American journal of community psychology
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Am J Community Psychol · Dec 2020
Applying Community-Based Participatory Approaches to Addressing Health Disparities and Promoting Health Equity.
This special issue highlights work that contributes to our understanding of health disparities and community-based participatory research (CBPR) approaches to promoting health equity across diverse populations and issues that matter to communities. We take on a global perspective, and thus, various efforts across international contexts are illustrated. Articles elucidate a variety of CBPR approaches designed to empower and build capacity among individuals and communities in order to seek changes at the level of community practices, programs, and systems. These articles span across diverse populations-children, youth, and families; adults and older adults; immigrants; refugees; Black people; Latinx people; Native Americans/Indigenous people, the Roma community; Muslim women, and women with disabilities-experiencing inequities of interest to community psychologists and other researchers and practitioners.
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Am J Community Psychol · Jun 2019
Strengthening the Child- and Youth-Serving Workforce: Surveying the Landscape, Overcoming Challenges.
This special issue addresses a neglected but important topic in our field: strengthening the child- and youth-serving workforce. Investing in this workforce should be a national priority because considerable evidence has shown that investments in early childhood education and development, particularly in low-resource contexts, that are reinforced through skills-based programs in adolescence and adulthood, have beneficial impacts throughout life. ⋯ Articles in this issue survey the landscape of an amorphous and complex area of practice and research and describe key challenges for the field. In this commentary, I offer organizing frameworks to characterize the child- and youth-serving workforce, note emerging issues when addressing specific challenges, and identify areas for future research.
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Am J Community Psychol · Mar 2019
Engaged Against the Machine: Institutional and Cultural Racial Discrimination and Racial Identity as Predictors of Activism Orientation among Black Youth.
The current study examines how experiences of institutional and cultural racial discrimination relate to orientations toward activism in the Black community among Black adolescents and emerging adults. Furthermore, we investigate the role of racial identity (centrality, public regard, nationalism) as moderators of those relations. In a national sample of 888 Black adolescents and emerging adults, we found that experiences of cultural racial discrimination, racial centrality, and nationalism ideology were related to a greater orientation toward low-risk Black community activism. ⋯ For Black adolescents and emerging adults who believe others view Black people negatively, more experiences of institutional racial discrimination were related to a greater high-risk activism orientation. Findings highlight the importance of investigating racial discrimination as a multidimensional construct that extends beyond individual interactions and microaggressions. Furthermore, these findings underscore how phenomenological variation in experiences of racial discrimination and racial identity differentially influence adolescent and emerging adult orientations toward social action in and for the Black community.
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Am J Community Psychol · Dec 2017
Rape Myth Acceptance in Sexually Assaulted Adolescents' School Contexts: Associations with Depressed Mood and Alcohol Use.
High school students exposed to sexual assault (SA) are at risk for negative outcomes like depressed mood and high-risk drinking. Although evidence suggests that both social contexts and internalized stigma can affect recovery from SA, no research to date has directly examined the presence of stigma in social contexts such as high schools as a correlate of adjustment after SA. In this study, the self-reported rape myth acceptance (RMA) of 3080 students from 97 grade cohorts in 25 high schools was used to calculate grade-mean and school-mean RMA, which was entered into multilevel models predicting depressed mood and alcohol use among N = 263 SA survivors within those schools. ⋯ Results indicate that higher grade-mean rape denial was associated with higher risk for depressed mood among high school boys and girls exposed to SA, and higher grade-mean traditional gender expectations were associated with higher risk for alcohol use among girls exposed to SA. Survivors' own RMA and school-level RMA were not significantly associated with their depressed mood or alcohol use. Although causality cannot be concluded, these findings suggest that interventions that reduce stigma in social contexts should be explored further as a strategy to improve well-being among high-school-aged survivors of SA.
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Am J Community Psychol · Mar 2017
"It Happens to Girls All the Time": Examining Sexual Assault Survivors' Reasons for Not Using Campus Supports.
Sexual assault is a prevalent problem in higher education, and despite the increasing availability of formal supports on college campuses, few sexual assault survivors use them. Experiencing sexual assault can have devastating consequences on survivors' psychological and educational wellbeing, which may intensify if survivors do not receive adequate care. Drawing from existing theoretical frameworks and empirical research, this study used a mixed methodological approach to examine why survivors did not use three key campus supports-the Title IX Office, the sexual assault center, and housing staff-and if these reasons differed across the three supports. ⋯ Quantitative findings revealed that survivors' reasons for not seeking help differed across supports. Collectively, our findings suggest that community norms and institutional policies can make it challenging for survivors to use campus supports. We propose several suggestions for institutional change (e.g., taking a stronger stance against "less serious" forms of sexual assault, reducing a quasi-criminal justice approach to investigation and adjudication, limiting mandated reporting).