Special Issue: Health, Medicine, and Society
From the Editors
We are excited to publish our first special issue: “Health, Medicine, and Society.” Waves will publish work selected for the issue on a rolling basis through fall 2022. Our goal is to feature critical, creative, and public-facing projects that humanize the challenges of medical research, clinical practice, and public health and consider the complex social contexts of health and medicine.
It is abundantly clear that health outcomes are determined by far more than genes. Sociodemographic factors—factors such as race, socioeconomic status, gender identity, sexual orientation, health insurance status, and living environments—have a powerful influence on our present and future health. “Health, Medicine, and Society” will highlight human responses to human problems and how we might best, collectively, find solutions to these issues.
This issue was inspired by a submission we received in spring 2021: Tiffany Nguyen’s medical review, “Menstrual Cups as a Menstrual Hygiene Solution for Resource-Limited Adolescent Girls,” featured below. Nguyen considers the many barriers to menstrual health management in low- to middle-income countries—from social stigma surrounding menstruation to access to menstrual hygiene products—and evaluates both the safety and potential acceptability of menstrual cups among menstruating adolescents in LMICs. The review models the kinds of projects we’d hoped to showcase in this issue: Nguyen proposes pragmatic, evidence-based solutions that take into account complex sociocultural conditions and needs.
We hope our readers will be as inspired as we’ve been by these authors’ calls for safe, equitable, and inclusive healthcare.
—The Waves team
Menstrual Health in Low- to Middle-Income Countries
Menstrual Cups as a Menstrual Hygiene Solution for Resource-Limited Adolescent Girls, by Tiffany Nguyen
Autism Spectrum Disorder Diagnosis in Women
Implications of Camouflage on the Delayed Diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in Women, by Jade Jackson
Health Disparities of Trans Masculine Population
Analyzing Health Disparities of Trans Masculine Populations with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, by Easton Brundage
Diabetes Management and Mental Health
Characterizing Diabetes Distress: Assessing Demographic, Clinical, Behavioral, and Psychosocial Correlates, by Emma Carpenter
Racial Disparities in Alzheimer’s Disease
Investigation of Racial Disparities in Rates of Alzheimer’s Disease Among African Americans as Compared to White Americans, by Rachel Younglove
Language Barriers in the ER
A Review of Interventions to Address Language Barriers in the Emergency Department, by Maria Maura, Joel Hernandez, and Keer Zhang
Reducing Stigma and Global Burden of HIV
Targeted prevention and control strategies for MSM and IDU populations can reduce stigma and global burden of HIV, by Ashlyn N. Ludovici and Callaway M. Wells
Tiffany Nguyen
“Global women’s health is a subject that I actively stay informed about, and while brainstorming topics, I reflected upon my own experiences with menstrual hygiene. . . . My mother is an immigrant that grew up in rural Vietnam, where internal products like tampons were not only taboo due to stigmas conflating menstruation with sex, but wholly inaccessible. Instead of disposable products, my mother and her sisters would use cut strips of old T-shirts as makeshift reusable pads that had to be cleaned between each use with an overnight soak.”
Jade Jackson
“In the Fall 2021 semester, I was challenged with writing an original review paper for my class Writing in the Health Professions. I knew right away that I wanted to explore an issue of health inequity, and I was loosely aware of the gender gap in Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) diagnosis for women. The more I read, the more I understood that a general female phenotype of ASD is missing from the diagnostic process, contributing to many women either being diagnosed much later in life, or never getting a diagnosis. This review attempts to explore the gender gap and provide the beginnings of a succinct female phenotype of ASD in women.”
Easton Brundage
“I first wrote this paper for my Women’s Studies Capstone course during the semester that I was both diagnosed with PCOS and started hormone replacement therapy (HRT). Both processes were tumultuous with expensive doctor’s visits, many tests, and constant bloodwork all while I faced consistent barriers from medical providers who created unsupportive and at times transphobic environments. . . . Birthed from my experience navigating the healthcare system, this research paper is a defense of trans masculine people’s bodily autonomy.”
Emma Carpenter
“While I originally anticipated writing a review paper regarding the pathophysiology of type 1 diabetes, after diving into existing literature I kept encountering an unfamiliar term–“diabetes distress.” Upon reading more, I found myself intrigued by this term–defined as the emotional burden that accompanies diabetes and its demanding self-care behaviors. Although I had investigated the mechanism of type 1 diabetes in my wet-lab research, I had not previously explored the psychological impact of diabetes–nor had I truly considered how living with diabetes might affect someone’s mental health.”
Rachel Younglove
“Investigating this topic also allowed me to incorporate anthropological perspectives on both race and medicine to better understand how the two interact within culture and society. My goal in illuminating these racial disparities in cognitive health is to enact change that can address the stubborn presence of racial bias and the persistent structural barriers that continue to contribute to African Americans’ increased risk of developing poor cognitive health. My hope is that this research emphasizes the need for interdisciplinary approaches to solving real-world health issues, specifically those involving race as a variable in determining health outcomes.”
Maria Maura, Joel Hernandez, and Keer Zhang
“We completed this project as part of a literature review initiative by the Equal Access Clinic Network (EACN) Research Department. We (Maria and Joel) were both born in Cuba and arrived in the United States when we were around 15 years of age. Since then, we have experienced language barriers ourselves and in our families. As future physicians, we have been involved in clinical activities where we have seen the effects of language barriers in patients as well. We hope that this paper will reach Emergency Department physicians and administrators, as well as other students interested in the topic.”
Ashlyn N. Ludovici and Callaway M. Wells
“Lead author Ashlyn Ludovici drove this project after an initial exposure to HIV as a global problem started in 2019, while studying abroad in Athens, Greece. While there, she noticed a lot of used needles and was questioning where they all came from. She learned that there was an Athens-based HIV outbreak among Intravenous Drug Users, and that the needles on the street helped stop the spread of HIV for this population. While writing our paper, we wanted to focus on other subpopulations that have faced unfair and very harmful stigma surrounding HIV and AIDS. This led us to research the history of HIV and the discovery of the significant burden that was placed upon the men who have sex with men (MSM) population.”