Disability perspectives on health care planning and decision-making.

Despite the needs for people with disabilities to plan for times of serious illness in order to receive good end-of-life care and to have their wishes respected, this community has often been overlooked in the extensive research, programs, and policies regarding advance care planning and palliative care. This article reviews the literature addressing the significance of disability on health care decision-making, advance care planning, and end-of-life care. Special attention is provided to assessing the life values or preferences of persons with intellectual disability with limited decisional capacity.

Ashley's case: the ethics of arresting the growth of children with serious disability.

This article analyzes the justifications and ethics of attenuating the growth of children with serious disability. It considers the case of Ashley, a child with profound developmental and cognitive disabilities whose growth was attenuated through high-dose estrogen treatment and surgery. The goals of Ashley's parents and physicians were to keep her small, thereby making it easier for her parents to care for her at home.

Lesbian and gay elders and long-term care: identifying the unique psychosocial perspectives and challenges.

This qualitative study of lesbian and gay elders seeks to identify the psychosocial challenges this community faces regarding long-term care. Two focus groups were conducted among 16 gay elders in community and long-term care settings. Participants reported fear of being rejected or neglected by healthcare providers, particularly personal care aides; fear of not being accepted and respected by other residents; fear of having to go back into the closet if placed in long-term care; and a preference for gay-friendly care.

The value of the presence of social work in emergency departments.

The value of the presence of social work in emergency rooms is supported by directly examining the hospitalization rates of patients seen by social workers. It utilizes a 3-year-long data set of social work self-reports on medical emergency room outcomes at a large, teaching hospital in the New York Metropolitan area with a sample size of 3370. The study findings suggest that social workers in this acute care hospital's emergency room often are referred the most complex cases.

The relationship between school-based health centers and the learning environment.

Background: School-based health centers (SBHCs) have improved access to primary and preventive health care for underserved children and youth by bringing comprehensive health services into the schools while addressing critical health problems that make it difficult for students to learn. Despite the findings on the positive effects of SBHCs on health outcomes, the literature investigating the relationship between SBHCs and the learning environment is scant. This purpose of this study is to add to the literature by investigating the correlation between SBHCs and perceptions of the overall school learning environment.

The role of intact family childhood on women's earnings capacity: implications for evidence-based practices.

This article examines the complexities of working with an evidence-based model to design intervention strategies benefiting individuals and families. It addresses the question, to what extent should the evidence of economic advantage for female children raised in two-parent families influence social work support for practices and policies that encourage marriage? The article reviews current research findings indicating benefits of two-parent families on children's well-being and contemporary policy prescriptions promoting marriage. It presents findings of the authors' study which considers the effects of being raised in an intact family on the economic future of young women.

HIV/AIDS prevention in New York City: identifying sociocultural needs of the community.

New York City has always been and remains at the epicenter of the country's AIDS epidemic, with more than 100,000 people living with HIV/AIDS. More than Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Miami combined (CDC, 2007b). Each year there may be as many as 4,800 people in New York City who are newly diagnosed with HIV and 1,700 who die from the disease (NYC Commission on HIV/AIDS, 2005; NYC AIDS Institute, 2006g).

Listening to the voices of children in foster care: youths speak out about child welfare workforce turnover and selection.

Child welfare workforce turnover rates across private and public child welfare agencies are concerning. Although research about the causes of child welfare workforce turnover has been plentiful, empirical studies on the effects of turnover on child outcomes are sparse. Furthermore, the voices and experiences of youths within the system have been largely overlooked.

How older Hispanic immigrants in New York City cope with current traumatic stressors: practice implications.

Older minority immigrant groups in the United States may be at increased risk for traumatic stress in an age of terrorism and of civil and political unrest. This exploratory study investigated how older Hispanic immigrants in New York City coped in response to current traumatic stressors, and whether they differed from a comparison group of older US-born non-Hispanics. We administered the Impact of Events Scale-Revised (IES-R) and the Brief COPE instruments to 24 older Hispanic immigrants and 15 older non-Hispanics, born in the United States, at 2 senior centers.

Social work in the Department of Defense hospital: impact, role, and interventions.

For the social worker in the Department of Defense hospital numerous challenges are faced and met while serving the nation's wounded. As an integral part of the multidisciplinary medical team, social workers perform vital services and function in diverse roles. The survey research reported in this article details some of the roles and functions performed by social workers, noting the impact, challenges, and rewards they identified when considering their work.

From hospital to nursing facility: factors influencing decisions.

This study addresses the factors influencing decisions to send medicine-surgical (med-surg) patients home or to nursing facilities (NFs). The sample (n = 7,852) was taken from a large, urban, teaching, med-surg unit where discharges were documented and data collected over a two-and-a-half-year period. Using logistical regression, the factors found to most influence the decision were age (z = 26.

Design teams: a promising organizational intervention for improving turnover rates in the child welfare workforce.

This purpose of this article is to describe results from a quasi-experimental study investigating the effects of an intervention designed to address organizational causes of turnover in public child welfare. Much of the previous research in this area has used proxy measures for turnover while the current study measures both worker intent to leave and actual turnover rates. This study adds to the knowledge base by (1) describing an organizational intervention aimed at addressing the organizational causes of turnover; (2) analyzing quantitative changes in actual turnover rates as well as organizational factors; and (3) analyzing supplemental qualitative data to provide a deeper understanding of the organizational changes that occurred through the course of the intervention.

Intentional seroconversion in the gay community: the social work role in assessment and intervention.

There is a reported increase of intentional seroconversion in the United States over the past several years in the gay community (Crossley, 2004; Trinufol, 2003). This article reports on a sample (n = 24) of men who identify their motivations behind their pursuit of seroconversion. Respondents were asked to identify what motivations were connected to their attempt to become seropositive.

Providing palliative care to people with intellectual disabilities: services, staff knowledge, and challenges.

People with intellectual disabilities require access to compassionate, quality, and effective palliative and end-of-life care when facing serious, life-limiting illness. This study was designed to document the degree to which hospice and palliative care services were provided to New Jersey residents with intellectual disabilities, and the challenges in providing this care. Surveys were designed to assess the provision of hospice and palliative care services to this population, staff knowledge and training needs, experiential and communication challenges, and financial concerns.

Evaluation research on social work interventions: a study on the impact of social worker staffing.

This study examined the impact of social worker staffing on depression and health-related quality of life (QOL) of end-stage renal disease patients on hemodialysis. Social workers in most dialysis units work a 5-day week. Patients are usually dialyzed three times per week.

Acting on our values: do social workers volunteer?

Volunteer activity among social workers is explored in this article. Anecdotal evidence suggests social workers are not major contributors of volunteer time. The overriding research questions of this descriptive-exploratory study are to what extent do social workers engage in volunteer activities, what factors influence their decisions to volunteer, and what are the types of activities in which they engage.

Should I stay or should I go? A comparison study of intention to leave among public child welfare systems with high and low turnover rates.

This comparison study analyzes the commonalties, similarities, and differences on supervisory and organizational factors between a group of high turnover systems and a group of low turnover systems. Significant differences on organizational factors, but not on supervisory factors, emerged from the statistical analysis. Additionally, this study found that low turnover is not necessarily predictive of a healthy organizational environment.

Increased wealth and income as correlates of self-assessed retirement.

This study examined whether retirement implies complete withdrawal from the labor force and the role that increased wealth and income play in regard to the nature of retirement. Data came from the Health & Retirement Study, Waves 1-5. Findings indicated that most study sample pre-retirees remained in the labor force as they moved into what are considered the normal retirement years.

Offering African Americans opportunities to participate in clinical trials research: how social workers can help.

Historically, African Americans have resisted participation in clinical trials and other research projects because of distrust of the mostly white research establishment. Although there are legitimate reasons for refusing to join clinical trials, most notably the abuses of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, African Americans may be passing up opportunities to obtain needed medications years before they reach the market. This article analyzes 29 empirical articles from medical and mental health journals for their findings on recruiting and maintaining African Americans in clinical trials.

Social work in Jewish community centers: a question of compatibility.

This article focuses on the Jewish community center JCC) as a host setting for social work practice. Findings of a national study of JCC professional staff designed to explore the degree of congruence between social work values and JCC practice are presented. The findings have implications for other sectarian and nonsectarian host settings providing similar types of services.

Prozac and crime: who is the victim?

Prozac has been cited in more medication defense criminal cases in the United States than has any other psychotropic drug. In the majority of these cases, defendants are arguing that they are the victims of the drug. Defendants assert that they are victimized by their own involuntary intoxication or that of witnesses and crime victims who have been adversely influenced by Prozac.