Publications by authors named "Angela Robertson"

Comprehensive prenatal care incorporates recommended vaccines to help protect the mother, the pregnancy, and the infant from adverse health outcomes and severe illness from vaccine preventable diseases (VPDs). However, vaccinations during pregnancy remain underutilized, often influenced by concerns about vaccine safety and low perception of disease risk. Self-reported vaccine hesitancy among pregnant people in the United States has significantly increased in the last few years, and influenza and Tdap (tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis) vaccination rates have declined.

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There is a critical need to understand the effectiveness of serum elicited by different SARS-CoV-2 vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 variants. We describe the generation of reference reagents comprised of post-vaccination sera from recipients of different primary vaccines with or without different vaccine booster regimens in order to allow standardized characterization of SARS-CoV-2 neutralization in vitro. We prepared and pooled serum obtained from donors who received a either primary vaccine series alone, or a vaccination strategy that included primary and boosted immunization using available SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccines (BNT162b2, Pfizer and mRNA-1273, Moderna), replication-incompetent adenovirus type 26 vaccine (Ad26.

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Background: Despite the heightened risk for substance use (SU) among youth in the juvenile justice system, many do not receive the treatment that they need.

Objectives: The purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which youth under community supervision by juvenile justice agencies receive community-based SU services and the factors associated with access to such services.

Methods: Data are from a nationally representative sample of Community Supervision (CS) agencies and their primary behavioral health (BH) partners.

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Substance use disorders (SUD) are prevalent among justice-involved youth (JIY) and are a robust predictor of re-offending. Only a fraction of JIY with substance use problems receive treatment. This paper describes the impacts of system-level efforts to improve identification and referral to treatment on recidivism of JIY.

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Background: Most justice-involved youth are supervised in community settings, where assessment and linkage to substance use (SU) treatment services are inconsistent and fragmented. Only 1/3 of youth with an identified SU need receive a treatment referral and even fewer initiate services. Thus, improving identification and linkage to treatment requires coordination across juvenile justice (JJ) and behavioral health (BH) agencies.

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Introduction: Youth involved in the justice system have high rates of alcohol and other drug use, but limited treatment engagement. JJ-TRIALS tested implementation activities with community supervision (CS) and behavioral health (BH) agencies to improve screening, identification of substance use service need, referral, and treatment initiation and engagement, guided by the BH Services Cascade and EPIS frameworks. This paper summarizes intervention impacts on referrals to treatment among youth on CS.

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Objectives: Youths in the juvenile justice system often do not access needed behavioral health services. The behavioral health services cascade model was used to examine rates of substance use screening, identification of substance use treatment needs, and referral to and initiation of treatment among youths undergoing juvenile justice system intake and to identify when treatment access is most challenged. Characteristics associated with identification of behavioral health needs and linkage to community services were also examined.

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Justice-involved youth are at risk for HIV/STIs but do not access services. The complex challenges of improving the delivery of health-related services within juvenile justice (JJ) settings warrant exploration of strategies to close this service gap. This study describes the successes and challenges of utilizing a local change team (LCT) strategy comprising JJ and health agency staff to implement HIV/STI programming in JJ settings, across six counties in six states in the U.

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Justice-involved youth are at high risk for HIV and STIs, and justice agencies are uniquely poised to offer HIV/STI testing. However, testing in these settings is not routine and represents a missed opportunity. This study describes a system-level implementation intervention designed to increase access to HIV/STI testing through juvenile justice (JJ) and public health agency collaboration across six counties in six states in the United States.

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Recidivism, and the factors related to it, remains a highly significant concern among juvenile justice researchers, practitioners, and policy makers. Recent studies highlight the need to examine multiple measures of recidivism as well as conduct multilevel analyses of this phenomenon. Using data collected in a National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)-funded Juvenile Justice-Translational Research on Interventions for Adolescents in the Legal System (JJ-TRIALS) cooperative agreement, we examined individual- and site-level factors related to 1-year recidivism among probation youth in 20 sites in five states to answer research questions related to how recidivism rates differ across sites and the relationships between individual-level variables and a county-level concentrated disadvantage measure and recidivism.

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Justice-involved youth (JIY) are at considerable risk for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), but are disconnected from treatment and prevention. Juvenile justice agencies providing community supervision (CS) are well positioned to provide HIV prevention, testing, and prompt referral to treatment for JIY. However, we lack an understanding of juvenile CS agency responses to HIV/sexually transmitted infection (STI) needs among JIY.

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Objective: Women are less likely than men to be arrested for driving under the influence (DUI) of alcohol or another drug, yet their proportion of DUI offenders is growing. Understanding how DUI recidivism risk varies for men and women is of practical utility for DUI assessment and intervention programs. The goals of the current study are to determine if there are different sets of predictors for men and women and whether gender-specific DUI recidivism risk scales perform better than a single recidivism scale for both men and women.

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Objectives: This study sought to expand the sparse literature examining the extent to which family engagement interventions and the structural characteristics of juvenile community supervision agencies influence caregiver participation in youths' behavioral health (i.e., mental health and substance use) treatment.

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Background: While involvement in the legal system offers an opportunity to educate, screen, and treat high-risk youth, research shows that staff attitudes toward these practices can serve as barriers to implementation. The current study investigates the degree to which JJ staff endorse HIV prevention, testing, and treatment linkage practices with youth under community supervision and examines differences between individuals who supervise youth (e.g.

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Given the large proportion of youth involved in the juvenile justice system who meet criteria for behavioral health disorders, the system is charged with delivering not only criminal justice programing, but also behavioral health services. Behavioral health service delivery is typically done through collaborative partnerships with behavioral health agencies. This study created process maps which describe the flows and boundaries of these partnerships with respect to screening, assessment and referral to treatment.

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Purpose: To evaluate the clinical utility of the ambulatory electroencephalogram (AEEG) in children.

Method: Data from 199 consecutive referrals for a paediatric AEEG were reviewed retrospectively. Information was gathered on various aspects of the referral process, the characteristics of the children referred and the reasons for referral.

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Racial differences in drinking motives, protective behavioral strategies (PBSs), alcohol consumption, and alcohol-related problems were examined among college student drinkers (N = 443: 296 [66.8%] White, 147 [33.3%] Black).

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Decades of research have established that experience of abuse and/or neglect in childhood is related to negative outcomes, such as juvenile delinquency. Existing research has shown that involvement in child welfare services is also related to juvenile delinquency, particularly for children who are victims of neglect. Research has also identified educational factors such as chronic absenteeism as significant predictors of involvement in the juvenile justice system.

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The Juvenile Justice (JJ) system has a number of local behavioral health service community linkages for substance abuse, mental health, and HIV services. However, there have only been a few systemic studies that examine and seek to improve these community behavioral health linkages for justice-involved youth. Implementation research is a way of identifying, testing, and understanding effective strategies for translating evidence-based treatment and prevention approaches into service delivery.

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Ample evidence exists in support of the influence of media, both traditional and electronic, on perceptions and engagement with alcohol marketing. We describe the development, calibration, and evidence for technical quality and utility for a new measure, the Alcohol Marketing Engagement Scale. Using two samples of college undergraduates (n1 = 199, n2 = 732), we collected field test responses to a total of 13 items.

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Overview: Substance use and substance use disorders are highly prevalent among youth under juvenile justice (JJ) supervision, and related to delinquency, psychopathology, social problems, risky sex and sexually transmitted infections, and health problems. However, numerous gaps exist in the identification of behavioral health (BH) problems and in the subsequent referral, initiation and retention in treatment for youth in community justice settings. This reflects both organizational and systems factors, including coordination between justice and BH agencies.

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We used responses of two large samples of court-ordered participants from a statewide alcohol/driving safety program to investigate factor structure, score reliability, and criterion-related validity of the Short Inventory of Problems (SIP). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, using both item-level and subscore-level data, support a one-factor structure for the SIP. Internal consistency score reliability estimates were consistent across samples and high enough to warrant use for making decisions about individuals.

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This study examines the impact of abuse trauma (physical and sexual) on alcohol and drug use of high-risk girls (12-18 years of age) who were surveyed within the first two weeks of their incarceration. One-way ANOVA analyses and Tukey post-hoc tests indicate physical abuse with a weapon was associated with higher marijuana use and number of drugs used. Sexual abuse, especially within the past year increased marijuana use, alcohol use, number of drugs used, and alcohol and other drug (AOD) problems.

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Background: Multi-component impaired driving interventions can reduce driving under the influence (DUI) recidivism rates; however, outcomes are better for those who complete the interventions and are adherent with program expectations. Research is needed to examine the differences between DUI offenders who are adherent vs. non-adherent to intervention efforts.

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