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“Disparity” implies the existence of a “markedly distinct in quality or character,” difference between one group and another. Some groups, due to elevated stigma associated with group membership, are invisible as a disparate minority and therefore, while there may be a great inequity in healthcare between that group and the normative population, the invisible minority is ignored. This chapter addresses the issue of healthcare for the transgender-identified population. We address how the normative viewpoint of mental illness and unacceptable religious status, along with lifelong perceived and actual abuse and violence, creates a socially sanctioned inequality in healthcare for this population.

Scholars and activists working both within and outside the massive health-related machinery of government and the private sector and within and outside communities of color address the same fundamental questions: Why do health disparities exist? Why have they persisted over such a long time? What can be done to significantly reduce or eliminate them?

While research on intergenerational service learning has focused on the benefits for the students, very few studies have focused on the older adults who are the recipients of the service learning. For the current study, we were interested in the benefits of service learning for both the college students and the older adults who participated in a service-learning course. Qualitative data were collected from both the students in a sociology of aging service-learning class and the older adults who participated as recipients of the service learning. Data from the students were collected via student journals and open-ended questionnaire responses written by the students. Data from the older adults were collected via interviews by the students as well as open-ended questionnaire responses written by the older adults. The following themes emerged as benefits to students: (1) a better understanding and less fear of aging; (2) a desire to learn more about older adults; (3) a desire to engage more with older adults. The themes for the benefits to the older adults included (1) improved social connections and companionship and (2) becoming family. We found that engaging in intergenerational service-learning courses is beneficial to all those who are involved.

Service-learning (SL) is an educational movement with roots in academic activism fuelled by commitments to accessibility, social mobility, social justice, community engagement, sustainable development and learning. Reviewing the voices of the original US ‘pioneers’ and contemporary practitioners over the last 30 years, this chapter argues that (1) contemporary SL has been ‘mainstreamed’ in various ways and (2) such a re-conceptualisation seems to have re-formatted educational commitments in line with contemporary economic framings and circumstances of higher education (HE). However, it also argues that beyond overt compliance and resistance, it is possible for practitioners and HE more broadly to create responses and spaces where educational adaptation and transformation can emerge. To facilitate such responses, it is important to embrace the strong driving force of passion and emotion, which can drive and sustain change agents in practice. This chapter aspires to revitalise and rejuvenate academic activism as a legitimate catalyst of educational transformation on a global platform.

This chapter reports on one faculty member’s experience introducing a service learning component into a sequence of required courses in a College of education at a University in the United Arab Emirates. This study identifies local issues associated with introducing service learning into the curriculum and examines students’ perceptions of self, attitudes toward service to others, and service as leadership and outcomes. Relatively little evidence exists in the Middle East of the actual processes involved in developing and implementing service learning programs and the relevant connections that can be made to Islamic principles for community advocacy and leadership.

This chapter provides a description of an ongoing service learning initiative and exemplars of reflection on service for nursing students at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. The service, health promotion, is provided to the Oglala Lakota, or Lakota, on the reservation through community screenings for adults and health education for the prevention of children’s health issues. Nursing student participants have the unique experience of learning about the Lakota culture, while also offering service via health promotion to a population that experiences ongoing health disparities and inequity. The Lakota and the Pine Ridge Reservation are examined, including the setting, history, culture, and disparities. Students improve their transcultural nursing skills and develop an awareness of their role in working toward social justice and health equity. Students blog daily during the trip and complete a final summative project as their reflection on service. The service learning initiative process is detailed, from choosing students for the experience to pre-travel student preparation to the actual travel. The reflection on service via blogging is discussed, including the evidence on the benefits of using this social media platform. The experience at Pine Ridge is also reviewed focusing on the details of the service learning initiative and cultural activity participation. Lastly, an overview of the final summative project is provided. Throughout the chapter, students’ reflections on service via blog posts are provided as evidence of the transformative quality of this initiative.

The purpose of this chapter is to review how well walking interventions have increased and sustained walking, and to provide suggestions for improving future walking interventions. A scoping review was conducted of walking interventions for adults that emphasised walking as a primary intervention strategy and/or included a walking outcome measure. Interventions conducted at the individual, community, and policy levels between 1990 and 2015 were included, with greater emphasis on recent interventions. Walking tends to increase early in interventions and then gradually declines. Results suggest that increased walking, and environmental-change activities to support walking are more likely to be sustained when they are immediately followed by greater economic benefits/time-savings, social approval, and/or physical/emotional well-being. Adaptive interventions that adjust intervention procedures to match dynamically changing environmental circumstances also hold promise for sustaining increased walking. Interventions that incorporate automated technology, durable built environment changes, and civic engagement, may increase cost-efficiency. Variations in outcome measures, study duration, seasons, participant characteristics, and possible measurement reactivity preclude causal inferences about the differential effectiveness of specific intervention procedures for increasing and sustaining walking. This review synthesises the effects of diverse walking interventions on increasing and sustaining walking over a 25-year period. Suggestions are provided to guide future development of more effective, sustainable walking interventions at the population level.

Epidemiology is often described as “the basic science of public health” (Savitz, Poole & Miller, 1999; Syme & Yen, 2000). This description suggests both a close association with public health practice, and the separation of “pure” scientific knowledge from its application in the messy social world. Although the attainability of absolute objectivity is rarely claimed, epidemiologists are routinely encouraged to “persist in their efforts to substitute evidence for faith in scientific reasoning” (Stolley, 1985, p. 38) and reminded that “public health decision makers gain little from impassioned scholars who go beyond advancing and explaining the science to promoting a specific public health agenda” (Savitz et al., 1999, p. 1160). Epidemiology produces authoritative data that are transformed into evidence which informs public health. Those data are authoritative because epidemiology is regarded as a neutral scientific enterprise. Because its claims are grounded in science, epidemiological knowledge is deemed to have “a special technical status and hence is not contestable in the same way as are say, religion or ethics” (Lock, 1988, p. 6). Despite the veneer of universality afforded by its scientific pedigree, epidemiology is not a static or monolithic discipline. Epidemiological truth claims are embodied in several shifting paradigms that span the life of the discipline. Public health knowledges and practices, competing claims internal and external to epidemiology, and structural conditions (such as current political economies, material technologies, and institutions) provide important contexts in which certain kinds of epidemiological knowledge are more likely to emerge.