Chiari Type I Malformations in Young Adults: Implications for the College Health Practitioner

Abstract

The authors describe 2 cases of Chiari type I malformation (CM-I) in students presenting to a college health center within a 6-month period. A review of CM-I, including epidemiology, typical presentation, evaluation, and management, is followed by a discussion of the clinical and functional implications of the disorder in an emerging adult population.     

Collective survival strategies and anti-colonial practice in ecosocial work

ABSTRACT

Oppressed communities have long used strategies of caring for and protecting each other to ensure their collective survival. We argue for ecosocial workers to critically interrogate how agency, history, and culture structure environmental problems and our responses to them, by developing a resilience-based framework, collective survival strategies (CSS). CSS consider power, culture and history and build upon the strengths of oppressed communities facing global environmental changes. We challenge the dominant narrative of climate change as a “new” problem and connect it to colonization. We discuss implications by examining a social work program explicitly built on Indigenous knowledges and anti-colonial practice.     

Variance estimation in adaptive cluster sampling

Abstract

In this paper, a class of variance estimator is proposed of a finite population variance under an adaptive cluster sampling design in the presence of information on an auxiliary variable. We obtain expressions for the mean square error and bias for the developed estimators and their performance is evaluated on a Poisson clustered process and a real data set. The simulation study evaluates the efficiency of the suggested estimators for an adaptive cluster sampling (ACS) design and the Isaki (1983 Isaki, C. T. 1983. Variance estimation using auxiliary information. Journal of the American Statistical Association 78 (381):117–23. doi: 10.1080/01621459.1983.10477939.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) estimator of the variance for SRSWOR over the sample variance for SRSWOR.     

Individual-focused approaches to the prevention of college student drinking

Alcohol consumption is prevalent among college students and can become problematic for some. Numerous randomized controlled trials have evaluated the efficacy of individual preventive interventions in reducing alcohol use and alcohol-related problems in college student populations. Consistent with earlier reviews, the balance of the evidence from studies conducted during the past 3 years strongly supports the efficacy of brief motivational interventions combined with personalized feedback interventions (PFIs) and personalized normative feedback (PNF), as well as of stand-alone PFI/PNF interventions. Recent analyses also continue to support the efficacy of alcohol expectancy challenge interventions, although the findings are less consistent. In addition, recent analyses offer mixed support for feedback-based interventions focused solely on blood alcohol concentration and for multicomponent, alcohol education-focused interventions that include elements of PFI/PNF. No evidence of efficacy was found for programs that only included alcohol education.     

The development of an evidence based assessment protocol for intimate partner violence in the U.S. Army

The importance of conducting evidence based assessment has been widely acknowledged by many professions, including social work. In this study, the U.S. Army, in partnership with University researchers, developed an evidence based assessment protocol to assist the individual social worker in conducting his/her assessment of intimate partner violence. The protocol development process involved posing answerable research questions about intimate partner violence assessment content and method and then adhering to the steps of evidence based practice to answer those questions. Key to the protocol development process was the partnership created between researchers and practitioners as part of an expert panel.     

Differences in perceptions of child sexual abuse based on perpetrator age and respondent gender

Child sexual abuse changes the lives of countless children. Child sexual abuse victims experience short and long term negative outcomes that affect their daily functioning. In this study, undergraduate students' perceptions of CSA were obtained using vignettes with an adult or child perpetrator and a general questionnaire. Results indicated participants receiving the child-on-child vignette were less likely to rate the vignette as abuse, saw the abuse as less severe, and assigned less blame to the perpetrator than participants reading the adult-on-child vignette. On a general questionnaire, male participants saw child-on-child abuse as less severe and more encouraged by society than did female participants. The information can be utilized by professionals in treatment planning and preventing revictimization at disclosure.     

Medical tourism in the backcountry: alternative health and healing in the Arkansas Ozarks

Tourists travel to Arkansas' mountain regions to experience, appreciate, and consume multiple aspects of otherness, including sacred sites and pristine and authentic peoples and environments. A largely unexplored aspect of this consumption of authenticity is alternative medicine, provided to tourists and day travelers in search of physical and emotional restoration. Traditional forms of medicine are deeply rooted in women's social roles as community healers in the region and are perpetuated in part because of the lack of readily accessible forms of so-called modern medicine. Contemporary medical tourism in Arkansas has promoted access to folk health systems, preserving them by incorporating them into tourists' health care services, and also has attracted new and dynamic alternative medical practices while encouraging the transformation of existing forms of traditional medicine. Ultimately, the blend of alternative, folk, and conventional medicine in the Arkansas highlands is evidence of globalizing forces at work in a regional culture. It also serves to highlight a renewed appreciation for the historic continuity and the efficacy of traditional knowledge in the upper South.     

Perceptions of fidelity to family group decision-making principles: examining the impact of race, gender, and relationship

This study explored the perceptions of fidelity to family group principles using comparative information from family, friends, and professionals, taking into account race and gender. White respondents felt there was a greater degree of fidelity than did the African American respondents, with other race respondents sometimes rating similarly to both white and African American respondents. Professionals generally perceived a greater level of fidelity and there were significant race by respondent interactions.