An abstract of a study by by Allen et al determining if clinical assessment of self-rated health (SRH) can increase healthcare providers' ability to identify which adolescents will be heavy health ...care utilizers or have a chronic disease in five years is presented. After controlling for health status and health behaviors typically measured in clinical encounters, SRH did not improve identification of which adolescents would experience chronic illness or utilize health care in young adulthood, even though the association between SRH and chronic disease (but not health care utilization) was statistically significant.
To estimate the long-term association between Israeli-imposed restrictions on travel for medical care in the occupied Palestinian territory and health status in adulthood.
Using event history ...calendar methods, we collected annual data from 1987 to 2011 from a representative sample of 1778 Palestinians aged 32 to 43 years and analyzed the subsample of whomever had a serious medical condition and needed to travel for medical care (n = 246; contributing 1163 person-years). We used ordered logistic regression with person-year data to test the association between movement restrictions from 1987 to 2011 and health status in 2011.
Two thirds (65%; n = 161) of participants reported travel restrictions, and 38% (n = 92) reported ever being barred from travel for medical care. Compared with study participants who experienced no travel restrictions in a year (n = 559 person-years), those who were barred from travel in that same year (n = 122 person-years) reported worse self-rated health (57% vs 22% reported bad or very bad self-rated health; P < .05) and greater limits on daily functioning caused by physical health (41% vs 16% reported regular limits; P < .05).
Being barred from travel for medical care was associated with poor health as long as 25 years later.
This two-part study explored whether discrimination encoded into U.S. school absenteeism policies leads to racially minoritized students being overrepresented in the juvenile court system. First, we ...examined unexcused absenteeism policies in a nationally representative school district sample (n = 97). All districts excused absences for reasons White students often miss school but not necessarily for reasons racially minoritized students do. Next, in three school districts we documented large racial disparities in both the proportion of absences designated unexcused (Whites 13%, Asians 18%, Hispanics 21%, Blacks 24%, and American Indians 24%) and risk of court petition for truancy, even after accounting for the total number of absences: Whites hazard ratio (HR) = 1.0; Asians HR = 1.15, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.98, 1.36; Hispanics HR = 1.60, 95% CI 1.34, 1.92; Blacks HR = 2.17, 95% CI 1.88, 2.50; and American Indians HR = 3.94, 95% CI 3.12, 4.97. Disproportionality in unexcused absenteeism fully explained the Hispanic/White and partially explained the Black/White and American Indian/White court petition disparities.
The conceptualization and measurement of parental support is predominately the work of adult researchers from the West. This mixed-method study reports the parental behaviors that adolescents ...themselves perceive as supportive. Data come from the Cross-National Adolescent Project, a survey of adolescents in 12 nations or ethnic groups in Africa, Asia, Australia, the Americas, the Balkans, Europe, and the Middle East. The authors find that adolescents in all 12 settings validated the substantive content of existing survey measures of parental supportive behaviors. Adolescents in all settings also expanded the list of supportive behaviors. When parents provide a rare and valued commodity, it is perceived as love. The specific commodities, which include quality time, basic necessities, and support for education, vary across culture. In the discussion the authors describe how parenting strategies that have been interpreted previously as reinforcing distinct cultural purposes may, in fact, serve the same purpose.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND
The US education system must find creative and effective ways to foster the healthy development of the approximately 2 million newly arrived immigrant and refugee adolescents, ...many of whom contend with language barriers, limited prior education, trauma, and discrimination. We identify research priorities for promoting the school success of these youth.
METHODS
The study used the 4‐phase priority‐setting method of the Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative. In the final stage, 132 researchers, service providers, educators, and policymakers based in the United States were asked to rate the importance of 36 research options.
RESULTS
The highest priority research options (range 1 to 5) were: evaluating newcomer programs (mean = 4.44, SD = 0.55), identifying how family and community stressors affect newly arrived immigrant and refugee adolescents' functioning in school (mean = 4.40, SD = 0.56), identifying teachers' major stressors in working with this population (mean = 4.36, SD = 0.72), and identifying how to engage immigrant and refugee families in their children's education (mean = 4.35, SD = 0.62).
CONCLUSION
These research priorities emphasize the generation of practical knowledge that could translate to immediate, tangible benefits for schools. Funders, schools, and researchers can use these research priorities to guide research for the highest benefit of schools and the newly arrived immigrant and refugee adolescents they serve.
Over 60% of US school districts implement court diversion programs to address chronic unexcused absenteeism, yet the effectiveness of these programs is not known. We evaluated whether the Truancy ...Intervention Program (TIP) improved the school attendance of students in grades 7–10 in a metropolitan county in the Midwestern USA. Similar to most truancy court diversion programs, TIP consisted of three increasingly intrusive steps: (1) a parent meeting, (2) a hearing to develop an attendance contract, and (3) a petition to juvenile court. The intervention group consisted of students from the intervention county who had been referred to TIP between 2006 and 2009. The comparison group was drawn from a contiguous, same-sized, and socio-demographically similar county that petitioned truant students directly to court. To construct the comparison group, we applied multi-level matching procedures to linked, individual-level administrative data from eight state and local agencies for all public school students in the state between 2004 and 2015. Using the matched samples, we conducted difference-in-differences analyses to identify program effects for two intervention groups: all students referred to TIP and students whose family participated in the group parent meeting. In the 4 years after the intervention, the intervention groups had similar or slightly lower attendance than the comparison groups. However, most coefficients were not statistically significant, and there was no consistent pattern of effects across different samples and different specifications of the intervention. This pattern of findings was not robust enough to conclude that the program influenced school attendance.
The purpose of this study was to examine the association of public and private domains of religiosity and adolescent health-related outcomes using data from the National Longitudinal Study of ...Adolescent Health (Add Health), a nationally representative sample of American adolescents in grades 7–12. The public religiosity variable combines two items measuring frequency of attendance at religious services and frequency of participation in religious youth group activities. The private religiosity variable combines two items measuring frequency of prayer and importance of religion. Our results support previous evidence that religiosity is protective for a number of adolescent health-related outcomes. In general, both public and private religiosity was protective against cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana use. On closer examination it appeared that private religiosity was more protective against experimental substance use, while public religiosity had a larger association with regular use, and in particular with regular cigarette use. Both public and private religiosity was associated with a lower probability of having ever had sexual intercourse. Only public religiosity had a significant effect on effective birth control at first sexual intercourse and, for females, for having ever been pregnant. However, neither dimension of religiosity was associated with birth control use at first or most recent sex. Public religiosity was associated with lower emotional distress while private religiosity was not. Only private religiosity was significantly associated with a lower probability of having had suicidal thoughts or having attempted suicide. Both public and private religiosity was associated with a lower probability of having engaged in violence in the last year. Our results suggest that further work is warranted to explore the causal mechanisms by which religiosity is protective for adolescents. Needed is both theoretical work that identifies mechanisms that could explain the different patterns of empirical results and surveys that collect data specific to the hypothesized mechanisms.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND
Foreign‐born children rarely use traditional school mental health services. Comprehensive programs that combine mental health services with academic, economic, and socioemotional ...supports reach more foreign‐born children and improve wellbeing. However, little practical guidance exists regarding how to best combine these diverse services.
METHODS
To identify essential service components and their organization, we interviewed 92 parents, school staff, mental health providers, and community agency staff from 5 school‐linked mental health programs designed specifically to serve immigrant and refugee youth.
RESULTS
Foreign‐born parents did not distinguish between academic, behavioral, and emotional help for their children; these western categorizations of functioning were not meaningful to them. Consequently, programs needed to combine 4 components, organized in a pyramid: family engagement, assistance with basic needs, assistance with adaptation to a new culture, and emotional and behavioral supports. Family engagement was the foundation upon which all other services depended. Assistance with economic and cultural stressors directly promoted emotional wellbeing and helped parents trust clinical mental health interventions.
CONCLUSIONS
Specific strategies to implement the 4 essential components include home visits by program staff, a one‐stop parent center located in the school to help with basic needs, working with cultural brokers, and informed consent procedures that clearly explain recommended care without requiring immigrant and refugee parents to internalize western conceptualizations of psychopathology. Future evaluations should assess the cost and effectiveness of these strategies. These data are essential to advocate payment for these nonclinical services by traditional funding mechanisms.
Law enforcement has been the primary strategy for addressing the opioid epidemic. As a result, the incarceration rate for women in county jails has increased more than 800% since 1980, and most women ...inmates struggle with substance use disorders. There is a large unmet need for contraception among women in county jails.
The East Region of the Tennessee Department of Health partnered with county correctional facilities to provide comprehensive family planning education and voluntary long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) to women in 15 jails.
Incarcerated women were invited to attend a comprehensive family planning education session conducted in the jail by health department nurses. The sessions included information on neonatal abstinence syndrome. The nurses explained that the women could receive intrauterine devices, implants, and injectable progesterone while incarcerated and come to the health department for all contraceptive methods upon release. Between January 2014 and June 2017, nurses conducted 182 education sessions, and 794 women received a LARC. Method placement occurred in the jails or at the local health department. No adverse effects were known to have occurred.
We collected pilot data to explore the accuracy and the comprehensiveness of the family planning education session and whether the incarcerated women experienced the program as voluntary. All 18 women inmates interviewed reported experiencing the program as voluntary. Using published and administrative data, we roughly estimated that the program prevented between 270 and 460 unintended pregnancies and between 40 and 52 cases of neonatal abstinence syndrome in the first year after the women received a method. This represents a cost savings to Medicaid of $1.4 million.
The partnership demonstrated the feasibility of providing voluntary comprehensive family planning education and access to highly effective contraception for women inmates who, as a group, face a host of political, socioeconomic, and personal barriers to reproductive health care.
We examined the effect on attendance of a truancy court-diversion program for elementary students. Truancy court-diversion programs represent a shift from a law-and-order approach toward a public ...health model to address school absenteeism. Instead of directly referring parents of truant elementary students to child protection services or juvenile court, most court-diversion programs educate parents about the importance of school attendance and create an attendance contract that includes social service referrals. Despite being widely implemented, truancy court-diversion models have not been rigorously evaluated. Using 10 years of administrative data from multiple state and local agencies from Minnesota, we constructed a counterfactual of students from schools that did not implement truancy court-diversion. We used difference-in-differences methods to test whether parent education and attendance contracts improved attendance relative to direct referral to child protection services or court. We failed to reject the null hypothesis of no program effect. Most truancy program evaluations use a pre- and post-mean comparison, but our analysis suggested that the magnitude of the bias in such studies is substantial because absenteeism showed a pattern of regression to the mean.
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