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Does gender nonconformity impact quality of life for adolescents and young adults?

Three Harvard Pop Center faculty members—Nancy Krieger, Cassandra Okechukwu and S. Bryn Austin—are authors on a study published in the journal Quality of Life Research that finds that the health-related quality of life for youth who behave and appear in ways that are considered atypical for their gender is impacted in several different ways.

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Supporting employees’ work-family needs improves health care quality

Thank you again to Cassandra Okechukwu for giving a seminar this past Thursday. Dr. Okechukwu has a new paper out in Social Science and Medicine titled “Supporting employees’ work-family needs improves health care quality: longitudinal evidence from long-term care.”  The study found that although managers of long-term care facilities perceived providing their employees with work-family support (including allowing employees to work additional off-site jobs) and ensuring high care quality for…

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Impact of schedule control on quality of care in nursing homes

Pop Center director Lisa Berkman and faculty member Cassandra Okechukwu have contributed to a study that examines whether the quality of care in nursing homes can be predicted by schedule control (workers’ ability to decide work hours), independently of other staffing characteristics. The study found that higher schedule control did indeed have the power to improve quality of care, as it was associated a lower prevalence of pressure ulcers.

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Maybe not everything gets better with time; a first long-term study of lifetime exposure to solvents and cognitive functioning

As reported in Time and Reuters, Harvard Pop Center fellow Erika Sabbath, ScD, and Harvard Pop Center affiliated faculty member Cassandra A. Okechukwu, ScD, have published a study in Neurology that examines the effects of lifetime solvent exposure among retired French utility workers. Those at greatest risk for cognitive deficits had experienced long-term exposure, even though the exposure might have ceased as long as 30 years prior.

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Human rights violations and smoking status among South African adults

Until now, no public health study has examined South Africans’ experiences of human rights violations and smoking. The first paper to examine this relationship has just been published in Social Science & Medicine;  Pop Center faculty members Ichiro Kawachi, Cassandra Okechukwu, and David Williams are co-authors. The results of their analysis suggest that smoking behaviors are more prevalent in South Africans who report that they have experienced violations of their human…

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