Capability Traps Impeding Homeless Services: A Community-Based System Dynamics Evaluation

Continuums of Care (CoCs) are the primary coordinating bodies for homeless services in the United States. However, the complexities involved in delivering homeless services across interagency networks challenges coordination and system improvement. CoC governance, planning, and service provision have received little attention in academic literature, and thus, Continuums attempt to manage complex systems with little guidance. This evaluation applied community-based system dynamics with homeless consumers and service providers to (1) identify capability traps that impede services delivery and to (2) engage stakeholders in a structured system improvement process. Results revealed organizational structures for governance and planning that inhibit system outcomes. Insights led to policy and practice recommendations for the homeless system.     

Climate variability and health in extremely vulnerable communities: investigating variations in surface water conditions and food security in the West African Sahel

In this project we consider the ways that different livelihood strategies impact the climate-health linkage. Specifically, we build on knowledge of livestock mobility in the Sahel and use remotely sensed-based measures of waterholes with health survey data to investigate the linkages between child health outcomes related to food security. We focus on the landscape characteristics relevant to limitedly studied, but highly climate-vulnerable populations, pastoralists and agro-pastoralists in the Sahel. We combine remotely sensed-based data on surface waterholes and spatially referenced health survey data and use flexible regression modeling techniques to uncover the quantitative relationship between waterhole depth and a child’s height-for-age z-score (HAZ). The results suggest that the water depth level of nearby waterholes does indeed impact a child’s HAZ, even after accounting for other environmental factors. This relationship is impacted, however, by the livelihood practices of the area as well as by the source of household drinking water.

     

With a Little Help from Their Friends: Use of Social Support Systems by Persons with Retardation

Within the past two decades there has been an increase in research studying the perspective of persons labeled as disabled, rather than relying solely on outsiders' (nonlabeled persons') perspectives about them. In this paper, a series of interviews with a small group of persons labeled as mentally retarded sought insights into their work environment, friendships, and future goals through their own words. The interviews revealed that they recognized being "different" in terms of the labels applied to them by others, but they did not use those same labels when defining themselves or choosing their close friends.     

The Effect of Negative and Positive Childhood Divorce Experiences on Professional Performers

The purpose of this study was to provide an in-depth analysis of divorce by comparing levels of depression, anxiety, self-esteem, and availability of resources between professional performers who were children from divorces considered negative, divorces considered positive or neutral, and professional performers raised in 2-parent households. The results of this study indicated that performers raised in divorced families reported more depression, more anxiety, and lower levels of self-esteem than those who were raised in intact families. Additionally, results indicated that those who were raised in neutral to positive divorced families reported less depression, less anxiety, and higher levels of self-esteem than did those stemming from negatively divorced families. Implications for treatment and directions for future research are presented.     

Proactive Screening for Health Needs in United Way's 2-1-1 Information and Referral Service

ABSTRACT

Cancer disproportionately affects the underserved. United Way 2-1-1 is an information and referral system that links underserved populations to community services. This study explores the feasibility of integrating proactive screening and referral to health services into 2-1-1. A cancer risk assessment was administered to callers (n = 297), measuring their need for 6 cancer control services. A subset of respondents was randomized to receive generic or tailored referrals to needed services. Nearly all participants (85%) needed at least one of the services. Those who received tailored referrals were more likely to make appointments. Future research will explore approaches to address and eliminate health disparities through 2-1-1.     

Do American mothers use self-employment as a flexible work alternative?

Review of Economics of the Household - This paper provides evidence that self-employment is a quantitatively important work alternative that American mothers use to gain workplace flexibility....     

Challenging the gendered rhetoric of success? The limitations of women‐only mentoring for tackling gender inequality in the workplace

Mentoring is widely acknowledged to be an important contributor to women's career success and progression, but women often struggle to access mentoring networks that can help sponsor and develop their careers. Formal mentoring programmes designed specifically for women help overcome this challenge, but such schemes may at the same time reinforce masculine discourses which position women as deficient in relation to the invisibly male norm that is implicit within contemporary working practices. Drawing on a formal women‐only mentoring programme built on gender‐positive goals to empower women to ‘be the best they can be’ within the events industry, this article considers the extent to which such programmes can both challenge and reproduce gendered discourses of business and success. Interviews with mentors and mentees illustrate how such programmes make gender visible within business and individual careers, but masculinist underpinnings of organizational discourses remain invisible, unacknowledged and thus largely unchallenged.     

Floral abundance and richness drive beneficial arthropod conservation and biological control on golf courses

Urban Ecosystems - Golf courses are among the largest, most ubiquitous highly maintained urban green spaces in the U.S. Although their primary function is recreation, a large portion of golf course...