Assignment:
You must respond to Prompt 1; choose either A or B.
In addition, you must respond to Prompt 2, 3, OR 4. I recommend labeling your initial post with the prompts, so it is clear to which prompts you have responded.
Required response from Prompt 1: Choose A or B
The purpose of this exercise is to explore different ways of finding material on policies for dealing with AIDS in elementary schools.
- Go to Google.com, and search for "AIDS in elementary schools." What types of materials do you find? Research reports? Policy statements? Personal essays?
- Now use Google to go to PubMed, the National Library of Medicine's database of scholarly articles. Then, search again for "AIDS in elementary schools." How does the type of information you get from PubMed differ from the type of information you found using Google?
- Go to PubMed again, but this time search for "HIV in elementary schools" rather than "AIDS in elementary schools." How does this affect your results?
OR
Go to mayoclinic.org (a highly respected nonprofit organization) and look up "headache." Then look up "headache" at WebMD.com (a highly popular for-profit website with financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry). How do the images, suggestions, and information on the two sites differ? Does WebMD's links to the pharmaceutical industry seem to affect its coverage of the topic?
Choose Prompt 2, Prompt 3, OR Prompt 4
Prompt 2
You have one kidney available that biologically matches all the following people. The one who receives the kidney will gain a longer life and better quality of life; the rest will die soon. Which one would you give it to? How would you justify your decision? What moral and social values or principles underlie your decision?
- Jill, 23 years old, white, is a former drug addict and single mother. She was taking classes at a community college, but had to quit to go on dialysis. She is now on welfare, with Medicaid paying all her medical expenses.
- John, 55 years old, white, married with no children. He is a successful business executive who owns his own company. He has partial health insurance and will probably go bankrupt soon because of medical bills.
- Bob, 30 years old, HIV-infected, white, architect. He has no health insurance. Single, no children.
- David, 25 years old, single with no children, African-American. He is trying to obtain a graduate degree in history while coping with physical problems caused by kidney failure. He has no health insurance.
- Martha, 40 years old, homemaker and mother of two, African-American, married to a police officer. Her insurance will pay all costs.
Prompt 3
- Evaluate the role that social conditions and status play in maintaining and restoring health, and compare that to the role played by medical treatments.
- How have social factors and conditions contributed to the spread of HIV? Why has HIV/AIDS spread more rapidly in Africa than in the United States? Why has heterosexual transmission played a greater role in Africa?
Prompt 4
- Imagine that you are a woman who is a recent immigrant and who works in a factory. Identify three factors that might put you and your family at risk for poor health.
- How is infant mortality linked to women's social status? How is maternal mortality linked to women's status?