When "Immersive" Learning Goes Remote: Interdisciplinary Lessons Learned in a Pandemic.

Background: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, health professional training programs made substantial changes to shift previously in-person student training opportunities to remote settings.

Objectives: We present lessons learned from changes made to one community-engaged internship program, Bridging the Gaps (BTG)-Pittsburgh, that should prove helpful in future times of crisis.

Methods: BTG-Pittsburgh places inter-disciplinary graduate pairs of students in community-based organizations that serve marginalized populations, to work directly with program participants and develop tangible products aimed to build organizational capacity.

The Power of Tailoring a Government-Funded Heart Health Program for Marginalized Women: Lessons from WISEWOMAN and Mujer Poderosa/Powerful Woman.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's DP18-1816 Well-Integrated Screening and Evaluation for Women Across the Nation (WISEWOMAN) award to the Pennsylvania Department of Health combats the leading cause of death in Pennsylvania, cardiovascular disease. Pennsylvania's program (PA-WISE) includes an innovative approach to engage low-income women in cardiovascular disease prevention. PA-WISE collaborated with Latino Connection to pilot Mujer Poderosa/Powerful Woman (MP/PW), utilizing bilingual community health workers to engage, educate, and empower marginalized women to improve their health.

Critical Lessons in Tailoring Interventions: Listening to WISEWOMAN Participants.

Purpose: To explore perspectives of participants in the WISEWOMAN program in Pennsylvania (PA-WISE) on challenges and facilitators of reducing cardiovascular disease risk as low-income and un-/under-insured middle-aged women.

Approach: Researchers conducted this 2 year qualitative data collection as one component of a broader, 5 year PA-WISE process and outcome evaluation.

Setting: Women from across Pennsylvania, primarily from rural communities.

Developing Community-Based Mentorship: Supporting Health Science Training in Historically Marginalized Communities.

Community mentors can play a unique and critical role in developing and supporting graduate and health professional student learning in underresourced community-based settings. These mentors can benefit from extra preparation for a potentially unfamiliar role as teachers about complex social and structural challenges faced by the populations with which they work. Encouraging mentors to recognize and share their valuable expertise while developing their teaching skills can (1) improve mentors' abilities to work effectively with graduate-level and health science students from multiple disciplines, (2) bolster student learning about important historical social and structural determinants of participants' health, and (3) help students understand the broader context within which organizations serving vulnerable populations operate.

Changes Over Time in Disparities in Health Behaviors and Outcomes by Race in Allegheny County: 2009 to 2015.

Racial/ethnic disparities in health behaviors and disease outcomes on the national level have persisted over time despite overall improvements in public health. To better understand the changes over time in racial/ethnic health disparities at the county level, we examined the Allegheny County Health Survey (ACHS) for Pittsburgh, PA and the surrounding area, which was conducted in 2009/2010 and 2015/2016 using random digit dialing of residents aged 18 and older. The prevalence rates and rate ratios at each time period were calculated using survey weights and general linear models.

Experiences of Community Doulas Working with Low-Income, African American Mothers.

The aim of this study was to learn from doulas the components of their services that might best serve low-income, African American (AA) women and to show the significance of doulas in helping these women have healthy, positive, birth experiences. Ten doulas were recruited from a local community doula program and through word-of-mouth referrals from participants and completed in-depth interviews. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using Atlas.

Shifting the Paradigm from Child Neglect to Meeting the Needs of Children: A Qualitative Exploration of Parents' Perspectives.

Substantiated reports of child neglect account for three times the combined total of physical and sexual abuse in the United States, yet there is a relative paucity of literature on child neglect differentiated from abuse. This study explores parent perspectives on the challenges of meeting the needs of children in poverty as a way of reframing our understanding of child neglect, revealing dynamics that can be lost to researchers. Analysis of six focus groups of 54 parents, living at or below the poverty level, revealed tensions between environmental challenges and parents' efforts to meet their children's needs.

The 6-step model for community empowerment: revisited in public housing communities for low-income senior citizens.

The 6-step community empowerment model was replicated in communities with different geographical, racial, and age backgrounds from the original application. Resident groups of Blue Ribbon Health Panels (BRHPs) in federally funded senior housing in Pennsylvania followed the 6 steps to identify community health issues, to develop strategies to address priority issues, and to implement the strategies in collaboration with partner agencies. The 6-step model served as an operationalization strategy of community empowerment by facilitating quick accomplishments of communities' desired outcomes, legitimizing and motivating BRHP efforts.