Coordinating County Based Services for the Frail Elderly

The aging network is fraught with fragmentation. Services to the elderly are administered out of multiple agencies and departments at all levels of government. This article discusses the approach taken by one county to diminish the level of fragmentation to frail elders by a cooperative agreement between key county departments providing services to the aged.     

SOCIAL INTERACTION AND MORALE OF SPANISH-SPEAKING RURAL AND URBAN ELDERLY

Considered in this survey study is the social interaction of rural and urban Spanish elderly with their kin in a northern New Mexico county. Generally rural elderly were visited significantly more than their urban counterparts. Implications about the modernization of the Mexican-American family are drawn.     

Health Issues of Homeless Youth

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of what is currently known about the health issues of homeless youth, focusing on risk-taking behaviors, health status, and access to care. The paper addresses the health issues of homeless youth in the U.S. within an international context. Existing data suggest that homeless adolescents exhibit high rates of risk-taking behaviors, face additional barriers to access of health care, and suffer from a high burden of poor health. However, most research on the health of homeless youth has been cross-sectional and has relied on convenience sampling. Future research should focus on conducting more methodologically rigorous studies on the specific health needs of homeless youth. Research should include eliciting information directly from the youth about their preferred health care interventions.     

铜陵公务员体育锻炼现状及健康状况的研究

本文通过对铜陵市279名在编公务员的问卷调查和跟踪访谈,对公务员的体育锻炼动机、影响体育锻炼的影响因素、体育锻炼场所、项目、形式及健康体检等结果做系统性的分析,寻找出公务员这一人群体育锻炼与身体健康存在的问题,并提出可行性的建议,为改善公务员的身心健康提供一定的科学依据。     

Fostering secure attachment in low- and middle-income countries: Suggestions for evidence-based interventions

Children struggling with the effects of trauma in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) face a substantial mental health resource gap that limits their opportunities for positive psychosocial development. Multidisciplinary interventions working to close this gap may benefit from incorporating an empirically supported treatment (EST) into their approach that targets a universal mechanism implicated in resilience, like attachment. ESTs should be selected based on their level of empirical support and cultural adaptability, and then modified on the basis of qualitative evaluations conducted with the local population and stakeholders. This paper will provide an overview of attachment as a mechanism of resilience, a critical analysis of existing attachment-based ESTs, and recommendations for overcoming EST implementation barriers in LMIC.     

Use of concurrent mixed methods combining concept mapping and focus groups to adapt a health equity tool in Canada

The aim of this project was to identify and prioritize a set of conditions to be considered for incorporating a health equity tool into public health practice. Concept mapping and focus groups were implemented as complementary methods to investigate the conditions of use of a health equity tool by public health organizations in Quebec. Using a hybrid integrated research design is a richer way to address the complexity of questions emerging from intervention and planning settings. This approach provides a deeper, operational, and contextualized understanding of research results involving different professional and organizational cultures, and thereby supports the decision-making process. Concept mapping served to identify and prioritize in a limited timeframe the conditions to be considered for incorporation into a health equity tool into public health practices. Focus groups then provided a more refined understanding of the barriers, issues, and facilitating factors surrounding the tools adoption, helped distinguish among participants’ perspectives based on functional roles and organizational contexts, and clarified some apparently contradictory results from the concept map. The combined use of these two techniques brought the strengths of each approach to bear, thereby overcoming some of the respective limitations of concept mapping and focus groups. This design is appropriate for investigating targets with multiple levels of complexity.     

Assessing participants’ perceptions on group-based principles for action in community-based health enhancing physical activity programmes: The APEF tool

In community-based health enhancing physical activity (CBHEPA) programmes, group-based principles for action such as active participation, enjoyment, and fostering group processes are widely advocated. However, not much is known about participants’ perceptions of these principles as there are no assessment tools available. Therefore, this article describes the development of the APEF (Active Participation, Enjoyment, and Fostering group processes) tool and reports on its implementation in a Dutch CBHEPA programme. Indicators for the principles have been identified from literature research, interviews with professionals, and secondary analysis of three group interviews with 11 practitioners. To address the identified indicators, the APEF tool was developed, pretested, and used in 10 focus groups with 76 participants.The APEF tool consists of eight statements about group-based principles for action, on which CBHEPA participants vote, followed by in-depth discussion. The voting procedure engages participants. Spider diagrams visualise participants’ perceptions of group-based principles.The APEF tool addresses the challenge of relating group level outcomes to individual outcomes such as physical activity behaviour. The tool facilitates as well as evaluates group-based principles for action, it stimulates dialogue and is culturally sensitive, but it needs strong facilitating skills to manage group dynamics.     

Introspection as intra-professionalism in social and health care

This article analyses two cases from health and social care, adopting a psycho-societal approach. The analysis highlights how professionalism evolves and develops through an introspection of the relational and scenic processes between professionals, as well as between the professional and the client or patient. As a phenomenon at the core of professional practice, it will be argued that introspection needs to recognize and encompass the intra- and inter-psychic responses and understandings of professionals and their clients and patients. The first case places supervision as a learning space, where framing and complex exchanges of loss and confirmation, and of denial and displacement take place between a group of social workers and their supervisor. In the second case, it becomes apparent how the research interview opens up an opportunity for processing the emotions and socially critical experiences involved in hospital work.     

Student and faculty perceptions about mandatory influenza vaccinations on a health sciences campus

Objective: To examine the perceptions among faculty and health professional students regarding mandatory vaccination policies on a health sciences campus. Participants: A total of 296 faculty and 244 students completed surveys during Fall 2015. Methods: The online survey administered to individuals who received the influenza vaccine during the fall 2015 influenza vaccination clinic season included five items evaluating perceptions of employer mandatory vaccination requirements. Results: Chi-square analysis indicated that although faculty and students agree mandatory vaccinations in a health care environment are appropriate, faculty are more likely than students to get vaccinated in the absence of a mandate. Additionally, a small fraction of faculty would consider employment elsewhere when facing this mandate. Conclusions: Overall, faculty and students had favorable perceptions about mandatory influenza vaccine policies. Since students were less likely to be vaccinated in the absence of a mandate, education of students should be improved to support the importance of vaccinations in a health care environment.