From the Empire State to the North Star State: Voter Engagement in the 2016 Election

Voter engagement has the potential to be a fundamental part of social work practice and key to the professional socialization of social work students. This article describes a classroom-based voter engagement project conducted in two undergraduate social work programs in different U.S. states with significantly different voting laws. We describe the rationale, process of implementing the project, evaluation, and review the results in the context of the 2016 election. We suggest future research that can help develop best practices and methods for implementation of voter engagement in social work practice and education in the future

The Political Participation of First Year Social Work Students: Does Practice Specialization Matter?

This study identifies the types of political participation engaged in by MSW students (n=214). A self-report survey administered to MSW students at a Northeastern university indicates limited political involvement. MSW students participate in political activities not requiring significant time, energy, or resources. Furthermore, on the scale and its two subscales, micro-oriented students had less political participation than macro-oriented students. This study suggests first-year social work students may lack the tools to engage in the political process effectively. Schools of social work should include political participation education in both micro and macro foundation courses and field placements

Creating a Culture of Voting in Direct and Generalist Practice: Training Field Instructors

Social workers have an ethical responsibility to be engaged in policy change, regardless of their practice area or specialization. Voter engagement and the importance of political power through voting is often overlooked in the literature as a valid and important component of social work practice. Creating a culture of nonpartisan voter engagement in practice settings can help empower individuals who have been historically and intentionally disenfranchised from our electoral system. Training for field instructors, faculty, and field staff is a key aspect of voter engagement in social work education. Unfortunately, social work education is unlikely to include substantive content on voter engagement or its connection to social work practice and impact. This article presents one component of a model for integrating voter engagement into social work education: the provision of training for field instructors on nonpartisan voter engagement at two universities over two years. Evaluation findings suggest that pre-existing levels of political efficacy affect the reaction of field instructors to nonpartisan voter engagement training. Furthermore, findings indicate that field instructors who receive voter engagement training are more likely to serve as resources for their students and to consider voter engagement as part of their own practice. We offer evidence on the important role field educators can play in the success of the larger national effort to integrate voter engagement in social work education. Increasing awareness of what social workers, nonprofit, and public agencies are allowed--or even required--to do is a critical first step

The Political Participation of First Year Social Work Students: Does Practice Specialization Matter?

This study identifies the types of political participation engaged in by MSW students (n=214). A self-report survey administered to MSW students at a Northeastern university indicates limited political involvement. MSW students participate in political activities not requiring significant time, energy, or resources. Furthermore, on the scale and its two subscales, micro-oriented students had less political participation than macro-oriented students. This study suggests firstyear social work students may lack the tools to engage in the political process effectively. Schools of social work should include political participation education in both micro and macro foundation courses and field placement

Collective Power to Create Political Change: Increasing the Political Efficacy and Engagement of Social Workers

Because social workers are called to challenge social injustices and create systemic change to support the well-being of individuals and communities, it is essential that social workers develop political efficacy: belief that the political system can work and they can influence the system. This study explored the impact of an intensive political social work curriculum on political efficacy and planned political engagement among social work students and practitioners. The findings suggest this model of delivering a political social work curriculum effectively increases internal, external, and overall political efficacy, and that increasing political efficacy has promise for increasing future political engagement

BHPR research: qualitative1. Complex reasoning determines patients' perception of outcome following foot surgery in rheumatoid arhtritis

Background: Foot surgery is common in patients with RA but research into surgical outcomes is limited and conceptually flawed as current outcome measures lack face validity: to date no one has asked patients what is important to them. This study aimed to determine which factors are important to patients when evaluating the success of foot surgery in RA Methods: Semi structured interviews of RA patients who had undergone foot surgery were conducted and transcribed verbatim. Thematic analysis of interviews was conducted to explore issues that were important to patients. Results: 11 RA patients (9 ♂, mean age 59, dis dur = 22yrs, mean of 3 yrs post op) with mixed experiences of foot surgery were interviewed. Patients interpreted outcome in respect to a multitude of factors, frequently positive change in one aspect contrasted with negative opinions about another. Overall, four major themes emerged. Function: Functional ability & participation in valued activities were very important to patients. Walking ability was a key concern but patients interpreted levels of activity in light of other aspects of their disease, reflecting on change in functional ability more than overall level. Positive feelings of improved mobility were often moderated by negative self perception ("I mean, I still walk like a waddling duck”). Appearance: Appearance was important to almost all patients but perhaps the most complex theme of all. Physical appearance, foot shape, and footwear were closely interlinked, yet patients saw these as distinct separate concepts. Patients need to legitimize these feelings was clear and they frequently entered into a defensive repertoire ("it's not cosmetic surgery; it's something that's more important than that, you know?”). Clinician opinion: Surgeons' post operative evaluation of the procedure was very influential. The impact of this appraisal continued to affect patients' lasting impression irrespective of how the outcome compared to their initial goals ("when he'd done it ... he said that hasn't worked as good as he'd wanted to ... but the pain has gone”). Pain: Whilst pain was important to almost all patients, it appeared to be less important than the other themes. Pain was predominately raised when it influenced other themes, such as function; many still felt the need to legitimize their foot pain in order for health professionals to take it seriously ("in the end I went to my GP because it had happened a few times and I went to an orthopaedic surgeon who was quite dismissive of it, it was like what are you complaining about”). Conclusions: Patients interpret the outcome of foot surgery using a multitude of interrelated factors, particularly functional ability, appearance and surgeons' appraisal of the procedure. While pain was often noted, this appeared less important than other factors in the overall outcome of the surgery. Future research into foot surgery should incorporate the complexity of how patients determine their outcome Disclosure statement: All authors have declared no conflicts of interes

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Bi-allelic Loss-of-Function CACNA1B Mutations in Progressive Epilepsy-Dyskinesia.

The occurrence of non-epileptic hyperkinetic movements in the context of developmental epileptic encephalopathies is an increasingly recognized phenomenon. Identification of causative mutations provides an important insight into common pathogenic mechanisms that cause both seizures and abnormal motor control. We report bi-allelic loss-of-function CACNA1B variants in six children from three unrelated families whose affected members present with a complex and progressive neurological syndrome. All affected individuals presented with epileptic encephalopathy, severe neurodevelopmental delay (often with regression), and a hyperkinetic movement disorder. Additional neurological features included postnatal microcephaly and hypotonia. Five children died in childhood or adolescence (mean age of death: 9 years), mainly as a result of secondary respiratory complications. CACNA1B encodes the pore-forming subunit of the pre-synaptic neuronal voltage-gated calcium channel Cav2.2/N-type, crucial for SNARE-mediated neurotransmission, particularly in the early postnatal period. Bi-allelic loss-of-function variants in CACNA1B are predicted to cause disruption of Ca2+ influx, leading to impaired synaptic neurotransmission. The resultant effect on neuronal function is likely to be important in the development of involuntary movements and epilepsy. Overall, our findings provide further evidence for the key role of Cav2.2 in normal human neurodevelopment.MAK is funded by an NIHR Research Professorship and receives funding from the Wellcome Trust, Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital Charity, and Rosetrees Trust. E.M. received funding from the Rosetrees Trust (CD-A53) and Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity. K.G. received funding from Temple Street Foundation. A.M. is funded by Great Ormond Street Hospital, the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), and Biomedical Research Centre. F.L.R. and D.G. are funded by Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre. K.C. and A.S.J. are funded by NIHR Bioresource for Rare Diseases. The DDD Study presents independent research commissioned by the Health Innovation Challenge Fund (grant number HICF-1009-003), a parallel funding partnership between the Wellcome Trust and the Department of Health, and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (grant number WT098051). We acknowledge support from the UK Department of Health via the NIHR comprehensive Biomedical Research Centre award to Guy's and St. Thomas' National Health Service (NHS) Foundation Trust in partnership with King's College London. This research was also supported by the NIHR Great Ormond Street Hospital Biomedical Research Centre. J.H.C. is in receipt of an NIHR Senior Investigator Award. The research team acknowledges the support of the NIHR through the Comprehensive Clinical Research Network. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NHS, the NIHR, Department of Health, or Wellcome Trust. E.R.M. acknowledges support from NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre, an NIHR Senior Investigator Award, and the University of Cambridge has received salary support in respect of E.R.M. from the NHS in the East of England through the Clinical Academic Reserve. I.E.S. is supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (Program Grant and Practitioner Fellowship)

\u27Politics is Social Work with Power\u27: Training Social Workers for Elected Office

Training social workers for leadership roles in electoral campaigns and political offices increases the profession\u27s effectiveness in promoting public policy that reflects our professional values and commitment to social justice. This research describes and evaluates an educational experience in the US that prepares social work practitioners and students to run for elected office; to work in leadership positions at the local, state, and federal levels; and serve as effective advocates for social change. Participants\u27 plans for future political engagement before and after the training were compared. Following the training, participants are more likely to plan to be politically active in general. Their intentions to work on campaigns, run for office, and engage with elected officials increased. These results can inform education in other social work settings

Training Social Workers for Political Engagement: Exploring Regional Differences in the United States

Social workers are challenged by the profession’s Code of Ethics to engage in social and political action to create social change, and social work education is challenged by our Code and accreditation standards to prepare students for this challenge. Social policy instructors often need to adapt teaching methods in order to account for differences in the political and social context within which they are teaching. This study uses the Civic Participation Model [CPM] to assess the regional differences in a political social work training offered in two strikingly different locations in the Eastern and Western United States. This paper describes a case example of an adaptation of a political social work training to a new context that varies significantly in a number of ways from the one in which it was created, including geography, ideology, density, and political structure. Outcomes are discussed, and the article proposes research questions for a larger follow-up study of political social work trainings in a series of diverse geographic areas of the country