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Educators across the United States have designed and implemented Comprehensive, Integrated, Three-tiered (Ci3T) models to meet K–12 students' academic, behavioral, and social and emotional well-being needs. As part of implementation efforts, educators collect and use social validity and treatment integrity data to capture faculty and staff views of the plan's goals, procedures, and outcomes and the degree to which the plan is implemented as designed (e.g., procedures for teaching, reinforcing, and monitoring). In this study, we re-examined the relation between social validity and treatment integrity utilizing hierarchical linear modeling with extant data from a research partnership across 27 schools in five midwestern districts. Findings suggested an educator's fall and spring social validity score on the Primary Intervention Rating Scale (PIRS) predicted their treatment integrity scores on the Ci3T Treatment Integrity: Teacher Self-Report (CI3T TI: TSR) in the same timepoint. Schoolwide average fall PIRS scores also statistically significantly predicted spring Ci3T TI: TSR scores. Results suggested schoolwide context is important for sustained implementation of Tier 1 procedures during the first year. Findings demonstrate the complex nature of implementing a schoolwide plan, involving each individual's behavior while also relying on others to facilitate implementation. We discuss limitations and future directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Latine communities in the United States have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19. It is critical to gain a better understanding of the sociocultural determinants that challenge and facilitate COVID-19 testing, vaccination, and booster uptake within these vulnerable communities to inform culturally congruent strategies and interventions. Methods: In summer 2022, our community-based participatory research partnership conducted 30 key informant interviews and 7 focus groups with 64 Spanish-speaking Latine participants in North Carolina. Interviewees consisted of representatives from health and service organizations, most of whom were engaged with direct service to Spanish speakers. Interviews were conducted in either English or Spanish, depending on the preference of the participant; all focus groups were conducted in Spanish. Interviews and focus groups were conducted in person or by videoconference. Results: Twenty themes emerged that we organize into four domains: general perceptions about COVID-19; barriers to COVID-19 testing, vaccination, and booster uptake; facilitators to COVID-19 testing, vaccination, and booster uptake; and recommendations to promote testing, vaccination, and booster uptake. Discussion: Results underscore important sociocultural determinants of ongoing COVID-19 testing, vaccination, and booster uptake to consider in developing interventions for Spanish-speaking Latines in the United States. Based on this formative work, our partnership developed Nuestra Comunidad Saludable (Our Healthy Community). We are implementing the intervention to test whether trained peer navigators can increase COVID-19 testing, vaccination, and booster uptake among Spanish-speaking Latines through blending in-person interactions and mHealth (mobile health) strategies using social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Authoritarian, revisionist, and revanchist powers are exerting pressure on the liberal international order and challenging the United States' vital security interests across theaters. The United States will increasingly need to simultaneously tackle challenges in two critical theaters while also addressing global threats. To do so effectively, it will need to lean in and actively capitalize on its chief geostrategic advantage over its competitors and adversaries – its global network of alliances and strategic partnerships. However, alliance management faces both traditional and emerging challenges. These range from ensuring effective burden sharing, to providing alliance assurance and balancing interests and values along with allies' contributions across theaters and domains. In addition, because the United States is operating in a world where all instruments of power, military and non-military, are increasingly utilized in an interconnected way, it will also need to look at defense and security alliance management through the lens of issues ranging from industrial policy to economic security. This essay sheds light on these "old" and "new" challenges, providing insights into critical issues of alliance management that the United States will face in the emerging security environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the differences in business continuity of Japanese and American small organizations during the Covid-19 pandemic since early 2020 in terms of organizational adaptation empowered by loans, grants, and aid and created through processes of visioning, and relationship building. The 28 Japanese and 21 American small organizations collected through snowball sampling were asked about their level of preparedness, the types of aid earned, the vision that an organization developed, and how they used their organization to advance community life. We used semi-structured interviews in the participants' native languages for 40 min to 1.5 h. Coding results identified 36 codes, nine subcategories, and three broad categories common among small organizations in Japan and the United States. A comparison of the coding results showed three results that we focus on in our comparative analysis. First, loans, grants, and aid provided by the government were effectively used as a business continuity resource in both countries. Second, visioning, a process of setting goals and understanding purpose, was observed in Japan and the United States. Lastly, Japanese organizations emphasized maintaining relationships with business partners, even providing monetary support to them. Conversely, in the United States, new relationships were observed but organizations did not provide as much mutual support. Thus, the study clarified two different types of resilience among small organizations: trust-based resilience seen frequently in Japan, which seeks to maintain relationships with employees and business partners rather than investing in the organization, and the change-based resilience in the United States, which aims to change the organization and build new relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]