Embedding Financial Services in Frequented, Trusted Settings: Building on Families' Pre-existing Economic Mobility Efforts.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to understand parents'/guardians' experiences and aspirations around economic mobility and their impact on the acceptability and use of financial services embedded in frequented, trusted settings such as schools and pediatric clinics. METHOD: We recruited 18 English-speaking guardians with at least 1 child enrolled in a school for low-income families and eligible for Internal Revenue Service-sponsored free tax preparation. Each participant completed a semistructured interview before tax filing; a subset completed follow-up interviews. We used grounded theory analysis. RESULTS: We developed the following theoretical model based on our key thematic findings to describe the acceptability and use of financial services within the context of guardians' lived experiences and pre-existing efforts to build economic mobility: Families experience multilevel barriers to economic mobility. Despite these barriers, guardians are proactively working to build economic mobility by empowering the next generation with knowledge, skills, and assets and resiliently pursuing economic goals. As a result, guardians will accept empowering, nonjudgmental, expert, and trustworthy financial services that contribute to their existing efforts. To move from acceptance to use, financial services must be effectively publicized, accessible, and supportive. CONCLUSION: Financial services may be more acceptable and used if they are embedded in trusted organizations and have expert, supportive staff with lived experience who empower guardians to work toward their economic goals, accessible platforms, and effective publicity. These characteristics may facilitate uptake and economic mobility. Trusted organizations serving young families can partner with financial services to test these findings and help families build economic mobility.

Small Moments, Big Impact: Pilot Trial of a Relational Health App for Primary Care.

OBJECTIVE: To conduct a pilot trial of Small Moments, Big Impact: a relational health app. METHODS: Low-income mothers with 1 or no prior children, a full-term birth, above 18 years old, and without substance abuse were recruited. The control group was recruited prior to the intervention group to avoid contamination. Of the 117 mothers enrolled, 29 intervention and 29 control mothers completed the study. Five questionnaires were administered at baseline and 6-months to measure maternal depression, empathy, beliefs about children's emotions, intelligence mindsets, and app use. At 6 months, questionnaires assessing parenting stress, reflective functioning, and perceived value of app were also administered. RESULTS: Mothers in the final sample were similar to those who did not complete the study, except more mothers who dropped out were recruited during COVID-19 and had a lower empathetic subscale score. No differences were found between groups at pre- or post-test. However, because of skewed outcome variables which violated normality principles and the small sample size, quantile regression analyses were performed comparing the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles for each outcome. Controlling for pretest and potential confounders, subsets of SMBI mothers reported lower parental stress, more growth mindset and increased effort to understand their child's feelings. Ninety percent of mothers reported using SMBI at least once per week. Eighty percent of mothers would recommend the SMBI app to new mothers. CONCLUSIONS: Most mothers used SMBI weekly, rated it highly and reported less stress, more growth mindset, and more positive child rearing beliefs.

Direct carbon-carbon bond formation via reductive soft enolization: a syn-selective Mannich addition of α-iodo thioesters.

The ß-amino carboxylic acid moiety is a key feature of numerous important biologically active compounds. We describe a syn-selective direct Mannich addition reaction that uses α-iodo thioesters and sulfonyl imines and produces ß-amino thioesters. Enolate formation is achieved by reductive soft enolization. The products of the reaction provide straightforward access to biologically important ß-lactams through a variety of known reactions.