Navigating Stigma in Romantic Relationships Where One or Both Partners Sell Sexual Services.

Romantic relationships are an important part of our social identities and well-being. In this paper, we report on qualitative findings with thirty Canadian couples, interviewed together, where it was known that one or both partners sell sexual services for a living. We asked a series of open-ended questions related to the background of the couple's relationship, their day-to-day interactions and work-related stressors. Participants talked about the ongoing negotiations they engage in as a couple, the benefits of being open to each other about working in the sex industry, and how they manage its emotional toll on their partnership. We conclude that there are various ways that sex workers are able to maintain intimacy in their romantic relationships after sex work has been disclosed. Widespread social stigma attached to sex work, complicated by criminalization in countries such as Canada, nevertheless threatens relationship quality in the long run.

Lower-risk substance use guidelines accessible by youth.

BACKGROUND: Lower-risk substance use guidelines (LRSUGs) are an evidence-based harm reduction strategy used to provide information to people who use drugs so they can reduce harms associated with substance use. OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to identify LRSUGs accessible to youth and to characterize the recommendations within these guidelines. The overall goal is to identify gaps in current LRSUGs and to inform researchers and policymakers of the kinds of health information youth can access. METHODS: We conducted a digital assessment using the Google search engine to identify LRSUGs that could be identified by youth when searching for official sources of information related to commonly used substances, including cannabis, caffeine, alcohol, hallucinogens, prescription opioids, nicotine, and/or prescription stimulants. LRSUGs were coded and data were extracted from them to identify gaps. RESULTS: One hundred thirty LRSUGs were identified; most focused on alcohol (n = 40, 31%), cannabis (n = 30, 23%), and caffeine (n = 21, 16%). LRSUGs provided recommendations about dosing (n = 108, 83%), frequency of use (n = 72, 55%), and when to use (n = 86, 66%). Most LRSUGs were published by health (n = 51, 39%) and third-sector organizations (n = 41, 32%), followed by provincial/state (n = 18, 14%), government (n = 14, 11%), municipal (n = 4, 3%), and academic (n = 2, 2%) sources. Only 16% (n = 21) of LRSUGs were youth-specific and one-quarter (n = 32, 25%) of LRSUGs provided gender-specific recommendations. Most guidelines featured information on short (n = 76, 58%) and long-term (n = 69, 53%) negative effectives and positive effects of substances (n = 56, 43%). Less than half (n = 50, 38%) of LRSUGs cited evidence in support of the information they provided. CONCLUSIONS: We identified several areas in the current LRSUGs for youth that need to be addressed. Among the gaps are a lack of LRSUGs developed specifically for youth, a lack of youth engagement in developing harm reduction strategies centered around them, and a lack of evidence-based LRSUGs. Youth-oriented, evidence-based LRSUGs are needed to better support youth who use substances and help them manage the negative effects of substance use.

Using Travel Diary Data to Estimate the Emissions Impacts of Transportation Strategies: The Puget Sound Telecommuting Demonstration Project.

Transportation control measures are often implemented for their environmental benefits, but there is a need to quantify what benefits actually occur. Telecommuting has the potential to reduce the number of daily trips and miles traveled with personal vehicles and, consequently, the overall emissions resulting from vehicle activity. This search studies the emissions impacts of telecommuting for the participants of the Puget Sound Telecommuting Demonstration Project (PSTDP). The California Air Resources Board's emissions models, EMFAC7F and BURDEN7F, are used to estimate the emissions on telecommuting days and non-telecommuting days, based on travel diaries completed by program participants. This study, among the first of its kind, represents the most sophisticated application of emissions models to travel diary data. Analysis of the travel diary data and the emissions model output supports the hypothesis that telecommuting has beneficial transportation and air quality impacts. The most important results are that telecommuting decreases the number of daily trips (by 30%), the vehicle-miles traveled (VMT) (by 63%), and the number of cold starts (by 44%), especially those taking place in early morning. These reductions are shown to have a large effect on daily emissions, with a 50% to 60% decrease in pollutants generated by a telecommuter's personal vehicle use on a telecommuting day. These net savings are almost entirely due to the elimination of commute trips, as non-commute trips increased by 0.33 trips per person-day (9% of the total trips), and the non-commute VMT increased by 2.2 miles. Overall reduc- tions in travel and emissions of this magnitude are observed because the telecommuters in this sample are long-distance commuters, with commutes twice as long as the regional average. However, even as telecommuting adoption moves into the mainstream, its net impacts are still expected to be beneficial- a reduction in VMT and in emissions. It is important to note that when the level of telecommuting is considered (that is, the percentage of work days that employees actually telecommute), the weekly savings are a much smaller proportion of total weekday travel. Also, these findings represent average per-capita reductions; the aggregate (or overall, regionwide) impacts are determined by scaling these reductions by the number of program participants. Thus, the aggregate effectiveness of telecommuting must take into account the number of people likely to participate as telecommuters and how often they telecommute, not just the per-capita, peroccasion impacts.