Overall, the presence of job lock annually leads to $772 million in foregone productivity gains.

Health insurance reduces the odds of a experiencing a debilitating health condition which can lead to an exit from the labor force. Bad health outcomes caused by a lack of health insurance means 12,000 less people work each year. Extending coverage to working age adults might increase annual gross state product by $230 million annually.

The study tracks recent trends in state job growth, the composition of new jobs, and wage movements. Significant findings include continued job growth, but employment levels still below 2001 levels; a reversal of the 2000-02 patterns of high-wage job creation/low-wage job reduction; and a decline in aggregate wages from 2003 onwards.

Of the hate crimes reported to the FBI in 2007, 16.6% were the result of a sexual orientation bias. In the wake of horrific hate crimes such as the shooting and death of Lawrence King earlier this year, killed because of his sexual orientation, and the murder of Matthew Shepard ten years ago, homophobia and its effects must be addressed. A proposed solution to the problem is mandatory diversity education in public schools, with no parental opt out.

Using actuarial and membership data, we documented changes in the rates of health care eligibility, enrollment, and coverage, and in workforce turnover and demographics from 2003 to 2006. Based on our survey responses, we compared differences between incumbent workers and new hires with regard to access to and utilization of health care.

3-Helix Micelles as Drug Nanocarriers

Control over particle size, cargo loading, encapsulation stability, and drug release is critical to optimize the safety and efficacy of drug formulations. This dissertation is focused on evaluation, optimization, and validation of 3-helix micelles as drug nanocarriers. The fundamental understanding of molecular parameters than can be used to tune loading content, drug retention stability, and release of drug from 3-helix micelles is important for their clinical translation as a viable platform for drug formulation and delivery. It is equally critical to characterize the structure and stability of drug loaded 3-helix micelles in biological conditions relevant to different applications, which in turn would dictate the pharmacokinetics, biodistribution, efficacy and clearance of drug formulations based on 3-helix micelles. The knowledge gained from these studies serves as guideline to identify the suitable design features to facilitate the development of 3-helix micelle based therapeutic nanocarriers.

3-helix micelles are formed by the self-assembly of a new family of amphiphilic peptide-polymer conjugates. Studies aimed at understanding intermolecular interactions that dictate the structure of the amphiphilic conjugates allowed to identify the building block that can be used to generate 3-helix micelles with requisite structure and stability. 3-helix micelles assembled from different amphiphiles were investigated for their biological stability and blood circulation time, and this set of studies resulted in a set of guidelines that could be used to tailor the stability of 3-helix micelles for different biological applications.

Systematic studies on encapsulation of drugs with different molecular structure underscored the significance of molecular geometry of drugs on their loading content in 3-helix micelles. These studies were critical in understanding the parameters that could be used to tune cargo loading content in 3-helix micelles. Drugs loadings of 7-8 wt% could be achieved depending on the cargo and micelle composition. This loading content is close to the theoretical limit imposed by the small core size of 15 nm 3-helix micelles, and carriers with similar loadings have shown enhanced therapeutic effect.

Doxorubicin (DOX) loaded 3-helix micelles exhibited efficient cellular internalization, elicited cytotoxicity for a range of cancer cell lines, and were sensitive to proteolytic degradation to facilitate drug release. Intravenous administration of DOX loaded 3-helix micelles showed selective accumulation in tumor tissue for an extended period with reduced off-target toxicity, relative to free drug.

Lastly, in vivo studies with 3-helix micelles demonstrated that they could be administered to brain by two different techniques that have been developed for anatomical targeting of severely restricted brain tissue. The results demonstrated that 3-helix micelles could penetrate into deep regions in the brain, not commonly accessible to conventional nanocarriers, which is very encouraging for their potential as nanocarriers for drug delivery to brain.

Due to the awareness of how visual technologies have historically functioned as hostile and violent forces that render Blackness as aberration, this dissertation pays special focus to the creative practices of Black women and queer image-makers who are invested in decolonizing the ways in which we see. Through a careful examination of films and photography that spans from South Africa, and across the African diaspora, this dissertation is able to explore the edgeless connections between slavery and colonialism as ongoing histories that continue to rupture contemporary Black visual cultures. By orientating towards Black feminisms and queer theories to examine film and photography, this project inaugurates an interdisciplinary avenue that is able to reveal how the field of vision has continued to make marginal assessments on the compounding intersections between race, gender and sexuality. To further decolonize the process of knowledge production, this project recognizes the creative work of image-making, as an aesthetic practice that theorizes in its doing. Thus, I further draw from my positionality as a media practitioner and the experiential knowledge I have garnered in order to offer a methodological intervention that centers Black feminist creative praxis. As a prevailing enquiry in each chapter of this project, I interrogate how Black women and queer image-makers subvert the use of the camera as an institutional apparatus and technology of capture. In an anti-Black visual culture that is often calibrated by abject representations of Black women and queer identities, I believe that there is something bold and subversive about positioning Black women’s visual productions as constituting counter-hegemonic historiographies and archival repositories. Thus, I consider that due to the institutional neglect and erasure of Black women in hegemonic visual history, a decolonial approach to scholarship ought to contend with questions of materiality to contemplate the role played by Black film and queer photography in producing narratives that are able to collapse colonial framings of histography and archive. Therefore, I postulate that the films and photography examined in this dissertation, serve as revolutionary and decolonial visual archives of an otherwise due to the ways in which the hegemonic visual histories are challenged and subsequently refused.