Capacity Building for Post-Disaster Mental Health Since Katrina: The Role of Community Health Workers

The floods and devastation of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita contributed to socioeconomic instability and psychosocial trauma for the affected communities and populations, significantly for people of limited economic means and persons of color. Though more than 1/3 of the adult population from impacted areas experienced significant psychological distress, few people had access to or received appropriate health or mental health services in the months and years that followed. Community health workers (CHWs)—defined as lay community members whose backgrounds are similar to those for whom they provide such services as culturally relevant health education, individual- and community-level advocacy, and links to the health care system— may represent a particularly promising workforce strategy to increase access to quality mental health services and overcome racial and ethnic disparities in care. In this paper, we briefly review a post-disaster mental health training program for CHWs from the greater New Orleans area. We present preliminary evidence that CHWs remain engaged in addressing post-disaster concerns, and that there is community support for further CHW education. We discuss implications for CHW participation in recovery from future disasters and we highlight the work of Cynthia Carriere, a CHW from the Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans.     

A Case Study of Gambling Involvement and Its Consequences

Gambling has attracted minimal recent research in leisure studies. Focusing on Indigenous Australian gambling, this article draws on theoretical frameworks in leisure and gambling to develop gambling involvement profiles. Using qualitative methods, 169 Indigenous Australians were interviewed. Thematic analysis generated three typical gambler profiles—light, binge and heavy gamblers—distinguishable by different gambling behaviors, motivations and consequences. Analysis of the dimensions of leisure involvement revealed that light and heavy gamblers differed according to importance/interest, pleasure, centrality, self-expression, social bonding, risk probability, and risk consequence. The article demonstrates the application to gambling of certain leisure involvement constructs.     

Rural poverty in the Eastern Cape Province: Legacy of apartheid or consequence of contemporary segregationism?

Poverty in South Africa in general has not declined since 1994, and it is particularly severe in the former Bantustans. This paper discusses two important issues related to rural poverty in the Eastern Cape Province. It questions the applicability of the notion of legacy to explain recent trends in rural poverty and constructs an argument that explains these trends in relation to post-1994 segregationism. It argues that the notion of legacy is not useful in explaining why rural poverty remains entrenched, long after 1994. Rural poverty today cannot be explained as something left behind after the end of apartheid, because its causes and drivers are the same now in 2012 as they were in 1970. The continuity between the pre- and post-1994 periods is best described by exploring and understanding post-1994 policy decisions and power configurations as an expression of contemporary segregationism.     

From solicitation to search: a study of monitoring costs as a driver of donor giving behavior in online portal websites

This study focuses on market contexts, in particular online giving portals, where donors are able to search and select organizations to contribute to instead of responding to solicitations. To understand donor behavior in this context, we construct and test a two-stage donor search model. A relationship between the behavior of the donor and that of the charitable organization is sought along two dimensions: how organizational behavior involving the reduction of monitoring costs affects the amount that a donor gives and the likelihood that donors will make a subsequent contribution. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A financial market forecast of industrial policy

This paper examines the reaction of foreign equity markets to anticipated changes in economic conditions. The ability of the equity markets to correctly anticipate economic behavior may be influenced by the existence of a national industrial policy designed to enhance economic growth. If market participants can rely on announced Industrial Policy to influence economic behavior, then security returns may lead economic events. To the extent that Industrial Policy is non-existent or inconsistently applied, market returns would not be expected to lead economic changes. This paper tests the hypothesis that Industrial Policy permits equity markets to correctly forecast economic condition.

Data for the United States, United Kingdom, West Germany, and Japan are used in testing for relationships between return on equity and industrial production. The period between 1952 and 1985 is employed in the analysis. The results suggest that the Japanese market is able to consistently anticipate changes in industrial production, while the markets in the remaining three countries are not able to anticipate economic policy.     

Electricity Forward Prices: A High-Frequency Empirical Analysis

We conduct an empirical analysis of forward prices in the PJM electricity market using a high‐frequency data set of hourly spot and day‐ahead forward prices. We find that there are significant risk premia in electricity forward prices. These premia vary systematically throughout the day and are directly related to economic risk factors, such as the volatility of unexpected changes in demand, spot prices, and total revenues. These results support the hypothesis that electricity forward prices in the Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland market are determined rationally by risk‐averse economic agents.     

Voices from Costa Rica: exploring youth perceptions of tourism and the influence of tourism on identity formation and cultural change

Tourism has become a rapidly growing phenomenon in Costa Rica over the past two decades, with a rate of foreign tourists per capita of 0.46 (one of the highest rates in the Caribbean basin). As tourism increases, it is clear that the impacts will continue to be a major change-agent, especially for small communities in Costa Rica. To explore youth perceptions of the impacts of tourism on their culture and community and to better understand the ways in which tourism influences the formation of cultural identity, this qualitative Photovoice study focuses on youth ages 10–16 living in a Costa Rican community. Through the participants’ photographs and discussion, four themes emerged, including economic impacts resulting from tourism, the preservation and loss of culture and history, the importance of respecting the land, and injustice resulting from tourism development. The youth demonstrated the ways in which their experiences and personal histories related to tourism are intertwined with their sense of identity and pride for their community and culture. The results emphasize the relevance of exploring cultural identity within youth populations and support the assertion that tourism generates significant cultural change, which in turn influences youths' past, present, and future perceptions of their community and culture.     

Removing biases in forecasts of fishery status

A recent highly cited paper from this journal develops a model predicting maximum sustainable yield ( \(MSY\) ) of a fishery using the historical maximum catch ( \(MaxCatch\) ). The model is parameterized with a small sample of fisheries from the United States, and is subsequently applied globally to estimate the benefits of fishery recovery. That empirical relationship has been adopted for many subsequent high-profile analyses. Unfortunately, the analysis suffers from two important oversights: (1) because the model is non-linear, it suffers from “retransformation bias” and therefore the results significantly understate \(MSY\) and (2) the analysis is parameterized from of a very limited data set and so generalizability of the fitted empirical relationship between \(MSY\) and \(MaxCatch\) to global fisheries is questionable. Here, we rectify both oversights and provide an updated estimate of the relationship between \(MSY\) and \(MaxCatch\) .     

Using imagine instructions to induce consumers to generate ad-supporting content

Some recent advertisements attempt to increase persuasiveness by directly asking consumers to imagine arguments supporting the ad's message. This research provides a critical test of the effectiveness of this imagine strategy, while also identifying specific situations in which this technique can be most effective in increasing persuasion. Three studies reveal that imagine instructions are most effective when there is a lack of fit between consumers' regulatory orientation and the ad content, when consumers are dispositionally oriented toward a high need for cognitive closure, and when consumers are at a high construal level. These results are consistent with the possibility that the imagine strategy is most effective when used to enhance the motivation level of otherwise unmotivated consumers.