Promoting the Health of Young Adults in Urban Public Universities: A Case Study From City University of New York

Abstract

Changing demographics of college students and new insights into the developmental trajectory of chronic diseases present universities with opportunities to improve population health and reduce health inequalities. The reciprocal relationships between better health and improved educational achievement also offer university health programs a chance to improve retention and graduation rates, a key objective for higher education. In 2007, City University of New York (CUNY), the nation's largest urban public university, launched Healthy CUNY, an initiative designed to offer life-time protection against chronic diseases and reduce health-related barriers to educational achievement. In its first 5 years, Healthy CUNY has shown that universities can mobilize students, faculty, and other constituencies to modify environments and policies that influence health. New policies on tobacco and campus food, enrollment of needy students in public food and housing assistance programs, and a dialogue on the role of health in academic achievement are first steps towards healthier universities.     

The Developmental Trajectory of Nonadjacent Dependency Learning

We investigated the developmental trajectory of nonadjacent dependency learning in an artificial language. Infants were exposed to 1 of 2 artificial languages with utterances of the form [aXc or bXd] (Grammar 1) or [aXd or bXc] (Grammar 2). In both languages, the grammaticality of an utterance depended on the relation between the 1 st and 3rd elements, whereas the intervening element varied freely. High variability of the middle element is known to contribute to perception of nonadjacent dependencies (Góomez, 2002), but the developmental trajectory of such learning is unknown. Experiment 1 replicated the study of Gómez with a younger age group and a more subtle variability manipulation. Twelve‐month‐olds failed to track nonadjacent dependencies under conditions tested here (Experiments 2a and 2b), but by 15 months, infants are beginning to track this structure (Experiment 3). Such learning has implications for understanding how infants might begin to acquire similar structure in natural language.     

Infants' Sensitivity to the Causal Features of Means‐End Support Sequences in Action and Perception

Current work has yielded differential findings regarding infants' ability to perceptually detect the causal structure of a means‐end support sequence. Resolving this debate has important implications for perception‐action dissociations in this domain of object knowledge. In Study 1, 12‐month‐old infants' ability to perceive the causal structure of a cloth‐pulling sequence was assessed via a habituation paradigm. After seeing an event in which a supported toy was moved by pulling a cloth that it sat on, 12‐month‐old infants demonstrated longer looking to events that violated the causal structure of this sequence than to events that preserved the causal structure but varied other perceptual features of the event. Studies 2 and 3 investigated 10‐month‐olds' interpretations of means‐end support sequences using both a habituation paradigm and a task that assessed infants' own means‐end actions. Whereas 10‐month‐olds failed to demonstrate an understanding of the causal structure when tested using a flat cloth as the support (Study 2), sensitivity to this structure was apparent when a rectangular box was the support. These patterns were evident in both action and perception (Study 3). Moreover, individual variation in action task performance was related to visual habituation performance. The results are discussed with respect to the relation between action and perception in infancy.     

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Attachment theory and research: Review of the literature

Attachment theory confirms the importance of human relationships and their consequences for individual development. Attachment research has made it clear that infants are predesigned from birth to relate to others, and that their relationships are of preeminent importance in shaping their psychic development. The expectations they have of themselves and others are slowly internalized into working models of the world. These serve as guides for future behavior. Internal working models tend to persist over time, and the history of relationships are transmitted from generation to generation. Attachment research has fostered three important changes in psychoanalytic thinking: it affirms a relational model of psychoanalysis, proposes new guidelines for work with mother-infant dyads, and it offers a new model of theory development based on testable hypotheses. Implications for clinicians are discussed.     

Barriers in permanency planning for medically fragile children: Drug affected children and HIV infected children

This article discusses the problems of medically fragile children, drug affected and/or HIV infected. Passage of the Adoption Assistance and Child Welfare Act of 1980 markedly increased the number of these children in foster care. The specific barriers to permanency planning for this group of children are discussed and include interviews with staff people, review of the literature and integration of material from pilot studies of families fostering and adoping children with HIV.Dr. Groze is an Associate Professor, Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, Case Western Reserve University, Mr Haines-Simeon is a Research Assistant, Univ. of Iowa, School of Social Work.Funding for the project from which this article was derived was provided by the Dept. of Health and Human Services, Abandoned Infants Assistance Programs, contracts #90CB00029.     

Families who foster children with HIV: A pilot study

This is a study to examine the characteristics of families providing foster care for children with HIV. The paper discussed the special problems of children with AIDS. In addition HIV foster families were compared with other foster families to determine if there were any differences. Implications for recruiting foster families for children with HIV are discussed.