<p> Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a serious issue for post-deployment United States Marine Corps (USMC) veterans, especially because PTSD can increase the risk of suicide. Marines are screened post-deployment, yet little is known about Marine veterans&rsquo; perceptions of the PTSD screening process. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore USMC male veterans&rsquo; perceptions of the Post- Deployment Health Reassessment (PDHRA). The social cognitive theory constructs of a triadic relationship among person, environment, and behavior were the framework for understanding this population&rsquo;s perceptions of the PDHRA and potential stigma. Two research questions focused on how people, culture, and behavior affect Marines perception of the PDHRA and PTSD attached stigma. Interviews were conducted with 10 Marine veterans&rsquo; participants and transcribed interview responses were input into NVivo 11 software to retain a reliable database and Colaizzi&rsquo;s strategy to identify emerging themes. Key findings revealed potential positive social change to military chaplains and veterans&rsquo; health service providers. This knowledge might inform about the perceptions of Marines through informed understanding and may help develop an updated evaluation tool. Future researchers might focus on the forthcoming answers and treatment of PTSD and the attached stigma among Marines by alleviating repercussions for Marines&rsquo; answers on the PDHRA. An understanding of the study&rsquo;s findings may elicit strategies for health care administrators to expound on the PDHRA and provide educational programs to assist in future screening environments and processes through Marines perspectives.</p><p>

<p> The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate the influence of the athletic health care team on urban secondary school student-athlete physical health, academic engagement, and academic success. Limited and inconsistent research had been identified that linked student-athlete physical health to academic engagement and success at the time of research. In question is how the presence of an athletic health care team influenced student-athlete health, academic engagement, and academic success. A qualitative intrinsic case study using a face-to-face responsive interview model was deployed for data collection. The population was identified as all student-athletes, coaches, and parents/guardians involved with one urban secondary school district athletic program. Five male student-athletes, two male and one female parent, and three male coaches voluntarily participated in the research study. Data analysis occurred through an iterative process beginning with manual transcription of audio recordings into a Microsoft Word document that was uploaded into the NVIVO 11 computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software for organizing further coding and theme development. A conceptually clustered matrix was further used for data analysis to help identify themes among student-athletes, their parents, and coaches to triangulate responses. The athletic health care team in this research study was found to directly influence student-athlete health, have a minimal influence on academic engagement, but have indirect influence on academic success according to participants. The athletic trainer was the key athletic health care team member contributing to student-athlete physical health, while coach was identified as most dominant figure on academic engagement, with coaches and parents being most powerful on academic success. Additional research is needed to fully understand the collaboration between athletic health services and general health services for the secondary school student-athlete. The variability between health care programing offers an opportunity for standardization that can be replicated and then studied across different settings, such as rural versus urban, or among diverse socioeconomic groups. Future research collaboration between health care and education is also needed specifically in the area of athletic health care team implementation at the secondary school level to fully understand the positive educational impacts that may be achieved. Extending health services beyond than the traditional student and into the extracurricular environment may be a powerful tool that offers additional academic engagement and success opportunities.</p><p>

<p> Academic advising has been found to be an important component in satisfaction and retention among online and distance students. This quantitative study examined the perceptions of both online and allied health students in an allied health program regarding academic advising methods. These perceptions were then examined to determine if there was a relationship to the students&rsquo; overall satisfaction and retention. To determine student perceptions, a convenience sample of both online and face-to-face students from two allied health programs in Louisiana was used. The students were given the Academic Advising Inventory (AAI), which was used to evaluate their perceptions regarding academic advising. </p><p> The review of the literature found that there are two primary models of academic advising: prescriptive and developmental. The literature indicated that different types of students prefer different advising models (Belchier, 1999; Gravel, 2012; Jeschke, Johnson, &amp; Williams, 2001; Kelley &amp; Lynch, 1991; LaPadula, 2003; Luna &amp; Medina, 2007). There are limited findings, however, regarding the preferences of online students. Further, there is no literature describing the preferences of online students in an allied health program. </p><p> This research study investigated student preferences regarding advising in an allied health program. This research study also investigated whether those preferences regarding advising had any effects on the overall satisfaction and persistence of students within an allied health program. Finally, this research study investigated if there were significant differences between the type of advising received between online and face-to-face students in the two programs. </p><p> Based on the data analysis, it was first found that students who experienced developmental advising had higher satisfaction than students who had prescriptive advising. Second, students who experienced developmental advising were more likely to persist in the allied health program than students who had received prescriptive advising. Third, students who experienced advising closely matched to their preferred advising style were more likely to be satisfied than students who experienced a wide gap between actual and preferred academic advising. Finally, it was found that face-to-face students were much more likely to receive developmental advising than online students in the same allied health program.</p><p>

The Governor of Virginia, Terry McAuliffe, signed an Executive Order to establish the Virginia Governor’s Children’s Cabinet, an executive-level cabinet dedicated to the education, health, safety, and welfare of Virginia’s children and youth. One of the Cabinet’s initiatives was to improve academic outcomes for students in Petersburg, a low performing school division that was selected as a pilot site to help the Cabinet learn how to build trust and work collaboratively with localities. While the Virginia Department of Education had a Petersburg school improvement plan focused on school leadership and teacher quality, the Children’s Cabinet focused on reducing absenteeism through interagency collaboration to address drivers such as inadequate health, housing, and nutrition. These drivers were selected because 34 percent of Petersburg students had seven or more unexcused absences per year, with more than five percent missing over 21 days; there were over 300 homeless students in the division; the teen pregnancy rate was five times the state average; and 100 percent of students received free and reduced lunch. To improve attendance, the Children’s Cabinet partnered with the Petersburg Superintendent and City Manager to create the City Partnership with the Schools which included state and local leaders from across health, social services, juvenile justice, education, nonprofits, faith communities, families, and students. Because the state’s role had traditionally been one of enforcing compliance, not collaboration, this capstone describes the journey of transforming the state’s role from sanctions to support. Throughout this capstone, I recount and analyze my process for creating a sustainable state and local partnership by understanding Petersburg’s powerful history, brokering interagency relationships, leveraging state resources, building local capacity, establishing collaboration structures, shifting mindsets, developing trust, and moving diverse stakeholders toward a collective goal of improved student outcomes. Seven principles emerged to inform future Governor’s Children’s Cabinet collaborations with localities: 1) Culturally responsible engagement; 2) Asset-based approach; 3) Inclusion of local voice at all levels; 4) Development of a sustainability plan; 5) Equalized access to power; 6) Strengthened relationships; and 7) Improved local capacity.

The Positive Living Skills (PLS) program for teens is a personal life enhancement intervention program centered on teaching focusing skills, positive perspectives, and relaxation skills. To date the PLS program has not been introduced to an adolescent population. The purpose of this study was to introduce the PLS program to adolescents (in a classroom context) and to investigate whether the students enjoyed, applied, and found these skills effective in their daily lives. A secondary purpose of this study was to learn from the interactions with the students and teachers and explore the best ways to deliver the program. Two grade 10 health and physical education classes (one boys' and one girls' class) participated in a 10 session PLS intervention over a period of 16 weeks. These sessions included PLS audio CD activities, interactive and person guided PLS activities, logbook exercises, discussions and practice using skills within the physical education context. Teens who participated in the PLS program enjoyed the program skills, applied and planned to continue applying the program skills, and found the program skills effective in daily life. These findings support results from previous PLS research conducted with younger students between the ages of 4-12 years of age (Cox & Orlick, 1996; Gilbert & Orlick, 2002; Taylor & Orlick, 2004). In addition facilitation and program delivery lessons learned are highlighted and discussed.

Young women in Canada are increasingly at risk for contracting HIV through heterosexual transmission, which represents the most common mode of HIV transmission worldwide. In Canada, women now comprise a quarter of all HIV prevalent people, and the number of young women aged 15-29 who have tested positive for HIV has increased dramatically despite over twenty years of health and education programming Women's gendered vulnerabilities are not well understood in the Canadian context, nor is women's risk (especially that of young women engaging in supposedly safer 'hetero'-sexual practices). The purpose of this study is to analyse how young Canadian women's prevention needs are represented in HIV/AIDS discourse and to determine whether and how those needs are being met in the current public health and formal educational contexts. This has been accomplished through a feminist content analysis of the relevant epidemiological, social, legal, educational and operational documents related to HIV prevention. This analysis addresses young women's representation in HIV/AIDS discourse; normative understandings of risk (primarily risk behaviours and categories in light of prevalence and incidence rates); and the inclusion of a gendered perspective in current Canadian policies, guidelines and public health prevention and formal education programs. The results show that all of these elements are lacking in current HIV prevention research, policies and programs. The intent of the study is to reflect this information back to researchers and educators, highlighting absences and silences in the representations of women in HIV/AIDS discourse and prevention efforts; it is also meant to provide a baseline understanding from which to undertake future research. This ongoing work largely consists of the development of evidence-based, gendered HIV prevention interventions in schools and communities. It also includes further analysis of issues relating to women's representation in HIV/AIDS discourse, particularly from a queer perspective; Foucault's exploration of power and knowledge, of the pedagogization of children's sex and the hysterization of women's bodies, and Butler's exploration of compulsory heterosexuality and the performativity of gender are presented as important ideas for informing analyses of young women's representation in the HIV epidemic. Hopefully this study serves to highlight young women's increasing vulnerability to HIV, clarify some of the issues impacting on that vulnerability, and inform the future development of effective, gendered prevention interventions.

It is a critical time in health care characterized by new models of service delivery, complexity of care, diverse practice environments, and evolving regulatory and legislative requirements. This is accompanied by recognition that the experiences and supports provided by workplaces are critical for initially developing the knowledge required for work and also for lifelong learning. In occupational therapy, there is relatively little understanding of how beginning occupational therapists learn to practice and how they resituate knowledge learned in the context of school, to the context of work. The objective of this research was to understand how beginning occupational therapy practitioners learn in the practice context, how clients mediate practitioners' learning, and the factors which shape practitioners' participation and learning through work. This qualitative study used an ethnographic approach to understand the situated practices, interactions and actions of occupational therapists in an acute care hospital context. Data collection consisted of semi-structured interviews, observations of practice, participant journal entries, researcher journal entries and meetings with the occupational therapy manager, over a period of twelve months. The study participants comprised five occupational therapists with less than two years of clinical experience. Activity theory provided an integrative, conceptual framework to understand how knowledge is co-constructed and distributed across a particular hospital system. The findings of this research help us understand how workplace affordances and constraints, and individuals' agency shape beginning occupational therapists' participation and learning through work. There are complex relations and interactions among the components of the activity system engaged in the object of patient care. A conceptual framework, the Workplace Learning Model for Occupational Therapy, was developed to understand how learning occurs in practice and the pedagogic means to support occupational therapists' engagement in work. The findings of this study contribute to the evidence in workplace learning and participation.

This study was designed to explore through two surveys and interviews the question of confidence levels of practicing professional nurses in giving quality care to ethnically diverse client populations. One questionnaire to nursing faculty in 170 colleges and universities across the United States was concerned with the transcultural educational preparation of students, and the second questionnaire to 40 community health agency and inpatient (hospital) facility nurses pertained to their present level of confidence. The comments on situations encountered by practicing professional nurses and how they handled the situation were sought. These nurses also discussed how transcultural education would have helped them to either prevent or solve the problems. Faculty were surveyed regarding the inclusion of transcultural nursing concepts in their nursing curricula, their transcultural education background, and the ethnic background of their student and client populations. The practicing professional nurses were surveyed as to their personal and professional backgrounds and their knowledge of and perceived confidence levels in giving holistic nursing care to three different ethnic groups--Asians, Blacks, Southeast Asians and Spanish-speaking people. Three variables were assessed; namely, family organization, health care beliefs and lifestyles. Results indicated that in the surveys of the colleges and universities 96.3% of the nursing programs included some general transcultural nursing concepts in their courses and 31,5% offered them in theory, seminar and clinical components of the program. Only 26% of those who responded offered specific courses or certification classes. In order to assist students in developing cultural awareness 74.1% of the colleges and universities offer clinical experiences with ethnically diverse populations. The second part of the survey (Self-efficacy) illustrated a definite lack of confidence in giving holistic nursing care to Asian/Southeast Asian clients. Although there appears to be no significant relationship between the three major ethnic minorities and the inclusion of transcultural nursing concepts or the number of years since graduation, there are definite levels of significance between the variables of family organization, health care beliefs, and lifestyles and background information as to the type of nursing program, length and place of employment, and past clinical experiences with ethnic minorities.

Physical Education teachers, non-physical education teachers, administrators, parents and students were surveyed regarding their perceptions of six basic issues in physical education. The purpose of the study was to establish a foundation of systematically collected information providing insight into determining the status of public school physical education. To do this, the Delphi Technique was employed to gain group consensus on the following issues: goals of P.E.; departmental organization; curriculum; comparative subject matter importance; grading procedures; and graduation/participation requirements. Descriptive statements are provided regarding the group consensus results on each issue. Differentiation between elementary, junior high and senior high results are reported where appropriate. Implications for physical educators and recommendations for further study are discussed.

No description available.