Occupational and environmental reproductive hazards education and resources for communities of color.

Little research has been published on the occupational and environmental hazards affecting people of color. Even less is known about the hazards that affect women of color. Although women of color have always been aggressive participants in the work force, their labor activity has increased dramatically over the last decade. Current job placement patterns suggest that women of color are concentrated in the lowest-paying and most hazardous jobs. In this paper, we specifically focus on occupational and environmental reproductive health concerns. We write with the understanding that reproductive hazards can affect pregnant women, nonpregnant women, and men, as well as the health and development of young children. Emphasis is placed primarily on African American women, because information on Hispanic, Native American, and Asian women is very limited. We discuss the participation of women of color in the labor force, using the U.S. Department of Labor categories. We review specific occupational hazards associated with each category of work and briefly discuss environmental hazards, noting that communities of color are at a disproportionate risk of exposure. Finally, we present the consensus report of the Community Education Working Group from the Woods Hole Conference on Occupational and Environmental Reproductive Hazards.

The life and death of Miss Mildred. An elderly black woman.

Who is the elderly black woman? What do health care providers need to know about her life when they treat her for her numerous chronic ailments? What social factors are important when those chronic illnesses ultimately require decisions about withholding or withdrawing treatment? This article presents the life story of Miss Mildred: a composite of the history, family, community, religion, work, health, and death of an elderly black woman in the rural south. What providers know about elderly blacks comes from the expert; this article lets Miss Mildred speak for herself.

In case of emergency: no need for consent.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is amending its current informed consent regulations to permit harmonization of the Department of Health and Human Services' (DHHS) policies on emergency research and to reduce confusion on when such research can proceed without obtaining an individual subject's informed consent. This regulation provides a narrow exception to the requirement for obtaining and documenting informed consent from each human subject, or his or her legally authorized representative, prior to initiation of an experimental intervention. The exception would apply to a limited class of research activities involving human subjects who are in need of emergency medical intervention but who cannot give informed consent because of their life-threatening medical condition, and who do not have a legally authorized person to represent them. FDA is taking this action in response to growing concerns that current rules are making high quality acute care research activities difficult or impossible to carry out at a time when the need for such research is increasingly recognized.