eHealth recruitment challenges

Little is known about effective eHealth recruitment methods. This paper presents recruitment challenges associated with enrolling African-American girls aged 8–10 years in an eHealth obesity prevention program, their effect on the recruitment plan, and potential implications for eHealth research.Although the initial recruitment strategy was literature-informed, it failed to enroll the desired number of girls within a reasonable time period. Therefore, the recruitment strategy was reformulated to incorporate principles of social marketing and traditional marketing techniques. The resulting plan included both targeted, highly specific strategies (e.g., selected churches), and more broad-based approaches (e.g., media exposure, mass mailings, radio advertisements).The revised plan enabled recruitment goals to be attained. Media appeared to be particularly effective at reaching the intended audience. Future research should identify the most effective recruitment strategies for reaching potential eHealth audiences.     

A midwife program of newborn resuscitation

A very small proportion of newborns fail to establish a normal respiratory pattern without some assistance at birth and newborns requiring resuscitative measures at birth should have a skilled practitioner able to provide it. In this small hospital midwives felt unskilled in newborn resuscitation and paediatricians were not always immediately available. A stakeholder group gathered to discuss the problem. A training program was implemented that improved the skills, confidence and support of the attending midwife to resuscitate the newborn effectively. The aim was to improve the outcome for the infant whilst maintaining the mother's choice of birthing in a small local hospital close to family and friends.     

Framing youth issues for public support

The insights from one state illustrate the challenges of working to shape public will to favor support for out-of-school learning opportunities for youth ages nine to fifteen. With the leadership of the Frameworks Institute, local and national research and refraining concepts were used to develop a strategy to help advocates communicate the value of these learning opportunities in ways the public is less likely to dismiss out of hand. Messages reinforcing the developmental need to practice skills using the illustration of brain architecture and emphasizing the important role of community contribution on future leadership proved to be important aspects of the communication strategy.     

A blueprint for career change when you don't know what you want to do

Follow the paths of a gynecologist turned investment banker and an internist who became a medical writer. Both used a proven process to change their careers and determine what they wanted to do.     

Measuring the lifetime experience of domestic violence: application of the life history calendar method

In the absence of a "gold standard," research on domestic violence relies primarily on self-report, the quality of which is known to decline as the length of the recall period increases. Eliciting valid and reliable self-report data is crucial to the development of prevention and intervention policies and services. Nevertheless, existing measures typically do not incorporate devices to facilitate respondents' recall of the lifetime experience of domestic violence. This article describes the application of the Life History Calendar (LHC) method (Freedman, Thornton, Camburn, Alwin, & Young-DeMarco, 1988) to increase a respondent's recall of domestic violence victimization over the lifecourse. The LHC method elicits memorable information of a personal nature (e.g., children's birth dates) and uses this information to facilitate the recall of less memorable events. A recent field test of this LHC measure indicates its utility in assessing domestic violence victimization, which takes place in a complex sequence of episodes and often involves multiple perpetrators over the lifecourse.