Safe Circular Food Systems: A Transdisciplinary Approach to Identify Emergent Risks in Food Waste Nutrient Cycling.

With growing awareness of the environmental, economic, and social costs associated with food waste, there is a concerted effort on multiple scales to recover the nutrient value of discarded food. These developments are positive, but the rapid movement toward alternatives and the complexity of solving problems located at the intersection of economic, social, and environmental systems also have the potential to produce unanticipated risks. This paper draws upon long-term stakeholder-engaged research throughout New England, with a focus on Maine, to develop a transdisciplinary, systems-based model of the potential social, economic, and environmental risks of food waste nutrient cycling.

Public psychology: Introduction to the special issue.

Psychology's role in public life and social issues has been of longstanding concern throughout the discipline. In a historical moment of tremendous social, political, and economic strife and a global pandemic, this special issue of American Psychologist seeks to extend important discourse about the concept of public psychology. The articles included in the special issue address a range of interconnected themes, including: (a) centering social problems, (b) engaging diverse publics in knowledge creation, (c) communicating and democratizing psychological knowledge, and (d) rethinking what constitutes psychology.

Defining drinking water metal contaminant mixture risk by coupling zebrafish behavioral analysis with citizen science.

Contaminated drinking water is an important public health consideration in New England where well water is often found to contain arsenic and other metals such as cadmium, lead, and uranium. Chronic or high level exposure to these metals have been associated with multiple acute and chronic diseases, including cancers and impaired neurological development. While individual metal levels are often regulated, adverse health effects of metal mixtures, especially at concentrations considered safe for human consumption remain unclear.

Localism "Reimagined": Building a Robust Localist Paradigm for Overcoming Emerging Conservation Challenges.

Governance gaps at both the federal and state level increasingly necessitate local action and remain a key driver of community-based solutions. A localist paradigm-encompassing models such as community-based management, citizen science, and cooperative research-offers a promising approach for bridging governance gaps by engaging citizens, co-producing knowledge, fostering trust, and developing innovative solutions to address complex conservation challenges. Yet, despite notable successes, significant barriers constrain widespread implementation of localist approaches.

Food insecurity among Cambodian refugee women two decades post resettlement.

Resettled refugees have high rates of chronic disease, which may be partially due to persistent food insecurity. This study describes food experiences on arrival in the U.S.

Acculturation, education, nutrition education, and household composition are related to dietary practices among Cambodian refugee women in Lowell, MA.

Refugees in the United States have higher rates of some chronic diseases than US-born residents or other first-generation immigrants. This may be partially a result of dietary practices in the United States. There is limited information about which factors are related to dietary practices in refugee populations, particularly those who have been in the United States for 10 to 20 years.

Community research in other contexts: learning from sustainability science.

In health research, community based participatory research (CBPR) has seen remarkable growth as an approach that overcomes many of the ethical concerns raised by traditional approaches. A community of CBPR scholars is now sharing ideas and devising new approaches to collaborative research. Yet, this is occurring in isolation from similar efforts using different nomenclature and occurring outside of health research areas.

Long-term development of a "whole community" best practice model to address health disparities in the Cambodian refugee and immigrant community of Lowell, Massachusetts.

Cambodians in Lowell, Massachusetts, experience significant health disparities. Understanding the trauma they have experienced in Cambodia and as refugees has been the starting point for Lowell Community Health Center's whole community approach to developing community-based interventions. This approach places physical-psychosocial-spiritual needs at the center of focus and is attentive to individual and institutional barriers to care.

Relationship between past food deprivation and current dietary practices and weight status among Cambodian refugee women in Lowell, MA.

Objectives: We investigated Cambodian refugee women's past food experiences and the relationship between those experiences and current food beliefs, dietary practices, and weight status.

Methods: Focus group participants (n = 11) described past food experiences and current health-related food beliefs and behaviors. We randomly selected survey participants (n = 133) from a comprehensive list of Cambodian households in Lowell, Massachusetts.

Explanatory models of asthma in the southeast asian community.

Purpose: To examine how two groups (parents and healthcare providers) perceive asthma in Southeast (SE) Asian children in the United States, and to address issues of access to asthma care.

Study Design And Methods: Using Kleinman's Explanatory Models (EM) approach, semistructured interviews were used with 12 families and 26 providers. Families were interviewed in a clinic setting.

Creating community-based participatory research in a diverse community: a case study.

Communities struggle to create research guidelines for ethical collaborative research within their locale. In Lawrence, Massachusetts (USA) a collaborative group of community members and academic researchers, known as the Mayor's Health Task Force Research Initiative Working Group, took on the challenge of creating guidelines for ethical community-based research. This case study of the Task Force's work addresses questions of research ethics in a diverse community where families struggle with few resources and face many health disparities, under the often-intrusive and unhelpful scrutiny of researchers from the many nearby major research universities.

Community-university partnerships: achieving the promise in the face of changing goals, changing funding patterns, and competing priorities.

An important challenge that community-university partnerships face is how to maintain themselves in the face of changing goals, priorities, and funding. Partnerships often form as a result of some sort of "spark:" an incident, perhaps, or the identification of a shared need or common concern. Often, external funding is sought to provide the majority of resources for the establishment of a partnership and for the implementation of the partnership's action plan.

Building on the strengths of a Cambodian refugee community through community-based outreach.

Literature and practice are limited on strategies to reach elder Southeast Asian refugees by using their strengths and resilience. This article presents the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention-funded Cambodian Community Health 2010 Program in Lowell, Massachusetts, as a case example and provides refugee history, project background, community survey results about strengths and risks, literature on strengths-based approaches, outreach activities, and evaluation. The focus is elimination of health disparities in cardiovascular disease and diabetes.

What do regions want?: A case study of university-community relations.

We hear more and more about the necessity of "sustainable regional development" as an alternative to and defense against globalization. While we certainly agree with this notion, we ask what might prevent it from becoming yet another "top-down" development scheme with good intentions but dubious results. We would argue that no road to development is sustainable if it is not deeply democratic and reliant on an informed, concerned public; the expressed needs of the public must be an essential aspect of regional development.