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The International Council on Women’s Health Issues (ICOWHI) is an international nonprofit association dedicated to the goal of promoting health, health care, and well-being of women and girls throughout the world through participation, empowerment, advocacy, education, and research. We are a multidisciplinary network of women’s health providers, planners, and advocates from all over the globe. We constitute an international professional and lay network of those committed to improving women and girl’s health and quality of life. This document provides a description of our organization mission, vision, and commitment to improving the health and well-being of women and girls globally.

Most researchers studying sex work have focused on the risks of sexually transmitted diseases, predominantly HIV, for sex workers, their clients, and subsequent partners. Violence against these women often goes undocumented and unnoticed. Consequently, few researchers have addressed violence against sex workers, and these few have generated limited evidence about the nature of violence from the sex-worker perspective--especially the street sex worker perspective. In this study, we used qualitative methods to explore characteristics of violence against street sex workers and how violence influences personal and societal health risks. The participants were 28 female street sex workers. The data were collected through in-depth interviews with 23 women, one focus group with 5 women, and observations of these women in their working and social environment. The results revealed that violence against sex workers can be clustered into three categories, threat to their life and health, threat to control of work and financial security, and finally, threat to humanity. Because they are disadvantaged, and engage in illegal employment, theses women were trapped in a circle of threats. To reduce violence, sex work should be decriminalized along with strategies to decrease poverty and social inequality. A special agency needs to be established to protect the rights and safety of sex workers.

To help prevent pressure ulcers in older stroke patients, the findings suggest that healthcare providers assess activity, moisture, nutrition, friction and shearing, as well as psychological assessment for depression. The results indicate that models for pressure ulcer prevention merit further investigation.

Objective: The present study has been aimed at constructing a causal model to determine factors affecting healthrelatedquality of life (HRQoL) in postoperative patients with colorectal cancer (CRC) following discharge.Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted with 396 postoperative CRC cancer patients fromten tertiary hospitals representing each of the four Regions of Thailand. Data was collected through a standardquestionnaire. Structure equation modeling (SEM) was applied to analyze data.Results: The findings revealed that the majority of patients with CRC surgery had a moderate HRQoL. One hundredand twenty-three patients (31.1%) had complications. SEM showed a good fit with ƛ2=40.347, df=28, p=0.062,GFI=0.980, CFI=0.959 and RMSEA=0.033. The final model showed that age, stage of cancer and healthcare servicebeing received following CRC surgery had direct effects on HRQoL. Nutritional status and follow-up outpatientclinic had indirect effects on HRQoL during postoperative complications. Moreover, social support and primaryfamily caregiver support had indirect effects on HRQoL through self-management capacity.Conclusion: The findings of this study emphasized the importance of implementing effective strategies to improvequality of life among postoperative patients with CRC after discharge and indicated these strategies should focuson quality of healthcare service following CRC surgery, self-management capacity and prevention of postoperativecomplications. Postoperative complications can be reduced by providing effective follow-up in outpatient clinicsand nutritional status management, consequently improving quality of life among this population.