The experience of being a partner to a spinal cord injured person: A phenomenological-hermeneutic study

This qualitative focuses on the personal experiences of partners to a spinal cord injured person. Using a Ricoeurian phenomenological-hermeneutic approach, we analysed seven partners’ narratives 1 and 2 years after their partner's injury. The study revealed how the injury was experienced from the partners’ perspective through the aftermath. In the acute phase after the injury, partners also felt harmed, and support was needed in relation to their own daily activities, eating, resting, and managing distress. During the institutionalized rehabilitation, partners felt torn between supporting the injured partner and the demanding tasks of everyday life outside the institution. After discharge, partners struggled for the injured partner to regain a well-functioning everyday life and for reestablishing life as a couple. The partner struggled to manage the overwhelming amount of everyday tasks. Some sought to reestablish their usual functions outside the family, whereas others focused on establishing a new life together. The partners experienced much distress and appreciated the support they got, but felt that they were mainly left to manage the difficult process on their own

Diffusion of School-Based Prevention Programs in Two Urban Districts: Adaptations, Rationales, and Suggestions for Change

The diffusion of school-based preventive interventions involves the balancing of high-fidelity implementation of empirically-supported programs with flexibility to permit local stakeholders to target the specific needs of their youth. There has been little systematic research that directly seeks to integrate research- and community-driven approaches to diffusion. The present study provides a primarily qualitative investigation of the initial roll-out of two empirically-supported substance and violence prevention programs in two urban school districts that serve a high proportion of low-income, ethnic minority youth. The predominant ethnic group in most of our study schools was Asian American, followed by smaller numbers of Latinos, African Americans, and European Americans. We examined the adaptations made by experienced health teachers as they implemented the programs, the elicitation of suggested adaptations to the curricula from student and teacher stakeholders, and the evaluation of the consistency of these suggested adaptations with the core components of the programs. Data sources include extensive classroom observations of curricula delivery and interviews with students, teachers, and program developers. All health teachers made adaptations, primarily with respect to instructional format, integration of real-life experiences into the curriculum, and supplementation with additional resources; pedagogical and class management issues were cited as the rationale for these changes. Students and teachers were equally likely to propose adaptations that met with the program developers’ approval with respect to program theory and implementation logistics. Tensions between teaching practice and prevention science—as well as implications for future research and practice in school-based prevention—are considered

Sociocultural considerations in aging men's health: implications and recommendations for the clinician

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

Designing Persuasion: Health Technology for Low-Income African American Communities

Abstract. In the United States, African Americans face a disproportionate amount of diet-related health problems. For example, African American adults are 1.6 times more likely to have diabetes than their Caucasian counterparts. Individuals in low-income communities may face a greater risk because they typically have less access to healthy foods. Due to the significant diet-related problems within the African American community, public health researchers call for approaches to health promotion that take into account the relationship between culture and dietary habits. In this paper, we discuss three important considerations for the design of technologies that address the diet-related health disparities in low-income African American communities. These considerations include designing for cultural relevancy, modeling health behavior, and encouraging healthy behavior through the use of social psychological theories of persuasion. We use a game design example to illustrate how each of these considerations can be incorporated into the development of new technology

Moderating effects of collectivism on customized communication: a test with tailored and targeted messages

A growing body of research has shown that customized messages have certain advantages over non-customized ones such as being more memorable and more persuasive. However, most prior studies tested customization effects with American participants only. It remains a mystery in the literature how people from other cultures may process customized messages. The current article examined the effects of two types of customized information, tailored and targeted, through two studies. Thirty Chinese working professionals and students in the US participated in study 1 and 56 Asian students in Hong Kong participated in study 2. In both studies, participants' tendencies toward collectivistic and individualistic cultures were measured. It was found that more collectivism-oriented participants generated higher recall and more favorable attitudes toward targeted messages, whereas less collectivism-oriented participants generated higher recall and more favorable attitudes toward tailored messages