Catherine Dp. Duarte

Higher educational attainment has been linked to better health and economic outcomes. However, little is known about how family caregiving responsibilities influence individuals’ educational trajectories in the United States (U.S.). Currently, 26% of U.S. undergraduates have at least one dependent child. While some literature describes the experiences of college-student parents, few studies examine the myriad ways family caregiving may singly or simultaneously present, including caregiving for children, relatives, household members, and older adults. The literature shows that caregiving for relatives, household members, and older adults is a common experience, with 20% of Americans providing care for an adult. Guided by social reproduction theory and reproductive labor, this paper examined qualitative interviews (n=31) from the Educational Trajectories & Health study to understand how caregiving responsibilities, broadly defined, influenced educational trajectories. Participants who identified as women discussed bearing disproportionate expectations to take on family caregiving responsibilities, including caregiving for siblings and aging parents. For most participants, family caregiving responsibilities substantially influenced educational decisions. Some experienced additional caregiving responsibilities but still attained their educational goals; others with family caregiving responsibilities discussed stretching and substituting resources in an effort to manage but ultimately having to step back from their stated educational pursuits. Situating these findings within broader social and structural contexts, this analysis examines educational disruption when family caregiving responsibilities arise. Findings have implications for policies that support students with family caregiving responsibilities at school, state, and federal levels.

Background: People incarcerated in US prisons have been disproportionately harmed by the COVID-19 pandemic. That prisons are such efficient superspreading environments can be attributed to several known factors: small, communal facilities where people are confined for prolonged periods of time; poor ventilation; a lack of non-punitive areas for quarantine/medical isolation; and staggeringly high numbers of people experiencing incarceration, among others. While health organizations have issued guidance on preventing and mitigating COVID-19 infection in carceral settings, little is known about if, when, and how recommendations have been implemented. We examined factors contributing to containment of one of the first California prison COVID-19 outbreaks and remaining vulnerabilities using an adapted multi-level determinants framework to systematically assess infectious disease risk in carceral settings.Methods: Case study employing administrative data; observation; and informal discussions with: people incarcerated at the prison, staff, and county public health officials.Results: Outbreak mitigation efforts were characterized by pre-planning (e.g., designation of ventilated, single-occupancy quarantine) and a quickly mobilized inter-institutional response that facilitated systematic, voluntary rapid testing. However, several systemic- and institutional-level vulnerabilities were unaddressed hindering efforts and posing significant risk for future outbreaks, including insufficient decarceration, continued inter-facility transfers, incomplete staff cohorting, and incompatibility between built environment features (e.g., dense living conditions) and public health recommendations.Conclusions: Our adapted framework facilitates systematically assessing prison-based infectious disease outbreaks and multi-level interventions. We find implementing some recommended public health strategies may have contributed to outbreak containment. However, even with a rapidly mobilized, inter-institutional response, failure to decarcerate created an overreliance on chance conditions. This left the facility vulnerable to future catastrophic outbreaks and may render standard public health strategies - including the introduction of effective vaccines - insufficient to prevent or contain those outbreaks.

Higher educational attainment predicts lower hypertension. Yet, associations between nontraditional educational trajectories (eg, interrupted degree programs) and hypertension are less well understood, particularly among structurally marginalized groups who are more likely to experience these non-traditional trajectories. In National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 cohort data (N = 6 317), we used sequence and cluster analyses to identify groups of similar educational sequences—characterized by timing and type of terminal credential—that participants followed from age 14–48 years. Using logistic regression, we estimated associations between the resulting 10 educational sequences and hypertension at age 50. We evaluated effect modification by individual-level indicators of structural marginalization (race, gender, race and gender, and childhood socioeconomic status [cSES]). Compared to terminal high school (HS) diploma completed at traditional age, terminal GED (OR: 1.32; 95%CI: 1.04, 1.66) or Associate degree after <HS (OR: 1.93; 95%CI: 1.11, 3.35) was associated with higher hypertension. There was some evidence of effect modification. Hypertension associated with delayed HS diploma versus HS diploma at a traditional age (the reference) was lower for Black men than White men (interaction term: 0.44; 95%CI: 0.21, 0.91); similarly, hypertension associated with <HS versus completing HS at a traditional age was lower for people with low cSES than people with high cSES (interaction term: 0.52; 95%CI: 0.30, 0.90). Both type and timing to terminal credential matter for hypertension but effects may vary by experiences of structural marginalization. Documenting the nuanced ways in which complex educational trajectories are associated with health could elucidate underlying mechanisms and inform systems-level interventions for health equity.

Since online media can be key in the widespread, symmetrical dissemination of science, we performed a media content analysis of 44 online articles to assess coverage of a French community-based participatory research (CBPR) epidemiologic study. Most articles highlighted methodological rigor and the research topic’s salience to residents. Approximately half of the articles reported findings, with the remaining focusing on action steps. To our knowledge, this study is the first to explore how online media communicate CBPR, a novel approach in the French context, to the public. Though there were some gaps in the media’s portrayal, CBPR may facilitate online media uptake of findings. We provide recommendations for future research on this topic.

Criminalizing young people, particularly Black- and Brown-identified young people, has increasingly been a feature of US rhetoric, policies, and practices. Thus, the domains in which young people are exposed to the legal system have continued to expand, encompassing their communities, schools, and homes. Importantly, public health researchers have begun exploring links between legal system exposure and health, although this literature is primarily focused at the interpersonal level and assesses associations within a single domain or in adulthood.Using critical race theory and ecosocial theory of disease distribution, we identified potential policy-level determinants of criminalization and briefly summarized the literature on downstream health outcomes among young people. Our analysis suggests that policy decisions may facilitate the targeting of structurally marginalized young people across domains.Future research should (1) position these legislative decisions as primary exposures of interest to understand their association with health among young people and inform institutional-level intervention, (2) measure the totality of exposure to the criminal legal system across domains, and (3) use theory to examine the complex ways racism operates institutionally to shape inequitable distributions of associated health outcomes.

American Journal of Public Health (AJPH) from the American Public Health Association (APHA) Applications of the American Public Health Association’s Statement on Addressing Law Enforcement Violence as a Public Health Issue, an article from American Journal of Public Health, Vol 110 Issue S1

Historically and contemporarily marginalized youth who are disproportionately exposed to community violence are often the same youth who are less likely to be civically engaged. However, the community violence and civic engagement literatures have not yet fully explored how these experiences may be linked in young people’s lives and in relation to what other forces. Using developmental assets and ecological-transactional frameworks, we review the emerging literature on civic engagement among youth exposed to community violence and how external developmental assets and neighborhood collective efficacy may create opportunity for their increased civic engagement. We present numerous conceptually- and empirically-based hypotheses to further examine the intersections between exposure to community violence and youth civic engagement. Ultimately, we identify opportunities for intervention.

This paper explores the connections between education for youth civic engagement and theories and strategies from public health (specifically, epidemiology). We illustrate this with four applications of epidemiologic theory to youth civic engagement: social determinants and fundamental causes, vulnerable populations and cumulative disadvantage, positive spillover, and herd immunity and critical mass. Formalizing concepts of current civics, in schools and the public, as a civic epidemic, we present a case for individual‐ and group‐level interventions based around targeted, school‐based, effective civic education initiatives. Grounded in epidemiological theory, such approaches call attention to the simultaneous need to improve broad civics education and ensure that particular populations receive necessary attentions.