The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is increasingly prioritizing research on health-promoting processes. Park et al. (this issue) respond to a call made by NIH to advance the study of emotional well-being (EWB) and to increase understanding of the fundamental constituents of EWB across the lifespan and among diverse subgroups.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The National Institutes of Health Science of Behavior Change Common Fund Program has accelerated the investigation of mechanisms of behavior change applicable to multiple health behaviors and outcomes and facilitated the use of the experimental medicine approach to behavior change research.
Purpose: This commentary provides a brief background of the program, plans for its next phase, and thoughts about how the experimental medicine approach to behavior change research can inform future directions in two areas of science-reproductive health and COVID-19 vaccine uptake.
Conclusions: The incorporation of a mechanisms-based approach into behavior intervention research offers new opportunities for improving health.
Maternal mortality and severe maternal morbidity are urgent issues in the United States. It is important to establish priority areas to address these public health crises. On April 8, 2019, and May 2 to 3, 2019, the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development organized and invited experts with varied perspectives to 2 meetings, a community engagement forum and a scientific workshop, to discuss underlying themes involved in the rising incidence of maternal mortality in the United States.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To estimate the prevalence of unintended pregnancies under relaxed assumptions regarding birth control use compared with a traditional constructed measure.
Design: Cross-sectional survey.
Setting: Not applicable.
Using daily diary data, this study examined the associations between positive and negative parent-youth experiences and youth cortisol and physical health symptoms among a sample of adolescents (=132, Mean Age = 13.39). On days when girls reported more negative experiences than usual, they exhibited more physical health symptoms and flatter evening cortisol slopes than usual.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis study tested whether effects of a workplace intervention, aimed at promoting employees' schedule control and supervisor support for personal and family life, had implications for parent-adolescent relationships; we also tested whether parent-child relationships differed as a function of how many intervention program sessions participants attended. Data came from a group randomized trial of a workplace intervention, delivered in the information technology division of a Fortune 500 company. Analyses focused on 125 parent-adolescent dyads that completed baseline and 12-month follow-up home interviews.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUsing a group-randomized field experimental design, this study tested whether a workplace intervention-designed to reduce work-family conflict-buffered against potential age-related decreases in the affective well-being of employees' children. Daily diary data were collected from 9- to 17-year-old children of parents working in an information technology division of a U.S.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnderstanding the multilevel and bidirectional factors and basic mechanisms linking psychosocial stress, sleep, and their interactions to health outcomes is critical to building successful interventions and promoting population health. We report here on the first gathering of the National Institutes of Health Basic Behavioral and Social Sciences Research Opportunity Network grant recipients in the separate but interrelated topics of psychosocial stress and sleep. The meeting provided an opportunity for investigators to present their research methods and discuss emerging findings, gain insight into new research directions, and form innovative collaborations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To study national-level trends in assisted reproduction technology (ART) treatments and outcomes as well as the characteristics of women who have sought this form of infertility treatment.
Design: Population-based study.
Setting: Not applicable.
This study examined feelings of having enough time (i.e., perceived time adequacy) in a sample of employed parents (N = 880) in information technology and extended-care industries.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: In the context of a group randomized field trial, we evaluated whether parents who participated in a workplace intervention, designed to increase supervisor support for personal and family life and schedule control, reported significantly more daily time with their children at the 12-month follow-up compared with parents assigned to the Usual Practice group. We also tested whether the intervention effect was moderated by parent gender, child gender, or child age.
Methods: The Support-Transform-Achieve-Results Intervention was delivered in an information technology division of a US Fortune 500 company.
Schedule control and supervisor support for family and personal life are work resources that may help employees manage the work-family interface. However, existing data and designs have made it difficult to conclusively identify the effects of these work resources. This analysis utilizes a group-randomized trial in which some units in an information technology workplace were randomly assigned to participate in an initiative, called STAR, that targeted work practices, interactions, and expectations by (a) training supervisors on the value of demonstrating support for employees' personal lives and (b) prompting employees to reconsider when and where they work.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRecognizing a need for rigorous, experimental research to support the efforts of workplaces and policymakers in improving the health and wellbeing of employees and their families, the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention formed the Work, Family & Health Network (WFHN). The WFHN is implementing an innovative multisite study with a rigorous experimental design (adaptive randomization, control groups), comprehensive multilevel measures, a novel and theoretically based intervention targeting the psychosocial work environment, and translational activities. This paper describes challenges and benefits of designing a multilevel and transdisciplinary research network that includes an effectiveness study to assess intervention effects on employees, families, and managers; a daily diary study to examine effects on family functioning and daily stress; a process study to understand intervention implementation; and translational research to understand and inform diffusion of innovation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To estimate the prevalence of infertility using a current duration approach for comparison with a traditional constructed measure.
Design: Cross-sectional survey.
Setting: Not applicable.
The absolute size of the foreign-born U.S. population is at a historical high, but neither the share of the population that is foreign born nor the share of children in immigrant families is high compared with the beginning of the 20th century.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFResearchers in psychology have focused a great deal of attention on the potential greater predisposition to achievement among first-born children relative to their siblings. Focusing on the United States as an example, a time series of the first birth ratio is used to show how the changing prevalence of first births relative to higher order births has altered the composition of birth cohorts, and the ratio is decomposed into four factors. Results show that the ratio increased significantly in the 1960s and early 1970s, but changed only slightly in the following decades.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFResearch thus far on the psychological consequences of impaired fecundity in developed countries has relied heavily on clinic-based samples. This study uses a nationally representative sample of American women regardless of fecundity status or treatment status. I analyze reports of fecundity status and anxiety from a 1995 sample of almost 11,000 respondents.
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