Oregon Parenting Education Collaborative Year 4 Report 2013-2014

The Oregon Parenting Education Collaborative (OPEC) is a multi-year initiative led by The Oregon Community Foundation (OCF), The Ford Family Foundation, and Oregon State University (OSU). Financial supporters include the Meyer Memorial Trust, The Collins Foundation, and OCF Donor Advised Funds. The initiative supports expanded access to best practice parenting education programs, with a focus on programs reaching parents of children prenatal to age six, and supports efforts to develop and strengthen regional parenting education "Hubs." OPEC is unique in its collaborative, foundation-approach in building a statewide infrastructure for parenting education through community-based non-profits and public agencies. The initiative was launched in July 2010. In 2013-2014, there were twelve regional parenting Hubs serving 19 Oregon counties and Siskiyou County, California. During this past year the OPEC initiative also funded ten Small Grant projects in the Portland Metro area to provide evidence-based classes and/or home visiting for specific groups of parents. The OSU evaluation team synthesized overarching lessons and impacts for the program year

Extremal metrics on fibrations

Consider a fibred compact Kähler manifold X endowed with a relatively ample line bundle, such that each fibre admits a constant scalar curvature Kähler metric and has discrete automorphism group. Assuming the base of the fibration admits a twisted extremal metric where the twisting form is a certain Weil-Petersson type metric, we prove that X admits an extremal metric for polarisations making the fibres small. Thus X admits a constant scalar curvature Kähler metric if and only if the Futaki invariant vanishes. This extends a result of Fine, who proved this result when the base admits no continuous automorphisms. As consequences of our techniques, we obtain analogues for maps of various fundamental results for varieties: if a map admits a twisted constant scalar curvature Kähler metric metric, then its automorphism group is reductive; a twisted extremal metric is invariant under a maximal compact subgroup of the automorphism group of the map; there is a geometric interpretation for uniqueness of twisted extremal metrics on maps.CIRGET and ANR funding (Canadian and French governmental agencies)

Evaluation of the Ford Institute Leadership Program: 2011 Report

Evaluation revealing the impact of the Ford Institute Leadership Program on individuals and communities

In Case of an Emergency: The Development and Effects of a Digital Intervention for Coping With Distress in Norway During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences has been found to negatively affect the general population’s psychological well-being. Objective: The objectives of this paper are to report on the development and clinical effects of a self-guided Internet-delivered intervention for adults in Norway who suffer from mild to moderate psychological distress during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: The participants, recruited between April and December 2020, were randomized to receive a new treatment module either every third or every fifth day. The clinical outcomes were self-reported depressive and anxiety symptoms and change in positive and negative emotions. Results: A total of 1256 individuals accessed the pre-screening survey, 407 were eligible and 92 provided contact information, where 82 were included in the study, n = 44 in the 3-day group and n = 38 in the 5-day group. Overall, the statistical analyses showed a significant decrease in depressive and anxiety symptoms and an increase in positive emotions, with small and moderate within group effect sizes. No significant differences between the groups were identified in clinical outcomes or adherence. Conclusion: These findings indicate that psychological distress in the general population during the COVID-19 pandemic may be reduced through the use of a scalable self-guided Internet-delivered intervention. Furthermore, the lack of significant differences between the 5-day and 3-day group may indicate that the intervention can be delivered at a more intensive pace without negatively affecting treatment outcomes. The results need to be interpreted with caution as the sample was self-selected, as well as the lack of passive control group. Hence the results may be attributed to external factors.publishedVersio

Goal management training for adults with ADHD – clients’ experiences with a group-based intervention

Background: There is growing evidence for the efficacy of group-based interventions for adults with ADHD. However, there is still a lack of research investigating how clients experience participating in such interventions. The aim of the current study was to explore how adults with ADHD experience participating in a group-based intervention (Goal Management Training) for ADHD. Method: We conducted individual, semi-structured, interviews with ten adults with ADHD who had participated in Goal Management Training administered as a group intervention. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using thematic analysis within a hermeneutic phenomenological framework. Results: Our analysis identified three main themes. The participants’ starting point captured the participants’ motivation and expectations prior to treatment. The ambiguity of the group – the various meanings of the group consisted of three sub-themes (The group created a sense of belonging - “I am not alone”; The personal cost of participating in the group - “At times it was a hot mess”; and The group supported the learning experience - “We worked with it together”). The group promoted positive change – How the group affected the participants’ everyday lives consisted of two sub-themes (Managing ADHD in daily life - “It’s much easier to handle everyday life”, and Personal growth - “Gaining new perspectives”). Conclusion: The group format was experienced as a valuable aspect of treatment. The structure provided by Goal Management Training allowed participants to expand their perspectives and experience improved management of ADHD, as well as personal growth. The opportunity to exchange experiences with others in similar situations was seen as particularly beneficial and brought feelings of recognition and belonging. However, some also experienced the group as a burden at times, for instance by stealing one’s focus. This study expands existing knowledge by exploring clients’ experiences of participating in group-based interventions for ADHD and shows how the group format provided participants with more than they had hoped for. While expecting a more instrumental outcome of treatment, such as tools to manage ADHD, participants also gained a welcomed, but unexpected outcome of personal growth.publishedVersio

Optimal Symplectic Connections on Holomorphic Submersions

The main result of this paper gives a new construction of extremal Kähler metrics on the total space of certain holomorphic submersions, giving a vast generalisation and unification of results of Hong, Fine and others. The principal new ingredient is a novel geometric partial differential equation on such fibrations, which we call the optimal symplectic connection equation. We begin with a smooth fibration for which all fibres admit a constant scalar curvature Kähler metric. When the fibres admit automorphisms, such metrics are not unique in general, but rather are unique up to the action of the automorphism group of each fibre. We define an equation which, at least conjecturally, determines a canonical choice of constant scalar curvature Kähler metric on each fibre. When the fibration is a projective bundle, this equation specialises to asking that the hermitian metric determining the fibrewise Fubini‐Study metric is Hermite‐Einstein. Assuming the existence of an optimal symplectic connection and the existence of an appropriate twisted extremal metric on the base of the fibration, we show that the total space of the fibration itself admits an extremal metric for certain polarisations making the fibres small. © 2021 The Authors. Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics published by Wiley Periodicals LLC

Hermitian Yang–Mills Connections on Blowups

Consider a vector bundle over a Kähler manifold which admits a Hermitian Yang-Mills connection. We show that the pullback bundle on the blowup of the Kähler manifold at a collection of points also admits a Hermitian Yang-Mills connection, for Kähler classes on the blowup which make the exceptional divisors small. Our proof uses gluing techniques, and is hence asymptotically explict. This recovers, through the Hitchin-Kobayashi correspondence, algebro-geometric results due to Buchdahl and Sibley