Reconsidering priorities for digital maternal and child health: community-centered perspectives from South Africa

Especially in developing regions, parents are rarely given a direct voice in the design of digital maternal and child health (MCH) interventions. Instead, MCH needs and requirements are driven by organizations and health workers. In this research, we engage with both rural and urban parents and community leaders to better understand their challenges and priorities for digital MCH and propose a parent-centered agenda for humancomputer interaction research. This paper reports on the community-based, digital MCH priorities identified in our research, and describes how we approached community discourse and co-design of digital initiatives for these priorities, through parent-centered workshops with low-resource South African communities. Furthermore, we provide the parent-centered design opportunities and tensions we discovered for digital MCH in South African contexts, such as designing for local contexts and languages, designing for accessibility and connectedness, and highlighting the underdeveloped digital MCH niches. Finally, we highlight the importance of including facilitators for co-design workshops, such as using intermediaries and design cards.

Disrupting the Status Quo: Leveraging collective teacher efficacy for the achievement and wellbeing of BIPOC and low socioeconomic students

Abstract At Mel Morgan Middle School (MMMS) a high percentage of students are of low socioeconomic status (SES). Compounding this problem is data which shows that students at MMMS also experience significant academic challenges. Educational challenges for students of low SES are like those experienced by Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC). Faculty beliefs and assumptions about how to effectively educate students from low SES and BIPOC communities are posited as a problem beyond their control. Despite the Legacy Regional Centre for Education’s (LRCE) commitment to student success through policies and documents such as student success planning, inclusive education, and culturally responsive pedagogy, challenges still exist. As a solution to the problem of practice (PoP) this Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) presents a solution to disrupt the status quo by leveraging collective teacher efficacy (CTE) for the success and wellbeing of all students. Explored through an Indigenous lens and highlighting the Indigenous principles of respect, responsibility, relevance and reciprocity, interconnection and collective action propel the solution to the problem. Essential to collective teacher efficacy is an environment which promotes strong relationships and collaborative teacher inquiry (CTI). As an administrative leader, continuous school improvement through the student success planning process and CTI will be explored through transformational, transformative, and adaptive leadership approaches. Guided by an ethic of care, collective teacher efficacy has significant potential to impact the education of all students. This is especially true for BIPOC and students of low socioeconomic status. Keywords: culturally responsive pedagogy, collective teacher efficacy, relationships, transformational leadership, adaptive leadership, ethic of car

Breaking the Barriers to Specialty Care: Practical Ideas to Improve Health Equity and Reduce Cost - Striving for Equity in Specialty Care Full Report

Tremendous health outcome inequities remain in the U.S. across race and ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation, socio-economic status, and geography—particularly for those with serious conditions such as lung or skin cancer, HIV/AIDS, or cardiovascular disease.These inequities are driven by a complex set of factors—including distance to a specialist, insurance coverage, provider bias, and a patient's housing and healthy food access. These inequities not only harm patients, resulting in avoidable illness and death, they also drive unnecessary health systems costs.This 5-part series highlights the urgent need to address these issues, providing resources such as case studies, data, and recommendations to help the health care sector make meaningful strides toward achieving equity in specialty care.Top TakeawaysThere are vast inequalities in access to and outcomes from specialty health care in the U.S. These inequalities are worst for minority patients, low-income patients, patients with limited English language proficiency, and patients in rural areas.A number of solutions have emerged to improve health outcomes for minority and medically underserved patients. These solutions fall into three main categories: increasing specialty care availability, ensuring high-quality care, and helping patients engage in care.As these inequities are also significant drivers of health costs, payers, health care provider organizations, and policy makers have a strong incentive to invest in solutions that will both improve outcomes and reduce unnecessary costs. These actors play a critical role in ensuring that equity is embedded into core care delivery at scale.

Constructing Collaborative Success for Network Learning: The Story of the Discovery Community Self-Assessment Tool

· Despite conversations about the importance of community collaboration, foundations continue to struggle with how to best frame and support collaborative success. · Existing tools to assess collaboration may not fit with either a foundation’s values or a specific program strategy. · From a foundation perspective, developing a community self-assessment tool reinforced the idea that collaborative functioning is crucial and deserves attention. · This article shares a story of the development and initial use of the Discovery Community Self-Assessment Tool as a process of social construction critical to collective action and a possible indicator of network learning

The predicament of generation 1.5 English language learners: Three disjunctures and a possible way forward

This article reports key findings from a collaborative project that focused on the academic literacy development of children who are born and/or begin their formal schooling in Canada but are raised in homes where the societally dominant language is not the primary idiom. Analyses involved characterizing students’ home ecological environments; assessing the nature of students’ challenges in relation to school-based literacy demands; and documenting collaborations with professional educators in generating cognitively and pedagogically differentiated instructional approaches. Findings are interpreted as three disjunctive conditions that impede the development of academic literacy competencies and, thus, schooling success of G1.5 linguistic minority students

Schools Uniting Neighborhoods: Sustainability and Racial Equity in a Community Schools Initiative

Schools Uniting Neighborhoods (SUN), a collaborative initiative in Multnomah County, Oregon, combines the increasingly popular community school model with an innovative organizational structure to further two key goals: sustainability as an initiative and furthering racial equity. This thesis situates SUN within the context of American public education reform and existing literature on the positive outcomes, organizational structures, and leadership components of community schools. Building on past reviews of SUN and its outcomes, I use results from qualitative interviews with key stakeholders to provide insight into how its organizational structure contributes to the goals of sustainability and racial equity. I discuss the current state of SUN, future directions, and the relevancy of findings to other community schools initiatives and more generally, public education reform efforts

In Search of Belonging Online: Achieving Equity through Transformative Professional Development

Abstract Online classes hold the potential to expand college access to Black, Latino/a/x, Indigenous, and other students of color who must be supported to diversify the STEM workforce. Research shows that fostering belonging is key to the academic success of students from minoritized groups. However, online classes often lack interpersonal interactions and are often left out of research about the positive impacts of belonging. This paper summarizes an equity-focused STEM grant project that produced an openly-shared online professional development program, the Humanizing Online STEM Academy. Through the Academy, STEM faculty are introduced to a model of humanized online teaching that centers belonging as a way to address equity gaps. Participant survey responses present opportunities for future research about belonging in online courses

Strategies to Reduce the Racial and Gender Wealth Gaps in North Carolina

Suggests strategies to close gaps in median net worth by race/ethnicity, gender, and marital status, such as promoting low income-targeted programs, addressing discrimination in home and business ownership, and long-term community economic development

Increasing Retention and Knowledge Transfer Through Digital Storytelling and the Comics Medium: A Design Case

Asynchronous multimedia learning is a common form of delivering training in the workforce industry, and organizations rely on a completion status to measure that training. However, measuring retention and knowledge transfer of new material rarely occurs during asynchronous learning. Grounded in the Visual Language Theory (VLT) and a delivery modality of digital storytelling (DST) suggest that sequential images presented as a visual narrative have higher degrees of retention. Thus, knowledge transfer occurs when learners relate to the narrative and visual applications when engaging with a comics approach to learning. From 2019-2022 a story emerged to design and develop an asynchronous digital storytelling comic narrative about simulation obstetrics training for distribution to 700 nurses in Bihar, India. Chapter 1 introduces digital storytelling and the use of comics in medical education. Chapter 2 explores the literature around visual language theory, digital storytelling, and andragogy in comics. Chapter 3 investigates the initial design beginning in 2018 with the implementation study, to the Simulation Educator Training redesign in 2019. A thorough needs assessment introduces Chapter 4 with learner and context analysis, exposing communication barriers, culture representation, character development, and technology challenges. The initial deployment and subsequent feedback survey in late 2019 resulted in a major redesign beginning in 2020. The following two years resulted in ten comic episodes with shorter seat time, more in-depth explanations of abstract concepts, and interactive scenarios to practice real-world situations. Chapter 5 concludes with lessons learned, opportunities, and closing with the results of a final study conducted in late 2021 and published in February 2022 in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, resulting in an 86% increase in retention

Conceptualising mLearning literacy

Research into the educational application of mobile technologies has increased dramatically in recent years. Much has been written about mobile learning and its various pedagogical practices and issues as well as the theoretical frameworks that have been developed to underpin the studies in the reports. However, little has been written about the literacy associated with learning with mobile devices and whether there is a place for its development in education. This conceptual paper seeks to explore mLearning literacy, the digital literacy associated with learning with mobile devices, and asks the question: What is mLearning literacy and what are its implications for educators? In the paper, the author will argue that fundamental to learning with mobile devices is the need to develop the associated digital literacy in students. The author proposes that being mLearning literate would empower students to learn more independently and more safely when using mobile devices and their applications. Copyright © 2013, IGI Global