"Why wasn't I doing this before?": Changed school social work practice in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The American education system has been significantly disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which led schools to shut down and convert to remote learning environments in spring 2020. However, long before these school closures, school social workers (SSWs) have faced significant practice dilemmas, as they have encountered obstacles to their engagement in best practices. While initial pandemic school closures presented SSWs with a range of uncertain situations, they also provided the possibility to respond to practice demands in different and dynamic ways.

The Creators' Game: A Conduit for Youth Development, Community Engagement, and American Indian Cultural Connections.

The Nebraska Panhandle Creators' Game event (CG) was a grassroots-driven community engagement project for the Nebraska Panhandle region, a largely rural region with a vibrant American Indian (AI) population. The CG event explored the role social workers can play in leveraging a youth sport (lacrosse) as a convening platform for public health messaging and to embrace the fundamental fact that the AI people live with an intimate connection to their community, the land, and their people. This connection is pivotal for self-directed change in communities that actively comingle with American Indian people.

Effective Practices in the Treatment of Trauma in Children and Adolescents: From Guidelines to Organizational Practices.

Exposure to traumatic events happens at an alarming rate for children and adolescents in the United States. If left unaddressed, these youth have a high risk of growing up with additional health and mental health problems. In this article the authors review three key aspects of helping youth heal from the symptoms of experiencing a traumatic event; (1) recommended guidelines, (2) specific treatments, and (3) the Trauma-Informed Care Framework.

GIS as a community engagement tool: developing a plan to reduce infant mortality risk factors.

This article describes how a community coalition focusing on maternal and child health engages community participation through the use of geographic information systems (GIS) mapping, developing strategies that culminate in the implementation of a service delivery plan to improve birth outcomes. Vital statistics data from 2007 to 2009 was analyzed by zip code in Pinellas County Florida to produce choropleth thematic maps using ArcGIS for 3 year rolling average infant deaths and single year percentages for prematurity. The maps were presented at the organization's annual coalition meeting to discuss risk areas, changes over time in the selected indicators and solicit community feedback on how to best target issues addressing infant mortality and prematurity.

Identifying the necessary and sufficient number of risk factors for predicting academic failure.

Identifying the point at which individuals become at risk for academic failure (grade point average [GPA] < 2.0) involves an understanding of which and how many factors contribute to poor outcomes. School-related factors appear to be among the many factors that significantly impact academic success or failure.