Reconciling Community-Based Versus Evidence-Based Philanthropy: A Case Study of The Colorado Trust’s Early Initiatives

One of the dominant tensions in philanthropy involves the question of whether foundations should focus their grantmaking on projects that come from the community versus projects that have a base of scientific evidence. How a foundation answers this question leads to different strategic orientations. This article describes how this tension was expressed and resolved during The Colorado Trust’s early years of initiative-based grantmaking. The community-based philosophy is illustrated through the Colorado Healthy Communities Initiative, while Home Visitation 2000 serves as an exemplar of the evidence-based approach. The Colorado School Health Education Initiative purposefully integrated the two philosophies. The community-based and evidence-based philosophies each have inherent limitations which can be overcome by incorporating the opposing philosophy. This finding is consistent with Barry Johnson’s (1992) Polarity Management model and potentially at odds with the principle of strategic alignment

Optimizing Outreach and Application Assistance Services in Community-based Organizations: Evaluation Findings from The Colorado Trust's Outreach and Enrollment for Children and Youth Grant Strategy

This report discusses findings from the evaluation of The Colorado Trust's three-year, $3.3 million grant strategy (2009-2011) to help expand enrollment of children and youth in public health insurance programs in Colorado. These findings focus on how 12 community-based organizations, with little previous experience in providing application assistance to families to enroll children and youth in public health insurance, offered targeted outreach and application assistance services. These findings provide new insights into the time, effort and outcomes associated with implementing outreach and application assistance services, reinforcing and expanding upon previous literature demonstrating the promise and potential pitfalls of this approach

The First Year at University: Giving Social Capital a Sporting Chance

The first year of university has been identified as an area of interest and concern for several decades because, for many students, their first year at university is also their last. The researchers developed a program based on a Sports Education model to influence the engagement and retention of first year students. The program sought to build social capital by providing opportunities for students to connect with their peers and establish supportive social and collegial networks at university. The data highlighted a number of interesting outcomes for both the first year students and mentors. First year students reported that the program made them feel welcome on campus and helped them establish support networks. The mentors commented on the benefits of their involvement in the program. The outcomes of this project have provided clear directions for future approaches to support first year students

A Social-Ecological-Infrastructural Systems Framework for Interdisciplinary Study of Sustainable City Systems

Cities are embedded within larger-scale engineered infrastructures (e.g., electric power, water supply, and transportation networks) that convey natural resources over large distances for use by people in cities. The sustainability of city systems therefore depends upon complex, cross-scale interactions between the natural system, the transboundary engineered infrastructures, and the multiple social actors and institutions that govern these infrastructures. These elements, we argue, are best studied in an integrated manner using a novel social-ecological-infrastructural systems (SEIS) framework. In the biophysical subsystem, the SEIS framework integrates urban metabolism with life cycle assessment to articulate transboundary infrastructure supply chain water, energy, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emission footprints of cities. These infrastructure footprints make visible multiple resources (water, energy, materials) used directly or indirectly (embodied) to support human activities in cities. They inform cross-scale and cross-infrastructure sector strategies for mitigating environmental pollution, public health risks and supply chain risks posed to cities. In the social subsystem, multiple theories drawn from the social sciences explore interactions between three actor categories—individual resource users, infrastructure designers and operators, and policy actors—who interact with each other and with infrastructures to shape cities toward sustainability outcomes. Linking of the two subsystems occurs by integrating concepts, theories, laws, and models across environmental sciences/climatology, infrastructure engineering, industrial ecology, architecture, urban planning, behavioral sciences, public health, and public affairs. Such integration identifies high-impact leverage points in the urban SEIS. An interdisciplinary SEIS-based curriculum on sustainable cities is described and evaluated for its efficacy in promoting systems thinking and interdisciplinary vocabulary development, both of which are measures of effective frameworks

Autism spectrum disorders in boys at a major UK hemophilia center: prevalence and risk factors

Background: Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are diagnosed by social communication difficulties strong, narrow interests, and repetitive stereotyped behavior. An apparently-elevated prevalence of ASD at a major UK hemophilia center warranted investigation. Objectives: To screen boys with hemophilia for difficulties in social communication and executive function and identify the prevalence and risk factors for ASD. Methods: Parents of boys with hemophilia aged 5 to 16 years completed the Social Communication Questionnaire, Children’s Communication Checklist, and the Behavior Rating Inventory of executive function. Prevalence and potential risk factors for ASD were evaluated. Boys with an existing diagnosis of ASD did not complete questionnaires, but were included in the prevalence analysis. Results: Negative scores on all 3 questionnaires were observed for 60 of 79 boys. Positive scores on 1, 2, and 3 questionnaires were seen in 12 of 79, 3 of 79, and 4 of 79 boys, respectively. In addition to the 11 of 214 boys with a prior ASD diagnosis, 3 further boys were diagnosed with ASD, yielding a prevalence of 14 (6.5%) of 214, greater than that of boys in the UK general population. Premature birth was linked to having ASD, but did not fully explain the increased prevalence with more boys born <37 weeks scoring positively on the Social Communications Questionnaire and Children’s Communication Checklist compared with those born at term. Conclusion: This study identified an increased prevalence of ASD at 1 UK hemophilia center. Prematurity was identified as a risk factor but did not fully explain the higher prevalence of ASD. Further investigation in the wider national/global hemophilia communities is warranted to determine whether this is an isolated finding

Do toddlers prefer the primary caregiver or the parent with whom they feel more secure? The role of toddler emotion

This study tested Bowlby and Ainsworth’s hypothesis that a hierarchy of caregivers exists whereby infants prefer one caregiver over another when distressed. We examined parent gender (mother vs. father), primary caregiver status (defined as the parent who spent most time with the infant and performed most of the caregiving tasks), and role of toddlers’ history of attachment security with each parent, as predictors of toddlers’ preference for a particular caregiver when the toddlers are distressed and when they are content. Infants’ attachment security with each parent was assessed at 12–15 months. At 24 months, mother–child and father–child interactions were observed in triadic (mother, father, toddler) home interactions. When distressed, regardless of the security of their attachment to each parent, toddlers more often interacted with the primary caregiver. When content, toddlers did not show this preference. As expected, toddlers’ recovery from distress was predicted by their security of attachment with the parent whom they approached when distressed

Cutting cardiovascular risk in barbershops

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jomh.2009.07.00