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The COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately impacted Latinos across the United States though data on emerging immigrant communities is lacking. The purpose of this study is to better understand how Latino immigrants were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing a community health clinic in Charlotte, North Carolina to quickly respond to their needs.

A mixed method, rapid appraisal using community-based participatory research approaches conducted in February to April 2021 by a team of bilingual researchers. Project consisted of a Spanish, electronic survey distributed through community leaders and in-person interviews conducted in Spanish at COVID-19 vaccine clinics. SPSS Version 26 was used for quantitative analysis. Ordinal and binary logistic regression tests were performed to assess the associations among several outcome and four predictor variables: documentation status, status of health insurance, level of trust in the vaccine and place of birth. Qualitative analysis used rapid appraisal and grounded theory approaches.

Latino immigrants experienced job and income loss, resulting in difficulty paying for food, housing and health care. Participants experienced emotional and financial stress and isolation from family. Undocumented immigrants were more likely to experience detrimental impacts than documented immigrants. Most wanted the vaccine but felt barriers like trust and insurance may prevent them.

Findings from this study are locally relevant to Latino immigrants living in the Charlotte area of North Carolina and findings may not be generalizable to other Latinos. Participants were recruited through faith networks and those who are not connected may not be represented. In addition, interview participants were sampled during vaccination clinics and likely had positive views of the vaccine.

As a direct result of this project, community health clinic (CHC) held vaccination clinics to instill more confidence in the vaccination process. Spanish-speaking staff were available to assist with paperwork and answer questions onsite. The importance of familismo in decision-making and the reported presence of misinformation about the vaccine prompted CHC to continue providing accurate information about the vaccine in Spanish, and to strategize marketing materials to reflect a family-centric approach to better appeal to Latinos. Findings were used to obtain funding for expansion of clinical and behavioral health services in the community through mobile units, increasing accessibility for Latino immigrants.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this was the first study to examine the effects of the pandemic on a growing and disproportionately underrepresented group in an emerging immigrant state. Findings informed culturally competent COVID-19 vaccine clinics, marketing strategies and the expansion of medical and behavioral health services for a local community clinic.

This study aims to understand the utility of personas and illustrate, through a case study, how a persona-building exercise in a Community Based Prevention Marketing (CBPM) training of community leaders elicited important insights that complemented findings from ongoing formative research on vaccine hesitancy in the Hispanic/Latino population in the USA during COVID-19 pandemic.

An exploratory concurrent parallel qualitative study design compared three personas created by community-based organization members (n = 37) to transcripts from five formative research focus groups (n = 30) from the same project. All participants in this study were recruited by the National COVID-19 Resiliency Network as part of their capacity-building and formative research activities. Grounded theory guided the content analysis.

This study found personas and focus groups to be complementary. A high degree of co-occurrence was observed when investigating the uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine under the categories of barriers, culture and communication. Between the two methods, the authors found strong associations between fear, disruption to the value system, work-related barriers, inaccessibility to health care and information sources and misinformation. Areas of divergence were negligible.

While personas provided background information about the population and sharing “how” to reach the priority population, focus groups provided the “why” behind the behavior, followed by “how”.

A community-driven persona-building process built on cultural community knowledge and existing data can build community capacity, provide rich information to assist in the creation of tailored messages, strategies and overall interventions during a public health crisis and provide user-centered, evidence-based information about a priority population while researchers and practitioners wait on the results from formative research.

This case study provided a unique opportunity to analyze the complementary effectiveness of two methods acting in tandem to understand the priority population: stakeholder-informed persona-building and participant-informed focus group interviews. Understanding their complementary nature addresses a time gap that often exists between researchers and practitioners during times of crises and builds on recommendations associated with bringing rigor into practice, promoting academic contribution to real-world issues and building collaborative partnerships. Finally, it supports the utility of a nimble tool that improves social marketers’ ability to know more about their audience for intervention design when time is of the essence and formative research is ongoing.

The authors aim to analyze the inequality in accessing distance learning during COVID-19 school closures.

The authors use the Household Pulse Survey, which is an effort by the United States (US) government to measure the well-being of American families during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors employ a regression analysis to estimate the inequality in accessing distance learning by race and household income.

Disadvantaged children from nonwhite and low-income families have much less access to distance learning, including less access to online classes, digital devices and the Internet. Schools are critical providers of the Internet and digital devices to children from disadvantaged households. Schools and parents devote more attention to these nonwhite children by spending extra time on their learning activities.

This paper estimates the inequality in accessing distance learning during the COVID-19 crisis. Also, the authors analyze the responses of schools and parents toward this inequality.

This paper aims to investigate the increasing trend of multigenerational co-living in the USA and to research the socioeconomic and cultural determinants of such decision.

This study uses the 2017 American Housing Survey data to run descriptive and regression analysis.

The authors find household income appears consistently to be the most significant factor determining multigenerational co-residence decision across all household compositions. Latino households are most likely to co-reside with multiple generations, followed by Asian and African American households. Immigrants tend to live in multigenerational co-residential housing units with smaller sizes and more impoverished neighborhoods, but show greater flexibility in making residential arrangements once they gain better education. In addition, older householders or female householders are significantly more likely to co-reside with multiple generations. Living in metropolitan areas has no impact on co-residence choice, although some evidence suggests that multigenerational co-residential families tend to live in inferior neighborhoods.

This study provides updated evidence on multigenerational co-residence choice in the contemporary United States. The findings provide evidence on how households make residential choices in response to financial hardships and contribute to the theoretical understanding of the variations of such decisions among immigrants and different ethnic and aging groups.

This study on multigenerational co-residence choice imposes important practical implications. The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic creates ideal research setting to study how households cope with the tremendous uncertainties in the job markets and financial markets. Although multigenerational co-living may work well for some households with lower or moderate-income for financial reasons, it is not an attractive option for every family.

Sharing a home with multiple generations can be challenging. Policymakers should design policies and programs to provide households with guidance on how to live peacefully in multigenerational settings and make multigenerational co-living an appealing and cost-effective housing option for American families of all means.

This study contributes to the existing literature by providing new evidence on the determinants of multigenerational co-residence decision. This study’s findings are fundamental to guide policymakers in carrying out policies and programs aimed at providing a more appealing and cost-effective housing arrangement for American families. The evidence on the senior and minority subsamples are especially meaningful as the vast majority of the baby boom generation in the USA is aging and substantial growth is expected in multigenerational households over the next several decades. Understanding the increasing burden of old-age depression in aging societies will help policymakers prioritize public resources in city planning to address the needs of this rapidly growing population.

The America Rescue Plan (ARP) transformed the Child Tax Credit (CTC) into a more generous, inclusive monthly payment from July through December 2021. However, the expansion has been terminated and the annual CTC has been reinstated. The United States is one of the few OECD countries that do not have a child allowance system and South Korea has recently adopted child allowance in 2018. This study aims to comprehensively review the existing literature and evidence on ARP-CTC in the United States and Universal Child Allowance (CA) in Korea.

The researchers completed a database search between July 1, 2022 and July 20, 2022. For the United States, the search keywords were child tax credit OR expanded child tax credit OR CTC OR child allowance. For Korea, the search keyword was child allowance. Searches were conducted using 79 databases. A total of 36 US studies and 7 Korean studies met all the inclusion criteria and proceeded to the extraction process. A narrative thematic synthesis approach was employed to identify themes in the findings. The results were organized based on the characteristics of the studies and the post-intervention outcomes.

Studies in the United States focused primarily on economic outcomes, including poverty and material hardship, reflecting the concern policymakers and researchers have about child poverty. On the other hand, Korean studies examined employment, economic well-being, psychological well-being and expenditures in a relatively balanced share. Overall, studies found that both ARP-Child Tax Credits and Universal Child Allowance reduced child poverty and improved material hardship. Also, studies in both countries suggested that both policies had positive impacts on parental psychological well-being.

To the authors knowledge, this paper is the first to comprehensively review the impact of the US ARP-CTC in comparison with the Korean child allowance. Two studies reviewed and updated the literature on US ARP-CTC as a round-up paper. Moreover, the authors conduct cross-national comparative analyses between the United States and Korea. The contexts of the child allowance system in the two nations have both similarities and differences, thereby offering a unique opportunity for a comparative study.

Globally millions of children have a parent who is imprisoned. Research suggests that this has an adverse impact on the child and imprisonment of a parent is considered to be an adverse childhood experience (ACE). Parental incarceration will not only affect the child but the entire household and may result in further ACEs such as household dysfunction and parental separation making this group of children particularly vulnerable. This scoping review aims to adopt an international perspective to comprehensively examine the extent range and nature of literature both published and grey relating to parental incarceration and the potential impact on children’s emotional and mental health.

In this scoping review, the five stages identified by Arksey and O’Malley (2005) were used including identifying the research question, identifying relevant studies, study selection, charting data, collating, summarising and reporting results. In addition, the included studies were appraised for quality using methodology-specific tools. A critical narrative synthesis was adopted to present findings and discussion.

Nine studies met the inclusion criteria. Of the included studies, eight were retrieved from peer-reviewed journals and one from grey literature searching. Five categories with subcategories were identified affecting children’s mental health: 1) Relationships: parent and incarcerated child relationship; facilitators and barriers to maintaining contact; 2) Family structure; maternal or paternal incarceration; living arrangements during parental incarceration; 3) Children’s emotions: emotional recognition and regulation; resilience; 4) Prison stigma: social stigma; shame and secrecy; 5) Structural disadvantages: poverty; race/ethnicity.

This scoping review has highlighted how the imprisonment of a parent negatively affects their children’s emotional and mental health. Factors negatively impacting children’s emotional and mental health are interrelated and complex. Further research is required, including differences between paternal and maternal incarceration; impact of gender and age of child; poverty as an ACE and prison exacerbating this; and effects of ethnicity and race. An important policy direction is in developing an effective way of capturing the parental status of a prisoner to ensure that the child and family receive needed support.

The early care and education (ECE) workforce plays a pivotal role in shaping early childhood developmental trajectories and simultaneously experiences significant mental health disparities. The purpose of this study is to investigate how social determinants of health and external stressors are associated with the mental health of ECE staff, which represent a low-resourced segment of the workforce; how psychological capital (psycap) can mitigate these associations.

The authors administered an 89-item survey to 332 ECE staff employed in 42 Head Start centers in the USA. The authors ran three hierarchical linear regression models to analyze associations between social determinants of health, external sources of stress, psycap and potential moderation effects and mental health outcomes.

Individuals experiencing greater finance-related stress reported 0.15 higher scores on the depression scale and 0.20 higher scores on the anxiety scale than those experiencing less finance-related stress (p < 0.05). Individuals experiencing greater work-related stress reported 1.26 more days of poorer mental health in the past month than those experiencing less work-related stress (p < 0.01). After controlling for all sociodemographic variables and sources of stress, psycap was significantly and negatively associated with depressive symptomology (b-weight = −0.02, p < 0.01) and the number of poor mental health days reported in the past month (b-weight = −0.13, p < 0.05). Moderation models suggest that higher levels of psycap may mitigate the association between work-related stress and the number of poor mental health days reported in the past month (b-weight = −0.06, p = 0.02).

The implications of these findings suggest a need for policy change to mitigate social determinants of health and promote pay equity and multi-level interventio ns that target workplace-related stressors and psycap to combat poor mental health of the ECE workforce.

Previous research has shown that children’s ability to understand mental states is related to their consumer development, yet it is unknown how parents can aid in this process. One possible way that parents may help is using mental state communication (i.e. communication that focuses on beliefs/intention to explain behavior by others). This study aims to examine whether this kind of communication is linked to children’s purchase requests through two potential mediators – active mediation and child socio-cognitive skills (i.e. Theory of Mind).

This study used a survey of 420 American mothers with children between the ages of 3 and 7. Respondents were given 12 scenarios describing typical parent–child interactions focused on discussing mental states and were asked how they would respond. Then, respondents were asked about demographic information, parenting style, mediation style, child socio-cognitive skills and child purchase requests.

Results showed both a direct and indirect negative association between parents’ mental state communication and children’s purchase requests via active advertising mediation. Contrary to expectations, active mediation was negatively associated with mental state communication and positively linked to child purchase requests. Children’s socio-cognitive skills were not associated with either parents’ mental state communication or children’s purchase requests.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first known study that has examined mental state communication of parents as a potential predictor in shaping children’s purchase requests and found that it was negatively associated with it.

Scholars have noted the impact of advertising on unhealthy food consumption. However, a systematic literature review (SLR) on this topic is currently lacking. This study aims to find, analyze and synthesize prior literature to set the stage for future researchers and practitioners. It also uncovers research gaps, suggests potential research questions and presents a conceptual framework for use in future research.

This paper catalogs and synthesizes topic-related literature by using the time-tested SLR methodology. It identifies and analyzes 99 relevant studies that have addressed the impact of advertising on unhealthy food consumption. Research profiling of the selected studies supported the synthesis of key themes in the extant literature.

The authors identify three key thematic foci: a) viewer attributes pertaining to excessive unhealthy food consumption, b) advertisement attributes pertaining to excessive unhealthy food consumption and, c) unhealthy food consumption regulation. Within these themes, the authors also identify some subthemes, presenting specific advertising and viewer attributes that contribute to unhealthy food consumption. The authors further develop a conceptual framework based on the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) model, summarizing the findings of the study. This could aid future researchers and practitioners in their design of certain strategies.

The study uncovers various gaps in the extant literature and suggests potential areas that can be examined by scholars. From a practical perspective, the study recommends certain actionable strategies for policymakers, helping customers to achieve the long-term goal of obesity reduction.

From the perspective of practice, the study recommends certain actionable strategies for policymakers helping customers achieve the long-term goal of obesity reduction.

The current study makes a novel contribution to the research on advertising and unhealthy food consumption by identifying theme-based research gaps in the existing literature, mapping those with potential research questions and presenting a conceptual framework based on the S-O-R model. Based on the findings, the study also proposes five potential research models examining diverse aspects of advertising and unhealthy food consumption to guide interested scholars and practitioners to shape the future research discourse.

Integrated health and social care initiatives are increasing and health and social care systems are aiming to improve health and social outcomes in disadvantaged groups. There is a global dialogue surrounding improving services by shifting to an integrated health and social care approach. There is consensus of what is “health care”; however, the “social care” definition remains less explored. The authors describe the state of “social care” within the current integrated care literature and identify the depth of integration in current health and social care initiatives.

A narrative literature review, searching Medline, PsychINFO, CINAHL, PubMed, Scopus and Cochrane databases and grey literature (from 2016 to 2021), employing a search strategy, was conducted.

In total. 276 studies were eligible for full-text review, and 33 studies were included and categorised in types: “social care as community outreach dialogues”, “social care as addressing an ageing population”, “social care as targeting multimorbidity and corresponding social risks factors” and “social care as initiatives addressing the fragmentation of services”. Most initiatives were implemented in the United Kingdom. In total, 21 studies reported expanding integrated governance and partnerships; 27 studies reported having health and social care staff with clear integrated governance; 17 had dedicated funding and 11 used data-sharing and the integration of systems’ records.

The authors' demonstrate that social care approaches are expanding beyond the elderly, and these models have been used to respond to multimorbidity [including coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)], targeting priority groups and individuals with complex presentations.