Kind discipline: Developing a conceptual model of a promising school discipline approach.

This formative evaluation develops a novel conceptual model for a discipline approach fostering intrinsic motivation and positive relationships in schools. We used concept mapping to elicit and integrate perspectives on kind discipline from teachers, administrators, and other school staff. Three core themes describing kind discipline emerged from 11 identified clusters: (1) proactively developing a positive school climate, (2) responding to conflict with empathy, accountability, and skill, and (3) supporting staff skills in understanding and sharing expectations.

Studying the teaching of kindness: A conceptual model for evaluating kindness education programs in schools.

Recent research suggests that school-based kindness education programs may benefit the learning and social-emotional development of youth and may improve school climate and school safety outcomes. However, how and to what extent kindness education programming influences positive outcomes in schools is poorly understood, and such programs are difficult to evaluate in the absence of a conceptual model for studying their effectiveness. In partnership with Kind Campus, a widely adopted school-based kindness education program that uses a bottom-up program framework, a methodology called concept mapping was used to develop a conceptual model for evaluating school-based kindness education programs from the input of 123 middle school students and approximately 150 educators, school professionals, and academic scholars.

Promoting Physical Activity With the Out of School Nutrition and Physical Activity (OSNAP) Initiative: A Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial.

Importance: Millions of children attend after-school programs in the United States. Increasing physical activity levels of program participants could have a broad effect on children's health.

Objective: To test the effectiveness of the Out of School Nutrition and Physical Activity (OSNAP) Initiative in increasing children's physical activity levels in existing after-school programs.

Childhood self-regulatory skills predict adolescent smoking behavior.

Cigarette smoking is the primary preventable cause of premature death. Better self-regulatory capacity is a key psychosocial factor that has been linked with reduced likelihood of tobacco use. Studies point to the importance of multiple forms of self-regulation, in the domains of emotion, attention, behavior, and social regulation, although no work has evaluated all of these domains in a single prospective study.

Validity of a practitioner-administered observational tool to measure physical activity, nutrition, and screen time in school-age programs.

Background: Nutrition and physical activity interventions have been effective in creating environmental changes in afterschool programs. However, accurate assessment can be time-consuming and expensive as initiatives are scaled up for optimal population impact. This study aims to determine the criterion validity of a simple, low-cost, practitioner-administered observational measure of afterschool physical activity, nutrition, and screen time practices and child behaviors.

Improving nutrition and physical activity policies in afterschool programs: results from a group-randomized controlled trial.

Objective: Afterschool programs can be health-promoting environments for children. Written policies positively influence nutrition and physical activity (PA) environments, but effective strategies for building staff capacity to write such policies have not been evaluated. This study measures the comprehensiveness of written nutrition, PA, and screen time policies in afterschool programs and assesses impact of the Out of School Nutrition and Physical Activity (OSNAP) intervention on key policies.

Material resources and population health: disadvantages in health care, housing, and food among adults over 50 years of age.

Objectives: We examined associations between material resources and late-life declines in health.

Methods: We used logistic regression to estimate the odds of declines in self-rated health and incident walking limitations associated with material disadvantages in a prospective panel representative of US adults aged 51 years and older (N = 15,441).

Results: Disadvantages in health care (odds ratio [OR] = 1.