Social Work in Public Health最新文献

This study aimed to examine the impact of Africentric ethnic identity on the relationship between gender and poor neighborhood air quality. Quantitative data were collected from a convenience sample of 122 African American charter school students residing in a northeastern metropolitan area of the United States. Female students reported greater satisfaction with neighborhood air quality and higher Africentric ethnic identity in comparison to male students. Hierarchical regression analysis showed Africentric ethnic identity to operate as a covariate in the relationship between gender and neighborhood air quality. The results showed that Africentric ethnic identity statistically significantly improved the model fit, explaining additional variance in neighborhood air quality beyond gender. Higher Africentric ethnic identity was a function of greater satisfaction with neighborhood air quality in students. Africentric ethnic identity operates as a source of resilience that can help youth combat climate change problems like poor air quality through emotional and mental flexibility.

The School-to-Prison Pipeline (STPPL) is primarily positioned in the discourse relating to education and criminal justice yet its public health implications remain underexplored. This commentary draws the connections between STPPL and social determinants of health on Macro, Mezzo, and Micro levels. The STPPL disrupts access to mental health care, nutritional programs, and safety systems embedded within schools. Exclusionary practices such as suspensions and expulsions disconnect students from critical services that promote psychological stability and physical well-being Obsuth et al. (2024). National data identifies that Black and Brown students experience disproportionate rates of exclusion, reinforcing systemic inequities and chronic stress linked to poor health outcomes (Warren, 2021). Viewing the STPPL through a public health lens highlights the need for interdisciplinary research that examines how educational exclusion contributes to health disparities across the life course. This article concludes that addressing the STPPL requires coordinated responses between social work, education, and public health systems. Recognizing exclusionary discipline as a public health crisis reframes prevention and belonging as essential components of youth health and equity Marmot and Wilkinson (2006), Obsuth et al. (2024).

Prevention of trafficking is legislated and funded through federal law, with victim services for child sex trafficking assigned to local departments of social services. Among child welfare workers, research has documented mislabeling, misidentification, misunderstanding of policy, and improper care for youth involved in sex trafficking, and pointed to a need for training of professionals. A survey of five years of classes of child welfare workers (n = 1,061) in departments of social services was conducted, measuring changes in the pre-training knowledge and self-efficacy workers arrived with regarding engaging with survivors of child sex trafficking. Correlations and regression analysis (controlling for gender, race, and years working in the field) showed that the passage of time was associated with markedly higher levels of pre-training knowledge by successive cohorts of workers arriving for training but not with higher self-efficacy in these areas. Professional development training for child welfare workers about child trafficking should deliver more advanced content, while expanding experiential training components that build self-efficacy.

Climate change is increasing the frequency, duration, and intensity of extreme weather, including extreme heat. As 87 million U.S. households include pets, and 97% of those households identify their pets as a family member, it is important to understand how a changing environment is impacting interspecies families. Applying the construal level theory for psychological distancing to climate change, this study explored the relationship between a pet impacted by extreme heat and climate anxiety. This secondary-data analysis of the July 2024 AP-NORC Center Poll AmeriSpeak Omnibus® survey of 1,143 U.S. adults included a subsample of 798 pet caregivers. A significant positive relationship was found between the subjective report of a pet impacted by extreme heat and self-reported climate anxiety. Implications for understanding how the construal level theory for climate change applies within the human-animal connection and the role of pets in identifying risk for climate anxiety.

In 2021, Jackson, Mississippi, received national attention after a winter storm caused the failure of operations at the city's largest water treatment facility. Years of neglect to a crumbling infrastructure triggered the Jackson water crisis, leaving residents without clean and reliable access to water. Predating any one administration, Black and low-income residents had long raised concerns about excessive water bills, broken water mains, poor water quality, and deterioration of the city's water system. Despite years of advocacy and concerned citizens, agenda items continued from one administration to the next without any resolution to this public health issue. For public health social workers, the Jackson water crisis represented a call to action to integrate environmental justice into practice and education, and to advocate for systemic solutions that impacted the city's most affected. The Jackson water crisis revealed how infrastructure failures threatened one's basic human right to clean water. Additionally, this crisis spotlighted an urgent need for equity-driven policies, as well as funding at both the state and federal level. Thus, creating opportunities for the social work profession to take an active role in advancing environmental justice by addressing the systemic inequities revealed by crises like Jackson's water failure. By integrating environmental justice into practice, social workers can help drive structural reforms that protect health, dignity, and community resilience.

Climate change presents a growing mental health concern for older adults, particularly among Korean and Korean American populations who may experience heightened vulnerabilities due to cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic factors. This study examines the psychological impact of climate change on this demographic, focusing on three key areas: increased vulnerability to climate-related disasters, the exacerbation of social isolation, and the role of resilience in mitigating negative outcomes. Drawing on interdisciplinary research, this study explores how environmental stressors, displacement, and disruptions to traditional support systems contribute to mental health challenges. Furthermore, it highlights protective factors such as cultural resilience, intergenerational support, and community-based interventions that can help older Korean and Korean American adults adapt to climate-related stressors. The findings underscore the need for culturally responsive mental health strategies, policy initiatives, and social support networks to promote psychological well-being and climate adaptation in aging populations.

As climate change accelerates, it generates not only environmental disruption but a new form of multidimensional social risk - climate risk - unfolding across nested social, ecological, and institutional systems. This paper advances a systems-ecological perspective to conceptualize climate risk as a relational and stratified risk, disproportionately impacting marginalized communities. It then maps dominant adaptation frameworks - ecomodernism, post-/degrowth, sustainability, Indigenous knowledge, and environmental and climate justice, as well as environmental social work - highlighting their divergent assumptions, values, and implications for equity and resilience. Building on these perspectives, the paper introduces the concept of ecosocial adaptation, an integrative framework that foregrounds inclusion, care systems, and ecological interdependence as central to climate resilience. Care professions like social work, public health, education, and allied fields are already engaged in adaptation, yet often without a shared paradigm. This paper calls for the care professions to embrace ecosocial adaptation as a unifying framework to guide practice, pedagogy, and policy, positioning them as critical agents in climate adaptation.

The climate crisis, which is currently recognized as a "threat multiplier" by the United Nations, exacerbates health disparities, deepens structural inequities, and often disproportionately affects marginalized communities globally. While social work values maintain a commitment to social justice, dignity and worth of the person and integrity, macro-level interventions remain constrained by national and neoliberal paradigms. These limitthe profession's capacity to address global and transnational challenges such as disaster capitalism, food insecurity, and the financialization and dispossession of essential resources. As the climate crisis deepens, macro social work should reconfigure its theoretical commitments and practical applications to center environmental justice and health equity. This paper discusses the limitations of macro social work in addressing climate-induced social and public health crises and proposes a reimagining of macro practice through intersectional and interdisciplinary lenses to interrogate the structural roots of these crises.

Little is known about how child asthma management programs, and their participants, fared during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. We describe the primary modifications made to a child asthma management program in East Harlem, NYC, to maintain service continuity during this time. Two questions guide our analysis: 1) To what extent did the program's primary service delivery activities change between the year before the pandemic and the pandemic's first year?; and 2) To what extent did the needs of children and families in the program change between the year before the pandemic and the pandemic's first year? This study found fewer enrollments during the first year of the pandemic than the previous year. There was also a shift in social service needs, especially an increase in food insecurity during COVID's first year. The program's social workers were able to pivot to develop strategies for supporting these shifting needs.

Social work is a caring profession, as social workers are required to provide psychological support and emotional caring for clients. If social workers have psychological distress, low job satisfaction, and conflicting job emotions, their services for the clients will be severely affected. To achieve the goal of better serving others, social workers should have a good state of mind. Their psychological health, job emotions, and satisfaction are thus extremely important to their career. Our findings show job support, job autonomy, and job task can be very effective ways to improve social workers' psychological well-being.