Poverty and Philanthropy: Strategies for Change

This paper traces the economic and social trends that help explain the persistence of poverty, describes some of the unintended consequences of public policies that have exacerbated the challenges facing poor families, and discusses four overarching strategies to address one of the most powerful contributors to poverty: stagnant wages for low-income workers, particularly among men, young men, and men of color

Understanding Reading First: What We Know, What We Don't, and What's Next

Studies of Reading First released in 2008 found no overall effect on student reading comprehension, and the program was eliminated in 2009. However, the research findings were more nuanced than was widely reported, and they offer lessons for policymakers making critical choices today about how the federal government can best support the teaching of reading to young children

Policymaking and Caseload Dynamics: Homeless Shelters

Many social problems can be understood as "conceptual caseloads" (e.g. people in poverty), and actual programmatic caseloads are a major, specific concern for policymakers and public administrators. Thus, a crucial and fairly general concern is how caseloads—whether conceptual or programmatic—can be reduced. To address this concern, officials often fall back on politically or intuitively attractive ideas—preventing people from entering caseloads, for example. Failure to incorporate caseload dynamics, however, may mean prevention and other caseload reduction policies will deliver much less than promised, and may cause caseloads to grow. In this paper, the authors first show how caseload size depends only on the number of entrants to a caseload and the rate at which people leave a caseload. With this framework in mind, they then address two common, seemingly appropriate policy responses: preventing entrants and hastening leaving. However, they show how too little is now known about homeless prevention to pin high hopes on its utility and that some social welfare problems, like homelessness, may be too inhospitable for prevention's logic. The authors then explain how allocating resources to hasten leaving is not as straightforward as policymakers have assumed but rather must recognize caseload dynamics to avoid unintended growth. They conclude by explaining some limits and opportunities in using caseload dynamics for policymaking

Homeless Family Shelters and Family Homelessness

One of the more valuable contributions of Peter Rossi's article is to remind us of the critical role that shelters play in defining and responding to the problem of homeless families. As Rossi points out, shelters help form our conceptualization of the problem-what kinds of families are homeless and why as well as their number. Perhaps more important, increasingly sophisticated shelters have come to define our policy response to family homelessness. Rossi reports that the number of family shelters soared throughout the middle and late 1980s and that they changed from simply providing a roof and food in an emergency to also providing social, medical, and psychological services for longer periods in more private quarters. And the future promises much more of the same. If the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) follows the suggestions its Assistant Secretary for Community Planning made for New York City, the Clinton homeless family policy will likely center around shelters (New York Commission on the Homeless, 1992). Here we want to extend Rossi's emphasis on the role of shelters in dealing with family homelessness. We make two arguments. One, shelters define the problem of family homelessness and therefore a particular conception of that problem. Two, shelters act to select from the population of poor families those who are worst off in some ways (housing, income, managing their lives, drug or alcohol addictions) and least able or willing to cope with circumstances other poor families do handle. We then explain that one reason why shelters play this role is because the ratio of "worst off, least able" poor families to the total number of poor families is so small that a device is needed to identify these families. Shelters are such a device. In the final section, we fill a lacuna in Rossi's causal analysis with a few ideas as to why shelter growth exploded in the mid-1980s and we explain our disagreement with Rossi's major policy suggestions. Because shelters house such a small proportion of all poor families and because few families stay sheltered very long, Rossi's recommendations are a very inefficient way to end homelessness. Also, the amounts of money entailed in his proposals are so large they are unlikely to be appropriated; and if lesser amounts are appropriated, they are unlikely, absent targeting, to reach families apt to become homeless

Substance-specific readiness to change among sexual and gender minority men who use crystal methamphetamine

A patient-oriented approach to addressing high levels of polysubstance use among sexual and gender minority men (SGM) who use crystal methamphetamine (CM) requires an understanding of which drugs they would like to change their use of. We examined readiness to change for 24 separate substances. Participants were SGM, aged 18+, living with Canada, who used CM in the past six months that were recruited through advertisements on socio-sexual networking applications. Frequency of use and readiness to change were descriptively analyzed and associations between frequency of use and readiness to change were assessed. Only slightly more than half (53.1%) of CM-using SGM were ready now, soon, or in the future to change substance use. Participants were most ready to change their tobacco, methamphetamine, and barbiturate use. Greater frequency of use was associated with greater readiness to change for all drugs in which daily or almost daily use was common. SGM participants reported high levels of comfort being asked about their substance use from primary care, mental health, and queer-identified health professionals. Interventions addressing multiple and specific substances are needed in health care settings serving SGM who use CM. Screening, brief interventions, and referral to treatment (SBIRT) in these settings may help identify those ready to address their substance use. Harm reduction interventions should offer supports for those not wanting to change their substance use—which includes most SGM for most of the drugs they use

Adolescents' Pregnancy Intentions, Wantedness, and Regret: Cross‐Lagged Relations With Mental Health and Harsh Parenting

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/90210/1/j.1741-3737.2011.00885.x.pd

New insights into the classification and nomenclature of cortical GABAergic interneurons.

A systematic classification and accepted nomenclature of neuron types is much needed but is currently lacking. This article describes a possible taxonomical solution for classifying GABAergic interneurons of the cerebral cortex based on a novel, web-based interactive system that allows experts to classify neurons with pre-determined criteria. Using Bayesian analysis and clustering algorithms on the resulting data, we investigated the suitability of several anatomical terms and neuron names for cortical GABAergic interneurons. Moreover, we show that supervised classification models could automatically categorize interneurons in agreement with experts' assignments. These results demonstrate a practical and objective approach to the naming, characterization and classification of neurons based on community consensus

Factors Associated with Higher Body Mass Index, Weight Concern, and Weight Gain in a Multinational Cohort Study of Smokers Intending to Quit

The ATTEMPT cohort study is multi-national, longitudinal study of smokers intending to quit recruited in the U.S.A., Canada, U.K. and France. Data on demographics, medical history, body mass index (BMI), weight concerns and smoking status were collected at baseline and after six months. A total of 2,009 subjects provided data at baseline and 1,303 at six months. High baseline BMI was associated with recent quit attempts, high weight concerns and high cigarette consumption. Weight gain was associated with low income, being single and number of cigarette-free days, but not with baseline weight concerns and confidence in preventing weight gain. Quit attempts were more frequent in subjects with a high baseline BMI and low weight concerns