KINDERGARTEN FOR EQUITY: A POLICY ADVOCACY STATEMENT

The urgency to close the achievement gap means it is our moral imperative to provide all children with the opportunities necessary to succeed as early as possible. Knowing the critical timing of a child’s brain development from birth to age five, we cannot afford to wait until a child is six or seven years old to begin developing their academic and social emotional capacity. This policy advocacy document supports a statewide mandate for children to attend kindergarten at age five throughout the state of Illinois. With little need for increased resources to accommodate the mandate, the social, moral and ethical benefits of providing education at an early age have lifelong benefits for children with access

AN EVALUATION OF FULL-DAY KINDERGARTEN PROGRAMMING

The purpose of this program evaluation document is to provide a rationale and structure for implementing full-day kindergarten. The persistence of the achievement gap in the United States requires considerable and deliberate action to narrow and eliminate the gap over time. With the evolving educational landscape and the adoption of the Common Core State Standards, early education, including systematically designed and implemented full-day kindergarten are one way to afford children the opportunity to begin their education on pace to succeed. This program evaluation examines the differences between half-day kindergarten and full-day kindergarten programs including data analysis from the first year of full-day kindergarten implementation in a large suburban school district. This evaluation of full-day kindergarten reveals the benefits of a full-day program result from a quality kindergarten program that makes use of the additional time with students

ENSURING STUDENT SUCCESS IN FULL-DAY KINDERGARTEN: PURPOSEFUL PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND PROFESSIONAL LEARNING COMMUNITIES

The change leadership model, developed by Wagner et al. (2008), was utilized to assess the context, culture, conditions and competencies of a large suburban school district during the early stages of districtwide implementation of full-day kindergarten. With overwhelming support from families, teachers and administrators, the change plan revolves around ongoing and purposeful professional development for staff building upon systematic work of Professional Learning Communities in order to provide a high quality full-day kindergarten program across twenty-three kindergarten program sites. When districts and schools focus on purposeful professional development and enhanced practice of Professional Learning Communities programs can work to provide outstanding learning opportunities and the foundation for future student success

Does risk-information processing differ as a function of risk status?

The present study sought to examine potential differences in risk information processing among different groups of college-age men. The study was based on the Prototype/Willingness model of adolescent health risk behavior, a modified dual-process model. Dual-process theories posit that there are two distinct systems of processing. The rational system is deliberate and analytical and requires greater time and effort. In contrast, the experiential system operates more quickly, is less reasoned, and is influenced by affect, heuristics, and images. Adolescents who score high on behavioral willingness (BW) and low on behavioral intention (BI) are considered at-risk because it is likely that they will engage in risk behavior, but it is unlikely that they will take precautions to protect themselves from the negative consequences of that behavior. They are unlikely to protect themselves because they have no plans to engage in the behavior; therefore, they do not tend to feel vulnerable to the consequences of that behavior. It was hypothesized that these at-risk adolescents would demonstrate a tendency, more so than other adolescents, to employ the experiential system when processing risk information. Male college students were categorized into three groups based on their baseline BI and BW: low BI/low BW, high Bl/high BW, and at-risk (low Bl/high BW). All participants read about a fictional peer (an exemplar) who engages in casual sex and contracts an STD. The experimental conditions differed in the favorability of the exemplar described. In one condition, the exemplar was outgoing, likeable, and hard-working, and in the other he was apathetic, less social, and less likeable. Following the manipulation, participants read factual information about STDs. Dependent measures included BI and BW to engage in casual sex, exemplar favorability, absolute and conditional perceived risk, recall of the STD information, and response times to all of the measures. Results indicated that, in general, at-risk participants did not tend to use an experiential processing style more than the other two groups did. There was evidence that the at-risk group paid more attention to risk information and spent more time deliberating about their intentions, indicators of more rational processing. Future research needs to replicate these findings and apply them to interventions aimed at discouraging at-risk adolescents from engaging in risk behavior

Stress and self-control: a test of contrasting pathways to health risk behavior

The current study investigated the effects of stress and self-control depletion on subsequent risk cognitions. Male college students (N = 133) were randomly assigned to complete a stress induction, a self-control manipulation, or a control task. All participants then completed a questionnaire containing measures of behavioral willingness, behavioral intentions, perceived vulnerability, and consideration of negative consequences regarding two risk behaviors: heavy drinking and casual sex. The order of the dependent measures (drinking measures first vs. casual sex measures first) was counterbalanced as a between-subjects factor.;Compared to the control task, it was predicted that both the stress induction and self-control depletion manipulation would lead to greater willingness to engage in the risk behaviors. Intentions were not expected to change as much as willingness in response to either manipulation. Different mediating mechanisms were hypothesized for stress and self-control depletion. The relation between stress and willingness was predicted to be mediated by emotional and physiological variables (negative affect and arousal), whereas the relation between self-control depletion and willingness was expected to be mediated by cognitive variables (perceived vulnerability and consideration of negative consequences).;As predicted, participants in the stress condition reported greater willingness than did those in the control condition. Unexpectedly, the self-control depletion manipulation did not lead to greater willingness. As anticipated, there was very little change in intention due to either experimental manipulation. In general, no effects of the order of the dependent measures (or interactions between order and condition) were detected. There was no evidence that negative affect or physiological arousal mediated the relation between stress and willingness. Instead, results indicated that decreases in perceived vulnerability mediated the effect of stress on willingness.;The experimental manipulations did not affect the level of participants\u27 perceived vulnerability or the extent to which they considered the positive and negative consequences of the risk behaviors. There were differences between conditions, however, in the correlations between considerations, perceived vulnerability, and willingness. The pattern of these correlations suggests that, among stressed participants, perceived vulnerability and consideration of negative consequences were not related to willingness. Perhaps people who are under stress focus on improving their emotional state at the expense of careful consideration of the risks associated with the behavior

Ill Effects of Smoking: Baseline Knowledge among School Children and Implementation of the “AntE Tobacco” Project

Introduction. Cigarette smoking contributes to the deaths of more than 400,000 Americans annually. Each day >3,000 children and adolescents become regular smokers. This paper details a new antitobacco educational program titled “AntE Tobacco” Method. Children in grades 1–3 were administered a 10-item questionnaire to ascertain their baseline knowledge about the ill effects of smoking, shown an educational cartoon video depicting the ill effects of tobacco, and given a story book based on the video. At the end of video, children were administered a questionnaire to determine short-term recall of the antitobacco educational objectives of the program. Four to 6 weeks later, the children were then administered a follow-up survey to determine long-term retention of the anti tobacco educational program. Result. Eighty two percent of the children answered the outcome questions correctly immediately following the video. At follow-up, 4–6 weeks later, 83% of children answered all questions correctly. Conclusion. The anti tobacco education program used in this study effectively conveyed most of the educational objectives. The results of this study indicate that a multimedia (i.e., video and book) educational program can be used to educate and reinforce anti tobacco messages. This program may be very useful as a part of a comprehensive anti tobacco curriculum in school systems

Rural-urban differences in substance use among African-American adolescents

Purpose: To examine substance use differences among African‐American adolescents living in rural and more urban areas in Iowa and Georgia and factors thought to be related to those differences. Specifically, negative affect and perceived availability were examined as mediators of the relation between community size and alcohol, tobacco, and drug use. Methods: In‐home interviews with the adolescents (Time 1: N = 897, Mean age = 10.5) assessed their use, perceived substance availability, and negative affect across 3 waves. Their parents’ use was also assessed. Census data were used to determine community size (rural ≤ 2,500; urban ≥ 2,500). Findings: Perceived substance availability and use were both higher among the more urban adolescents. As expected, negative affect was a primary antecedent to use at each wave. Structural Equation Modeling indicated that the relation between population and use was mediated by perceived availability of the substances. Additional multigroup analyses indicated that the relations between negative affect and use were significantly stronger among the urban adolescents at all waves. Conclusions: Results suggest that stress or negative affect is an important antecedent to use among African‐American adolescents, especially when it occurs at an early age, but living in rural areas may be a buffer for both problems, in part, because exposure to this type of risk is lower in these environments

SARS-CoV-2 lineage B.1.1.7 is associated with greater disease severity among hospitalised women but not men: multicentre cohort study.

BACKGROUND: SARS-CoV-2 lineage B.1.1.7 has been associated with an increased rate of transmission and disease severity among subjects testing positive in the community. Its impact on hospitalised patients is less well documented. METHODS: We collected viral sequences and clinical data of patients admitted with SARS-CoV-2 and hospital-onset COVID-19 infections (HOCIs), sampled 16 November 2020 to 10 January 2021, from eight hospitals participating in the COG-UK-HOCI study. Associations between the variant and the outcomes of all-cause mortality and intensive therapy unit (ITU) admission were evaluated using mixed effects Cox models adjusted by age, sex, comorbidities, care home residence, pregnancy and ethnicity. FINDINGS: Sequences were obtained from 2341 inpatients (HOCI cases=786) and analysis of clinical outcomes was carried out in 2147 inpatients with all data available. The HR for mortality of B.1.1.7 compared with other lineages was 1.01 (95% CI 0.79 to 1.28, p=0.94) and for ITU admission was 1.01 (95% CI 0.75 to 1.37, p=0.96). Analysis of sex-specific effects of B.1.1.7 identified increased risk of mortality (HR 1.30, 95% CI 0.95 to 1.78, p=0.096) and ITU admission (HR 1.82, 95% CI 1.15 to 2.90, p=0.011) in females infected with the variant but not males (mortality HR 0.82, 95% CI 0.61 to 1.10, p=0.177; ITU HR 0.74, 95% CI 0.52 to 1.04, p=0.086). INTERPRETATION: In common with smaller studies of patients hospitalised with SARS-CoV-2, we did not find an overall increase in mortality or ITU admission associated with B.1.1.7 compared with other lineages. However, women with B.1.1.7 may be at an increased risk of admission to intensive care and at modestly increased risk of mortality.This report was produced by members of the COG-UK-HOCI Variant substudy consortium. COG-UK-HOCI is part of COG-UK. COG-UK is supported by funding from the Medical Research Council (MRC) part of UK Research & Innovation (UKRI), the National Institute of Health Research (NIHR) and Genome Research Limited, operating as the Wellcome Sanger Institute

Author Correction: Scalable and robust SARS-CoV-2 testing in an academic center.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper

Investigation of hospital discharge cases and SARS-CoV-2 introduction into Lothian care homes

Background The first epidemic wave of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) in Scotland resulted in high case numbers and mortality in care homes. In Lothian, over one-third of care homes reported an outbreak, while there was limited testing of hospital patients discharged to care homes. Aim To investigate patients discharged from hospitals as a source of SARS-CoV-2 introduction into care homes during the first epidemic wave. Methods A clinical review was performed for all patients discharges from hospitals to care homes from 1st March 2020 to 31st May 2020. Episodes were ruled out based on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) test history, clinical assessment at discharge, whole-genome sequencing (WGS) data and an infectious period of 14 days. Clinical samples were processed for WGS, and consensus genomes generated were used for analysis using Cluster Investigation and Virus Epidemiological Tool software. Patient timelines were obtained using electronic hospital records. Findings In total, 787 patients discharged from hospitals to care homes were identified. Of these, 776 (99%) were ruled out for subsequent introduction of SARS-CoV-2 into care homes. However, for 10 episodes, the results were inconclusive as there was low genomic diversity in consensus genomes or no sequencing data were available. Only one discharge episode had a genomic, time and location link to positive cases during hospital admission, leading to 10 positive cases in their care home. Conclusion The majority of patients discharged from hospitals were ruled out for introduction of SARS-CoV-2 into care homes, highlighting the importance of screening all new admissions when faced with a novel emerging virus and no available vaccine