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Adherence in Ethnic Minorities : The Case of South Asians in Britain
Published in Lynn B. Myers, Kenny Midence, Adherence to Treatment in Medical Conditions, 2020
The literature on health attitudes and behaviour among South Asians in Britain is full of contradictory imagery. The community is depicted as knowing little of the concept of screening, and yet on the Indian subcontinent, the determination of foetal gender by amniocentesis is well-known to the point of abuse (Pandya, 1988). The culture is characterised as retrograde with respect to the seclusion of women and yet the support of the extended family system is seen to be beneficial. Overcrowding is used as an indicator of poverty and thereby implicated in poor health, but it has also been noted that the cultural practice of parental-infant bed sharing may limit the occurrence of sudden infant death syndrome (Farooqi, 1994). Subgroups of the community are described in terms of “good” and “bad” health practices. For example, alcohol and cigarette consumption is low in Pakistani and Indian females (Ahmad, Kemohan and Baker, 1988) but the habit of betel nut chewing has been implicated in the excess cases of oral cancer found amongst South Asians (Donaldson and Clayton, 1984). Any attempts to generalise about health in general or adherence are further complicated by the confounding of ethnicity with class (Navarro, 1990; LaVeist, 1996). Poor adherence may be as much, if not more, related to structural than to attitude barriers.
Breastfeeding and infant sleep – what medical practitioners need to know
Published in Amy Brown, Wendy Jones, A Guide to Supporting Breastfeeding for the Medical Profession, 2019
When parents in Western countries are interviewed about sleeping with their baby they express various reasons for doing so, such as deeply rooted cultural or religious beliefs and parenting philosophies, physiological links between lactation and night-time breastfeeding and a biological compulsion that drives the urge for close contact (Ball 2002; Ateah and Hamelin 2008; Culver 2009; Salm-Ward 2015; Crane and Ball 2016). On a practical level they explain that sleeping with the baby makes night-time care easier, helps them to monitor the baby, providing comfort, and yet obtaining sleep (Ball 2002; Ball 2003; Rudzik and Ball 2016). Sometimes parents report having nowhere else to put their baby at night, or that they have fallen asleep with their baby unintentionally (Ball 2002; Ateah and Hamelin 2008; Volpe et al. 2013). Despite decades of advice to avoid mother–baby sleep contact (for various reasons), 20–25% of US and UK babies under 3 months of age share a bed with a parent for sleep on any given night (Blair and Ball 2004; McCoy et al. 2004) and during their first 3 months 40–70% of babies in those Western societies surveyed to date have done so (Gibson et al. 2000; Rigda et al. 2000; Willinger et al. 2003; Blair and Ball 2004; Ateah and Hamelin 2008; Hauck et al. 2008; Santos et al. 2009). Recent studies have found that mother–infant bed-sharing in low-risk circumstances is no more hazardous for babies than sleeping in a cot (Blair et al. 2014), and that advising parents against bed-sharing does not reduce its prevalence (Moon et al. 2017).
Effect of oral stimulation on feeding performance and weight gain in preterm neonates: a randomised controlled trial
Published in Paediatrics and International Child Health, 2018
Pareshkumar A. Thakkar, H. R. Rohit, Rashmi Ranjan Das, Ukti P. Thakkar, Amitabh Singh
Feeding performance was assessed by overall volume intake (ml/kg/feed) and rate of milk transfer (ml/min). The caregivers (parents and nurses) were blinded to the group assignments. To safeguard this, before providing OMS, a screen was placed around the infant bed for the entire duration of the intervention. The infants in the control groups were treated similarly by the paediatric physiotherapist who put a hand near the infants without touching them and with a screen placed around the bed.