Blurring boundaries: the promise and challenge of a district-community action plan for systemic high school change in Worcester,Massachusetts

The Worcester, Massachusetts, district-community plan for reinventing high schools shows how learning can be enhanced and transformed through intentional connections to community.     

One-year outcomes from the CASAWORKS for Families intervention for substance-abusing women on welfare

AIM: To evaluate the effectiveness of a multiservice intervention designed to move substance-abusing women on welfare to sobriety and self-sufficiency by addressing their substance abuse, domestic violence, employment, and basic needs. DESIGN: A field evaluation with repeated measures at 6 and 12 months on an intent-to-treat sample of 529 women conducted in 11 selected sites across the country. There were significant improvements shown in substance use and family and social functioning by the 6-month point, and additional improvements in employment by the 12-month point. By 12 months, more than 46% were abstinent from alcohol and other drugs, and 30% were employed at least part-time. There were only modest improvements shown in the medical and psychiatric status of these women. These preliminary findings suggest that site-level interagency coordination and program-level case management were associated with improvements in the targeted areas as predicted by the model. Future work will require a more closely specified, manual-guided form of the intervention plus the inclusion of control groups and cost measures to fully evaluate the cost benefits from the final form of the intervention.     

Best practices for physical activity programs and behavior counseling in older adult populations

Physical activity offers one of the greatest opportunities for people to extend years of active independent life and reduce functional limitations. The article identifies key practices for promoting physical activity in older adults, with a focus on those with chronic disease or low fitness and those with low levels of physical activity. Key practices identified: (a) A multidimensional activity program that includes endurance, strength, balance, and flexibility training is optimal for health and functional benefits; (b) principles of behavior change including social support, self-efficacy, active choices, health contracts, assurances of safety, and positive reinforcement enhance adherence; (c) manage risk by beginning at low intensity but gradually increasing to moderate physical activity, which has a better risk:benefit ratio and should be the goal for older adults; (d) an emergency procedure plan is prudent for community-based programs; and (e) monitoring aerobic intensity is important for progression and motivation. Selected content review of physical activity programming from major organizations and institutions is provided.     

Reassessing the Insurance Effect: A Qualitative Analysis of Fertility Behavior in Senegal and Zimbabwe

A number of prominent demographers have recently reiterated the argument that a lasting mortality decline is a key determinant of the fertility transition. Of the main hypothesized pathways linking fertility to mortality, the one least studied is the insurance hypothesis: the notion that, in high‐mortality contexts, people decide to have more children in order to anticipate possible future child deaths and lessen the risks of having too few surviving offspring. In‐depth interviews and focus groups from Zimbabwe and Senegal are used to examine this hypothesis and to extend it into a broader theory of reproductive decision making under uncertainty. Whereas insurance strategies are frequent in Zimbabwe and occur in urban Senegal, in the higher‐mortality settings—the rural Senegalese site and the recent past described by respondents in Zimbabwe and urban Senegal—deliberate fertility‐limitation strategies are rare. The data depict fundamental changes in attitudes, strategies, and behaviors concerning family size over time and, in Senegal, over space. Important reproductive goals and risks extend far beyond numbers of children and mortality. Parents seek to have healthy, successful children for many reasons including companionship, descendants, and old‐age support. Diverse investments in child quality (their education, health, etc.) and quantity (numbers of births) are the main means to attain these goals and, less recognized by demographers, are also important ways for parents to manage uncertainty in family‐building outcomes; the “classic” insurance mechanism is only one, often minor, aspect of the quantity option.     

The Possible Effects of Child Survival on Women's Ages at First Union and Childbirth in Sub-Saharan Africa

Improvements in childsurvival may lead to lower fertility throughseveral pathways. To date, most studies havefocused on the physiological and replacementeffects, whose impacts are known to be modestin size. Few have examined the potentially moreimportant insurance effect on fertility withinunion, and almost none have considered thepossible relationship between child mortalityand marriage, which could also grow out of aninsurance strategy. In this study, we use datafrom 21 sub-Saharan African countries to assessthe relationship between child mortality andyoung women's ages at first marriage andchildbirth. The results show that lower levelsof mortality are strongly associated with latermarriages and first births, even aftercontrolling for the effects of a large numberof other variables. The implications of thefindings are discussed and alternativeexplanations for this relationship arepresented.     

Critical Analysis of the Relationship between Local Ownership and Community Resiliency*

Abstract Collectively, current resource‐development literature has given little attention to organizational features of ownership as important variables in community resilience. By drawing from six local buyout cases in Canada's forest sector, we reveal the complexity and numerous constraints on local ownership and expose a more nuanced context than most sociologists tend to consider. Our findings suggest that the meaning of local ownership and community resilience varies depending upon the composition (e.g., private vs. public; mill vs. forest license vs. coupled mill & forest license), type (social, cooperative, trust and/or direct‐share ownership), extent of ownership (percentage of local versus extra‐local shares), and the level of control (e.g., proportion of locally held seats on the Board of Directors) associated with ownership. Future research on local ownership should more carefully differentiate between the nature of local ownership and its associated outcomes.     

Passing and Stigma Management: The Case of the Transsexual

The nature of the transsexual's stigma is such that she can pass as a natural female with little difficulty if she chooses to. At the same time, transsexuals do not once and for all become women after their conversion operation. Their ambiguous gender implies at least a double identity: some of the feminized transsexual's social circles remain associated with her former (male) gender, while some center around her new identity. Thus, it is more accurate to say that the transsexual is ongoingly passing than that she has passed. This led to the formulation of two hypotheses: (1) transsexuals compartmentalize their social circles to a greater extent than normals, and (2) transsexuals experience greater incompatibility of their social circles than normals. To operationalize social circles, the family and present friends were chosen. In terms of this operationalization, the findings support the first hypothesis but not the second. It is argued that transsexuals do not experience unusual incompatibility between family and friends because they either minimize contacts with the former, or do so with the latter, or segregate the two. In the final analysis, the transsexual's double identity is not simply a double gender identity, but also the product of participation in the radically different cultures and lifestyles of her rural background on the one hand and her present urban underworld environment on the other.