Employment Opportunities and Experiences among Recent Master's-Level Global Health Graduates.

OBJECTIVES: To examine the job search, employment experiences, and job availability of recent global health-focused master's level graduates. METHODS: An online survey was conducted from October to December 2016 based out of Washington, DC. The study sample includes students graduating with master's degrees in global health, public health with a global health concentration or global medicine from eight U.S. universities. RESULTS: Out of 256 potential respondents, 152 (59%) completed the survey, with 102/152 (67%) employed. Of unemployed graduates, 38% were currently in another educational training program. Out of 91 employed respondents, 62 (68%) reported they had limitations or gaps in their academic training. The average salary of those employed was between $40,000 and $59,000 annually. The majority of respondents reported they currently work in North America (83.5%.); however, only 31% reported the desire to work in North America following graduation. CONCLUSIONS: Discrepancies exist between graduates' expectations of employment in global public health and the eventual job market. Communication between universities, students and employers may assist in curriculum development and job satisfaction for the global public health workforce.

Linguistic translation of psychological assessment tools: a case study of the MMPI-2.

This article examines the effect of cultural differences on translation accuracy outcomes for the translation of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (S. R. Hathaway & J. C. McKinley, 1940) into Farsi for use in Iran.

Who will keep the public healthy? The case for undergraduate public health education: a review of three programs.

While most universities have focused on graduate education to create public health leaders, undergraduate public health education is another way to ensure a prepared workforce at all levels. This article provides examples of three Council on Education for Public Health accredited graduate programs outside schools of public health (University of Southern California, Temple University, and New York University) that also offer undergraduate public health education, one that is in its first year of offering a public health minor, and the other two offering majors and minors. Although these programs come from different philosophies, all have an underlying mission to influence how public health is understood. Considering the current need for public health workers, we anticipate that most higher education institutions will soon offer undergraduate public health courses. These programs must be mindful, however, of newly emerging accreditation requirements, which might have implications for both established and newly developing undergraduate public health programs, as well as articulation issues between undergraduate- and graduate-level master of public health programs. An examination of existing programs, as well as a discussion of accreditation requirements and articulation issues, will help institutions create curricula that meet their students' educational needs as well as the need for a strong public health workforce.

Exploring peers as a mediator of the association between depression and smoking in young adolescents.

Recent research has suggested that depression causes teens to begin smoking to elevate their mood. Other studies, however, have suggested the reverse causal direction: smoking causes depression. To gain a more complete understanding of the relationship between smoking and depression, potential mediators should be explored. This study explored how peer influences could mediate the relationship between depression and smoking. The methodology of Baron and Kenney was followed to test for mediation and moderation. Peers mediated the relationship between depression and smoking. Separate analyses by gender showed that depression remained significantly associated with smoking when peers were included in the model for girls only. Peer influence was related to depressed affect for both genders. These results provide evidence that peer influences are an important variable to take into consideration when addressing a depression smoking relationship.

The influence of depressive symptoms on experimental smoking and intention to smoke in a diverse youth sample.

Numerous studies have shown associations between smoking and depression, but the generalizability of the relationship across ethnic groups remains unknown. The present study assessed the association between depression and smoking intention and experimentation among adolescents from four ethnic groups in the Los Angeles area-Chinese/Chinese American, Latino/Hispanic, Persian/Iranian, and White. Over 800 7th graders in the Los Angeles area completed measures of depressive symptoms, experimentation with smoking, intention to smoke, and sociodemographic covariates. Chinese/Chinese American students had the lowest levels of depressive symptoms, whereas Latinos/Hispanics had the highest levels. Latinos/Hispanics also were the most likely to intend to smoke in the next year and were the most likely to have started experimenting with cigarette smoking. Depressive symptoms were significantly associated with intention to smoke even after controlling for language use acculturation, socioeconomic status, gender, and ethnicity. The association between depressive symptoms and intention to smoke did not vary significantly across ethnic groups. These results indicate that the association between depressive symptoms and adolescent smoking generalizes across diverse ethnic groups.

Hostility, depressive symptoms, and smoking in early adolescence.

Using logistic and multiple regression, we examined the association between hostility, level of depressive symptoms, and smoking in a sample of 1699 ethnically diverse students in California. Self-reports were collected twice from each student, at the beginning of the 6th and 7th grade years. Among 6th graders who had not smoked, depressive symptoms and hostility were associated with smoking initiation by the 7th grade. Among those students who had already tried smoking, increases in depressive symptoms and hostility were associated with more frequent smoking. The association between hostility and smoking was stronger for students reporting higher levels of depressive symptoms.

Motivation in tobacco use cessation research.

This paper summarizes four major conceptions of motivation that have been applied to cigarette smoking cessation. These conceptions are the direction-energy, transtheoretical, intrinsic/extrinsic, and self-regulation models. Constituents of each of these models are suggested. Implications of these theories of motivation for an integrative model of smoking cessation are discussed.

A cultural psychology approach to "drug abuse" prevention.

Much research on the etiology of adolescent drug use has focused on posited risk and protective factors at the level of the individual or small group. However, those proximal influences exist within a cultural context that also influences drug use. To prevent drug use in the diverse population of the United States, research is needed on the influence of the cultural context on adolescent drug use, including the effects of immigrating from one cultural or sociodemographic context to another, as well as the effects of living within two different cultural systems simultaneously. Theoretical models and research methods from cultural psychology and cultural sociology are well-suited to examine the cultural context of drug use. We examine causal mechanisms by which acculturation might affect drug use by using two paradigms to conceptualize culture: a stress/coping paradigm and a cultural values paradigm. Implications of cultural risk and protective factors for transdisciplinary research on drug abuse prevention are also discussed.