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Purpose: To explore the barriers to the uptake of eye care services in urban and rural communities in Papua New Guinea. Methods: This was a population-based cross-sectional descriptive study and involved multi-stage sampling. Communities were randomly selected from each of the three clusters of Madang District for free eye care outreaches from June to September 2022. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data from the outreach patients. The study excluded attendees who refused to consent. Responses were rated from 1 (not a barrier) to 10 (a very strong barrier). The p-value significance was set at ≤ 0.05. Results: The majority of the 972 participants (60.2%) were from rural communities. The mean age of participants was 40.82 ± 13.14 years. Almost two-thirds of the participants (61.4%) never had an eye examination before this study was conducted. All the participants reported that time constraint, insufficient income, good vision in the fellow eye, not considering their eye conditions as serious issues and cultural beliefs were personal barriers to accessing eye care services. Provider-related challenges included long waiting periods at eye clinics and fear of procedure complications. There were differences in barriers with respect to the participants' demographic clusters. Conclusion: There are major personal- and service-related barriers to eye care services in Madang. These barriers could be overcome through strategic human resource development, health education, school screening programs, and establishing eye care centres in the communities to improve the uptake of eye care services in Madang and more widely across the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research in the out-of-school time (OST) field confirms a strong connection between professional development for staff and positive experiences and outcomes for youth. In recent years, the OST community has invested significant time and money into researching, creating, implementing, and evaluating professional development activities for OST staff. The goal of this paper is to begin a conversation in which a national collaborative of OST organizations can agree on a common set of professional development definitions. This article presents a set of commonly used terms in the OST field, provides examples of how the OST community has adapted and refined these terms, and proposes a series of OST professional development definitions.

The science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields have a well-documented racialized and gendered participation gap between males, particularly white males, and women of color (WOC). Through a Critical Race Feminist lens, this qualitative research study uses lifestory narrative analysis to understand the experiences of eleven WOC who participated in an urban STEM-focused out-of-school time (OST) program. Data analysis showed students story their experiences around three overarching themes: (1) Experiencing New Opportunities; (2) Cultivating Supportive Relationships; and (3) Expanding STEM Career Possibilities. Findings indicate that an urban STEM-focused OST program can activate an ecosystem of opportunities and support which can empower WOC to step out of their socialized comfort zones and step up to more advanced academic and career paths. Participant narratives demonstrate how their experiences in a particular urban STEM OST program opened doors and encouraged pathways otherwise historically made inaccessible to WOC in STEM fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To explore parents' emotional investment in and behaviors in response to youth sports, the author conducted a mixed-methods investigation to answer four research questions: (1)How do parents feel about their children's participation in organized youth team sports? (2) Which situations trigger which feelings? (3) How do parents' feelings influence their behaviors? (4) What parental characteristics (such as personal histories or demographics) are linked to different feelings and behaviors? The research indicated that many parents' feelings are triggered by their children's sports experiences and that adults must learn how to translate these feelings into productive behaviors.