My Social Toolbox: Building a Foundation for Increased Social Participation Among Children With Disabilities

Social participation is an important occupation for children that occupational therapists address. The benefits of participation include emotional well-being, life satisfaction, building friendships, psychological benefits and positive effects on overall health and development (Law, Petrenchik, King, & Hurley, 2007). Compared to their typically developing peers, children with disabilities are at an increased risk for decreased participation (Law et al., 2007). An expedited scoping review of the literature revealed key supports and critical barriers that impact the frequency and quality of social participation for children with disabilities. Children with disabilities and their families experiencing these barriers with resultant decreased levels of social participation could potentially lead to social isolation, decreased friendships, and negative psychological outcomes (Law et al., 2007). A synthesis of the most current research informed the development of My Social Toolbox, a pilot program designed to alleviate the social participation disparities between children with and without disabilities. By addressing some of the barriers, as noted in the literature, My Social Toolbox aims to ease the social experience for the parents by providing them with the skills and resources they need to be successful, thereby facilitating increased social participation for their child, as well as enhancing the quality of interactions of their child. Thus, the My Social Toolbox program integrates the evidence supporting the effectiveness of parent-training programs in general and the important role parents play in the therapy process (Kaiser & Hancock, 2003; Kane, Wood, & Barlow, 2007). This one-month pilot program consisted of weekly parent training sessions and a social event for the parents, their child, and other family members. The participants consisted of four mothers of children with disabilities. This comprehensive program addressed topics including the benefits of social participation, education about local resources, and teaching of strategies for enhanced social interaction skills. Multiple outcome measurement tools were chosen to measure the effectiveness of My Social Toolbox and program goal achievement, including the Participation and Environment Measure for Children and Youth (PEM-CY), the Child Occupational Self-Assessment (COSA), Goal Attainment Scaling (GAS), as well as tools created by the doctoral candidate to measure goal achievement and parent satisfaction with the program. Results of the program indicate parent’s increased knowledge of the importance and benefits of social participation and parents’ interest in programs helping them be able to best support their child socially. Knowledge of the current literature combined with the outcomes of My Social Toolbox can help guide the development of future programs addressing the participation disparities between children with disabilities and children without disabilities

The Influence of ADHD Symptoms and Social Impairment on Anxiety and Depression Symptoms in 8- to 10-year-old Children

Previous research has shown that Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is associated with impaired social functioning in children and adolescents. ADHD and increased social impairment have proven to be separately correlated with increased anxiety and depression symptoms as well. However, little research has examined these specific associations and interactions among ADHD, social functioning, and internalizing symptoms. The current study aimed to examine the influence of ADHD symptoms and social functioning on anxiety and depression symptoms in 321 8- to 10- year-old children, and specifically, if social impairment moderated the relation between ADHD symptoms and anxiety and depression symptoms. Data on ADHD, social functioning, and anxiety and depression symptoms were collected via a multi-rater approach (i.e., parent, teacher, children’s self-reports as well as peer ratings from playgroups). Results indicated that increased ADHD symptoms were associated with increased anxiety and depression symptoms. Additionally, it was found that teacher-rated social impairment moderated the relation between ADHD symptoms and depression symptoms, such that ADHD symptoms were significantly related to depression symptoms only at average and high levels of social skills but were unrelated to depression symptoms at lower levels of social skills. Children with lower ADHD symptoms and higher social skills had the least depression symptoms, and interestingly, children with more ADHD symptoms and higher social skills had the most depression symptoms, which differs from the prediction that lower social skills would lead to more depression symptoms. The current study filled a gap in and addressed limitations of previous research, and these findings will hopefully be able to inform future interventions and treatments targeting children with ADHD

Occupational Learning, Financial Knowledge, and the Accumulation of Retirement Wealth

This study explores the relationship between general human capital investment, financial knowledge, occupational spillovers, and the accumulation of wealth in a primarily descriptive manner. Drawing upon human capital theory and following previous related work by Delavande, Rohwedder and Willis (2008), we hypothesized that individuals with daily exposure to financial knowledge through their occupation would benefit by having greater financial knowledge that would translate into greater wealth accumulation than individuals who do not enjoy such spillovers from their occupation. Using data from the Cognitive Economics Study and the Health and Retirement Study, we find strong evidence that individuals in financial occupations tend to have greater financial knowledge and moderate evidence that they also have greater wealth accumulation.

The Impact of Stepfamily Adjustment on Adult Attachment: A Comparison of American Indians and Whites

One-third of American children will spend time in a stepfamily. Stepfamily formation is often accompanied by heightened amounts of stress. This study examined the effects of stress on attachment for American Indian and White emerging adults who spent time in stepfamilies. Participants of the STEP study were between the ages of 18 and 30 and spent at least one year in a stepfamily before the age of 18. Ordinary Least Square regressions were run to identify correlations and relationships. Interactions were examined between race and stress to identify the moderating effects that race had on attachment outcomes. Results indicated that an individual’s level of education, gender and race all impacted their emerging adult attachment outcomes. American Indians had higher overall attachment outcomes than Whites. However, the impacts of stress on attachment did not differ by race. Implications of these findings are also discussed

Intractable? Identifying Consensus Policy Opportunities to Address Legal and Ethical Challenges in National Public Health Surveillance from State and Local Epidemiologist Leaders.

Presentation at APHA 2022 Annual Meeting and ExpoBackground. Nearly all US jurisdictions that conduct syndromic surveillance to monitor public health threats send their data to the National Syndromic Surveillance Program (NSSP), operated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). However, current data sharing agreements (DUAs) limit federal access to only multi-state regional aggregations. This limitation was a significant challenge for the national response to COVID-19 because federal agencies could not access available data to see how the pandemic was developing across state lines. Methods. NSSP DUAs (2018, 2021) between state/local governments and CDC NSSP were analyzed to: 1) determine whether DUA provisions are consistent with 2017 World Health Organization’s (WHO) ethical guidance; and 2) to determine the extent that legal provisions address (fully, partially, or omitted) policy opportunities identified by state and local epidemiologist leaders in a 2021 study. Results. The NSSP DUAs are in apparent conflict with the WHO ethical recommendations for sharing public health surveillance data between public health agencies. However, NSSP DUAs at least partially address all but three of the policy opportunities identified by state and local epidemiologist leaders (i.e., audit process, access restriction standards, breach responsibility). Conclusions. Imminent public health data modernization efforts require careful examination of existing legal and ethical challenges in public health surveillance. Critically, these findings suggest that these challenges are not intractable. In fact, federal, state, and local partners may be closer to agreement than they might realize. Moreover, several consensus policy opportunities (i.e., data analysis collaborations and developing communication protocols) provide a promising path forward

WP 2015-331

Population aging and attendant pressures on public budgets have spurred considerable interest in understanding factors that influence retirement timing. A range of sociodemographic and economic characteristics have been shown to predict both earlier and later retirement. Less is known about the role of occupations and their characteristics on the work choices of older workers. Knowing more about the occupations that workers seem to stay in longer or leave earlier may point the way to policy interventions that are beneficial to both individuals and system finances. This project uses detailed occupational categories and work characteristics in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) linked to information in the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) to examine compositional changes in occupations held by older workers over time; to provide some basic and interesting information about relationships between occupations and their characteristics and retirement expectations and outcomes; and to shed some light on which occupations and associated characteristics might encourage or discourage longer working lives. There are large percentage changes (increases in decreases) in the percentage of older workers in occupations over time. Considering detailed as opposed to aggregated occupational categories yields interesting additional information. Jobs that HRS respondents say entail less physical effort, less stress, and jobs that have not increased in difficulty in recent decades, and those in which people can reduce hours if desired, are associated with longer work. While the traditional blue collar-retire earlier and white collar-work longer associations emerge, we find interesting exceptions that suggest fruitful directions for future research.Social Security Administration5 RRC08098401-07http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/117396/1/wp331.pd

New Clinical Faculty Training Program: Transforming Practicing Dentists into Part-Time Dental Faculty Members

At Indiana University School of Dentistry, a New Clinical Faculty Training (NCFT) program was created with the primary goals of informing new part-time faculty members of clinical policies and assessment guidelines and thus developing qualified and satisfied faculty members. The aim of this study was to determine if participation in the training program improved the participants’ satisfaction and competence in comparison to their colleagues who did not participate in the program. Two cohorts were compared: a control group of part-time faculty members who did not receive formal training when they were hired (n=21; response rate 58.3%); and the intervention group, who had participated in the NCFT program (n=12; response rate 80%). A survey of faculty members in the control group gathered information on their experiences when initially hired, and a pretest was administered to measure their knowledge of clinical policies. After the control group was given an overview of the program, their feedback was collected through post surveys, and a posttest identical to the pretest was given that found statistically significant increases on questions one (p=0.003) and four (p=0.025). In February 2014, 15 new faculty members participated in the pilot implementation of the NCFT program. Of those 15, 12 (the intervention group) completed follow-up surveys identical to the pre survey used with the control group. Statistically significant differences were found for the factors clinical teaching (p=0.005) and assessment training (p=0.008) with better responses for the NCFT group. These results suggest that participation in the program was associated with improved clinical teaching knowledge and job satisfaction

Is a Picture Worth a Thousand Words? Effectiveness of iPad Technology in Preclinical Dental Laboratory Courses

Dental educators should consider alternative modalities of instruction when experiencing difficulties conveying feedback to students. The aim of this study was to determine if integrating iPad technology as a visual learning tool would enhance the exchange of assessment information and improve academic performance in Indiana University School of Dentistry's preclinical curriculum. In 2016, the first‐year Tooth Morphology (TM) and second‐year Fixed Prosthodontics (Fixed) courses implemented a project using iPad images that allowed instructors to annotate acceptable and deficient areas of students' tooth wax‐ups and preparations. In the two courses, all students (TM n=106 and Fixed n=105) and instructors (TM n=21 and Fixed n=17) were given pre‐intervention surveys to report their perceived effectiveness of verbal feedback and were given post‐intervention surveys to rate their experiences with iPad image feedback. Response rates for students in the two courses on the pre surveys were TM 87.7% and Fixed 85.7% and on the post surveys were TM 26.4% and Fixed 76.2%. Response rates for instructors on the pre surveys were TM 52.4% and Fixed 82.4% and on the post surveys were TM 76.2% and Fixed 76.5%. The results showed that a majority of both groups preferred the combination of verbal and iPad image feedback: 53% of responding students in TM and 51% in Fixed, and 75% of instructors in TM and 77% in Fixed. In the TM course, responding instructors had a statistically significantly higher agreement than students that feedback with iPad images was superior to verbal feedback alone (p=0.008). Furthermore, a multi‐year analysis of TM practical examination grades found statistically significant lower change scores for the first and second exams in 2014 and 2015 compared to the 2016 scores when the iPad intervention occurred. These results suggest that verbal feedback combined with iPad images resulted in an enhanced exchange of information and increased student grades, particularly in the first‐year dental curriculum

Assessing the living and dead proportions of cold-water coral colonies: implications for deep-water Marine Protected Area monitoring in a changing ocean

Coral growth patterns result from an interplay of coral biology and environmental conditions. In this study colony size and proportion of live and dead skeletons in the cold-water coral (CWC) Lophelia pertusa (Linnaeus, 1758) were measured using video footage from Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) transects conducted at the inshore Mingulay Reef Complex (MRC) and at the offshore PISCES site (Rockall Bank) in the NE Atlantic. The main goal of this paper was to explore the development of a simple method to quantify coral growth and its potential application as an assessment tool of the health of these remote habitats. Eighteen colonies were selected and whole colony and dead/living layer size were measured. Live to dead layer ratios for each colony were then determined and analysed. The age of each colony was estimated using previously published data. Our paper shows that: (1) two distinct morphotypes can be described: at the MRC, colonies displayed a ‘cauliflower-shaped’ morphotype whereas at the PISCES site, colonies presented a more flattened ‘bush-shaped’ morphotype; (2) living layer size was positively correlated with whole colony size; (3) live to dead layer ratio was negatively correlated to whole colony size; (4) live to dead layer ratio never exceeded 0.27. These results suggest that as a colony develops and its growth rate slows down, the proportion of living polyps in the colony decreases. Furthermore, at least 73% of L. pertusa colonies are composed of exposed dead coral skeleton, vulnerable to ocean acidification and the associated shallowing of the aragonite saturation horizon, with significant implications for future deep-sea reef framework integrity. The clear visual contrast between white/pale living and grey/dark dead portions of the colonies also gives a new way by which they can be visually monitored over time. The increased use of marine autonomous survey vehicles offers an important new platform from which such a surveying technique could be applied to monitor deep-water marine protected areas in the futureVersión del edito

Occupational Learning, Financial Knowledge, and the Accumulation of Retirement Wealth

This study explores the relationship between general human capital investment, financial knowledge, occupational spillovers, and the accumulation of wealth in a primarily descriptive manner. Drawing upon human capital theory and following previous related work by Delavande, Rohwedder and Willis (2008), we hypothesized that individuals with daily exposure to financial knowledge through their occupation would benefit by having greater financial knowledge that would translate into greater wealth accumulation than individuals who do not enjoy such spillovers from their occupation. Using data from the Cognitive Economics Study and the Health and Retirement Study, we find strong evidence that individuals in financial occupations tend to have greater financial knowledge and moderate evidence that they also have greater wealth accumulation.Social Security Administrationhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78354/1/wp237.pd