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The question I am seeking answers to is whether or not we have the ability to re-make ourselves into another person. The research subject is me. More to the point, can I, a white woman of Northern European descent, truly become a member of the Japanese society that I grew to love? My methodological approach to this question is a mixed evocative and analytical autoethnography. Within these pages is a complex tale of illness, racism, and sexual discrimination and how they intersect to create a self. From this creation come the questions of un-creation and re-creation; can I deconstruct my self and identity so as to reconstruct who I want to be? Will my reconstruction be supported by my chosen society? Can I truly belong somewhere, anywhere?

This chapter highlights a College of Education’s revision of required undergraduate courses into service-based initiatives engaging students with their local communities to enact change. These courses include a 20-hour field experience component, where faculty provide education majors with hands-on experiences illustrating the importance of reciprocal community–university partnerships, linking theory and practice, and demonstrating the ways in which students can become engaged citizens. This chapter focuses on the development of one such partnership with a secondary school. In particular, the author discusses two course-specific projects: a mentoring program for students labeled as “at-risk” and a multicultural learning community where future educators taught students in In-School-Suspension (ISS). Both illustrate the importance of utilizing critical multicultural education (CME) and intersectionality as a combined framework for teacher education partnerships, but also for projects in other majors, disciplines, and colleges. This year-long qualitative case study shows that such a foundation can provide a space for all participants to understand cultures other than their own, participate in knowledge construction, and understand their roles and responsibilities in contributing to socially just environments. This is not a one-size-fits all approach to community–university partnership development, but such studies can highlight the challenges and successes faced along the journey.

The average American child spends more time “playing”¹ than doing any other activity besides sleeping and attending school (watching television comes in next, with children gradually replacing play time with TV time as they grow older) (Hofferth & Sandberg, 2001a, b). In fact, free, unstructured time makes up between 20 and 50% of children’s waking hours² (Hofferth & Sandberg, 2001a, b; Larson & Richards, 1989). Nonetheless, sociologists currently know very little about how children’s free time use influences their well-being. Although scholars, teachers, and parents all have strong opinions about the types of free-time activities that they think are “best” for children, recent studies of the association between children’s time use and their well-being have failed to find consistent associations (Hofferth & Sandberg, 2001a, b; McHale, Crouter & Tucker, 2001).

Purpose – This chapter discusses health disparities among African Americans living in urban spaces within the United States.

Approach – This chapter provides an overview of health disparities in morbidity and mortality related to maternal and child health (maternal mortality rate, infant mortality, and low birth weight).

Practical implications – This chapter describes research and interventions that strive to increase our ability to understand and reduce health disparities. Eliminating health disparities not only is beneficial to these affected groups but also offers the opportunity to improve the health of the entire U.S. population.

Originality/value – This chapter adds to our understanding of the correlates of health disparities for African American women and children as well as successful interventions that have proven effective in ameliorating these disparities.

The U.S. Census Bureau reports that 25.7% of individuals residing in the United States were under the age of 18 in the year 2003 (U.S. Census Bureau, 2004a). Within that group 17.6%, about 12 million children, were living in poverty (U.S. Census Bureau, 2004b). Of the children classified as living in poverty, most lived in metropolitan areas. As defined by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), metropolitan areas are geographic entities with more than 50,000 inhabitants, or an urbanized area made up of a central place and adjacent territories where the general population density is at least 1000 people per square mile of land (U.S. Census Bureau 2004c). The largest city in a metropolitan area is called a “central city” or an urban center. These densely populated urban cities are home to most children living in poverty in metropolitan areas.

This paper empirically tests whether the nonprofit hospital is influenced by the community benefit standard by analyzing differences in nonprofit and for-profit hospital inpatient Medicaid share, while controlling for the effects of hospital market competition. Hospital specific data for this study are from the 1991 American Hospital Association Annual Survey of Hospitals and the 1991 Medicare Minimum Cost Report by the Health Care Financing Administration. The sample includes 192 for-profit, 899 nonprofit and 221 government-owned general acute care hospitals. Key variables in the multivariate analysis include hospital inpatient Medicaid share as the dependent variable and Medicaid demand, market competition and input quality as independent variables. The principal findings are that nonprofit hospitals serve a larger share of Medicaid inpatients than for-profit hospitals although the greater the presence of for-profit hospitals in the market (one measure of market competition) the smaller the nonprofit hospital Medicaid share. It is concluded that nonprofit hospitals reduce their level of community benefit, where community benefit is measured as a hospital's percent Medicaid share, in markets with a greater presence of for-profit hospitals.

I present and evaluate various explanations for why new workers who were sponsored by oldtimers tend to have better job outcomes (better performance, more satisfaction, and less turnover) than do new workers who were not sponsored.

My evaluations involve searching for evidence that fits (or does not fit) each of the explanations.

The two most popular explanations argue that the job benefits of sponsorship arise because (a) sponsored newcomers have more realistic job expectations than do unsponsored newcomers, or (b) the quality of sponsored newcomers is greater than that of unsponsored newcomers. Unfortunately, these explanations have weak empirical support. A third explanation, largely untested as yet, attributes the performance benefits of sponsorship to social pressures that can arise when someone is sponsored for a job. These pressures include efforts by newcomers to repay the people who sponsored them, efforts by sponsors to assist the newcomers they sponsored after those persons have been hired, and stereotypes among coworkers about the kinds of people who get jobs through sponsors. Although limited as yet, the evidence regarding this new explanation seems promising.

More research on this third explanation for sponsorship effects should be done. Suggestions for how to do such research are reviewed and a relevant experiment is presented.

The ideas and evidence presented here could help employers who want to improve the job outcomes of their new workers. Poor outcomes among such persons are a major problem in many settings.

Although some of my ideas have been mentioned by others, they were not been described in much detail, nor were they tested. My hope is that this chapter will promote new theory and research on the performance benefits of sponsorship, a topic that has been largely ignored in recent years.