Publications by authors named "Sara Coffey"

Collaboration between the child welfare system and health care practitioners has become increasingly necessary in order to meet the often-significant health needs of system-involved youth. Child welfare medical directors and psychiatric medical directors have been implemented as a means to address this need in several state child welfare systems. Building on the core principles of the National Guidelines for Child and Youth Behavioral Health Crisis Care, medical and psychiatric medical directors can help ensure youth receive the least-restrictive, most appropriate level of behavioral health care; prioritizing care involvement with caregivers in community-based settings.

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Context: Racial inequalities across social determinants of health (SDOHs) are often influenced by discriminatory policies that reinforce systems that further uphold these disparities. There is limited data describing the influence of food insecurity (FI) on childhood racial discrimination.

Objectives: Our objective was to determine if the likelihood of experiencing racial discrimination was exacerbated by FI.

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Objectives: More than 15 million individuals receive home health care (HHC) for chronic conditions, which allows them to maintain a level of independence and self-sufficiency. Although poor mental health can negatively impact health outcomes, little research has been done on the mental health of these individuals.

Methods: Utilizing National Health Interview Survey years 2019-2022, we ran a cross-sectional analysis to determine rates of depression among individuals who indicated that they utilized HHC services, based on their sociodemographic statuses and diagnosis, as well as their rate of depression by condition whether they utilized HHC services.

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Context: Lack of access to food is a significant concern for child well-being, and it creates many health disparities and adverse social outcomes. Food insecurity and its many associated risk factors increase parental stress, which are strongly correlated with an increased risk of child abuse and maltreatment. Research now identifies being witness to domestic abuse as a form of child maltreatment, and exposure to violence in the community has been shown to result in similar long-term impacts.

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Objective: Individuals with developmental conditions, such as autism, experience stigma, which is reflected in derogatory language and labels. To limit stigma associated with disabilities, government agencies and medical organizations have adopted the use of person-centered language (PCL). This study investigated adherence to PCL guidelines among peer-reviewed research publications focused on autism.

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Background: Early life stress (ELS) has been linked to poor mental and physical health outcomes in adolescence and adulthood. Mindfulness reduces symptoms of depression and anxiety and improves cognitive and social outcomes in both youth and adults. However, little is known whether mindfulness can mitigate against the adverse neurobiological and psychological effects of ELS.

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Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has contributed to risk factors for child abuse and neglect and disrupted conventional abuse surveillance.

Objective: The goal of this study was to assess how counts of criminal charges have been affected by COVID-19 social distancing measures and related policy changes.

Participants And Setting: This study used publicly available court filings pertaining to child abuse and neglect from Jan 1, 2010 to June 30, 2020.

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Thunberg's increased media attention coupled with her diagnosis-Asperger Syndrome (AS)-may foster help-seeking behaviors among those with similar psychiatric disorders. Using Google Trends data, we compared values of AS from the week of the UN Climate Summit through the end of the year compared to an ARIMA model predicting search interest had Thunberg not been in the media. The search trend for AS at peak was 254.

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Objective: This study examined mental health service use outcomes for children receiving integrated care via a collaborative-practice model (CPM). The study hypothesis was that the delivery of intensively integrated clinical care within pediatrics, combined with community-based parent support from family support specialists (FSSs), would facilitate mental health or substance use disorder treatment access and engagement for youths at risk of experiencing disparities.

Methods: The study sample consisted of 228 children referred by pediatricians for outpatient child psychiatry evaluation within an urban safety-net hospital system in 2013.

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There is a consistent need for more child and adolescent psychiatrists. Despite increased recruitment of child and adolescent psychiatry trainees, traditional models of care will likely not be able to meet the need of youth with mental illness. Integrated care models focusing on population-based, team-based, measurement-based, and evidenced-based care have been effective in addressing accessibility and quality of care.

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