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In 1999 the American Cancer Society (ACS) launched the National School Health Coordinator Leadership Institute, a groundbreaking initiative designed to enhance and invigorate school health in the nation's schools by training individual school health coordinators to act as change agents. The Institute consisted of three, week-long summer training sessions, and three, shorter midyear "booster" sessions, with the various sessions designed to assist one cohort of participants (n = 50) to build leadership capacities to coordinate school health. This evaluation examined the effects of the Institute as measured through a panel survey of participants--school health coordinators or their equivalents--over an 18-month period. Findings suggest that substantial progress was made in institutionalizing the school health coordination function in the target school districts. Specifically, in contrast to when the training began, clear, written position descriptions are common among program participants, most have functioning school health councils in their school districts, and program trainees appear to be moving aggressively to enhance the infrastructure for school health coordination through planning, setting priorities, and assessing needs. Program trainees report spending increased time on school health coordination, and they are active in spreading the word about coordinated school health programs. Trainees viewed the Institute as relevant to their needs, though not all aspects of the program are viewed as equally useful. As possible shortcomings, the training needed more emphasis on funding for school health coordination, and a low level of evaluation skills existed among coordinators.

Discusses the evolution of public involvement in public management. Explains the theory that the degree of group involvement desirable in making a decision depends on the need for quality and acceptability in the eventual decision. (Author/JOW)

Analysis of data on citizen contacts with the Cincinnati municipal bureaucracy reveals some possible racial and social discrimination in treatment of citizens, but no discrimination by income. However, municipal administrators appear mostly to be exercising neutral competence in their dealings with citizens, and not always to the disadvantage of blacks. (KH)

There has been growing interest in recent years in what might be termed 'community dialogs,' or techniques for engaging broad-based discussions of issues within particular communities. The purpose of this article is to survey and assess this movement based on prior research. We first contrast traditional citizen involvement in public planning as a method of pursing community dialogs with the newer, collaborative public decision making approaches. The article then examines the benefits of community dialogs and the tensions which arise from their pursuit. We conclude by offering an assessment of how we might think about these techniques in the future.

Term limits have captured the fancy of American voters like no electoral reform in recent history. The November 1992 elections saw 14 states pass measures limiting the number of terms [...]

Citizen-initiated contacts represent an important, yet perplexing, category of political participation. The authors attempt to provide a comprehensive explanation of when and why citizens initiate contacts. They draw from prior research to summarize knowledge about these contacts and the measurement problems that have plagued earlier research. To explore the bases for citizen-initiated contacts, they use survey data on contacts with various municipal departments of the city of Atlanta. Logistic regressions of 15 different types of contacts reveal perceived needs as the most consistently significant predictor of most types. The influence of socioeconomic status over contacting is indirect.