Miami thrives: weaving a poverty reduction coalition.

In an environment where community based organizations are asked to do increasingly more to alleviate the effects of complex social problems, networks and coalitions are becoming the answer for increasing scale, efficiency, coordination, and most importantly, social impact. This paper highlights the formation of a poverty reduction coalition in south Florida. Our case study approach chronicles a developing coalition in Miami-Dade County and the role of one organization acting as lead to the initiative. Drawing on interviews with lead organization staff, participant observation field notes, network mapping and analysis of documents and artifacts from the initiative, we analyze the local organizational context and illuminate important processes associated with supporting a developing coalition. Findings offer a picture of the interorganizational relationships in the community using social network analysis and identify the organizational capacity factors that contribute to and inhibit the formation of a cohesive and effective coalition in this context. This study also highlights the utility of an action research approach to organizational learning about coalition-building in such a way that informs decision making.

Over a half-century encapsulated: a multicultural content analysis of the Journal of Counseling Psychology, 1954-2009.

Articles including multicultural content published in the Journal of Counseling Psychology (JCP), from 1954 to 2009, were examined for themes. Multicultural content in this study was broadly defined to include the following identities: race/ethnicity, gender/sex, religion/spirituality, sexual orientation, social status, disability, age, and intersections. Inclusion of articles focused on each of these identity domains was reported by decade. Gender/sex was the most prevalent multicultural identity found in the JCP, followed by race/ethnicity. The most common themes for multicultural articles, in order, were counseling process, vocation/career, and psychological processes/interventions. Academic achievement, discrimination/minority stress, and research methodology were the other common themes that were found across multicultural research. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Purposeful exposure of a polylactic acid barrier to achieve socket preservation for placement of dental implants: case series report.

This retrospective case series reports on the use of a polylactic acid barrier that was left exposed in the process of socket preparation for the placement of dental implants. A retrospective chart review found 43 patients with 48 extraction sockets that were treated in this manner. Teeth were removed and the sockets were thoroughly debrided, with 40 of them receiving a bone replacement graft covered by the polylactic acid barrier and the additional 8 receiving the membrane alone. Suturing left the barrier exposed, and the sites were re-entered on average at 23 weeks for the placement of a dental implant. All sites were able to receive a dental implant, demonstrating the ability to leave a polylactic acid barrier exposed and achieve successful guided bone regeneration (GBR) results. This ultimately helped avoid some of the negative sequelae of trying to achieve primary closure of the flaps at the time of tooth extraction.

Psychotherapy trainees' multicultural case conceptualization content: thematic differences across three cases.

This study examined thematic differences in the multicultural case conceptualization content of 61 psychotherapy trainees across three different cases and trainee demographics (number of multicultural courses completed, years of supervised clinical practicum completed, and White trainee vs. trainee of color). Themes across cases included general counseling skills (attend to affect, build rapport, focus on specific client concerns, use of specific clinical interventions, and use of external resources not related to culture), as well as multicultural specific counseling skills (focus on culture, focus on discrimination, use of culturally competent interventions, and use of external resources related to culture). Thematic differences across case were found in three of the nine themes (affect, culture, discrimination). No systematic differences were found across multicultural training, clinical training, or race. Implications of these results are discussed.