Personality judgments from everyday images of faces.

People readily make personality attributions to images of strangers' faces. Here we investigated the basis of these personality attributions as made to everyday, naturalistic face images. In a first study, we used 1000 highly varying "ambient image" face photographs to test the correspondence between personality judgments of the Big Five and dimensions known to underlie a range of facial first impressions: approachability, dominance, and youthful-attractiveness. Interestingly, the facial Big Five judgments were found to separate to some extent: judgments of openness, extraversion, emotional stability, and agreeableness were mainly linked to facial first impressions of approachability, whereas conscientiousness judgments involved a combination of approachability and dominance. In a second study we used average face images to investigate which main cues are used by perceivers to make impressions of the Big Five, by extracting consistent cues to impressions from the large variation in the original images. When forming impressions of strangers from highly varying, naturalistic face photographs, perceivers mainly seem to rely on broad facial cues to approachability, such as smiling.

'If you have a soul, you will volunteer at once': gendered expectations of duty to care during pandemics.

Duty to care has been identified as a pressing ethical issue in contemporary discussions of pandemic preparedness; however, nuanced discussions of this complicated issue are relatively limited. This article presents historical data from the experience of the 1918 influenza pandemic in Brantford, Ontario in Canada, demonstrating that, in the face of an actual pandemic, the particular construction of duty to care as both moral and gendered meant that women were placed at a greater personal risk during this time. Given that women still dominate the front lines of healthcare work, we argue that it is critical for current stakeholders to reflect on how these historical patterns may be replicated in contemporary pandemic planning and response.

Bearing response-ability: theater, ethics and medical education.

This paper addresses a growing concern within the medical humanities community regarding the perceived need for a more empathically-focused medical curricula, and advocates for the use of creative pedagogical forms as a means to attend to issues of suffering and relationality. Drawing from the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, I critique the notion of empathy on the basis that it erases difference and disregards otherness. Rather, I propose that the concept of empathy may be usefully replaced with that of ethical responsibility, which suggests a shared sense of humanity outside the boundaries of presumed knowledge of the other. To illustrate this argument, I theorize the importance of theater within medical education. Theater, I argue, may engender ethical responsibility in the Levinasian sense, and thus may allow learners to differently engage with the experience of the suffering other. As such, I examine Margaret Edson's widely used play Wit as a platform for such an ethical encounter to occur. Thus, rather than working to understand the value of theater in medical education in terms of knowledge and skill acquisition, I theorize that its primacy within medical curricula arises from its ethical/relational potential, or potential to engender new forms of inter-human relationality.

Access to primary health care among homeless adults in Toronto, Canada: results from the Street Health survey.

BACKGROUND: Despite experiencing a disproportionate burden of acute and chronic health issues, many homeless people face barriers to primary health care. Most studies on health care access among homeless populations have been conducted in the United States, and relatively few are available from countries such as Canada that have a system of universal health insurance. We investigated access to primary health care among a representative sample of homeless adults in Toronto, Canada. METHODS: Homeless adults were recruited from shelter and meal programs in downtown Toronto between November 2006 and February 2007. Cross-sectional data were collected on demographic characteristics, health status, health determinants and access to health care. We used multivariable logistic regression analysis to investigate the association between having a family doctor as the usual source of health care (an indicator of access to primary care) and health status, proof of health insurance, and substance use after adjustment for demographic characteristics. RESULTS: Of the 366 participants included in our study, 156 (43%) reported having a family doctor. After adjustment for potential confounders and covariates, we found that the odds of having a family doctor significantly decreased with every additional year spent homeless in the participant's lifetime (adjusted odds ratio [OR] 0.91, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.86-0.97). Having a family doctor was significantly associated with being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered (adjusted OR 2.70, 95% CI 1.04-7.00), having a health card (proof of health insurance coverage in the province of Ontario) (adjusted OR 2.80, 95% CI 1.61-4.89) and having a chronic medical condition (adjusted OR 1.91, 95% CI 1.03-3.53). INTERPRETATION: Less than half of the homeless people in Toronto who participated in our study reported having a family doctor. Not having a family doctor was associated with key indicators of health care access and health status, including increasing duration of homelessness, lack of proof of health insurance coverage and having a chronic medical condition. Increased efforts are needed to address the barriers to appropriate health care and good health that persist in this population despite the provision of health insurance.

Contextualizing ethics: ventilators, H1N1 and marginalized populations.

If the H1N1 pandemic worsens, there may not be enough ventilated beds to care for all persons with respiratory failure. To date, researchers who explicitly discuss the ethics of intensive care unit admission and the allocation of ventilators during an influenza pandemic have based criteria predominantly on the principles of utility and efficiency, that is, promoting actions that maximize the greatest good for the greatest number of people. However, haphazardly applying utility and efficiency potentially disadvantages marginalized populations who might be at increased risk of severe reactions to H1N1. In Canada, Aboriginals represent 3% of Canadians, yet 11% of H1N1 cases requiring hospitalization involve Aboriginal persons. Aboriginal persons suffer from high rates of obesity due to socio-economic inequalities. Obesity is also a risk factor for severe H1N1 reactions. Yet, since obesity is found to increase the duration of stay in ventilated beds and a long stay is not considered an optimal use of ventilators, applying the principles of utility and efficiency may magnify existing social inequalities. Although promoting utility and efficiency is important, other ethical principles, such as equity and need, require thoughtful consideration and implementation. Furthermore, since public resources are being used to address a public health hazard, the viewpoints of the public, and specifically stakeholders who will be disproportionately affected, should inform decision-makers. Finally, giving attention to the needs and rights of marginalized populations means that ventilators should not be allocated based on criteria that exacerbate the social injustices faced by these groups of people.

After the crash: research-based theater for knowledge transfer.

INTRODUCTION: The aim of this project was to develop and evaluate a research-based dramatic production for the purpose of transferring knowledge about traumatic brain injury (TBI) to health care professionals, managers, and decision makers. METHODS: Using results drawn from six focus group discussions with key stakeholders (consumers, informal caregivers, and health care practitioners experienced in the field of TBI) and relevant scientific literature, a 50-minute play was produced for the purpose of conveying the experiences of TBI survivors, informal care providers, and health practitioners and best practice for TBI care. A self-administered postperformance survey was distributed to audience members at the end of four performances in Ontario, Canada, to evaluate the play's efficacy. Two hundred ninety-one questionnaires were completed. The questionnaire had five questions scored on a 5-item Likert scale with space for open-ended comments. RESULTS: Consistently high mean scores from the questionnaires indicate that theater is a highly efficacious and engaging method of knowledge transfer, particularly for complex material that deals with human emotion and interpersonal relationships. DISCUSSION: Responses supported the effectiveness of drama as a knowledge translation strategy and identified its potential to impact practice positively.

From page to stage: dramaturgy and the art of interdisciplinary translation.

In recent years, interdisciplinary collaboration between artists and social scientists has received sustained interest from many members of the academic community. However, cross-disciplinary work is often more difficult than presumed. Epistemological and methodological differences between disciplines create barriers that may impede collaborative projects. This article explores some of the unique tensions and challenges that arose from the creation of ;After the Crash', a research-based theatre production about traumatic brain injury. Through the narrative lens of the project's dramaturg, we explore moments of interdisciplinary tension, and the possibility for the role of the dramaturg to build bridges between disparate methods of knowledge generation and translation.

The last straw!: a tool for participatory education about the social determinants of health.

BACKGROUND: In response to a scarcity of teaching tools regarding the social determinants of health (SDOH), Kate Reeve and Kate Rossiter created The Last Straw! board game, an innovative participatory education tool to facilitate and engage critical thinking about the SDOH. OBJECTIVES: The Last Straw! is designed to encourage discussion about the SDOH, promote critical thinking, and build empathy with marginalized people. METHODS: The game begins as each player rolls the dice to create a character profile, including socioeconomic status (SES), race, and gender. Based on this profile, players then receive a certain number of "vitality chips." Moving across the board, players encounter scenarios that cause them to gain and lose chips based on their profile. The player who finishes the game with the most chips wins the game. The game can be facilitated for a variety of audiences, including both players with no prior knowledge of the SDOH and those experienced in the field. CONCLUSIONS: The game has been played with students, policymakers, and community workers, among others, and has been met with immense enthusiasm. Here, we detail the game's reception within the community, including benefits, limitations, and next steps.

Staging data: theatre as a tool for analysis and knowledge transfer in health research.

Over the past several decades, researchers have taken an interest in theatre as a unique method of analysing data and translating findings. Because of its ability to communicate research findings in an emotive and embodied manner, theatre holds particular potential for health research, which often engages complex questions of the human condition. In order to evaluate the research potential of theatre, this article critically examines examples of evaluated health research studies that have used theatre for the purposes of data analysis or translation. We examine these studies from two perspectives. First, the literature is divided and categorized into four theatre genres: (1) non-theatrical performances; (2) ethnodramas, which can be interactive or non-interactive; (3) theatrical research-based performances; and (4) fictional theatrical performances. This categorization highlights the importance of these genres of theatre and provides an analysis of the benefits and disadvantages of each, thus providing insight into how theatre may be most effectively utilized in health research. Second, we explore the efficacy of using theatre for the purposes of data analysis and knowledge transfer, and critically examine potential approaches to the evaluation of such endeavours.