Life course changes provoked by chronic disease: A study on everyday life for patients with systemic lupus erythematosus

Objective:This study examined patients with systemic lupus erythematosus(SLE)as a means to explore the impacts of chronic disease on life courses.Methods:A semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with nine patients in China in 2017;participants were included based on their having or having had facial butterfly erythema.Results:The study focused on both the disease's impact on the patients'health and on their daily lives.Four core themes emerged:visible changes in the patient's bodies,social dilemmas,"the encouragement of disease",and a new perspective on the relationship between disease and health.One important finding was that the occurrence of a chronic disease did not have only negative repercussions;some patients felt that there were advantages to being sick.Chronic disease resulted in a reworking of daily life.The patients developed a self-referential model of healing.Conclusion:The distinct interpretations of the same disease offered by different patients served to yield a more complete understanding of the disease.People with SLE adjust their thinking about the disease based on personal feelings as well as experiences and pursue a dialogue on their illness based on the disease pattern unique to them.The meaning that disease had for the patients was not limited to negative connotations.

The Life Course of a Long-Lasting Affection Medium:A Fieldwork Based on the Communication Practice of the Rural Loudspeakers in North China

The loudspeakers played a crucial role in rural community during the COVID-19 pandemic,and had returned to the public with the help of short video platforms.However,with the continued popularity of digital media,is the revival of the loudspeakers which belong to traditional media just a flash in the pan?What the historic process of return has the loudspeakers undergone?Based on these questions,the paper applies Bourdieu’s sense of practice theory,focuses on“habit”throughout,adopts the research methods of online ethnography and fieldwork,and conducts participant observation and targeted in-depth interviews in a village in North China for about nine months.The study found that:(1)There is the lag of habit in the state’s handling of social relations in villages.Based on rational habit,village cadres used the loudspeakers to manifest their physical presence and restructure their authority;the villagers,operating under perceptual habit,rationalized the presence of the loudspeakers through using the key words such as elders,nostalgia,and homesickness;(2)the loudspeakers was maintained under the habit of village cadres and ordinary villagers,and the outbreak of the epidemic made the loudspeakers as an habit truly“appearing”;(3)the young village cadres,on the other hand,acquired this habit through imitation,transposed the loudspeakers into the short video platform,and carried out different forms of experimentation and innovation,thus surpassing the previous forms of loudspeakers practice.The return of the loudspeakers is the result of the game of different habits.As a long-lasting affection medium,the loudspeakers,on the one hand,has become an important media scene and memory field indispensable to rural community,and on the other hand,the people living on this land have a deep attachment to the loudspeakers,which is indirectly transformed into the bearer of homesickness.This brings new inspiration for us to rethink the relationship between the traditional media and the new media,the iteration of cadres and the change of rural community.

What Makes Homeowners Consider Protective Actions to Reduce Disaster Risk?An Application of the Precaution Adoption Process Model and Life Course Theory

We hypothesize that for disaster risk mitigation,many households,despite being aware of their risk and possible mitigation actions,never seriously consider doing anything about them.In mitigation-focused decisions,since there is no equivalent to warning messages,the decision process is likely to evolve over an extended time.We explore what activates hurricane mitigation protective action decisions through three research questions:(1)to what extent are homeowners unengaged in protective action decision making?(2)What homeowner characteristics are associated with lack of engagement?And(3)to what extent do different life events trigger engagement in the decision-making process?We use the Precaution Adoption Process Model to conceptualize engagement as distinct from decision making;the broader protective action decision-making literature to explore drivers of engagement;and Life Course Theory to examine potential transitions from unengaged to engaged.We use survey data of homeowners in North Carolina to examine these questions empirically.Findings suggest that one-third of respondents had never engaged in protective action decisions,that life experiences differ in their occurrence frequency and effect on households’mitigation decisions,and that some events,such as renovating,reroofing,or purchasing a home may offer critical moments that could be leveraged to encourage greater engagement in mitigation decision making.

Prevention of malignant digestive system tumors should focus on the control of chronic inflammation

Chronic inflammation,through a variety of mechanisms,plays a key role in the occurrence and development of digestive system malignant tumors(DSMTs).In this study,we feature and provide a comprehensive understanding of DSMT prevention strategies based on preventing or controlling chronic inflammation.The development and evaluation of cancer prevention strategies is a longstanding process.Cancer prevention,especially in the early stage of life,should be emphasized throughout the whole life course.Issues such as the time interval for colon cancer screening,the development of direct-acting antiviral drugs for liver cancer,and the Helicobacter pylori vaccine all need to be explored in long-term,large-scale experiments in the future.

Development trends of etiological research contents and methods of noncommunicable diseases

1|BACKGROUND Noncommunicable diseases(NCDs)are a significant public concern,greatly impacting the economic and social development in China.In 2019,NCDs accounted for a staggering 88.5%of total deaths in China,with cardiovas-cular diseases,cancer,chronic respiratory diseases,and diabetes—the four major chronic diseases—contributing to a premature mortality rate of 16.5%[1].The complexity of NCDs arises from the involvement of multiple genetic and environmental factors that interact in intricate ways.The complexity is characterized by a multitude of interactions among genes,proteins,and metabolic path-ways throughout the various stages of life.

Accelerating into Immunization Agenda 2030 with momentum from China’s successful COVID-19 vaccination campaign during dynamic COVID Zero

China’s immunization programs conducted a unified,tightly coordinated COVID-19 vaccination campaign during the dynamic COVID Zero period that reached well over 90%of the population with vaccines having>90%effectiveness against serious-to-fatal COVID-19.The campaign was eight times the size of the annual routine national immunization program,administering 3.4 billion doses of vaccines while monitoring vaccine coverage,acceptability,safety,and effectiveness.Every asset of the routine immunization program had to be strengthened and expanded to attain high coverage and reach hundreds of millions of adults who had not been vaccinated since childhood.Program strengthening and expansion were in directions aligned with the World Health Organization’s Immunization Agenda 2030,which has a vision that"everyone,everywhere,at every age fully benefits from vaccines for good health and well-being"and requires reaching all children,adolescents,and adults with lifesaving vaccines.Momentum from this campaign should not be lost but should be invested into achieving what is possible with a properly resourced national immunization program that is now proven to be capable of reaching everyone in the world’s largest country throughout the life course,and to do so with all vaccines recommended by the World Health Organization.

Changes in Disease Patterns in Rural China,With an Explanatory Framework

Data on the disease pattern in rural China over the past hundred years show that chronic diseases have now replaced infectious diseases as the major health problems plaguing rural residents.From the perspective of life-course research,taken together with medical anthropology's emphasis on bio-sociocultural integrity,we can divide chronic diseases into two:the chronic diseases of excessive depletion and the chronic diseases of excessive intake.The former are mainly the result of societal experiences engraved on the body;chronic diseases represented by arthritis and intervertebral disc disease arc the marks left on the human body by the"hard times"of the early years.The latter is the result of the transformation of working life in which the abundance of material resources and the reduction of physical exertion occur simultaneously;the rapid arrival of the"good times"mean that bodies that have long suffered from hunger and exhaustion find it hard to adapt.Hypertension and diabetes are the physical manifestations of this distress.Fundamentally,chronic diseases falling into the over-intake category may appear to originate from the sweetness of current life,but they are in fact the physical reproduction of earlier experiences.Our village case study fleshes out this explanatory framework,allowing us to see the complex relationship between social institutions,livelihood patterns,cultural mindsets,bodily habits,and disease.

The better future projections the more childbirth:the association between subjective social status and fertility desire of the Chinese population

Previous research has detailed how social status affects the willingness to have children.However,subjective social status(SSS)derived from a comparison with a reference group also has an important impact on fertility desire.This study explores the relationship between the past,present,and future SSS and fertility desire,using data from the Chinese General Social Survey,a nationally representative population survey conducted in 2017(N=4,864).The study found that the individual’s fertility desire is positively enhanced by the current SSS,the expected SSS in the future,and the upward trend of SSS throughout the course of life.Compared with the group with a low level of SSS and with little change in SSS,the fertility desire of the group with"Rising first and then stable"SSS and"Rising"SSS significantly increased.The results suggest that the expectation of positive changes in social status will stimulate fertility desires and produce long-term family plans.With the rapid development of China’s social economy and the positive response to the low fertility rate,social policies should be adopted to open up channels for the protection and improvement of the social status of citizens and to achieve an increase of fertility desire.