Publications by authors named "Leff S"

Many racial-ethnic minoritized individuals are repeatedly exposed to subtle actions reflecting racial slights, termed racial microaggressions (RMAs), which are associated with adjustment problems in early adult and adult populations. Early adolescence represents a unique developmental period when minoritized youth begin their racial-ethnic identity exploration and are subjected to stereotypes and prejudice, thereby making them vulnerable to RMAs. Based upon the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses checklist, a systematic literature search, screening and review of RMA literature focusing on high schoolers and younger youth was conducted and yielded 54 publications.

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Peer victimization can be detrimental to youth. This study examines a particular type of peer victimization, relational peer victimization, and its effect on students' engagement in the classroom. We specifically investigate the longitudinal relationship between relational peer victimization and academic engagement in a sample of 204 Black 3rd through 5th grade elementary school students by utilizing multiple informants: students and their parents reported on relational peer victimization, and teachers reported on students' academic engagement.

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Understanding when it is the appropriate time to stop administering the drugs in a chemotherapy-centered treatment program such as onchocerciasis remains a challenge due to cost, imperfect testing procedures, and a lack of long-term experience. Different approaches for assessing when a program can begin the extensive stop-treatment surveys have been recommended, and tested, with varying results. We describe here a practical approach that is based on information on both transmission as well as infection.

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Relational aggression is characterized by attempts to damage another's relationships or social status and is a major concern affecting academic, socioemotional, behavioral, and health outcomes, particularly for urban, minority youth. Teachers and peers frequently disagree about which students are relationally aggressive. Factors associated with peer and teacher discordant and concordant identification of relationally aggressive students were explored including prosocial behavior, perceived popularity, academic competence, and gender.

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There is currently limited research on the relation between forms of empathy and subsequent cyberbullying in middle childhood, a stage in which cyberbullying behaviors are likely to develop. The purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which affective empathy (experiencing someone else's emotions) and cognitive empathy (perspective-taking) predicted subsequent cyberbullying perpetration in middle childhood. Participants were 105 fourth-and fifth-grade students from two urban elementary schools ( = 9.

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Cells sense a wide variety of signals and respond by adopting complex transcriptional states. Most single-cell profiling is carried out today at cellular baseline, blind to cells' potential spectrum of functional responses. Exploring the space of cellular responses experimentally requires access to a large combinatorial perturbation space.

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The Preventing Relational Aggression in Schools Everyday (PRAISE) Program is a school-based program that has shown promise for reducing aggression. PRAISE, 20-session classroom-based universal prevention program, was designed to be appropriate and responsive to the needs of youth within the urban school context. A preliminary trial of PRAISE evinced positive effects for girls but was less effective for boys.

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Peer bullying occurs frequently among middle school youth, negatively impacting students and the broader school climate. However, during these years there is a gap in translating empirically supported prevention science into school-based practices. This paper describes how the evidence-based Free2B bullying prevention multi-media assembly was disseminated by a team of educators, researchers, and technologists to over 14,000 students in 40 middle schools across the state.

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Despite research emphasizing the importance of parents in addressing children's bullying perpetration, there has been little prior research that explored how parental knowledge, particularly from child-initiated disclosure of their daily behaviors and experiences, may impact the child's overt, relational, and cyberbullying perpetration longitudinally. The current study examined the longitudinal relations between parent-reported child disclosure and the child's overt, relational, and cyberbullying perpetration, and the roles of parent-teacher connection in moderating the relations. This study utilized data gathered from 110 fourth to 5th grade children (M age = 10.

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Objective: The objective of the current article is to highlight an example of a new paradigm, . The manuscript describes how educational researchers and technologists worked together to develop a multi-media bullying prevention experience, called Free2B for middle school students paying particular attention to ensure that the programming was not only relevant to all students but also was appealing and responsive to the needs of urban youth. Bullying is the most common form of aggression experienced among school-aged youth, which impairs students' learning and social-emotional functioning and has financial costs to society.

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Peer report of aggression has typically been obtained through peer nominations. The purpose of this study was to identify the extent to which peer nominations and peer ratings identified the same children as aggressive and to explore whether the two methods were equally accurate in identifying children at risk for poor social adjustment. Participants were 1051 students in third, fourth, or fifth grade and were predominantly African American (76.

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Bone marrow stromal cells (BMSCs) include a subset of stem cells that are considered promising for developmental studies and therapeutic applications. While it is appreciated generally that BMSC populations can exhibit morphological and functional heterogeneity upon in vitro culture expansion, the potential for heterogeneity within a single colony forming unit-generated ostensibly from a single mother cell-is less explored but is critical to design of both fundamental studies and cell therapy production. Here we observed BMSC colony formation in real time via time lapsed optical imaging and analysis, to quantify whether and how heterogeneity emerged over multiple cell divisions spanning the duration of a typical colony formation unit assay.

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This study examined the efficacy of the Juvenile Justice Anger Management (JJAM) Treatment for Girls, an anger management and aggression reduction treatment designed to meet the unique needs of adolescent girls in residential juvenile justice facilities. This randomized controlled trial of JJAM compared changes in levels of anger and aggression among girls who participated in the JJAM treatment with those of girls who participated in treatment as usual (TAU) at the facilities. This study also investigated the theoretical model underlying the JJAM treatment, which proposed that reductions in hostile attribution biases, development of emotion regulation skills, and improvement in social problem solving would serve as mechanisms of action in JJAM.

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Background: The purpose of this study was to identify injunctive norms for cyberbullying prevention among youths, parents, and primary care providers, as well as barriers to preventive behaviours.

Methods: Semi-structured interviews on the topic of cyberbullying were conducted with 29 adolescents, 13 paediatricians, and 15 parents recruited from 3 primary care sites. Transcripts were coded for themes related to various stakeholders' perceived roles in cyberbullying prevention and barriers to preventive behaviours.

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Unlike the overt nature of physical aggression, which lends itself to simpler and more direct methods of investigation, the often-masked nature of relational aggression has led to difficulties and debate regarding the most effective tools of study. Given concerns with the accuracy of third-party relational aggression reports, especially as individuals age, self-report measures may be particularly useful when assessing experiences with relational aggression. However, it is important to recognize validity concerns-in particular, the potential effects of item order presentation-associated with self-report of relational aggression perpetration and victimization.

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Objectives: To explore the programmatic reach and experience of high-need adolescents who received sexual health education in 3 distinct implementation settings (targeted-prevention settings, traditional schools, and alternative schools) through a statewide sexual health education program.

Methods: Data are from youth surveys collected between September 2013 and December 2014 in the California Personal Responsibility Education Program. A sample of high-need participants (n = 747) provided data to examine the impact of implementation setting on reach and program experience.

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Girls often harm others' social standing by starting rumors about peers or by excluding others from peer group activities, which is called relational aggression. Although relational aggression is not a new phenomenon, there have been relatively few interventions designed to address this, especially for urban ethnic minority girls. The Friend to Friend (F2F) program, developed through an iterative participatory action research process, has proven to be effective in improving targeted relationally aggressive urban girls' social problem-solving knowledge and decreasing levels of relational aggression, with effects being maintained 1 year after treatment.

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Background: Although the partnership between academic researchers and community members is paramount to community-based research efforts, a limited number of measures exist to evaluate this construct. Of those in existence, no assessment measures include a comprehensive coverage of the many dimensions of partnerships. In addition, these measures were not designed through an extensive community-based participatory research (CBPR) model, in which the strengths of traditional assessment techniques were integrated with input from stakeholders.

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Pediatric health care networks serve millions of children each year. Pediatric illness and injury are among the most common potentially emotionally traumatic experiences for children and their families. In addition, millions of children who present for medical care (including well visits) have been exposed to prior traumatic events, such as violence or natural disasters.

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Objective: To determine the effectiveness of the Friend to Friend (F2F) aggression intervention through a clinical trial with urban African American girls.

Method: A randomized parallel-group study design was conducted comparing the effectiveness of F2F to an attention control condition (called Homework Study Skills and Organization, HSO) among relationally aggressive girls from six urban low-income elementary schools. Analyses of covariance were utilized for comparing post-test measurement between the two conditions while adjusting for pre-test measurement.

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Objective: The authors evaluated the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's mental health transformation state incentive grant program, which provided more than $100 million to nine states to make infrastructure changes designed to improve services and outcomes.

Methods: The authors measured infrastructure changes, service changes, and consumer outcomes in the nine programs. Although the federal program had no logic model, the authors adopted a model that hypothesized positive, but small, correlations between the program elements.

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Background: Insufficient evidence exists to support obesity prevention in paediatric primary care.

Objectives: To test a theory-based behaviour modification intervention delivered by trained paediatric primary care providers for obesity prevention.

Methods: Efficacy trial with cluster randomization (practice level) and a 12-session 12-month sweetened beverages decrease intervention or a comprehensive dietary and physical activity intervention, compared with a control intervention among children ages 8-12 years.

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Despite considerable fiscal and structural support for youth service programs, research has not demonstrated consistent outcomes across participants or programs, suggesting the need to identify critical program processes. The present study addresses this need through preliminary examination of the role of program empowerment in promoting positive identity development in inner-city, African American youth participating in a pilot school-based service program. Results suggest that participants who experienced the program as empowering experienced increases in self-efficacy, sense of civic responsibility, and ethnic identity, over and above general engagement and enjoyment of the program.

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