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  • A Note from the Editor
  • Virginia M. Brennan, PhD, MA

As our 23rd volume draws to a close, we again see health care for medically under-served populations at the center of the national election in the United States. The articles in this issue concern a wide array of underserved populations, both in the U.S. and in other parts of the African Diaspora. The articles are arranged into five thematic parts:

Part 1: Electronic Advances, Measurement Tools, and Health Information

Part 2: Health Care Workforce and Settings

Part 3: Disabilities and Health

Part 4: Homelessness

Part 5: Latino Health

As preface to these five parts, readers will find our regular ACU Column, which this month concerns providing care (both behavioral and physical health care) for people who are incarcerated. Immediately following that column are a Featured Commentary by Prof. Bill Brandon concerning the merits of expanded Medicaid (even from the point of view of States who might otherwise oppose it) in light of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as it gradually comes into full force. Following this is a featured research article on whether and how rising medical costs affect the U.S. Latino electorate’s health care–seeking behaviors.

Part 1 encompasses articles arising from the omnipresence of information and technology in early 21st century health care. Topics addressed cover a wide range:

  • • systems engineering for community health centers (Tu et al.)

  • • the use of geographic information systems in low-income countries (Brijnath et al.)

  • • implementing electronic health record systems in safety-net settings (López et al.)

  • • a review of the literature on the validity of postpartum depressions screens across socioeconomic groups (King et al.)

  • • how the use of continuity of care documents fare in the care of special-needs people living with HIV/AIDS (Odlum et al.), and

  • • how race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status relate to information-seeking, confidence, and trust (Richardson et al.).

In Part 2, we turn to the health care workforce and the settings in which care is delivered. Beginning with two columns celebrating caregivers working among the underserved (by Rodríguez and Sparling), this part continues with an introduction to a training model for new HIV care providers (by Jacobson et al.) and two more Reports from the Field, both concerning how community-researcher partnerships can be institutionalized (Magwood et al.) and sustained, even through difficult economic times (Weiss et al.). After these short papers, we turn to the research papers, which concern: [End Page ix]

  • • how access to a medical-legal partnership affects patients’ sense of stress and well being (Ryan et al.),

  • • community health centers as sites for the provision of hepatitis B prevention and care for (the disproportionately affected populations of) Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders (Caballero et al.),

  • • whether continuity of care affects diabetes quality measures in teaching practices (Younge et al.),

  • • the policy implications of physicians’ demographic characteristics (He),

  • • a look at whether so-called patient activation affects health outcomes in a racially diverse sample of chronically ill older adults (Ryvicker et al.), and

  • • a first evaluation of an innovative student-run vegetable business at urban high schools (Sikic et al.).

Part 3 is small but important: it concerns disabilities and health. Here readers will find a Report from the Field on building patient-centered medical homes for people with developmental disabilities (Weedon et al.) and research papers on access to breast cancer screening programs for women with disabilities (Proulx et al.), health care avoidance by people in serious psychological distress (Ye et al.), and the rate of uninsurance and its correlates among low-income adults with disabilities (Burns et al.).

Part 4, which concerns homelessness, begins with a reflective column by a provider on trying to take a conventional social history from a patient without a home (Jain). It continues with four research papers:

  • • health care professionals’ views of addressing tobacco use by patients who are homeless (Baggett et al.),

  • • a comparison of the use of the public health system in Houston by people who are homeless and those who are housed (Buck et al.),

  • • how people having a choice in their living environments, case management, and mental health treatment affects outcomes...

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