How Can Employment-Based Benefits Help the Nursing Shortage?: Executive Summary

Summarizes a study of the benefits available to registered nurses; trends in health insurance and retirement plan enrollment; and the role benefits play in recruitment and retention. Includes recommendations for healthcare leaders and employers

Saving Our Homes: The Lessons of Community Struggles to Preserve Affordable Housing in Chicago's Uptown

In collaboration with Organization of the NorthEast (ONE) a community organizing group on Chicago's north side, CURL worked to produce a study of nine affordable housing buildings in Uptown and the tenants' and community organizations' efforts to keep the housing affordable. The research process included open-ended interviews with community leaders and close-ended resident surveys in eight sample blocks in Edgewater and Uptown along with less-structured interviews with additional residents on these blocks. The interviews touch on a wide variety of issues, but a primary focus was to gain an understanding of racial, ethnic, and social class conflict and cooperation in the two communities.

Knowledge Exchange as Program Evaluation: The Family Networks Implementation Study as a Case Example

The Family Networks is a comprehensive system transformation initiative to redesign and integrate traditional categorical services across the Commonwealth into local service systems for children, youth, and families served by the child welfare system. The Family Networks Implementation Study (FNIS), a partnership between MA/DCF and UMMS, is a study of the process of implementing systems change, and provides a case example of knowledge exchang

Predicting Second and Third Graders' Reading Comprehension Gains: Observing Students' and Classmates Talk during Literacy Instruction using COLT.

This paper introduces a new observation system that is designed to investigate students' and teachers' talk during literacy instruction, Creating Opportunities to Learn from Text (COLT). Using video-recorded observations of 2nd-3rd grade literacy instruction (N=51 classrooms, 337 students, 151 observations), we found that nine types of student talk ranged from using non-verbal gestures to generating new ideas. The more a student talked, the greater were his/her reading comprehension (RC) gains. Classmate talk also predicted RC outcomes (total effect size=0.27). We found that 11 types of teacher talk ranged from asking simple questions to encouraging students' thinking and reasoning. Teacher talk predicted student talk but did not predict students' RC gains directly. Findings highlight the importance of each student's discourse during literacy instruction, how classmates' talk contributes to the learning environments that each student experiences, and how this affects RC gains, with implications for improving the effectiveness of literacy instruction

Saving Our Homes: The Lessons of Community Struggles to Preserve Affordable Housing in Chicago\u27s Uptown

Over the past 25 years we have witnessed declining federal investment in affordable housing at the same time as there has been growth in low-income households. During this same quarter of a century we have seen a shift from a national War on Poverty to federal policies that treat poor adults and children as hopeless, undeserving citizens. In this new era of fiscal constraints there is no talk about meeting basic nutritional, housing, health care, and educational needs. A chorus of new conservative leaders claims to be speaking for the suffering middle class. The media increasingly talk of the haves and the have-nots. It is not easy to hear talk of helping the working poor over the din of politicians seeking to protect the family and traditional American values. This report is an effort to give voice to some of those working poor who have been struggling to preserve the affordable housing that is their road to self-sufficiency. It is the story about Uptown, a Chicago community which is about as American as it gets. Like the traditional urban communities in American cities in the late 1800s and early 1900s, our community is filled with immigrants who came to the United States, sometimes escaping persecution in their homelands and other times hoping to improve their quality of life through hard work in the land of opportunity. The names by the doorbells are not McGuire, Ianello, or Schmidt; they are Thu, Asoegwu, and Lopez

Stemming the Revolving Door: Teacher Retention and Attrition in Arctic Alaska Schools

Limited research is available concerning teacher retention and teacher attrition in Arctic Alaska.  This paper reports survey research findings, which identify factors related to teacher retention and attrition in Alaskan Arctic Native communities. Teacher retention rates (2009-2013) vary widely over time showing no significant trends. Results confirm that teacher turnover in rural districts is higher than in urban school districts. The authors recognize that teacher retention and attrition are multidimensional issues recommending that better communication patterns and shared responsibilities between rural school districts, local administrators, teachers, community members, and university-based teacher preparation programs be established

Tobacco advertising, promotion, and sponsorship ban adoption:A pilot study of the reporting challenges faced by low- and middle-income nations.

INTRODUCTION: The WHO Framework Convention for Tobacco Control (FCTC) Secretariat has identified issues with Article 13 (Tobacco Advertising, Promotion and Sponsorship) Party policy progress reporting, whilst some researchers remain skeptical of the completeness and accuracy of the data collected as part of the required reporting questionnaire. Gaining a deeper understanding of the challenges encountered when completing these questionnaires could provide insights to improve WHO FCTC progress reporting. METHODS: Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted between January and June 2021, with nine national tobacco control focal point (NFP) individuals (designates who report on WHO FCTC implementation on the Party’s behalf) from low- and middle-income countries. The study analysis used a thematic framework approach involving data familiarization, thematic framework construction, indexing and refining, mapping and interpretation of the results. RESULTS: The analysis generated four themes: 1) use of different resources, 2) presence of compounding complexities, 3) use of supporting mechanisms employed for tackling the challenges, and 4) recommendations for refinements within the questionnaire and for those completing it. CONCLUSIONS: The WHO FCTC reporting questionnaire needs improvements that could be piloted and discussed between the Convention Secretariat and the Parties prior to wide scale implementation

The Family Networks Implementation Study

Family Networks is a comprehensive system transformation initiative to redesign and integrate traditional categorical services across Massachusetts into local systems of care for children, youth, and families served by the child welfare system. The Family Networks Implementation Study, a partnership between the Massachusetts Department of Social Services and the University of Massachusetts Medical School, is a two-year study of the process of implementing local systems of care that began in January 2007, and will continue through December 2008