Persistent population aging worldwide is focusing attention on modifiable factors that can improve later life health. There is evidence that religiosity and spirituality are among such factors. Older people tend to have high rates of involvement in religious and/or spiritual endeavors and it is possible that population aging will be associated with increasing prevalence of religious and spiritual activity worldwide. Despite increasing research on religiosity, spirituality and health among older persons, population aging worldwide suggests the need for a globally integrated approach. As a step toward this, we review a subset of the literature on the impact of religiosity and spirituality on health in later life. We find that much of this has looked at the relationship between religiosity/spirituality and longevity as well as physical and mental health. Mechanisms include social support, health behaviors, stress and psychosocial factors. We identify a number of gaps in current knowledge. Many previous studies have taken place in the U.S. and Europe. Much data is cross-sectional, limiting ability to make causal inference. Religiosity and spirituality can be difficult to define and distinguish and the two concepts are often considered together, though on balance religiosity has received more attention than spirituality. The latter may however be equally important. Although there is evidence that religiosity is associated with longer life and better physical and mental health, these outcomes have been investigated separately rather than together such as in measures of health expectancy. In conclusion, there is a need for a unified and nuanced approach to understanding how religiosity and spirituality impact on health and longevity within a context of global aging, in particular whether they result in longer healthy life rather than just longer life.

Men are more likely than women to perpetrate nearly all types of interpersonal violence (e.g. intimate partner violence, murder, assault, rape). While public health programs target prevention efforts for each type of violence, there are rarely efforts that approach the prevention of violence holistically and attempt to tackle its common root causes. Drawing upon theories that explain the drivers of violence, we examine how gender norms, including norms and social constructions of masculinity, are at the root of most physical violence perpetration by men against women and against other men. We then argue that simply isolating each type of violence and constructing separate interventions for each type is inefficient and less effective. We call for recognition of the commonalities found across the drivers of different types of violence and make intervention recommendations with the goal of seeking more long-standing solutions to violence prevention.

The objective of this paper is to understand global connections between indicators of religiosity and health and how these differ cross-nationally. Data are from World Values Surveys (93 countries, N=121,770). Health is based on a self-assessed question about overall health. First, country-specific regressions are examined to determine the association separately in each country. Next, country-level variables and cross-level interactions are added to multilevel models to assess whether and how context affects health and religiosity slopes. Results indicate enormous variation in associations between religiosity and health across countries and religiosity indicators. Significant positive associations between all religiosity measures and health exist in only three countries (Georgia, South Africa, and USA); negative associations in only two (Slovenia and Tunisia). Macro-level variables explain some of this divergence. Greater participation in religious activity relates to better health in countries characterized as being religiously diverse. The importance in god and pondering life’s meaning is more likely associated with better health in countries with low levels of the Human Development Index. Pondering life’s meaning more likely associates with better health in countries that place more stringent restrictions on religious practice. Religiosity is less likely to be related to good health in communist and former communist countries of Asia and Eastern Europe. In conclusion, the association between religiosity and health is complex, being partly shaped by geopolitical and macro psychosocial contexts.

Media coverage of HIV criminal cases has deployed sexualized and racialized tropes, and portrayed defendants as villains. Several media analyses of HIV criminal trials have been conducted, though only one was in the US, and none involved young Black gay men, who are disproportionately impacted by HIV. We conducted content and textual analyses of 91 media stories focused on the 2015 case of Michael Johnson, a Black gay college student living with HIV who was convicted under Missouri’s HIV non-disclosure laws. To capture both dominant and resistant meanings in news stories, we included mainstream news outlets, as well as HIV-related, African American and GLBT community-oriented outlets. Open and axial coding were carried out by a team of four researchers and thematic analysis was used to explore how media framed Johnson, his sexual activities, condom use, and alleged nondisclosure. Results showed that media stories portrayed Johnson as dishonest and sexually predatory by drawing on narratives of deception and framing him as the sole agentic actor in his sexual encounters. We argue that these media frames, coupled with what is included and excluded in media coverage negatively impacts public opinion of PLWH, reinforces HIV criminalization ideologies, and performs a disciplinary function in the lives of PLWH.

Food security in the U.S. presents a paradox: despite being one of the wealthiest countries in the world, 13.7 million U.S. households experienced food insecurity in 2019. El Paso County, Colorado, is no exception. Through a community-academic partnership, we formed a diverse research team that conducted a collaborative qualitative analysis to identify residents' desires, knowledges, and visions towards more just and equitable food access in their communities. This analysis utilized 35 indepth interviews with residents from three food-insecure neighborhoods in Colorado Springs, Colorado, from 2019-2020. We find that residents expressed a holistic vision for community food security and endeavored to make this vision a reality by navigating various and intersecting food-access challenges. Our findings challenge previous literature on food choice that has identified low-income residents as either lacking an appropriate nutrition knowledge or lacking interest in pursuing a healthy diet. Residents held complex understandings of healthy food and food systems. Additionally, residents employed a range of strategies to gain access to the healthy foods they desired, attempting to confront various structural barriers to healthy food access. They held extensive knowledge about what their community needs to move closer to the visions they expressed. These insights will provide critical knowledge for successful food security interventions.