A cluster randomized trial of an organizational linkage intervention for offenders with substance use disorders: study protocol.

Background: Substance use disorders are highly prevalent in community correctional populations, yet these settings frequently are ill-equipped to identify and refer offenders to community-based treatment services. In particular, community corrections staff are often opposed to the use of medication in addiction treatment because of inadequate knowledge, resources, and organizational structures to facilitate client linkages to evidence-based services.

Methods/design: Each of the NIDA-funded Research Centers recruited 2 criminal justice agencies to participate in the study.

Pathways to posttraumatic growth versus posttraumatic stress: coping and emotional reactions following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Exposure to trauma can lead to both posttraumatic growth and posttraumatic stress, but little is known about the commonalities and differences in the pathways through which they occur. The authors examined coping and emotional reactions as mediators of the effect of television exposure on both posttraumatic growth and posttraumatic stress in a nationally representative sample of 1,004 U.S.

Positive and negative health behavior changes in cancer survivors: a stress and coping perspective.

Cancer survivors often make health behavior changes in response to their increased risk for subsequent health problems. However, little is known about the mechanisms underlying these changes or whether they differ for positive and negative changes. This cross-sectional study applied a stress and coping model to examine both positive and negative health behavior changes in 250 middle-aged cancer survivors.

Meaning making and psychological adjustment following cancer: the mediating roles of growth, life meaning, and restored just-world beliefs.

Cancer survivors' efforts at meaning making may influence the extent to which they successfully make meaning from their experience (i.e., experience posttraumatic growth, find life meaningful, and restore beliefs in a just world), which may, in turn, influence their psychological adjustment.

Deconstructing spiritual well-being: existential well-being and HRQOL in cancer survivors.

We demonstrate the utility of partitioning the spiritual well-being (SpWB) construct into spiritual and religious components using results from a study of the relationship of existential well-being to health-related quality of life (HRQOL) in a sample of 237 cancer survivors. Existential and religious well-being were measured using the FACIT-Sp-12 and HRQOL was measured using the mental and physical component scores of the SF-12. In hierarchical linear regression analyses, existential well-being fully mediated religious well-being's effect on HRQOL and explained unique variance in both the mental and physical HRQOL domains, controlling for demographic, disease, and psychosocial variables previously shown to impact HRQOL.

Risk factors for hospitalization among Medicare home care patients.

This study determined factors associated with an increased risk of ending Medicare home health care because of hospitalization and examined specific types of and reasons for hospitalization. Sample members (N = 922) were followed from admission to discharge as they received home care from Ohio Medicare-certified home care agencies between December 1999 and March 2002. Potential patient-level risk factors were predisposing, enabling, or need variables, and an agency-level variable denoting hospital affiliation or free-standing status was examined as a second-level risk factor.

Medicare and Medicaid home health and Medicaid waiver services for dually eligible older adults: risk factors for use and correlates of expenditures.

Purpose: The purpose of this work was to, among frail dually eligible older adults, determine risk factors for the likelihood of using Medicare home health and Medicaid home health services and to, among service users, determine correlates of Medicare home health, Medicaid home health, and Medicaid waiver service expenditures.

Design And Methods: Dually eligible individuals enrolled in Connecticut's Medicaid home- and community-based services (HCBS) waiver program for the aged (N = 5,232) were identified from a statewide database containing person-level linked data from Medicare claims, Medicaid claims, and uniform clinical assessment forms. Expenditures, based on claims data, were observed from the month following clinical assessment over the period August 1995 to December 1997.

Strategies for enrolling diverse older women in an osteoporosis trial.

Objectives: This study reviewed a consumer-oriented process for recruiting research volunteers age 65 or older for an osteoporosis clinical trial.

Methods: Odds ratios were used to estimate the relative importance of methods to enroll research volunteers from three racial or ethnic groups.

Results: Nine hundred and four women were screened; 168 African American, White, and Hispanic women enrolled.