Punitive school discipline as a mechanism of structural marginalization with implications for health inequity: A systematic review of quantitative studies in the health and social sciences literature.

Punitive school discipline deploys surveillance, exclusion, and corporal punishment to deter or account for perceived student misbehavior. Yet, education and legal scholarship suggests it fails to achieve stated goals and exacerbates harm. Furthermore, it is disproportionately imposed upon Black, Latinx, Native/Indigenous, LGBTQIA, and disabled students, concentrating its harms among marginalized young people. Its implications for health, however, are less clear. Using public health theories of sociostructural embodiment, we propose a framework characterizing pathways linking societal ideologies (e.g., racism) to punitive discipline with implications for health and health inequity and then present our systematic review of the punitive school discipline-health literature (N = 19 studies) conducted in accordance with PRISMA guidelines. Data were extracted on guiding theories, study characteristics, measurement, methods, and findings. This literature links punitive school discipline to greater risk for numerous health outcomes, including persistent depressive symptoms, depression, drug use disorder in adulthood, borderline personality disorder, antisocial behavior, death by suicide, injuries, trichomoniasis, pregnancy in adolescence, tobacco use, and smoking, with documented implications for racial health inequity. Using our adapted framework, we contextualize results and recommend avenues for future research. Our findings support demands to move away from punitive school discipline toward health-affirming interventions to promote school connectedness, safety, and wellbeing.

Praziquantel Resistance in the Zoonotic Cestode Dipylidium caninum.

Dipylidium caninum is a cosmopolitan cestode infecting dogs, cats, and humans. Praziquantel is a highly effective cestocidal drug and resistance in adult cestodes has not been reported. From 2016 to 2018, a population of dogs with cestode infections that could not be eliminated despite multiple treatments with praziquantel or epsiprantel was identified. Cases of D. caninum were clinically resistant to praziquantel and could not be resolved despite increasing the dose, frequency, and duration of treatment. Resistant isolates were identified and characterized by sequencing the 28S, 12S, and voltage-gated calcium channel beta subunit genes. Cases were only resolved following treatment with nitroscanate or a compounded pyrantel/praziquantel/oxantel product. Clinicians should be aware of this alarming development as treatment options for cestodes are limited in both human and veterinary medicine.

Modeling Interventions in the Owned Cat Population to Decrease Numbers, Knox County, TN.

To find management strategies for controlling the owned cat population in Knox County, TN, the authors formulated a mathematical model using biological properties of such nonhuman animals and spay actions on certain age classes. They constructed this discrete-time model to predict the future owned cat population in this county and to evaluate intervention strategies to surgically sterilize some proportion of the population. Using the predicted population size and the number of surgeries for specific scenarios, they showed that focusing on specific age classes can be an effective feature in spay programs.