What Do We Know About Women’s Experiences of Living With Hepatitis C? An Analysis of Canadian Women's Journey with Hepatitis C Care
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: The Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a blood-borne infection affecting an estimated 170 million people worldwide including approximately 250,000 Canadians. Untreated HCV can contribute to significant morbidity and mortality. Despite the benefits of HCV care, there continues to be significant gaps in the uptake of services. Purpose: This thesis explored Canadian women’s experiences of the journey with HCV care from the perspective of the women, in order to promote care engagement, improve patient-provider relationships and deliver services that meet women’s needs. Methods: This study, inspired by grounded theory techniques, explored women’s experience of living with HCV and factors influencing their journey with care. Purposive and theoretical sampling across three Canadian provinces generated interviews with 25 women. Results: Three concepts were central to understanding women’s journey with HCV care: 1) The point of diagnosis shaped women’s journey with care through a) their preparedness for a positive diagnosis, and b) the information/health education they received; 2) Women faced complex barriers to care - (a) information provision, b) family and caregiver responsibilities, c) relationship with healthcare provider, d) active substance use and e) stigma and discrimination - but often showed inventiveness and determination to overcome them; 3) Women saw their decision to attend for HCV care as prompted by a) immediate crisis, b) gradual sequence of awareness, or c) medical intervention. Conclusion: The development of effective interventions and integrated models of care requires an understanding of the complex factors that shape women’s journey with HCV care. Improving women’s journey with HCV care will enhance their access to the new treatment regimes. Recommendations: A National HCV Strategy and comprehensive guidelines for care, treatment and prevention; HCV education throughout the healthcare system; and equitable and accessible healthcare for all women living with HCV.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.011 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.036 | 0.009 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".