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Background: The Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES) has long recognized and championed increasing diversity within the surgical workplace. SAGES initiated the Fundamentals of Leadership Development (FLD) Curriculum to address these needs and to provide surgeon leaders with the necessary tools and skills to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in surgical practice. In 2019, the American College of Surgeons issued a request for anti-racism initiatives which lead to the partnering of the two societies. The primary goal of FLD was to create the first surgeon-focused leadership curriculum dedicated to DEI. The rationale/development of this curriculum and its evaluation/feedback methods are detailed in this White Paper. Methods: The FLD curriculum was developed by a multidisciplinary task force that included surgeons, education experts, and diversity consultants. The curriculum development followed the Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation and Evaluation (ADDIE) instructional design model and utilized a problem-based learning approach. Competencies were identified, and specific learning objectives and assessments were developed. The implementation of the curriculum was designed to be completed in short intervals (virtual and in-person). Post-course surveys used the Kirkpatrick's model to evaluate the curriculum and provide valuable feedback. Results: The curriculum consisted of interactive online modules, an online discussion forum, and small group interactive sessions focused in three key areas: (1) increasing pipeline of underrepresented individuals in surgical leadership, (2) healthcare equity, and (3) conflict negotiation. By focusing on positive action items and utilizing a problem-solving approach, the curriculum aimed to provide a framework for surgical leaders to make meaningful changes in their institutions and organizations. Conclusion: The FLD curriculum is a novel leadership curriculum that provided surgeon leaders with the knowledge and tools to improve diversity in three areas: pipeline improvement, healthcare equity, and conflict negotiation. Future directions include using pilot course feedback to enhance curricular effectiveness and delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

EU-US data transfers for health research remain a particularly thorny issue in view of the stringent rules of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the challenges related to US mass surveillance programs, particularly the manner in which US law enforcement and national security agencies can access personal data originating from the EU. Since the entry into force of the GDPR, evidence of impeded collaborations is increasing, particularly in the case of sharing data with US public institutions. The adoption of a new EU-US adequacy decision in July 2023 does not hold the promise for a long-lasting solution due to the risks of being challenged and invalidated – yet again – at the Court of Justice of the EU. As the research community is calling for answers, the new proposal for a European Health Data Space regulation may hold a key to solving some of the existing issues. In this paper, we critically discuss the current rules and outline a possible way forward for transfers between public bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the backdrop of a global pandemic, this study investigates how U.S. higher education leaders have centered their crisis management on values and guiding ethical principles. We conducted 55 in-depth interviews with leaders from 30 U.S. higher education institutions, with most leaders participating in two interviews. We found that crisis plans created prior to the COVID-19 pandemic were inadequate due to the long duration and highly uncertain nature of the crisis. Instead, higher education leaders applied guiding principles on the fly to support their decision-making. If colleges and universities infuse shared values into their future crisis plans, they will not have to develop a moral compass on the fly for the next pandemic. This paper suggests the following somewhat universal shared values: (1) engage in accuracy, transparency, and accountability; (2) foster deliberative dialog; (3) prioritize safety; (4) support justice, fairness, and equity; and (5) engage in an ethic of care. To navigate ethics tensions, leaders need to possess crisis-relevant expertise or ensure that such expertise is present among crisis management team members. Standing up formal ethics committees composed of diverse stakeholders also is instrumental in navigating tensions inherent in crises. The next pandemic is already on the horizon according to experts. Through infusing values into future crisis plans, higher education leaders can be confident that their responses will be grounded in their communities' shared values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the main tools for communicating benefit-risk medicines information to patients that are used, or could be used, by pharmaceutical regulators. One highly successful tool from the food safety sector (front-of-package traffic-light labelling) and the mental models approach (which provides a framework for developing new tools) are also reviewed as they show great promise for being usefully adapted to the pharmaceutical context. The evolution of benefit-risk medicines communication is first contextualised within the broader risk communication literature. Three distinct goals are then made explicit before critically examining the evidence for and against tools developed in the US (e.g. at the Food and Drug Administration [FDA]) and Europe (e.g. at the European Medicines Agency [EMA]). These goals are (i) sharing information (e.g. publishing clinical trial and adverse event data online); (ii) changing patients' beliefs by conveying factual knowledge (e.g. patient information leaflets and the drugs facts box); and (iii) changing behaviour (e.g. patient alert cards and warning labels). The mental models approach and traffic-light labelling, developed outside the pharmaceutical context, are then examined. Ultimately, the paper provides a helicopter view of the variety of benefit-risk communication tools that are used, or could be used, by pharmaceutical regulators in the US and Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines the current ethical guidelines for electronic therapy services, and the sufficiency and implications of these guidelines in a culturally diverse population as found in the United States. The paper limits the discussion of ethical deliberations to: what is considered adequate competency to practice mental health therapy electronically; the disclosure and identity verification requirements; confidentiality issues when different social norms exist; the social responsibility of public institutions or individuals; and issues that relate to miscommunication due to different cultural or educational backgrounds. It concludes that since E-Therapy helps to reach underserved populations and significantly reduces costs associated with mental health services, compliance with ethical guidelines must be enforced to benefit from the latest communication technologies. This paper is relevant for various professions related to psychology and psychotherapy, including pastors and pastoral counselors, because various forms of E-therapy are emerging in the 21st century and can serve as resources for 'E-pastoral counseling.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing upon Bourdieu's conceptualization of habitus, this ethnographic study explores the cultural bases guiding engineering makerspaces at a public university in the United States. Students carry forms of capital that impact their entry into these learning spaces, over time becoming disciplined in the "game" of makerspaces as they accumulate capital through everyday talk and storytelling. Communication constructs the makerspace habitus as students (1) move from outsider to insider as they acquire forms of capital; (2) negotiate a habitus characterized by tensions of access vs. exclusivity; (3) learn to use the vocabularies of innovation and creativity; and (4) cultivate supportive making communities. Findings point to the critical role of intentional communication and space design in cultivating inclusive makerspace cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interventions aiming to improve access to and retention in HIV care are optimized when they are tailored to clients' needs. This paper describes an initiative of interventions implemented by ten demonstration sites using a transnational framework to tailor services for Mexicans and Puerto Ricans living with HIV. Transnationalism describes how immigrants (and their children) exist in their "receiving" place (e.g., continental U.S.) while simultaneously maintaining connections to their country or place of origin (e.g., Mexico). We describe interventions in terms of the strategies used, the theory informing design and the tailoring, and the integration of transnationalism. We argue how applying the transnational framework may improve the quality and effectiveness of services in response to the initiative's overall goal, which is to produce innovative, robust, evidence-informed strategies that go beyond traditional tailoring approaches for HIV interventions with Latino/as populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the possibility that early sociological interest in the integrative role of mass communication may have been undermined (1) by the short-run study of media “campaigns,” and the declaration that such persuasive efforts have only “limited effect”; (2) by the wrangling over theories of “mass society”; and (3) by a quasi-journalistic emphasis on “media events.” In spite of the theoretical basis for reconciling these traditions, the rift over the academic locus of communications research has not been repaired. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dissemination of evidence-based programs and policies is a critical final step in reducing the burden of cancer in the general public. Yet, we have not been fully successful to date in improving clinical or public health practice by disseminating programs found to be effective in research. Therefore, research is needed into the dissemination process and outcomes to enable better efforts in the future. This paper explores the definitions and models used for dissemination, the designs of dissemination studies, and possible research questions in dissemination research, all focused on cancer prevention and control. We hope that this paper will encourage dissemination research in our field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stratification in science has received extensive attention from researchers in the sociology of science. The general research strategy involves identifying certain socio-personal characteristics of scientists such as professional age, highest degree, prestige of training and affiliated institutions, and relating these characteristics to the reward systems in science. Two identifiable reward systems in science involve (1) the bestowal of honorary awards, and (2) the access to, and recognition in, the formal communication system in science. These two systems both contribute to the overall stratification of the reward system but differ on at least two counts. This paper attempts to examine the stratification of the formal communication system in American sociology as it is related to the stratification of scientists. It is found that the visible journals in sociology are consistently stratified according to criteria such as rejection rates, articles rejected but eventually published in other sociological journals, order of submission preferences of ASA meeting authors, and cross-citation patterns in articles of the journals.

The COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately affected racial and ethnic minorities in the United States, including many with limited English proficiency (LEP). These patients face various communication barriers, including a shortage of available interpreters and the need for masks that exacerbated communication barriers. It is not known how hospitals responded to these unique challenges to providing language services for the large number of patients with LEP during COVID-19. This narrative review assessed literature and lay media to identify strategies utilized by hospitals to communicate with patients with LEP hospitalized during the COVID-19 pandemic. A search of APA PsychInfo, EBM Reviews, Embase, Ovid MEDLINE, Epub Ahead of Print, and Ebsco Megafile initially yielded 61 articles, 6 of which were ultimately included after reviewing abstracts and full texts. The identified interventions, which sought to increase accessibility of language-concordant care, increase accessibility of professional interpretation, and improve family communication and understanding, were described positively, though only one was tested for effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: This study examined the conflicts between different generations working in US emergency departments (ED). We sought to record generational differences involving communication preferences, perceived areas of conflict, work motivations, and attitudes regarding work-life balance. Methods: We developed a survey to assess the physician perspective on generational conflict in the ED. The survey was distributed to members of the American College of Emergency Physicians, a professional organization comprising emergency medicine physicians in the USA. Results: We received 696 completed responses. Men represented 60% of respondents and the largest proportion of respondents were emergency physicians working in community settings (53%); 11% were residents. Generation representation was smallest for Traditionalist (2%) and largest for Gen X (43%). Seventy percent reported observing conflict due to generational communication with the largest frequency being once a week (26%). In the associated open-ended questions, 247 (33%) provided 316 anecdotal descriptions of observed conflict. Responses clustered into seven themes (ordered by frequency): Work Ethic, Treatment Approach, Technology Application, Entitlement, Professionalism, Work Life/Balance, and Communication Style. Comparing Work Ethic responses, 52–70-year-olds reported that younger providers are less interested in "accomplishing anything" while 26–34-year-olds resented that attitude. Respondents completing the open-ended questions regarding preventing and responding to conflict provided some insight into helpful strategies including actions supportive of clear communication and standardized policies and expectations. Only 5% of respondents reported that they had discussed generational communication in department meetings with the odds of a woman reporting conflict being less than males (p =.01). Conclusion: Conflicts in the ED in the USA can be attributed to how an individual views the values of someone from another generation. Understanding the frequency and areas of generational conflict in the ED can help medical leaders find strategies to mitigate negative workplace interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to assess the relationship between parental sexual passion styles and parent-child communication about sex. The central research questions were how parent sexual passion was associated with parent-child communication about sex and whether commonalities emerged in communication patterns across passion styles. Data were taken from a US national sample; participants were 801 mothers and 838 fathers (n = 1639). Comprehensive measures of parent-child sexual communication and sexual passion were used in a structural equation model. Among both mothers and fathers, harmonious sexual passion was associated with higher communication frequency, openness, and adolescent disclosure. Obsessive and inhibited sexual passion were associated with parental control of communication. Inhibited sexual passion was associated with adolescent secrecy. Additionally, for mothers only, obsessive sexual passion was associated with higher adolescent disclosure; for fathers only, inhibited sexual passion was associated with higher communication frequency and adolescent disclosure. These results help to connect the individual-level concept of sexual passion with dyad-level communication about sex; they also can help lead researchers and practitioners to better understand the influence of motivation and sexual passion on parental participation in sex education, which may lead to more effective efforts to educate adolescents about sex. Highlights: Parents with higher levels of harmonious passion had higher levels of communication about sex with their adolescents. Parents with higher levels of inhibited and obsessive sexual passion had higher levels of controlling communication about sex with their adolescents. Parents with higher levels of inhibited passion had adolescents with higher levels of secrecy about their sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we attempt to formalize the idea that a mechanism that involves multilateral communication between buyers and sellers may be dominated by one that involves simple bilateral communication. To do this we consider the well known problem in which a seller tries to sell a single unit of output to a group of N buyers who have independently distributed private valuations. Our arguments hinge on two considerations. First, buyers communicate their willingness to negotiate with the seller sequentially, and second, buyers have the option of purchasing the good from some alternative supplier. It is shown that the seller cannot improve upon a procedure in which she offers the good to each buyer in turn at a fixed price. The seller reverts to multilateral communication if possible, only when no buyer is willing to pay the fixed price. In reasonable environments buyers will be too impatient to wait for the outcome of a multilateral negotiation and all communications will be bilateral. In many problems in mechanism design, informed traders have no alternative to participation in the mechanism that is offered by its designer. The best mechanism from the designer's point of view is then the one that is most efficient at extracting informational rents, that is, a simple auction. In a competitive environment it is likely to be costly for buyers to participate in an auction or any other multilateral selling scheme in which the seller must process information from many different buyers because alternative trading opportunities will be disappearing during the time that the seller is collecting this information. Buyers might be willing to participate in an auction, but only if they could be guaranteed that the competition that they face will not eliminate too much of their surplus. At the other extreme to the auction is a simple fixed price selling scheme1. The seller simply waits until he meets a buyer whose valuation is high enough, given the opportunities that exist in the rest of the market, for him to be willing to pay this price. The seller extracts the minimum of the buyer's informational rents since the price that a buyer pays is independent of his valuation. Yet the seller might like this scheme if adding a second bidder to the process makes it very difficult for him to find a buyer with a valuation high enough to want to participate. In the presence of opportunity costs, the seller faces a trade-off between his ability to extract buyers informational rents and his ability to find buyers who are willing to participate in any competitive process. In practice this trade-off will impose structure on the method that is used to determine a price. In markets where there are auctions, limits are put on buyer participation. In tobacco auctions bids are submitted at a distinct point in time from buyers who are present at that time. In real estate auctions time limits are put on the amount of time the seller will wait before making a decision. These restrictions on participation are presumably endogenously selected by the seller (possibly in competition with other mechanism designers) with this trade-off in mind. On the other hand, markets in which objects appear to trade at a fixed price are rarely so simple. A baker with a fixed supply of fresh bagels is unlikely to collect bids from buyers and award the bagels to the high bidder at the end of the day. Buyers are unlikely to be willing to participate in such a scheme since they can buy fresh bagels from a competitor down the street. Yet despite the fact that bagels sell at a fixed price throughout the day, most bakers are more than willing to let it be known that they will discount price at the end of the day on any bagels that they have not yet sold. Selling used cars presents a similar problem. Each potential buyer for the used car is likely to have inspected a number of alternatives, and is likely to know the prices at which these alternative can be obtained. A seller who suggests that buyers submit a bid, then wait until the seller is sure that no higher offer will be submitted is asking buyers to forgo these alternative opportunities with no gain to themselves. To avoid the rigidity of the pure fixed price scheme most used cars are sold for a fixed price or best offer. These examples suggest that the best selling mechanism may involve a complex interplay between participation and surplus extraction considerations. The purpose of this paper is to provide a simple formalism within which the factors that determine the best contract can be evaluated. We consider the best known environment from the point of view of auction design in which there are a large number of buyers with independent private valuations for a unit of an indivisible commodity that is being sold by a single supplier who acts as the mechanism designer. We modify this standard problem in two critical ways. First, we assume that the seller meets the potential buyers sequentially rather than all at once. Secondly we assume that buyers have a valuable alternative that yields them a sure surplus. This creates a simple bidding cost that is effectively the expected loss in surplus (created by the disappearance of outside alternatives) that the buyer faces during the time that he spends negotiating with the seller. These simple assumptions allow us to calculate the impact of competition and communication costs using completely standard arguments from the mechanism design literature. We are able to show that with these assumptions the seller's expected surplus will be highest if the object is sold according to the following modified fixed price scheme: the seller contacts each of the potential buyers in turn price. The seller extracts the minimum of the buyer's informational rents since the price that a buyer pays is independent of his valuation. Yet the seller might like this scheme if adding a second bidder to the process makes it very difficult for him to find a buyer with a valuation high enough to want to participate. In the presence of opportunity costs, the seller faces a trade-off between his ability to extract buyers informational rents and his ability to find buyers who are willing to participate in any competitive process. In practice this trade-off will impose structure on the method that is used to determine a price. In markets where there are auctions, limits are put on buyer participation. In tobacco auctions bids are submitted at a distinct point in time from buyers who are present at that time. In real estate auctions time limits are put on the amount of time the seller will wait before making a decision. These restrictions on participation are presumably endogenously selected by the seller (possibly in competition with other mechanism designers) with this trade-off in mind. On the other hand, markets in which objects appear to trade at a fixed price are rarely so simple. A baker with a fixed supply of fresh bagels is unlikely to collect bids from buyers and award the bagels to the high bidder at the end of the day. Buyers are unlikely to be willing to participate in such a scheme since they can buy fresh bagels from a competitor down the street. Yet despite the fact that bagels sell at a fixed price throughout the day, most bakers are more than willing to let it be known that they will discount price at the end of the day on any bagels that they have not yet sold. Selling used cars presents a similar problem. Each potential buyer for the used car is likely to have inspected a number of alternatives, and is likely to know the prices at which these alternative can be obtained. A seller who suggests that buyers submit a bid, then wait until the seller is sure that no higher offer will be submitted is asking buyers to forgo these alternative opportunities with no gain to themselves. To avoid the rigidity of the pure fixed price scheme most used cars are sold for a fixed price or best offer. These examples suggest that the best selling mechanism may involve a complex interplay between participation and surplus extraction considerations. The purpose of this paper is to provide a simple formalism within which the factors that determine the best contract can be evaluated. We consider the best known environment from the point of view of auction design in which there are a large number of buyers with independent private valuations for a unit of an indivisible commodity that is being sold by a single supplier who acts as the mechanism designer. We modify this standard problem in two critical ways. First, we assume that the seller meets the potential buyers sequentially rather than all at once. Secondly we assume that buyers have a valuable alternative that yields them a sure surplus. This creates a simple bidding cost that is effectively the expected loss in surplus (created by the disappearance of outside alternatives) that the buyer faces during the time that he spends negotiating with the seller. These simple assumptions allow us to calculate the impact of competition and communication costs using completely standard arguments from the mechanism design literature. We are able to show that with these assumptions the seller's expected surplus will be highest if the object is sold according to the following modified fixed price scheme: the seller contacts each of the potential buyers in turn and either offers to negotiate or announces that he no longer wishes to trade. If he offers to negotiate and the buyer agrees, the buyer immediately has the option of trading for sure with the seller at a fixed price set ex ante. If the buyer does not wish to pay this fixed price, he may submit an alternative bid. The seller will then continue to contact new buyers, returning to trade with the buyer only if no buyer wishes to pay the fixed price and no higher bid is submitted. It will be clear that in our environment, both the simple fixed price scheme and the simple auction are feasible. The simple auction prevails when the fixed price is set equal to the maximum possible valuation, while the simple fixed price scheme occurs when the fixed price is set so that buyers are willing to participate if and only if they are willing to pay the fixed price. Our results will show that a simple auction in never optimal for the seller. The seller can always strictly improve his payoff by moving to a scheme in which there is some strictly positive probability that trade will occur at the fixed price. On the other hand, there are reasonable circumstances in which the seller cannot achieve a higher payoff than the one she gets by selling at a fixed price. It is shown that for any positive participation cost, there is a large, but finite, number of potential buyers so that the seller cannot achieve a higher payoff than what she gets by selling at a fixed price. Two simple, but important continuity results are also illustrated. As the cost of participation in the mechanism increases (decreases), the probability with which the seller's unit of output is sold at a fixed price goes to one (zero) in the best modified fixed price mechanism for the seller. Our paper is not the first to generate such a modified fixed price scheme. Both McAfee and McMillan (1988) and Riley and Zeckhauser (1983) come up with similar schemes for the case in which the seller must bear a fixed cost for each new buyer that she contacts. There are two essential differences between our model and theirs. First, as the cost is interpreted as the opportunity cost of participation in the mechanism, it is reasonable to imagine that the seller advertises the mechanism ex ante. Another way of putting this is that the seller pays a fixed rather than a variable cost to communicate the mechanism to buyers. This makes it possible to assume that the mechanism is common knowledge to the seller and all the buyers at the beginning of the communication process. For this reason we can make our case using completely standard arguments. Secondly, the mechanism in the opportunity cost case plays a different allocative role than it does in the case when the seller bears a cost. The mechanism must decide whether buyers should communicate with the seller or pursue their alternative activities, as well as who should trade and at what price. It is this allocative role that makes bilateral communication superior to multilateral communication in a competitive environment. These differences allow us to show, for example, that a simple fixed price scheme is undominated for the seller when the number of buyers is finite. As shown by McAfee and McMillan, this is only possible when the number of potential buyers is infinite when the seller bears the cost of communication. Remarkably, the existence of opportunity costs to buyer participation is not, by itself, sufficient to explain why sellers might prefer bilateral communications mechanisms. Samuelson (1983) and McAfee and McMillan (1987) show that when buyers must pay a fixed cost to submit a bid, which is equivalent to giving up a valuable alternative, a seller cannot expect to earn more than she does in a second price auction (though Samuelson shows that the reserve price may depend on the number of potential buyers). One of the contributions of this paper is to show that the assumption that buyers make their participation decisions simultaneously is critical to this result. Simultaneous entry decisions means that whether or not any particular buyer is assigned to the alternative activity is independent of any other buyer's valuation. With sequential communication the seller is able to relax this constraint. It is precisely the enlargement of the class of feasible mechanism that breaks down the optimality of the simple auction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports of a comparative study of American and Japanese management styles in a conceptual framework consisting of six managerial dimensions: supervisory style, decision making, communication pattern, control mechanism, interdepartmental relationships, and paternalistic orientation. • The findings indicate that U.S. and Japanese management styles differ significantly both in overall management styles and in each of the six dimensions. They also show that managerial perception of departmental (unit) effectiveness in each country differs significantly. Additionally, the paper discusses the implications of research findings for management theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We identified (a) sources of and communication about HPV information and (b) factors (e.g., religious affiliations) related to information sources and communication regarding HPV among Hispanic/Latino college students attending US institutions. Applying a cross-sectional design, we recruited 209 participants from US colleges. Most participants used healthcare professionals for their sources and communication about HPV-related information. Respondents who were practicing Catholics tended to use the Internet and healthcare professionals as their sources for HPV-related information. Healthcare professionals, TV, schoolteachers, same-sex friends, and family members affected participants' HPV vaccination, knowledge, and attitudes. Religious faith may influence information-seeking behaviors and requires more research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 crisis has exposed the public to considerable scientific uncertainty, which may promote vaccine hesitancy among individuals with lower tolerance of uncertainty. In a national sample of US adults in May–June 2020, we examined how both perceptions of uncertainty about COVID-19 and trait-level differences in tolerance of uncertainty arising from various sources (risk, ambiguity, and complexity) are related to vaccine hesitancy-related outcomes, including trust in COVID-19 information, COVID-19 vaccine intentions, and beliefs that COVID-19 vaccines should undergo a longer testing period before being released to the public. Overall, perceptions of COVID-19 uncertainty were not associated with trust in information, vaccine intentions, or beliefs about vaccine testing. However, higher tolerance of risk was associated with lower intentions to get vaccinated, and lower tolerance of ambiguity was associated with lower intentions to get vaccinated and preferring a longer period of vaccine testing. Critically, perceptions of COVID-19 uncertainty and trait-level tolerance for uncertainty also interacted as predicted, such that greater perceived COVID-19 uncertainty was more negatively associated with trust in COVID-19 information among individuals with lower tolerance for risk and ambiguity. Thus, although perceptions of uncertainty regarding COVID-19 may not reduce trust and vaccine hesitancy for all individuals, trait-level tolerance of uncertainty arising from various sources may have both direct and moderating effects on these outcomes. These findings can inform public health communication or other interventions to increase COVID-19 vaccination uptake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Although gun owners overwhelmingly support violence prevention policies, they are hesitant to speak up publicly to advocate for these policies. We tested a series of communication messages on gun owners' level of support for various firearm violence prevention policies and on their willingness to engage in gun violence prevention advocacy. Methods: We conducted three consecutive experiments, testing a total of thirteen messages on a sample of gun owners over 18 years old who live in the U.S. The first was a random experiment, the second a quasi-experiment, and the third a randomized control trial. The goal of having these varied methods was to develop messages applicable to different contexts with different levels of information about the audience. Results: The most effective message was a script showing respect for gun owners' decisions to purchase a firearm and proposing a balanced policy roadmap to end gun violence, which led to an increase in gun owner's willingness to engage in eight different advocacy activities. We also found a value-based message conveying loyalty to increase support for domestic violence related prohibitions and willingness to engage in advocacy for gun violence prevention policies. Conclusions: Public health professionals need to develop communication strategies that are aligned with gun owners' values and that affirm respect for gun culture and for gun owners' decisions to own a gun. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze the potential role of a public message as a coordination mechanism between traders in an experimental asset market that exhibits departures from fundamental values. Dividends are the same for all players except for an unknown ex-ante. During the treatment sessions, a message that does not offer new information is sent to all traders at the same predetermined time. We compare deviations from fundamental prices in sessions with and without a message. We find no statistical evidence that a public message without informational content is able to bring prices back to fundamental values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Understand whether and how Black adolescent daughters' relationships with their single mothers could be strengthened through an intervention to address adverse experiences and stress during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: Five Black adolescent daughters of single mothers and five Black single mothers with adolescent daughters were interviewed during the pandemic who participated in a program designed to improve Black adolescent daughter-single mother relationships. Results: Changes in work and school requirements impacted the daughter-mother relationship, with most respondents suggesting their relationships improved during COVID-19 due to involvement in this program. Conclusions: Despite the stress and strain of COVID-19, involvement in similar programs can strengthen daughter-mother relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined whether an internet use promotion intervention influences low-income older adults' communication modes, internet use, and social networks using existing data collected for an intervention. Participants living in public senior housing facilities in the United States (n = 77) completed surveys before and after a 12-week computer and internet training. The six-item Lubben Social Network Scale (LSNS-6) was used to measure the extent of older adults' social networks. The primary mode of communication shifted from more traditional means to internet-based communications (p <.0005 in a Fisher's exact test). The frequency of internet use significantly increased (p <.00005 in a one-sided Sign test). Overall, the LSNS-6 score increased by 4.1 points (p <.00005 in a Welch's t-test). The LSNS-6 score increase was significantly larger among African Americans than Whites, controlling for gender (p <.05 in negative binomial regression). Moderate (p <.005) and frequent internet users (p <.05) had higher LSNS-6 scores than rare internet users at posttest when gender and race were controlled for in linear regression. Comparatively more improvement in the extent of social networks among African Americans suggests greater benefits of such interventions for population groups of disadvantaged backgrounds. Larger social networks among moderate and frequent internet users than rare users suggest positive impacts of internet communications on social networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose An increasing number of workers in the US have chronic health conditions that limit their ability to work, and few worksite interventions have been tested to improve worker coping and problem solving at work. The purpose of this study was to evaluate a worksite-based health self-management program designed to improve workplace function among workers with chronic health conditions. Methods We conducted a randomized, controlled trial of a worksite self-management program ("Manage at Work") (clinicaltrials.gov #NCT01978392) for workers with chronic health conditions (N = 119; 82% female, ages 20–69). Most workers were recruited from the health care or light manufacturing industry sectors. Workers attended a 5-session, facilitated psychoeducational program using concepts of health self-management, self-efficacy, ergonomics, and communication. Changes on outcomes of work engagement, work limitation, job satisfaction, work fatigue, work self-efficacy, days absent, and turnover intention at 6-month follow-up were compared to wait-list controls. Results The most prevalent chronic health conditions were musculoskeletal pain, headaches, vision problems, gastrointestinal disorders, respiratory disorders, and mental health disorders. The self-management program showed greater improvement in work engagement and turnover intent at 6-month follow-up, but there was no evidence of a parallel reduction in perceived work limitation. Trends for improved outcomes of work self-efficacy, job satisfaction, and work fatigue in the intervention group did not reach statistical significance in a group x time interaction test. Conclusions Offering a worksite self-management program to workers with chronic health conditions may be a feasible and beneficial strategy to engage and retain skilled workers who are risking disability. Clinical trial registration: Clinicaltrials.gov #NCT01978392. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: The aim of this study was to identify key challenges and opportunities to better support non-clinician clinic staff at family planning centers in Southern US states. Methods: We conducted qualitative interviews with 15 individuals in clinic staff and leadership positions at family planning centers in seven Southern states. Results: Turnover had negative impacts on both clinic functioning as well as patient care. Participants identified several challenges related to recruitment and retention in family planning health centers in the South, including the conservative contextual landscape, the perceived value of support staff, gaps in communication, and rural locations. In response to these challenges, staff also identified key strategies to better support and retain health center workers. These included prioritizing investment in management, creating career advancement opportunities, prioritizing staff retention, and creating space for self-care. Health center staff and leadership who used these strategies to support and retain staff noted improvements in the effectiveness of staff work as well as increases in patient volume. Conclusions for Practice: Study findings provide key areas for intervention including providing development opportunities, commitment from leadership to recognize and invest in staff and supporting self-care. Focusing on ensuring internal organizational justice for staff may also facilitate resilience to external challenging environments. Better supporting clinic staff is likely also important for quality services and ensures the full workforce involved in providing family planning care can work at full capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Results of 2 trials of postmenopausal hormone therapy (HT) challenged established practice patterns; 1 was not associated with changes in HT use, whereas the other was associated with substantial decline. Differential coverage by lay newspapers may have contributed to the differential impact.Objective: To examine newspaper coverage of HT before and after the publication of the Heart and Estrogen Replacement Study (HERS) in August 1998, and the main findings of the estrogen plus progestin therapy arm of the Women's Health Initiative (EPT-WHI) in July 2002.Design: Longitudinal review of newspaper articles, 1998 to 2003 (n=663).Setting: Twenty local and 6 regional/national newspapers.Measurements: Number and content of articles about HT.Results: The average number of articles about HT published during the month of the publication of the EPT-WHI was at least 8-fold greater than the number of articles published on the topic during any prior period. While the majority of articles in all periods presented information about the potential benefits of HT, information about harms became more common than information about benefits during the 2 months before the publication of the EPT-WHI, when the trial participants were notified of the early termination of the study. The presentation of specific health harms was more common after the publication of the EPT-WHI than after the publication of HERS. Few articles in any period used visual aids.Conclusions: The publication of the EPT-WHI was associated with a change in both the volume and content of newspaper coverage about HT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integrated health care includes joint, outpatient delivery of medical and behavioral health services. Traditional patient satisfaction measures might fail to capture the discrete delivery approaches in this model. To identify patient satisfaction measures used in integrated health care settings, a systematic review was conducted of US-based studies conducted in adult outpatient integrated care settings from 1999 through 2020. Study quality was assessed using standards recommended by the COSMIN guidelines. The review yielded a sample of 23 studies, consisting of 10 standardized measures and 6 self-developed tools. All studies/measures met at least one of the identified COSMIN guidelines, demonstrating quality of the measures. While most measures evaluated key elements of integration, including access, communication, and relationships, only one standardized measure evaluated elements of care specific to practice in integrated care. Findings suggest a need for a comprehensive patient satisfaction measure that captures important aspects of the integrated health care experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: Educational attainment has been demonstrated as a protective factor for the physical and mental health of children into adulthood, yet there has been limited research on the association between positive childhood experiences (PCEs) and school success. The purpose of this study is to examine the associations between PCEs and challenges to school success. Methods: This cross-sectional study used data of 33,450 children from the 2017–2018 National Survey of Children's Health to examine PCEs and two challenges to school success (school absenteeism and repeated grades), using multivariable logistic regression analysis. Results: The most prevalent types of PCEs were mentor for advice or guidance (89.8%), family resilience (81.1%), and after-school activity participation (79.8%). Children who participated in after-school activities had lower odds of reported school absenteeism (aOR 0.59; 95% CI 0.46–0.76) and repeating a grade (aOR 0.75; 95% CI 0.59–0.97) than their counterparts. Children who shared ideas with their caregiver had lower odds of repeating a grade (aOR 0.78; 95% CI 0.63–0.97) than children who did not share ideas with their caregiver. Children who lived in a supportive neighborhood were less likely to have reported school absenteeism than children who did not live in a supportive neighborhood (aOR 0.77; 95% CI 0.60–0.98). Conclusions for Practice: Participation in after-school activities had optimal associations with both school absenteeism and repeated grade, suggesting its potential protective effect for school success. Promoting PCEs at the school, family, and community levels may help address school absenteeism and grade retention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For 2 weeks, participants (282 US collegians) used a diary technique to describe the social interactions they had each day. These descriptions included how enjoyable the interaction was, how confident they felt, and how intimate the interaction was. They also completed a measure of Allport's Intrinsic–Extrinsic religious orientation, the Christian Orthodoxy scale, and the Beck Depression Inventory. A series of multilevel modeling analyses found that enjoyment and confidence in social interaction were positively related to the Extrinsic Personal factor of the IE scale, whereas intimacy of interactions was not related to any of these measures. These relationships remained after controlling for orthodox beliefs and depression. These results suggest that the extent to which people find comfort in religious beliefs and practices (e.g., prayer) is positively related to the quality of their daily social experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the current study, we examined how caregiver prompting of tobacco products (e.g., asking a child to empty an ashtray), caregiver monitoring, and caregiver-adolescent communication were associated with adolescents' tobacco use, intentions to use, and efficacy to refuse using tobacco. Caregiver-adolescent dyads were recruited from a southeastern city in the United States. Approximately 48% of the population in this city is Black. Participants included 101 Black caregivers who smoke and their adolescents (Mage = 14.4 years). Multiple regression analyses (R2 ranged from 0.10 to 0.44 across models) indicated that higher levels of adolescent-reported caregiver prompting were associated with a higher likelihood of adolescent-reported use and intentions to smoke tobacco products in their lifetime. Caregiver monitoring was associated with lower levels of adolescent tobacco use and intentions to use tobacco, and higher levels of tobacco refusal self-efficacy. General caregiver-adolescent communication was associated with greater tobacco refusal self-efficacy. Differences among caregiver prompting behavior by reporter highlight the importance of obtaining both adolescent and caregiver perceptions. These findings illustrate that caregivers may play a critical role in shaping their adolescents' tobacco-related outcomes through adolescent perceptions of their prompting of tobacco products, as well as their overall knowledge or monitoring of adolescent activities. Highlights: Black caregivers who smoke and their adolescent were both assessed. Prompting behavior from caregivers is associated with adolescent smoking. Caregivers that smoke tobacco products may shape their adolescents smoking behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the US-Mexico border region has had increasing restrictions due to coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19), the economically and socially integrated region continues to facilitate necessary movement between the two countries. Binational partners representing universities, government, and health delivery worked together to develop a COVID-19 Virtual Seminar for the US-Mexico Border Region, which consisted of weekly sessions in Spanish designed to better facilitate communication and collaborative systems between border states. In total 835 participants registered for the virtual seminar with attendance ranging from 394 in Session 1 to 269 in Session 6. From evaluation surveys (n = 297), organizers observed a large plurality of healthcare professionals, followed by students, researchers, and government employees. The seminar's contribution to increasing collaborative and communication systems identified major needs in the region surrounding surveillance and monitoring; increased resources for migrant shelters to control outbreaks; an increase in personal protective equipment; tracking binational cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses public relations and whether and how the field should be professionally regulated. Professionalism in public relations has arisen out of a renewed concern over ethical principles. The Public Relations Society of America has made a Code of Professional Standards. The author suggests that public relations specialists need a clearer definition of the roles, functions and purposes of public relations followed by a definitive code of conduct addressing those concepts specifically.

Caring for millions of Muslim patients who decide to fast during Ramadan can be challenging for clinicians. Using a theory-guided approach, this study explores Muslim patients' perspectives on factors influencing communication with clinicians in relation to fasting during Ramadan. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a sample of patients in Egypt (9) and the USA (8). Participants were purposefully sampled to assure variance in age, gender, education, decision to fast and ethnicity. Data emerging from narratives were mapped to constructs within the Linguistic Model of Patient Participation in Care (LMOPPC). Using framework analysis, iterative sampling and analysis continued until saturation. Drawing on LMOPPC, participants' narratives were mapped and clustered into patient participation and quality of care; predisposing factors (perceptions about fasting and its significance including sense of spiritual benefit when fasting and sense of guilt when not fasting, prior experiences including prior conversations with clinicians on fasting and experience of fasting while sick, patients' personality and locus of control, belief in the legitimacy of participation, motivations and perception of need to communicate with clinicians about fasting, provider verbal and nonverbal responses, and provider–patient rapport); and enabling factors (knowledge about the topic and repertoire of communicative skills, presence of companions during appointment, and timing of appointments). The LMOPPC framework provided insight into patients' perspectives on barriers and facilitators for communication with clinicians about fasting during Ramadan. It is important for stakeholders to consider those issues when implementing interventions aiming to adopt a concordant approach in providing care for this group of patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Background: Child life specialists play a crucial role with children and their families when the child has a life-threatening illness and is hospitalized by trying to establish some degree of normalcy in a situation void of such. Programs designed to train child life specialists have expanded over the last 10 years. Objective: This is a follow-up of our previous study a decade ago to determine if offerings on end of life issues have changed in US child life programs since 2009. Method: We surveyed the 48 child life academic programs in the U.S. in 2019 and compared these findings with the earlier survey in 2009. We also analyzed the websites of all 48 programs to obtain a better understanding of current death and dying offerings in U.S. child life programs. Results: All child life programs now include content on death, dying, and bereavement. Child life programs continue to emphasize end-of-life issues, with child life specialists being the primary deliverers of such information. Communication with patients with life-threatening illnesses, communication with family members of such patients, and grief and bereavement were the three most covered topics in both 2009 and 2019. Conclusions: U.S. child life specialist programs have increased in numbers over the decade and continue to prepare child life specialists to relate to children with life-threatening illnesses and their families, thus playing a pivotal role in the lives of these individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over 74,000 women in the United States are diagnosed annually with endometrial or cervical cancers and experience significant treatment-related difficulties with body image, sexuality, and sexual functioning. The aims of the research were to examine relationships among body image, sexuality, and sexual functioning, and to understand women's views of these concepts. A novel theoretical framework encompassing these three concepts and contextual variables guided the research. A non-experimental cross-sectional pilot study was conducted with pre-menopausal women in an academic medical center who had stages I–III cervical or endometrial cancer, were 3–36 months post-treatment, and had no mental health comorbidities. Participants completed the Body Image Scale, Female Sexual Function Index, Female Sexuality Questionnaire, a demographic questionnaire, and open-ended questions; the researchers collected clinical data from the medical record. Twenty women participated, and most reported issues with body image, sexuality, and sexual functioning. Significant relationships were found between body image and sexuality (p = 0.0244) and sexuality and sexual functioning (p < 0.0003). Stages II–III disease were significantly (p = 0.0371) associated with worse body image. Women reported issues with body image, sexuality, sexual functioning, psychosocial areas, reproduction, and communication with healthcare providers and personal caregivers. This study is one of the first to simultaneously examine relationships among body image, sexuality, and sexual functioning. Despite design and sample limitations, findings demonstrate a need for longitudinal studies using larger samples to further examine relationships among these concepts and selected contextual variables, explore communication issues, and refine the theoretical framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public stigma is one barrier to accessing behavioral health care among Vietnamese Americans. To explore and identify features of culture and acculturation that influence behavioral health-related stigma, six focus groups were conducted with Vietnamese American participants in three generational groups and eleven key informant interviews were conducted with Vietnamese community leaders, traditional healers, and behavioral health professionals. Data were analyzed using Link and Phelan's (Annu Rev Sociol 27(1):363–385, 2001) work on stigma as an organizing theoretical framework. Findings underline several key cultural and generational factors that intersect to affect perceptions, beliefs, and stigma about mental health treatment. In particular, participants in the youngest groups highlighted that while they recognized the value of mental health services, they felt culturally limited in their access. This appeared to be closely related to intergenerational communication about mental health. The findings suggest avenues for further research as well as interventions to increase mental health treatment access and adherence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Instagram, with more than 1 billion monthly users, is the go-to social media platform to chronicle one's life via images, but how are people using the platform to present visual content about HIV? We analyzed public Instagram posts containing the hashtag "#HIV" (because they are self-tagged as related to HIV) between January 2017 and July 2018. We described the prevalence of co-occurring hashtags and explored thematic concepts in the images using automated image recognition and topic modeling. Twenty-eight percent of all #HIV posts included hashtags focused on awareness, followed by LGBTQ (24.5%) and living with HIV (17.9%). However, specific strategies were rarely cited, including testing (10.8%), treatment (10.3%), PrEP (6.2%) and condoms (4.1%). Image analyses revealed 44.5% of posts included infographics followed by people (21.3%) thereby humanizing HIV and stigmatized populations and promoting community mobilization. Novel content such as the handwriting image-theme (3.8%) where posters shared their HIV test results appeared. We discuss how this visual content aligns with public health priorities to reduce HIV in the US and the novel, organic messages that public health could help amplify. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Shared decision-making (SDM) is widely recommended and required by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid for patients considering lung cancer screening (LCS).Objective: We examined clinicians' communication practices and perceived barriers of SDM for LCS at three medical centers with established screening programs.Design: Multicenter qualitative study of clinicians participating in LCS.Approach: We performed semi-structured interviews, which were transcribed and analyzed using directed content analysis, guided by a theoretical model of patient-clinician communication.Participants: We interviewed 24 clinicians including LCS coordinators (2), pulmonologists (3), and primary care providers (17), 4 of whom worked for the LCS program, a thoracic surgeon, and a radiologist.Results: All clinicians agreed with the goal of SDM, to ensure the screening decision was congruent with the patient's values. The depth and type of information presented by each clinician role varied considerably. LCS coordinators presented detailed information including numeric estimates of benefit and harm. Most PCPs explained the process more generally, focusing on logistics and the high rate of nodule detection. No clinician explicitly elicited values or communication preferences. Many PCPs tailored the conversation based on their implicit understanding of patients' values and preferences, gained from past experiences. PCPs reported that time, lack of detailed personal knowledge of LCS, and patient preferences were barriers to SDM. Many clinicians perceived that a significant proportion of patients were not interested in specific percentages and preferred to receive a clinician recommendation.Conclusions: Our results suggest that clinicians support the goal of SDM for LCS decisions but PCPs may not perform some of its elements. The lack of completion of some elements, such as PCPs' lack of in-depth information exchange, may reflect perceived patient preferences for communication. As LCS is implemented, further research is needed to support a personalized, patient-centered approach to produce better outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Divorcing couples in western societies are strongly encouraged to "take the High Road," which is accomplished by not "involving the children." The stoicism demanded of a father in the wake of a divorce is doubly imperative, dictated by both the High Road and masculinity codes. A "real man" takes the High Road even if he suspects that this is critically damaging his relationship with his children. This article is part of a study consisting of qualitative, semi-structured interviews of 50 men in Israel and the United States who were left by the women they loved. The research was conducted from a gendered and narrative perspective, and the analysis relied strongly on Gilligan's "Listening Guide." The article explores six tolls of the High Road from the specific perspective of these men: (1) Not telling the true story of the divorce is often perceived by children and the men themselves as telling a lie. (2) A fear of inappropriately burdening children stifles communication between parents and children. (3) In never blaming Mom, a man often becomes emotionally unknowable to his children. (4) A narrative of the divorce will emerge for the children, but without the father's perspective it will be a distorted narrative. (5) Not speaking truthfully with the kids when they are young severely limits subsequent discussions of the divorce when they are adults. (6) Living in fear of "losing the kids" is not a helpful guide toward a meaningful relationship with one's children. The article concludes by suggesting that it is possible for a divorced man to find a sensitive and age-appropriate way to share his pain with his children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adults on the autism spectrum report comparable levels of desire for sex and sexual satisfaction as adults who are not on the spectrum. However, there has been little empirical focus on the need for sexual and relationship-oriented education for youth on the spectrum as they transition to adulthood. In this review, we use the Information–Motivation–Behavioral Skills Model of sexual health behavior change as a lens through which to understand the experiences of adults on the autism spectrum. We present those insights infused with emerging data and best practices in the field. Overall, it appears clear from the extant literature that providers need to recognize the specific characteristics of autism when developing sexual education curricula. Specifically, the social communication and sensory profile of people on the autism spectrum appears to interact with access to information, motivation to engage in healthy sexual activities, and the development of skills needed to engage in healthy sexual behavior. Finally, the voice of adults on the spectrum is essential to guide the emerging understanding of healthy sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Filipinos, the second largest Asian subgroup in the U.S., experience significant youth behavioral health disparities but remain under-represented in health research. We describe lessons learned from using the Matching Model of Recruitment to recruit 215 Filipinos to participate in a large, randomized controlled trial of a culturally tailored video aimed at increasing enrollment in the Incredible Years® Parent Program. We recruited participants from schools, churches, clinics, community events, and other community-based locations. Facilitators of participation included: partnership with local community groups, conducting research in familiar settings, building on existing social networks, and matching perspectives of community members and researchers. Findings suggest recruitment success occurs when there is a match between goals of Filipino parents, grandparents and the research community. Understanding the perspectives of ethnic minority communities and effectively communicating goals of research studies are critical to successful recruitment of hard-to-reach immigrant populations in randomized controlled trials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary goal of this study was to examine the relationship between adolescent-parent communication and adolescent internalizing problems. Both gender of the adolescent and gender or the parent were considered. An additional goal was to explore whether coping skills mediated this relationship. The sample included a community sample of 980 U.S. high school students. Surveys were administered during three annual assessment waves in seven public high schools during the spring of 2007 (Time 1), 2008 (Time 2), and 2009 (Time 3). Path analysis results indicated significant direct effects only for same-sex adolescent-parent dyads. For boys, adolescent-father communication predicted depressive and anxiety symptoms. Coping did not mediate these relationships. For girls, adolescent-mother communication predicted anxiety symptoms. Further, this relationship was mediated by humor coping. Adolescent-mother communication also predicted depressive symptoms via instrumental social support for girls. These results align with social learning theory and suggest that family-based interventions with same-sex adolescent-parent dyads are warranted to prevent internalizing problems in adolescents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We evaluated the validity of the use of an SMS text messaging survey for measuring daily life activity in a sample of emerging adults. Short Message Service (SMS) text messaging is a prevalent form of everyday communication in the lives of emerging adults, yet there is limited research on the use of automated text messaging as a data collection method in clinical research. Study participants were 274 ethnically diverse emerging adults (54.4% female, baseline age = 17-21 years), and constructs included alcohol use, substance use, school activity, peer interaction, mood, and interaction with parents. Participants responded to "bursts" that included multiple surveys during the course of 2 weeks, 6 months apart (a total of 13 texting surveys). Most of the questions were strongly associated across bursts. Findings revealed response stability for participating subjects across the 6 months and across the texting and self-report survey methodologies. Paired sample t-tests indicated that participants reported differently across data methodologies, which suggests that some data collection methodologies are best suited for certain types of constructs, such as alcohol consumption. Study results encapsulate the daily life of emerging adults and highlight the importance of evaluating the validity of SMS text messaging as a potential data collection device in future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

US-American sociology has largely failed to examine the transformation of mediated communication of the past 20 years. If sociology is to be conceived as a general social science concerned with analyzing and critically scrutinizing past, present, and future conditions of collective human existence, this failure, and the ignorance it engenders, is detrimental. This ignorance, we argue, may be traced back to the weak self-identity, institutionalization and position of media sociology in the discipline. Our argument here is threefold: 1) There was an opportunity structure for specialization, that is, a venerable research tradition in media sociology since the first half of the twentieth century. This tradition links back to classics in sociology and peaked at a time (1970s and 1980s) when the discipline differentiated institutionally and many new sections emerged in the American Sociological Association. 2) Despite this tradition, media sociology has not become established in sociology in the United States until recently. 3) Lastly, we locate reasons for non-establishment on three distinct but interconnected levels: the history of ideas in media sociology, institutional/disciplinary history, and disciplinary politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose To improve the mental health component of the Work Disability Functional Assessment Battery (WD-FAB), developed for the US Social Security Administration’s (SSA) disability determination process. Specifically our goal was to expand the WD-FAB scales of mood & emotions, resilience, social interactions, and behavioral control to improve the depth and breadth of the current scales and expand the content coverage to include aspects of cognition & communication function. Methods Data were collected from a random, stratified sample of 1695 claimants applying for the SSA work disability benefits, and a general population sample of 2025 working age adults. 169 new items were developed to replenish the WD-FAB scales and analyzed using factor analysis and item response theory (IRT) analysis to construct unidimensional scales. We conducted computer adaptive test (CAT) simulations to examine the psychometric properties of the WD-FAB. Results Analyses supported the inclusion of four mental health subdomains: Cognition & Communication (68 items), Self-Regulation (34 items), Resilience & Sociability (29 items) and Mood & Emotions (34 items). All scales yielded acceptable psychometric properties. Conclusions IRT methods were effective in expanding the WD-FAB to assess mental health function. The WD-FAB has the potential to enhance work disability assessment both within the context of the SSA disability programs as well as other clinical and vocational rehabilitation settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective To explore women's perceptions of the risks and benefits associated with medication use during pregnancy and to better understand how women make decisions related to medication use in pregnancy. Methods We conducted online focus groups with 48 women who used medication during pregnancy or while planning a pregnancy, and 12 in-depth follow-up interviews with a subset of these women. Results We found that women were aware of general risks associated with medication use but were often unable to articulate specific negative outcomes. Women were concerned most about medications' impact on fetal development but were also concerned about how either continuing or discontinuing medication during pregnancy could affect their own health. Women indicated that if the risk of a given medication were unknown, they would not take that medication during pregnancy. Conclusion This formative research found that women face difficult decisions about medication use during pregnancy and need specific information to help them make decisions. Enhanced communication between patients and their providers regarding medication use would help address this need. We suggest that public health practitioners develop messages to (1) encourage, remind, and prompt women to proactively talk with their healthcare providers about the risks of taking, not taking, stopping, or altering the dosage of a medication while trying to become pregnant and/or while pregnant; and (2) encourage all women of childbearing age to ask their healthcare providers about medication use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community health workers (CHWs) can engage elderly persons in advance care planning (ACP) conversations. We report how trained CHWs used Go Wish cards ( GW cards) to identify patients' highest priority preferences and evaluated whether engaging in ACP conversations was associated with subsequent health care utilization. A one-year long, pre-post longitudinal design was used to evaluate our educational intervention using mixed-methods. 392 patients (mean of 73.3 years, 82% women, 48% African American, 43% Caucasian) enrolled in the Aging Brain Care (ABC) program and participated in ACP discussions with CHWs. We expanded the role of the ABC's CHW, who work directly with individuals and caregivers during home visits to monitor bio-psycho-social needs, to include ACP conversations. The CHWs received ACP training, practice with tools such as GW cards, and support from an electronic health record (EHR) clinical decision support tool. Quantitative measures of patients' ACP preferences and health care utilization were abstracted from the EHR. Qualitative data about patients' perceptions of CHWs in facilitating ACP discussions was obtained through semi-structured interviews. Eighty-six patients' data indicated that they had engaged in a preferences-for-care process using GW cards. The top-three card choices by patients was attending to spirituality and religious concerns, preparing for end of life, and maintaining personal wholeness. CHWs were able to effectively engage in ACP conversations with patients and GW cards were a positive way to stimulate discussion of issues previously undiscussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trust contributes to young people's capacity for sustaining current and future successful relationships. To date, research has yet to examine the meaning of trust in early dating relationships and reasons for its deterioration. The present study focused on video-recorded conversations about trust between 34 heterosexual adolescent couples in dating relationships living in the U.S. Transcripts from these conversations were qualitatively analyzed using thematic analysis to identify adolescents' meanings of trust and reasons they provided for a lack of trust in their romantic partners. All 34 couples identified concerns specifically related to infidelity. Six major themes for not trusting romantic partners emerged. Results suggested that the lack of trust in romantic relationships might stem from several areas that are directly and indirectly related to the current relationship, including low self-esteem, the experience of betrayal in past romantic relationships, partners' extradyadic behaviors, and gossip among peers. Importantly, peers can play a defining role in influencing young people's perceptions of their romantic partners and developing or sustaining trust in their romantic relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This follow up study with 23 normal functioning 1st graders examined the long-term effectiveness of Child-Centered Play Therapy (CCPT) on academic achievement. Through the use of a one-way repeated measures analysis of variance, researchers examined the use of CCPT from pre-intervention to mid-intervention (16 sessions) to post-intervention (26 sessions). Results indicated that children who participated in 26 sessions of CCPT demonstrated statistically significant improvement on the Early Achievement Composite as measured on the Young Children's Achievement Test (YCAT), along with increases in the Reading, Mathematics, and Spoken Language subscales. Participants showed statistically consistent improvement in academic scores of the full duration of the study. Overall, the findings imply that CCPT as a long term method can support academic achievement in the school system with normal functioning 1st grade students. The outcome suggests long term CCPT is an intervention for elementary/primary school counselors to use with children who have emotional or academic needs. The findings open the door for school counselors or outside professionals to use play therapy with children in the school system as a way of providing academic support and thereby promoting the field of play therapy in the school system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the economic assimilation of childhood immigrants to the United States. The linguistic distance between English and the predominant language in one's country of birth interacted with age at arrival is shown to be closely connected to occupational sorting in adulthood. By applying big-data techniques to occupations' detailed skill requirements, we provide evidence that childhood immigrants from English-distant countries who arrived after the primary school years reveal comparative advantages in tasks distinct from those for which (close to) Anglophone immigrants are better suited. Meanwhile, those who arrive at younger ages specialize in a bundle of skills very similar to that supplied by observationally equivalent workers. These patterns emerge even after we net out the effects of formal education. Such findings are compatible with the existence of different degrees of complementarity between relative English-learning potential at arrival and the acquisition of multiple capabilities demanded in the U.S. labor market (math/logic, socioemotional, physical, and communication skills). Consistent with the investment-complementarity argument, we show that linguistic distance and age at arrival also play a significant role on the choice of college major within this population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The healthcare system is ill-equipped to meet the needs of adults on the autism spectrum.Objective: Our goal was to use a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach to develop and evaluate tools to facilitate the primary healthcare of autistic adults.Design: Toolkit development included cognitive interviewing and test-retest reliability studies. Evaluation consisted of a mixed-methods, single-arm pre/post-intervention comparison.Participants: A total of 259 autistic adults and 51 primary care providers (PCPs) residing in the United States.Interventions: The AASPIRE Healthcare toolkit includes the Autism Healthcare Accommodations Tool (AHAT)-a tool that allows patients to create a personalized accommodations report for their PCP-and general healthcare- and autism-related information, worksheets, checklists, and resources for patients and healthcare providers.Main Measures: Satisfaction with patient-provider communication, healthcare self-efficacy, barriers to healthcare, and satisfaction with the toolkit's usability and utility; responses to open-ended questions.Key Results: Preliminary testing of the AHAT demonstrated strong content validity and adequate test-retest stability. Almost all patient participants (>94 %) felt that the AHAT and the toolkit were easy to use, important, and useful. In pre/post-intervention comparisons, the mean number of barriers decreased (from 4.07 to 2.82, p < 0.0001), healthcare self-efficacy increased (from 37.9 to 39.4, p = 0.02), and satisfaction with PCP communication improved (from 30.9 to 32.6, p = 0.03). Patients stated that the toolkit helped clarify their needs, enabled them to self-advocate and prepare for visits more effectively, and positively influenced provider behavior. Most of the PCPs surveyed read the AHAT (97 %), rated it as moderately or very useful (82 %), and would recommend it to other patients (87 %).Conclusions: The CBPR process resulted in a reliable healthcare accommodation tool and a highly accessible healthcare toolkit. Patients and providers indicated that the tools positively impacted healthcare interactions. The toolkit has the potential to reduce barriers to healthcare and improve healthcare self-efficacy and patient-provider communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]