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This study focused on understanding individual (e.g., political identity and alignment of social work core values with the Black Lives Matter movement and the All Lives Matter argument) and social environmental correlates (e.g., social network composition) of awareness of racism among social work students. A convenience sample of social work students (n=98) recruited from a major Midwest land grant university completed an online anonymous survey with questions covering individual characteristics, social network information, and attitudes toward social phenomena. The Color-Blind Racial Attitudes Scale was used to assess overall awareness of racism, White privilege, institutional racism, and blatant racism. Regression models were conducted to identify correlates of these domains of racial attitudes separately. Liberal political view identification and alignment of Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement with social work core values were associated with better awareness of racism across all domains; aligning All Lives Matter with social work core values was associated with unawareness of overall racism, institutional racism, and blatant racism. Finally, discussion on racial issues with network members was associated with better awareness of overall racism, White privilege, and blatant racism. Social work programs should facilitate inter-group dialogues to build consensus on countering racism. Discussions on the mission and the context of BLM and its opposition efforts should also be incorporated in the curriculum. Finally, more emphasis on the impact of institutional racism should be included into course activities to further discussion on such topics within students' network.

Relations between political violence and child adjustment are matters of international concern. Past research demonstrates the significance of community, family and child psychological processes in child adjustment, supporting study of inter-relations between multiple social ecological factors and child adjustment in contexts of political violence. Testing a social ecological model, 300 mothers and their children (M= 12.28 years, SD = 1.77) from Catholic and Protestant working class neighborhoods in Belfast, Northern Ireland completed measures of community discord, family relations, and children's regulatory processes (i.e., emotional security) and outcomes. Historical political violence in neighborhoods based on objective records (i.e., politically motivated deaths) were related to family members' reports of current sectarian and non-sectarian antisocial behavior. Interparental conflict and parental monitoring and children's emotional security about both the community and family contributed to explanatory pathways for relations between sectarian antisocial behavior in communities and children's adjustment problems. The discussion evaluates support for social ecological models for relations between political violence and child adjustment and its implications for understanding relations in other parts of the world.

While cyberbullying has been recognized as a critically important social problem, a void remains regarding the role of digital media. To address this gap, we propose the social-ecological model of cyberbullying, an expanded model that builds on Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory (EST) and expands Swearer and Espelage's social-ecological model of bullying. A strength of the proposed model is the addition of the digital context as a new ecology in the everyday lives of youth, which is closely interconnected with all the other systems. Furthermore, the model incorporates digital-specific factors within each ecological system of the original EST model. This provides scholars with a holistic model that they can test, finetune, and expand. A practical implication of the model is that it can guide the creation and implementation of effective and age-appropriate cyberbullying prevention and intervention approaches because it considers in the chronosystem life phases, life transitions, historical events, and crises.

This study utilized the four-level social-ecological model to provide a better understanding of the disparities in health-related outcomes in high- and low-density African American (AA) communities. The current research sought to understand the relationships between mental and physical health, social-economic factors, and physical environment within this community. The goal of this study was to understand the relationship between these indicators of health, to better inform health-care strategies. The results highlight the significant difference between high- and low-density AA communities and socio-economic factors, physical environment, poor physical days, and poor mental health days. Implications for behavioral health providers are explored.

BACKGROUND: This study was a part of 16-week sitting light volleyball (SLVB) intervention program which examined the effects of the intervention on the physical and psychological attributes of adults with physical impairments (PWPI) in Hong Kong. Gaining a deeper understanding of the perceptions and experiences of PWPI in the SLVB intervention is critical to the development of SLVB as a physical activity and a sport. The aims of this study were (a) to assess participants' experiences of the intervention and (b) to examine the suitability and feasibility of SLVB intervention for PWPI. METHODS: Twenty participants (mean age = 53.52 years, standard deviation 9.02 years; 60% female; 25% with at least a college degree) participated in semi-structured interviews. RESULTS: Content analysis revealed features of their experiences at the individual or intrapersonal level (physical and psychological health, enjoyment, novelty, competence, autonomy), interpersonal level (socialization and teamwork, social support), organizational and community levels (perceived sport venue environment, venue accessibility, safety, dissemination of information), and policy level (resources allocation by the government). The participants also commented on the suitability and feasibility of the SLVB intervention for PWPI, its content and coaching, the modified rules, the duration of sessions, scheduling, and the number of participants and coaches. CONCLUSIONS: This study identified several themes relevant to the promotion of PWPI engagement with SLVB and demonstrated that adopting a multilevel approach to the intervention resulted in positive outcomes for participants. Playing SLVB is suitable and feasible for PWPI. The findings contribute to the understanding of the experiences PWPI had of the SLVB intervention, which is critical to the further development of SLVB as a physical activity and a sport.

From publisher: Background Social and structural factors are now well accepted as determinants of HIV vulnerabilities. These factors are representative of social, economic, organizational and political inequities. Associated with an improved understanding of multiple levels of HIV risk has been the recognition of the need to implement multi-level HIV prevention strategies. Prevention sciences research and programming aiming to decrease HIV incidence requires epidemiologic studies to collect data on multiple levels of risk to inform combination HIV prevention packages. Discussion Proximal individual-level risks, such as sharing injection devices and unprotected penile-vaginal or penile-anal sex, are necessary in mediating HIV acquisition and transmission. However, higher order social and structural-level risks can facilitate or reduce HIV transmission on population levels. Data characterizing these risks is often far more actionable than characterizing individual-level risks. We propose a modified social ecological model (MSEM) to help visualize multi-level domains of HIV infection risks and guide the development of epidemiologic HIV studies. Such a model may inform research in epidemiology and prevention sciences, particularly for key populations including men who have sex with men (MSM), people who inject drugs (PID), and sex workers. The MSEM builds on existing frameworks by examining multi-level risk contexts for HIV infection and situating individual HIV infection risks within wider network, community, and public policy contexts as well as epidemic stage. The utility of the MSEM is demonstrated with case studies of HIV risk among PID and MSM. Summary The MSEM is a flexible model for guiding epidemiologic studies among key populations at risk for HIV in diverse sociocultural contexts. Successful HIV prevention strategies for key populations require effective integration of evidence-based biomedical, behavioral, and structural interventions. While the focus of epidemiologic studies has traditionally been on describing individual-level risk factors, the future necessitates comprehensive epidemiologic data characterizing multiple levels of HIV risk. ; The study was funded by amFAR, Foundation for AIDS Research, who supported SB, CB, AG and AW. CL was funded by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Institute of Gender and Health Training Fellowship.

Contraceptive use is deemed one of the 10 greatest public health achievements of the 20th century because its benefits are universally acknowledged as a cornerstone for reducing global maternal morbidity and mortality. However, although the adoption of the Affordable Care Act in the United States (US) enhanced access to preventive health services, as well as increased contraceptive use, a considerable proportion of reproductive-aged women still have unmet reproductive health needs. Current data indicates gaps in contraceptive use patterns in the US, particularly among low-income women and those from racial/ethnic and gender minority subgroups, necessitating further investigation using an ecological approach. This narrative literature review aims to investigate the current perspective of contraceptive use in the US using the social-ecological model (SEM). Based on SEM levels, barriers to contraceptive use entail the following levels: individual (e.g., misbelief about the side effects of contraceptives), interpersonal (e.g., influence of family and friends), institutional (e.g., lack of training on how to use different types of contraceptives), community (e.g., societal stigma and shame), and policy (e.g., restrictive federal and states policies). Access to contraceptives for women is a system-level issue that necessitates consideration for multilevel strategies by key stakeholders to improve contraceptive uptake among vulnerable populations.

The COVID-19 outbreak has raised questions about how vulnerable groups experience the pandemic. Research that focuses on the view of individuals with pre-existing mental health conditions is still limited, and so are cross-country comparative surveys. We gathered our sample of qualitative data during the first lockdown after governmental measures against the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus came into force in Austria, Czechia, Germany, and Slovakia. A total of n = 1690 psychotherapists from four middle European countries answered the question of how the COVID-19 pandemic was addressed in sessions by their patients during the early stage of unprecedented public health conditions. We employed a descriptive qualitative methodology to determine themes following levels of the social-ecological model (SEM) regarding how the COVID-19 pandemic affected patients. At the public policy level, stressful environmental conditions concerned the governmental mitigation efforts. At the level of community/society, reported key themes were employment, restricted access to educational and health facilities, socioeconomic consequences, and the pandemic itself. Key themes at the interpersonal level regarded forced proximity, the possibility of infection of loved ones, childcare, and homeschooling. Key themes at the individual level were the possibility of contracting COVID-19, having to stay at home/isolation, and a changing environment. Within the SEM framework, adaptive and maladaptive responses to these stressors were reported, with more similarities than differences between the countries. A quantification of word stems showed that the maladaptive reactions predominated.