An Exploration of Family and Juvenile Justice Systems to Reduce Youth HIV/STI Risk

Using in‐depth interviews with 20 probation youth (60% female; 35% White; 30% Hispanic; mean age: 15 years, range = 13–17), their caregivers (100% female; mean age: 44 years, range = 34–71), and 12 female probation officers (100% White; mean age: 46 years, range = 34–57), we explored how family and probation systems exacerbate or mitigate sexual risk. We conducted thematic analyses of interviews, comparing narratives of families of sexually risky (n = 9) versus nonsexually risky (n = 11) youth. Family functioning differed by youth sexual risk behavior around quality of relationships, communication, and limit setting and monitoring. The involvement of families of sexually risky youth in probation positively influenced family functioning. Data suggest that these families are amenable to intervention and may benefit from family‐based HIV/STI interventions delivered in tandem with probation.     

‘This is American get punished’: unpacking narratives of Southeast Asian refugees in the US

This paper explores acculturative experiences and perceptions of Southeast Asian refugees residing in the Midwestern US through analysis of oral history narratives of Southeast Asian refugees representing the countries and/or cultures of Burma, Laos, the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam. Through this paper, I seek to add to the sparse research base on Southeast Asians residing in the US, to shed light on the experiences of young refugees' attempts to negotiate identities in the host society, and to inform educators and others who work with refugee populations.     

Providing Intensive Child Case Management Services: How Do Case Managers Spend Their Time?

This paper focuses on the results of an exploratory study conducted to describe the characteristics of the families and children served in one rural state's intensive child case management program for families with children with serious emotional and behavioral disturbances, and to explore the relationship between these characteristics and case managers' contact with families. Findings suggest that case managers spend more time with families of boys, and with children exhibiting more severe difficulties in daily functioning. Implications for the provision of intensive child case management services are discussed.     

Keeping the Faith: The Impact of Human Services Restructuring on Catholic Social Welfare Services

Church related agencies are major providers of community services in Australia (Lyons, 2001:34‐35). While the history of church related welfare service provision is not well known in Australia it is asserted that many have a long tradition of outreach and service provision to marginalised groups regardless of the government social policy of the day (ACSWC, 2000; Mendes, 2003). This paper examines the current environment of human services restructuring and the impact of the shift to contractualism on one church related provider: Catholic social welfare provision in Australia. It explores the significance of the church's social teachings and history on concerns that service innovation, diversity and advocacy are currently under threat. Finally it calls for greater appreciation of the distinctive contribution of church related agencies and what they have to offer in service delivery and as contributors to the social policy discourse.     

The genetic connections of Alzheimer's disease: An emerging source of caregiver stress

The purpose of this study was to expand and refine current theoretical conceptualization of dementia caregiving by identifying and analyzing new potential sources of stress. A qualitative analysis of unsolicited letters (N=51) written by family caregivers of persons diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease (AD) was conducted. Content analysis of the data confirmed that providing care for persons diagnosed with AD could impart emotional, physiological, and financial stress on caregivers. The data also revealed an emerging source of stress for family caregivers—fears and uncertainties regarding possible genetic connections between family caregivers and relatives suffering from AD. These results strongly suggest that concerns with genetic connections should be included in theoretical models of stress and dementia caregiving. Implications include the need for increased dissemination of information regarding genetic connections and AD, as well as increased support for family members if and when genetic connections are discovered.     

Choice of purchasing arrangements in insurance markets

A simple dynamic model helps explain why risk-pooling purchasing arrangements evolved for health, disability, and term life insurance but not for property, automobile, or homeowners' insurance, and why whole-life policies typify life insurance purchased on an individual basis. We show that risk-pooling purchases facilitate insurance against unpredictable changes in one's risk type, but such contracts prevail in competitive equilibrium only when the loss probabilities increase with age, as they do for health, disability, and life insurance. In contrast, when the loss probability declines with age (as it does for automobile insurance), then competitive equilibrium entails separating insurance contracts.     

Modeling Human Interindividual Variability in Metabolism and Risk: The Example of 4-Aminobiphenyl

We investigate, through modeling, the impact of interindividual heterogeneity in the metabolism of 4-aminobiphenyl (ABP) and in physiological factors on human cancer risk: A physiological pharmacokinetic model was used to quantify the time course of the formation of the proximate carcinogen, N-hydroxy-4-ABP and the DNA-binding of the active species in the bladder. The metabolic and physiologic model parameters were randomly varied, via Monte Carlo simulations, to reproduce interindividual variability. The sampling means for most parameters were scaled from values developed by Kadlubar et al. (Cancer Res., 51 : 4371, 1991) for dogs; variances were obtained primarily from published human data (e.g., measurements of ABP N-oxidation, and arylamine N-acetylation in human liver tissue). In 500 simulations, theoretically representing 500 humans, DNA-adduct levels in the bladder of the most susceptible individuals are ten thousand times higher than for the least susceptible, and the 5th and 95th percentiles differ by a factor of 160. DNA binding for the most susceptible individual (with low urine pH, low N-acetylation and high N-oxidation activities) is theoretically one million-fold higher than for the least susceptible (with high urine pH, high N-acetylation and low N-oxidation activities). The simulations also suggest that the four factors contributing most significantly to interindividual differences in DNA-binding of ABP in human bladder are urine pH, ABP N-oxidation, ABP N-acetylation and urination frequency.     

The Mind of a Stranger: A Philosophic Contribution to Bi-Cultural Psychotherapy

Several philosophic paradigms reveal different ideas about how we know who we are to ourselves and to others. Emerging out of a plethora of notions, one area of philosophic thought, the intersubjective philosophy of Donald Davidson and Marcia Cavell reveals a perspective which I found significant in deepening psychoanalytic theory as well as work with patients, including people from other cultures. Two Chinese patients are presented, and the usefulness of the philosophic and psychoanalytic theory addressing their issues are discussed.     

Changing Linkages Between Work and Poverty in Rural America1

Abstract The changing relationship between work and poverty in non-metropolitan (nonmetro) America is documented using data from the 1980 and 1990 March supplements of the Current Population Survey. Specifically, this paper assesses changing differentials in the proportion of poor people who are working; documents the rapid rise in poverty among nonmetro and metropolitan (metro) workers during the 1979—1989 period, especially among young adults and females; and provides evidence of growing inequality between metro and nonmetro workers, a pattern that cannot be explained by differences in work attachment, human capital, or job characteristics. The results imply that poverty is a persistent if not increasingly harsh reality for workers in rural America.     

The Impact of Parental Death on Child Well-being: Evidence From the Indian Ocean Tsunami

Identifying the impact of parental death on the well-being of children is complicated because parental death is likely to be correlated with other, unobserved factors that affect child well-being. Population-representative longitudinal data collected in Aceh, Indonesia, before and after the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami are used to identify the impact of parental deaths on the well-being of children aged 9–17 at the time of the tsunami. Exploiting the unanticipated nature of parental death resulting from the tsunami in combination with measuring well-being of the same children before and after the tsunami, models that include child fixed effects are estimated to isolate the causal effect of parental death. Comparisons are drawn between children who lost one or both parents and children whose parents survived. Shorter-term impacts on school attendance and time allocation one year after the tsunami are examined, as well as longer-term impacts on education trajectories and marriage. Shorter- and longer-term impacts are not the same. Five years after the tsunami, there are substantial deleterious impacts of the tsunami on older boys and girls, whereas the effects on younger children are more muted.