With the Latinx community anticipated to make up ~30% of the population by 2060, it will be crucial more than ever to mitigate the health disparities preventing them from equitable well-being. From a higher prevalence of obesity to better understanding mental health, there exists a myriad of challenges imposed against the community; however, its largest barrier is American hegemony. This is because their biases have exacerbated the public health system, preventing one from accessing their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. As a result, intervention goals, most commonly through educational settings, fail to be met. One of the worst results: poor health literacy rates. Without proper health literacy skills, individuals lack the knowledge required to best manage their health. Unfortunately, the Latinx community is reported to have fewer strengths in terms of this; hence, Sana Sana was created. Through this magazine, the project intends to increase general healthy literacy, improve health trajectories, and promote overall well-being amongst Latino adolescents.

After giving birth, protections are essential to provide a mother with the time and ability to support her new child. There are several considerations for policy makers when they establish a maternity leave policy that best facilitates bonding, wellbeing, and the health of the mother-infant dyad. Within Switzerland, maternity leave policy permits fourteen-weeks of paid leave, including an optional two week unpaid extension. To understand how Swiss women are experiencing the current maternity leave policy, a scholarly database search was conducted and six interviews were held with stakeholders in Switzerland. Several themes emerged through the interviews, particularly, the mother-infant dyad, and the mental & physical health of the new mother. Stakeholders found the current leave policy within Switzerland may be sufficient, on average, to support women’s physical healing post-birth. However, it may act as a barrier for mental health interventions, and achieving breastfeeding goals which benefit both mother and child. Several stakeholders suggested lengthening maternity leave to remove these barriers. This study emphasizes the need for policy makers to consider the complex impacts of maternity leave policy on not only the health of the child, but also the mother.

Although the indigenous populations of the United States experience substantial disparities in health outcomes, little information is available regarding barriers to their access to specifically baby friendly hospitals and baby friendly services in the United States. Access is important because indigenous patients, especially women, have higher infant mortality and childhood obesity than their white counterparts.
This systematic review seeks to uncover potential barriers to baby friendly hospital services for indigenous patients in the United States. This systematic review analyzed the current literature from select databases published between 2000 and 2020 and narrowed literature down into studies deemed relevant because of their focus on the BFHI or equivalent and on indigenous patients. 303 studies were found using a specialized search string and then after evaluation under exclusion and inclusion criteria, 21 were identified for use in this review.
Analysis of these selected studies revealed trends of barriers as well as disparities in indigenous participation in current research. The conclusion of this review is that baby friendly and its “Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding” must be altered to allow for implementation in different cultural settings, especially for indigenous patients. Additionally, there is a need for additional research that focuses on indigenous patients in this setting and is written by members of that community. Increased representation from this community will enhance future work towards deconstructing the barriers preventing indigenous patients to access BFHI resources.

Weed, pot, chronic, kaya, and kush are just a few names for one of the world’s most far-reaching and impactful substances. This course is designed with inclusive teaching devices for students to explore how the roots of economies, cultures, and histories have been intertwined with the subsistence of a plant. We will explore the biological and chemical nature of cannabis, historical accounts of human interactions with cannabis, production and industries, medicinal and recreational applications, legal and criminal ramifications, as well as future directions for legislation and economic opportunities. This class is intended to provide you with past research and facts, paired with coverage of events and movements happening today, so that you can make well-informed decisions for your future. The goal of this class is to motivate students to approach the topic of cannabis from various thought perspectives, so they can critically develop both life science knowledge and social science understandings regarding this polarizing subject. At the end of the course, students should be able to 1) Describe the basic anatomy and biology of cannabis plants, and the effects of psychoactive strains of cannabis on humans, 2) Explain the effects of cannabis on U.S. culture, as well as how U.S. culture has shaped the status of cannabis, 3) Differentiate evidence-based arguments from opinions and anecdotal positions, 4) Evaluate the interconnectedness of history, economics, criminal justice, and social contexts as they relate to cannabis, and 5) Demonstrate the ability to integrate evidence-based understandings into creating and disseminating knowledge through structured conversations and organized presentations.

Behavior of males and females may be mediated by their biological differences and, among cercopithecines, their divergent reproductive strategies. In order to have high reproductive success, individuals need to produce high quality offspring. Through pregnancy, lactation, and maternal care, females have a strong influence on the quality of their offspring. Within the cercopithecine mating system, males are limited in direct influence on offspring outcomes within the Cercopithecines, and are adapted to more typically maximize mating opportunities. In general, female reproductive strategies involve securing the most food while male reproductive strategies are geared towards helping them secure the most fertile females both somatically and behaviorally. In this paper, I investigated how the behaviors observed among female adolescent rhesus macaque monkeys would differ from the males as their divergent reproductive trajectories begin to manifest. I made predictions based off of four questions: who would be more affiliative with whom, who would be more aggressive and with whom, who would be more variable in their behaviors, and who would be lonelier. I predicted that females would be more affiliative with other females, due to the importance of social connectivity, and males would be more affiliative with males, due to the social bonds male adolescents form with each other. I predicted that males would be overall more aggressive than males because they were found to be by Bernstein et al. (1993). I predicted that males would show more variation in behavior since they may have to be more flexible to capitalize on all conditions to obtain mates. Finally, I predicted that males would be lonelier as an effect of social rank on males and female choice. In order to further understand these differences, 36 adolescent Macaca mulatta, N = 20 female and N=16 male, from the California Primate Center at University of California at Davis, CA were observed. The observer used a standardized method to score the subjects on a variety of behaviors like locomotion, aggression, grooming and more. Each individual underwent around 6 trials and the observations lasted 15 minutes. The data supported the first hypothesis that females are affiliative with each other and males are affiliative with each other. The date also showed that females are more aggressive than males and their aggression is generally targeted towards females. The third prediction was not supported by the data and females were actually more variable in their behaviors than males. Lastly, the data did not support the prediction that males are lonely moneys, however, it did support the alternative hypothesis that they are truly low sociable, low in sociability and low social connectivity.