Homelessness and Public Health in Los Angeles

Los Angeles faces a housing crisis of unprecedented scale. After years of underinvestment, in 2016/2017 LA County voters approved Measures H and HHH, which provided an infusion of resources for homeless services, permanent housing, and integrated outreach through the LA County Homeless Initiative (HI). An estimated 58,936 individuals in LA County remain homeless as of January 2019, 75% of them unsheltered and living on streets, in tents, or encampments. Our best estimates suggest that the homeless population has grown since 2017.HI takes a Housing First approach to homelessness, with the largest amount of total funds allocated to housing solutions. However, rehousing is often subject to delays in construction and case management. These delays, combined with persistent market forces driving new homelessness, have left the county well short of its targets. While no forecasts were issued, the initial gap analysis for HI had assumed a 34% reduction in the total homeless count from 2016 to 2019. The count has in fact increased by 26% over that period, meaning 28,000 more homeless clients than anticipated on any night. Whereas cities with comparable homeless crises such as New York have focused on increasing the availability of emergency shelters and safe havens in addition to permanent housing, LA County’s relatively low investment in transitional options has resulted in persistent levels of unsheltered homelessness.Research has shown that homelessness has severe health consequences. Homeless individuals have a high risk of mortality, with a recent LA County Medical Examiner report finding an average age of death of 48 for women and 51 for men. Homeless individuals have much higher risks of mental illness, substance abuse, infectious disease, chronic illness, violence, and reproductive health risks than the general population. Much less is known about the health burdens associated with being unsheltered, but most evidence points to substantially greater health risks given the more intense exposures to violence, weather, pollution, poor sanitation, and behavioral risk. Research is just beginning to quantify the burdens of living on the streets.Our analysis of the LA County homelessness response drew on expert interviews, data analysis, and document review. Beyond the growing numerical gap between HI’s targets and actual trends, we identified five critical service gaps that require immediate attention: Taking a person-centered approach that recognizes both the diversity of client needs and the limitations of existing resources, yet honors the principle that everyone deserves housing; Improving access to emergency shelters by reducing legal and political barriers to construction and adopting “low barrier shelters” that facilitate entry; Delivering comprehensive street medicine and other services to unsheltered homeless populations using evidence-based models that support the path to housing and recovery Adopting more extensive outreach models that engage citizens, empower homeless clients and leverage mobile technology so that case workers can focus on clients most in need; Strengthening data collection and research methods to understand the consequences of unsheltered homelessness, pilot new service models, and evaluate rehousing efforts

Psychologists\u27 use of, familiarity, and comfort with Alcoholics Anonymous slogans in psychotherapy

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is often included as an adjunct to psychotherapy for individuals suffering from addiction. As a culture unto itself, AA has its own customs, philosophy, and language, including what is commonly referred to as AA slogans. This study investigated the frequency with which psychologists use these slogans as well as how familiar and comfortable they are with them. Additionally this study investigated whether these variables were related to psychologists\u27 work setting or percentage of addicted caseload. Using a mix of quantitative and qualitative methodologies, results indicate that more than 80% of respondents utilize AA slogans at least some of the time. Familiarity varied greatly depending on the slogan. Over 80% of those surveyed are at least somewhat comfortable using AA slogans in psychotherapy. Work experience in an addiction treatment setting was a mediating variable for familiarity as well as use of specific AA slogans, though not for overall use of AA slogans or levels of comfort. A higher rate of use and familiarity was related to a higher caseload of addicted patients and comfort was not related to caseload. Frequency of slogan use, familiarity and comfort were significantly positively related to frequency of referral to AA. Themes regarding reasons for discomfort using AA slogans as well as their clinical utility were also explored

A Local Stochastic Algorithm for Separation in Heterogeneous Self-Organizing Particle Systems

We present and rigorously analyze the behavior of a distributed, stochastic algorithm for separation and integration in self-organizing particle systems, an abstraction of programmable matter. Such systems are composed of individual computational particles with limited memory, strictly local communication abilities, and modest computational power. We consider heterogeneous particle systems of two different colors and prove that these systems can collectively separate into different color classes or integrate, indifferent to color. We accomplish both behaviors with the same fully distributed, local, stochastic algorithm. Achieving separation or integration depends only on a single global parameter determining whether particles prefer to be next to other particles of the same color or not; this parameter is meant to represent external, environmental influences on the particle system. The algorithm is a generalization of a previous distributed, stochastic algorithm for compression (PODC \u2716) that can be viewed as a special case of separation where all particles have the same color. It is significantly more challenging to prove that the desired behavior is achieved in the heterogeneous setting, however, even in the bichromatic case we focus on. This requires combining several new techniques, including the cluster expansion from statistical physics, a new variant of the bridging argument of Miracle, Pascoe and Randall (RANDOM \u2711), the high-temperature expansion of the Ising model, and careful probabilistic arguments

2a: Illinois Carbon Dioxide Emissions Activity

Your goal for this activity is to compare the different sources of carbon dioxide emissions, stemming from the consumption of fossil fuels, in Illinois. To do this you will be working with data spanning from 1980 to 2012

3: The Current Extinction: Defaunation & Ecosystem Disruption

Information taken from: Dirzo, R. et al (2014). Defaunation in the Anthropocene. Science, 345(401). Scientists estimate, conservatively, that there are 5 to 9 million different animal species on the planet. But that number is continually changing, and unfortunately, dropping, as we are likely losing 11,000- 58,000 species annually, and evidence suggests that on average, there has been a decline of about 28% in terms of numbers of individuals within a species over the last four decades. Both of these statistics are vitally important. The critical nature of the first is perhaps more obvious, as total loss of a species is irrecoverable, but the second, a decline in population sizes of species, though more subtle may actually have more immediate impacts and represents an area where positive progress can be made

1. Investigating the impact of changes in carbon dioxide concentration on ecosystems

Question: Does the concentration of carbon dioxide affect air temperature in a closed environment

School-Based Tier II and III RTI Interventions for Children Affected by Trauma

We partnered with Wendi Trummert, DrOT, OTR/L, an occupational therapist in a school district in Puyallup, Washington. We collaborated to examine what school-based Tier II & Tier III Response to Intervention (RTI) interventions can be used by occupational therapists, teachers, and paraeducators to improve school participation in children aged 3-13 who have experienced trauma. It was found that various forms of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) interventions may reduce post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, depression, and anxiety in children age birth - 13 who have experienced trauma. CBT was the most effective intervention based on the current literature. Additionally, there is emerging research on six other interventions which may improve school participation for children who have experienced trauma. To translate this knowledge, a manual of research-based interventions was created for the collaborating clinician as well as a kit of one of the interventions deemed most appropriate for the school setting by the collaborating clinician. The Bounce Back (Langley & Jaycox, 2015) intervention was perceived as the most feasible and appropriate for her practice. A satisfaction survey was provided to the collaborating clinician to monitor the effectiveness of the intervention kit. We recommend that school-based clinicians familiarize themselves with evidence-based and academically relevant intervention for children who have experienced trauma