Physical education policy compliance and Latino children's fitness: Does the association vary by school neighborhood socioeconomic advantage?

OBJECTIVES: To investigate the contribution of school neighborhood socioeconomic advantage to the association between school-district physical education policy compliance in California public schools and Latino students' physical fitness. METHODS: Cross-sectional Fitnessgram data for public-school students were linked with school- and district-level information, district-level physical education policy compliance from 2004-2005 and 2005-2006, and 2000 United States Census data. Multilevel logistic regression models examined whether income and education levels in school neighborhoods moderated the effects of district-level physical education policy compliance on Latino fifth-graders' fitness levels. RESULTS: Physical education compliance data were available for 48 California school districts, which included 64,073 Latino fifth-graders. Fewer than half (23, or 46%) of these districts were found to be in compliance, and only 16% of Latino fifth-graders attended schools in compliant districts. Overall, there was a positive association between district compliance with physical education policy and fitness (OR, 95%CI: 1.38, 1.07, 1.78) adjusted for covariates. There was no significant interaction between school neighborhood socioeconomic advantage and physical education policy compliance (p>.05): there was a positive pattern in the association between school district compliance with physical education policy and student fitness levels across levels of socioeconomic advantage, though the association was not always significant. CONCLUSIONS: Across neighborhoods with varying levels of socioeconomic advantage, increasing physical education policy compliance in elementary schools may be an effective strategy for improving fitness among Latino children.

Integrating immigrant health professionals into the US health care workforce: a report from the field.

Since 2001, the Welcome Back Initiative (WBI) has implemented a program model in ten US cities to help foreign trained health professionals enter the US healthcare workforce. This paper reviews how the WBI has worked toward achieving this goal through community needs assessment, the development of a comprehensive program model and ongoing program evaluation. Since 2001, the WBI has served over 10,700 immigrant health professionals. Of these participants, 66% were not previously working in the health sector. After participating in the WBI's services, 23% of participants found work in health care for the first time, 21% passed a licensing exam, and 87 physicians were connected to a residency program. As the US is facing a major shortfall of health care providers, the WBI is uniquely positioned to help fill a gap in provider supply with qualified, culturally aware, experienced clinicians that the current medical education infrastructure is unable to meet.

Making sure research is used: community-generated recommendations for disseminating research.

Academic research, no matter how innovative, will never make a difference in the lives of people unless it is disseminated in an appropriate and timely manner to providers and organizations serving the public. Yet many researchers are not trained, rewarded, or supported to disseminate research findings. The Community Advisory Board (CAB) of the University of California, San Francisco, Center for AIDS Prevention Studies (CAPS) developed a set guidelines to support researchers' intentions to disseminate their findings through nontraditional venues. These guidelines are unique because community members, many of whom have struggled with accessing research in a timely way, generated them. In addition to developing the guidelines, the CAB also conceived and implemented a dissemination strategy for the guidelines. The purpose of this article is to present specific guidelines for disseminating research developed by the CAPS CAB.