October, 2019 - Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis

Mothers in low-income neighborhoods report more physical and social barriers that discourage them from allowing their children to play outside, according to new research from Maura Kepper, research assistant professor at the Brown School.

The decline in outdoor play, particularly unsupervised or independent play among today’s children and adolescents can affect children’s physical, emotional and social development. Poor neighborhoods also tend to have less access to quality greenspace, parks or playgrounds and well-maintained sidewalks.

Researchers interviewed the parents of adolescents in both low- and high-disadvantaged neighborhoods in Southeast Louisiana to identify factors that positively and negatively influence parenting decision for outdoor play. Supervision, time of day and location of play were major factors in parental decisions.

Physical factors such as walkability were important, as were environmental factors such as crime. Social cohesion in neighborhoods also influenced parental decisions, researchers found. For example, mothers who saw other children playing outside in the neighborhood felt more comfortable letting their kids outside to play.

“Neighborhood factors interrelate and differ in low- and high-disadvantage neighborhoods to influence parenting practices for outdoor play,” wrote Kepper. “Community-level interventions that target both physical and social environmental factors and are tailored to the neighborhood and population may be needed to reduce parental constraints on outdoor play, increase physical activity and improve the health and well-being of developing youth.”

The study was published October 12 in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

Sunday, November 3

3:30 – 4:30 p.m.	Tess Thompson Merriah Croston Matthew Kreuter	“I’m always looking up something new”: Health-related use of mobile phones among Medicaid beneficiaries
3:30 – 4:30 p.m.	William Byansi Proscovia Nabunya Joelynn Muwanga Ozge Sensoy Bahar Mary McKay Fred Ssewamala	Self-reported medication adherence, physical health and pediatric quality of life among children and adolescents living with HIV: Baseline findings from Southwestern Uganda
5:00 – 6:00 p.m.	Theodore Cicero	Trading sex for drugs as a pathway for rising sexually transmitted infections amidst the opioid epidemic

Monday, November 4

8:50 – 9:10 a.m.	Manik Ahuja	Suicide in South Asian Americans: An Emerging Public Health Problem in the United States
10:30 – 11:30 a.m.	Fred Ssewamala Ruth Katumba Ozge Sensoy Bahar Kim Johnson	Cancer in Youth Living with HIV (YLWHIV): A Narrative Review of the Epidemiology of Pediatric Cancers among YLWHIV, Access to Oncological Services and the Role of Economic Strengthening in Child Health
10:30 – 11:30 a.m.	Kiriam Escobar	A case report of acute flaccid paralysis associated with arboviruses infection in the Republic of Panama
1:00 – 2:00 p.m.	Rachel Tabak Debra Haire-Joshu	Social Determinants of Health and Childhood Obesity Risk Factors in a Child’s First 1,000 Days
1:40 – 2:00 p.m.	Amy Eyler	Getting a “head start” on exercise: Results of a physical activity survey of Head Start and Early Head Start programs
3:00 – 4:00 p.m.	Theodore Cicero	Outside the opioid silo: Co-occurring use of opioids with other substances and the implications for policy and treatment in the opioid crisis
3:00 – 4:00 p.m.	Roger Wong Takashi Amano	Racial/ethnic differences in Alzheimer’s disease and dementia risk in the United States: A systematic review and meta-analysis
3:00 – 4:00 p.m.	Rachel Garg Matthew Kreuter	Scoping review of evidence for quit line effectiveness in low socioeconomic status populations
3:00 – 4:30 p.m.	Ross C. Brownson Enola Proctor	State Legislator Support for Behavioral Health Parity Laws: The Influence of Factors at Multiple Levels
3:20 – 3:40 p.m.	Stephanie Mazzucca Ross C. Brownson Renee Parks Peg Allen	Advancing evidence-based public health through Academic Health Department partnerships in the United States

Tuesday, November 5

8:30 – 8:50 a.m.	Alan Beck Amanda Gilbert Dixie Duncan Amy Eyler Ross C. Brownson	Physical activity motives in rural communities: A qualitative study
8:50 – 9:10 a.m.	Kim Johnson Arash Delavar	Differences in rural/urban cancer survival disparities between adults and children
9:00 – 10:00 a.m.	Rachel Tabak Debra Haire-Joshu	Maternal-Infant Relationship is a Key Driver of Childhood Obesity Risk in the First 1,000 Days. What Drives Maternal-Infant Relationship?
9:10 – 9:30 a.m.	Sean Joe	Integrating Social Needs Care and the Delivery of Health Care -Moving Medicine Upstream: A final report from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine
11:30 – 11:50 a.m.	Manik Ahuja	Examining How Adolescent Bullying Experiences Affect Traumatic Stress, Sexual Health and HIV Risk among Young Men Who Have Sex with Men (YMSM) in New York City
11:30 – 11:50 a.m.	Sicong Sun Darrell Hudson	Socioeconomic and Health Inequalities Across Young Adulthood: Evidence from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth
3:00 – 4:30 p.m.	Fred Ssewamala	Is it time to RE-AIM: A systematic-review of economic empowerment HIV prevention programs for adolescent girls and young-women in sub-Saharan Africa using the RE-AIM framework

Wednesday, November 6

12:30 – 12:50 p.m.	Sean Joe	Impact of Adverse Childhood Experiences on Sport Participation in the Youth population
12:50 – 1:10 p.m.	Ellis Ballard	Using community-based system dynamics to obtain new insights into drivers of urban health and identify policy implications: The SALURBAL study
1:30 – 1:50 p.m.	Vetta Sanders Thompson	Validation and psychometric analysis of a quantitative measure to assess stakeholder engagement in research

While suicide attempts decreased overall among U.S. adolescents between 1991 and 2017, they increased by 73% among black adolescents, finds a new study from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

“The rise in suicide rates among black youth can most likely be traced back to an internalization of issues around structural racism in America, along with a lack of coping mechanisms and lack of investment in mental health services in black communities,” said Sean Joe, the Benjamin E. Youngdahl Professor of Social Development and nationally recognized authority on suicidal behavior among African Americans.

Joe is co-author of the study, “Trends of Suicidal Behaviors Among High School Students in the United States: 1991–2017,” published in the journal Pediatrics.

“Black youth experience disparities in mental health treatment,” Joe said. “They may not want to face the fact that they have a problem. They may not want to be judged. Another explanation could be that black adolescents view mental health treatment with skepticism because of mistrust of providers.”

The researchers used the nationally representative school-based Youth Risk Behavior Survey to examine suicide trends by different racial and ethnic groups. Participants included 198,540 high school students.

The results suggest that, over time, black youth have experienced an increase in suicide attempts. In comparison, self-reported suicide attempts for white adolescents fell by 7.5% over the same period.

“This is troubling because attempts are the most prominent risk factor associated with suicide death,” Joe said.

Suicidal thoughts and behaviors trends by race and ethnicity from 1991–2017. Click to expand.

For black boys, the study found, a significant increase in injury by attempt occurred, which suggests that black boys may be engaging in increasingly lethal means when attempting suicide.

“Our findings reveal that almost one in five adolescents are thinking about suicide and more than one in 10 has a suicide plan,” Joe said.

Despite increased attention given to the creation of campaigns to reduce youth suicide in the United States over the last decade, the findings suggest that more resources should be put toward such programs.

“The dearth in suicide research has limited our understanding of how to intervene or prevent suicidal behavior among ethnic minority populations,” Joe said. “Greater equity in science is needed to advance career pathways for ethnic minority investigators posing critical question like what we raised in this article.”

A new list of the world’s most influential researchers includes several members of the Brown School faculty. The list was compiled by a team led by John P. Ioannidis of Stanford University and is based on measurements of peer-reviewed publications and their citations by other scientists.

The list of the 100,000 most influential scientists represents the top 1.5% of the database of nearly 7 million scientists around the world who published at least five papers from 1996-2017. A separate list focused on a single year, 2017. Those from the Brown School on the lists were:

Ross Brownson, Steven H. and Susan U. Lipstein Distinguished Professor and Director of the Prevention Research Center. Brownson is a national leader in chronic disease prevention and dissemination and implementation science.
Francis Drake, professor. Drake researches child welfare with a focus on early intervention cases of child neglect and its connections to socio-environmental conditions.
Melissa Jonson-Reid, Ralph and Muriel Pumphrey Professor of Social Work Research and director of the Center for Innovation in Child Maltreatment Policy, Research, and Training. Jonson-Reid’s work focuses on outcomes associated with childhood exposure to trauma, particularly abuse and neglect.
Matthew Kreuter, Kahn Family Professor of Public Health and the founder and senior scientist of the Health Communication Research Laboratory. Kreuter is a leading public health expert in the field of health communication and health disparities.
Douglas Luke, professor and director of the Center for Public Health Systems Science. Luke is a leading researcher in the areas of public health policy, systems science and tobacco control.
Nancy Morrow-Howell, the Betty Bofinger Brown Distinguished Professor of Public Policy. An international leader in gerontology, Morrow-Howell is known for her work on productive engagement of older adults.
Enola Proctor, professor. Proctor’s research focuses on improving the care delivered in social work, public health and healthcare settings. Her research and training programs have been funded by the National Institute of Mental health since 1993.

The study was published in PLOS Biology.

Most of the Brown faculty on the list were also on a list of the 100 most influential faculty at U.S. schools of social work, published earlier this year in the Journal of Social Service Research. That list was also based on publications and citations, though calculated somewhat differently. It included two additional Brown School faculty members:

Debra Haire-Joshu, Joyce Wood Professor and director of the Center for Obesity Prevention and Policy Research. Haire-Joshu is an internationally renowned scholar of health behavior who develops population-wide interventions to reduce obesity and prevent diabetes among underserved women and children.
Michael Sherraden, George Warren Brown Distinguished University Professor and the founding director of the Center for Social Development. Sherraden has defined and informed applied research and policies to promote inclusion in asset building, including the establishment of child development accounts in the U.S. and internationally.

A special issue of the journal Global Social Welfare, titled “Equity, Collaboration, and Empowerment in Mental Health Research Partnerships” highlights experiences and issues in North-South research collaborations from across the world.

The special issue was developed by a team from the Brown School’s SMART Africa Center, and it was edited by Brown School Research Assistant Professor Ozge Sensoy Bahar, as well as Manasi Kumar, from the Center’s Kenya team at University of Nairobi, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Nairobi.

“The project was born as a platform to think critically about issues of equity, power and collaboration in the context of increasing north-south collaborations in the global mental health research,” said Kumar.

The partnerships and collaborations, the team explained, are often silent in questioning oppressive practices and problematic unethical or inequities.

“There is a growing trend to include Southern researchers in the publications and research processes, but without a true dialogue around cross-cultural synergies,” added Sensoy Bahar.

Both researchers noted that the other trend was to praise the local partners in local meetings without actually embracing them in more global and advanced forums. These attitudes, they added, perpetuate injustice and inequity given the historical landscape of colonization and collective oppression of the South.

To dismantle these practices, the issue offers the following takeaways:

Partnerships should prioritize and invest in a bi-directional exchange and learning models that step away from solely valuing western paradigms, knowledge and practices.
Research agendas should allow significant leadership by the global South team.
The field needs to develop global ethics-in-practice dialogues where practices are deliberated, and concepts and definitions articulated collaboratively and inclusively.

Read the full issue here.

Join the Brown School at the Council on Social Work Education annual program meeting.

Please consult the listings below to explore the breadth of ways to connect with the Brown School. All presentations take place at the Sheraton Downtown Hotel in Denver, Colorado.

Friday, October 25

12:30 – 1:30 p.m.	Social Work the “White Way”: Decolonizing the Classroom	Tonya Edmond	Governor’s Square 10, Plaza Building
1:45 – 2:45 p.m.	Evidence Mapping : Interventions for American Indian and Alaska Native Youth Mental Health	Autumn Asher BlackDeer	Plaza Court 4, Plaza Building
4:15 – 5:15 p.m.	CSWE and IASWG: Educating Future Group Workers Within the Social Work Curriculum	Maria Gandarilla Ocampo	Plaza Court 6, Plaza Building

Saturday, October 26

8:45 – 9:45 a.m.	Strategies for Emphasizing Diversity and Inclusion in and Throughout the MSW Curriculum	Tyriesa Howard Howell	Governor’s Square 10, Plaza Building
10:30 – 11:30 a.m.	Inequality and Mental Health	Hannah Szlyk	Plaza Court 4, Plaza Building
10:30 – 11:30 a.m.	Renewing Social Work’s Commitment to Financial Well-Being Through Courses and the Curriculum	Margarat Sherraden Lissa Johnson Gena McClendon	Windows,Tower Building
12:30 – 1:30 p.m.	Preparing Social Work Students for Their Responsibilities as Mandated Child Maltreatment Reporters	Maria Gandarilla Ocampo	Plaza Ballroom, Plaza Building
1:45 – 2:45 p.m.	Political Justice Meets Democracy: Challenging Systemic Barriers Through Practice and Research	Gena McClendon	Tower Court D, Tower Building
3:00 – 4:00 p.m.	Social Action and Social Work: Collective Impact and Community Engagement: Lessons Learned From the Field	Helen Robinson	Plaza Court 7, Plaza Building
3:00 – 4:00 p.m.	Competence with Technology for Social Work Practice	Autumn Asher BlackDeer Maria Morrison	Director’s Row I, Plaza Building

Sunday, October 27

8:45 – 9:45 a.m.	Developing Social Work Curriculum: Case Study: Curriculum Development and Innovation in Leadership, Management, and Entrepreneurship Education	Barry Rosenberg	Century Tower Building
1:15 – 2:15 p.m.	Cultural Humility and Intersectionality: Expanding Perspectives on Diversity and Cultural Competency	Erika Gonzalez	Director’s Row H, Plaza Building

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