Suchergebnisse

Diabetes is a growing problem that threatens both individual health and health care systems throughout the industrialized world. This study analyzes the process and evolution of a collaborative project dealing with diabetes and employing action research methodology and the Citizen Health Care model. Partners in Diabetes (PID) was created through a democratic process among patients, families and providers in a primary care setting in the United States. Fourteen PID `support partners' were nominated by their physicians to receive training and then reach out to other patients and families across a variety of contexts (e.g. home, clinic, telephone). We conducted qualitative analyses of detailed meeting process-notes spanning more than three years, and key-informant interviews with providers, patients and family members. We identified key developmental themes, including how providers and patients learned to overcome traditional hierarchy, how PID was designed and implemented, what challenges were encountered and what mistakes were made. Lessons for extending similar projects are highlighted.

Students Against Nicotine and Tobacco Addiction (SANTA) is an action research project that engages local medical and mental health providers in partnership with students, teachers, and administrators in the Minneapolis/St Paul Job Corps community to reduce on-campus smoking. In this article, we describe how the initiative has endeavored to better understand the causes of students' smoking behaviors; changed the campus environment in ways facilitative to stress-management and boredom-reduction; revised the manners in which smoking cessation and support services are conducted; and sustained the project following the discontinuation of its start-up grant. Evaluative efforts across several cohorts of students in time show that smoking rates decrease significantly with prolonged exposure to SANTA interventions.

Community‐based participatory research (CBPR) is an action research approach that emphasizes collaborative partnerships between community members, community organizations, health care providers, and researchers to generate knowledge and solve local problems. Although relatively new to the field of family social science, family and health researchers have been using CBPR for over a decade. This paper introduces CBPR methods, illustrates the usefulness of CBPR methods in families and health research, describes two CBPR projects related to diabetes, and concludes with lessons learned and strengths and weaknesses of CBPR.

ObjectiveTo explore the lived experiences of secondary trauma among partners of law enforcement professionals (LEPs).BackgroundStress is a common occurrence for LEPs. Although research suggests that LEPs are directly affected by trauma exposure, few studies focus on the secondary trauma of partners or spouses of LEPs.MethodUtilizing transcendental phenomenological inquiry, in‐depth qualitative interviews were conducted with a purposeful sample of eight spouses of law enforcement recruited from community groups and police departments.ResultsThe results revealed three overarching themes of how participants experienced being partnered with an LEP: (a) types of trauma exposure, (b) the ripple impact of trauma, and (c) strength of couples and how they cope with trauma.ConclusionFindings suggest that spouses are both affected by trauma and serve a supportive role to LEPs following trauma exposure. Because secondary trauma can exacerbate existing difficulties in communication and emotional intimacy within couples' relationships, a greater understanding of the impact of trauma on law enforcement couples may lead to greater resources to help support couples wherein one individual is directly exposed to work‐related trauma.ImplicationsFamily professionals should promote healthy responses and coping among law enforcement couples following exposure to traumatic events.

Contact in adoption is a complex issue that adoption professionals frequently negotiate. Today most adoption placements include an initial plan for contact that in many instances changes over time. By understanding contact as an issue that presents itself over the course of an adopted person's lifetime, the complexities it brings to the adoption experience can be seen. Gretchen Miller Wrobel, Harold D Grotevant, Jerica Berge, Tai Mendenhall and Ruth McRoy discuss contact from a US perspective using findings from the Minnesota/Texas Adoption Project, a longitudinal study of openness in adoption. They examine how curiosity, satisfaction with adoptive contact, family communication and searching influence decision-making about the extent of contact. Implications for adoption professionals in the USA and the UK are also presented.