Public Health

... like imitations of Guarini's style. Quagliati also sets one sonnet by Petrarch and one by Domenico Veniero, and he pays tribute to Sannazaro, the Roman celebrity, in setting two of his eclogues. His expressive means, used sparingly ...

Policies that address opioid dose limits may help reduce high-risk opioid prescribing. We evaluated three sequential and progressive decreases in high dose (HD) opioid limits implemented by Massachusetts Medicaid over 15 years. The study population included members ages 18-64 years with ≥1 claim for a schedule II opioid between January 2002 and March 2017. The interventions (Intv1a/1b, Intv2, and Intv3) consisted of prior authorization (PA) requirements for prescriptions exceeding morphine equivalent dose (MED) high dose (HD) dose limits: >360mg (Intv1a/1b), >240mg (Intv2), and >120mg (Intv3). A segmented regression evaluated the change in natural log of the average daily MED (lnAD_MED). The LnAD_MED decreased during the six quarters following Intv1a (p < 0.001), immediately after Intv1b (p = 0.0002), and continued to decrease over the following eight quarters (p = 0.023). LnAD_MED dropped immediately after Intv2 (p = 0.002) and again after Intv3 (p < 0.001). The percentage of utilizers exceeding HD limits of 360mg, 240mg, and 120mg MED decreased by 87.3%, 79.8%, and 75.2% from baseline, respectively. LnAD_MED decreased among members after implementation of three sequential and progressive high-dose PA limits, as did the percentage of members exceeding each of the HD limits. Perspective: This study demonstrates the longitudinal impact of a PA policy-based HD limit in a Medicaid population. This study contributes to options for policymakers and other Medicaid programs as a potential strategy to assist in addressing the opioid epidemic.

For a certain subset of eminent Beethoven scholars, the celebration of Beethoven's 250th birthday in 2020 represented a challenge. In taking up the opportunity to communicate with a wider population of educated music lovers, the standard vehicle, a Beethoven biography, was off the table for thembecause they had already written one. 1 In the three books reviewed here, each author responds to this dilemma by focusing on themes in reception history. I will attempt to clarify their main points, comment on similarities and differences in their approaches, and evaluate how successful each one might be in in making recent Beethoven scholarship more accessible for the general reader. I will argue that all three of these books successfully target the more musically literate segment of lay readers, and that any weak points arise at the intersection between their academic content and the address to these members of their presumed readership. In the introduction to his biography Beethoven: The Music and the Life (2003), Lewis Lockwood addressed the issue of writing for multiple audiences. Observing that 'for no matter how faithfully painters work to present their subjects, they also present themselves', he acknowledged that both his background and scholarly work directed him towards a biography whose chief focus was Beethoven's music. 2 However, he also hoped to reach readers more interested in Beethoven's life or his cultural context. Lockwood recalls this metaphor of portrait painting in his new Beethoven's Lives: The Biographical Tradition, where he applies it

In an anonymous travelogue published in 1828, Karl Postl, better known as Charles Sealsfield, set down his impressions of his native Austria. 1 Among Sealsfield's scathing remarks on the Austrian education system is this description of its censored schoolbooks, 'the most barren and stupid extracts which ever left the printing press' which turned professors into 'ex-officio spies'. In required reports on each student, 'a strict vigilance is paid to his reading; trials are made with classic authors, his opinion is elicited about characters such as Brutus, Cato, and the account thereof faithfully inserted'. 2 Sealsfield suggests here that the biographies of Marcus Junius Brutus and Cato the Younger, two of Plutarch's Parallel Lives, were offensive to both church and state. The reasons are obvious: both Brutus and Cato opposed Julius Caesar because of their republican principles, and both died by suicide, an act contrary to Catholic doctrine. 3 Histories of ancient Greece and Rome have always had political implications; Sealsfield's account suggests that these were particularly intense during the last years of Ludwig van Beethoven's life. This new book by Jos van der Zanden is particularly welcome because its content sits at the intersection of two recent themes in musicology, Beethoven's religion and his politics post-1815. 4 By choosing this subject, van der Zanden ventures into potentially controversial territory. However, his approach is anything but polemical. He sets out to explore his topic 'in a thoughtful and cautious manner, with sufficient supply of background material' (p. 3). He aims to get closer to Beethoven's actual state of mind and avoid tangential correlations … between ancient figures that were known to Beethoven … and such themes as German idealism (the realm of love, freedom, and beauty), heroism, republicanism, rebelliousness, etc. As will be seen, many of these themes had their actual roots not so much in Beethoven's time, but in the later nineteenth century, predominantly in the second-half. (p. 7)

It is critical to develop practical, effective, ecological, and decolonizing approaches to indigenous suicide prevention and health promotion for the North American communities. The youth suicide rates in predominantly indigenous small, rural, and remote Northern communities are unacceptably high. This health disparity, however, is fairly recent, occurring over the last 50 to 100 years as communities experienced forced social, economic, and political change and intergenerational trauma. These conditions increase suicide risk and can reduce people&#39;s access to shared protective factors and processes. In this context, it is imperative that suicide prevention includes-at its heart-decolonization, while also utilizing the &quot;best practices&quot; from research to effectively address the issue from multiple levels. This article describes such an approach: Promoting Community Conversations About Research to End Suicide (PC CARES). PC CARES uses popular education strategies to build a...

In order to determine health perceptions, values, and behaviors of rural residents across diverse ages, races, educational levels, and genders, random telephone surveys of 184 residents were conducted in three North Central Florida counties. Survey data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results indicated that the majority of residents defined health in either functional status or affective terms. Many were concerned about their health status and either engaged in some type of physical activity or altered their SOJNR, Issue 3 Volume 5, p. 2 diet for health reasons. Rural residents in this sample tended to favor self-directed rather than institutionalized forms of health maintenance and rely on their own assessments of health rather than those of healthcare professionals.

is paper is inspired by recent trends in narrative research that orient to the meaning-making actions of those involved in describing the life course. Applying concepts of narrative, discourse, and contrast, the complex meaning of growing up is presented by way of Lakeesha's story, one of the 20 women interviewed for a project on African American gender socialization. Rather than viewing the participant in question as having been subject to the ostensible forces and parameters of socialization, she was o ered the opportunity to represent her growing-up experiences in her own terms. She talked herself into being, situating herself as a particular type of women throughout her growing-up story -strategically employing and manipulating particular cultural discourses to do so. Lakeesha's story is presented in this paper to illustrate a strategic model of narrative activity. In particular, I trace her use of the American Dream to analyze the ways that she situates herself with particular identities linked to local conceptions of successful womanhood. Methodological implications of this approach are considered in the conclusion. (American Dream, Contrast structure, Gender socialization, Narrative analysis, Rural African American women, Social construction of identity)