Acceptability and initial promise of trainings for community stakeholders serving refugee and immigrant families.

Cumulative traumatic migration experiences are compounded by escalating chronic distress related to the current sociopolitical climate for refugee and immigrant children and families. The aim of this open trial was to conduct a preliminary evaluation of You're Not Alone, a rapidly mounted, strengths-based, community-focused capacity building training initiative for stakeholders interacting with refugee and immigrant children and families in the Chicago area. Trainings, based on Trauma-Informed Care (TIC) and psychological first aid frameworks, adapted education and universal health promotion strategies for population-specific chronic traumatic stress. Two groups of participants (N = 948), who attended either mandatory (n = 659 educators) or voluntary (n = 289 community stakeholders) trainings, completed surveys at pretraining, post-training, and 6-week follow-up. Outcome indices included participant satisfaction, acceptability of training model, and changes in knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. Over 90% of participants reported satisfaction and acceptability of trainings. For educators, hierarchical linear modeling analyses demonstrated significant increases in trauma knowledge, refugee and immigrant-specific knowledge, positive attitudes toward TIC over time, and a decrease in negative attitudes toward immigrants. Over 95% of participants indicated that they learned and intended to use new strategies to help serve refugee and immigrant children and families. At follow-up, over 80% of those who completed the survey had utilized at least one strategy, and over 55% indicated that they were using resources that they learned about in the training. This study demonstrates that capacity-building trainings swiftly developed and disseminated to community stakeholders can produce positive change in knowledge, attitudes, and practices. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Stress, Coping, and Mood Among Latino Adolescents: A Daily Diary Study.

The current study examines whether daily coping moderates the effects of daily stress on same-day mood and next-day mood among 58 Latino adolescents (Mage  = 13.31; 53% male). The daily diary design capitalized on repeated measurements, boosting power to detect effects and allowing for a robust understanding of the day-to-day experiences of Latino adolescents. Hierarchical linear modeling revealed that on days when youth reported higher levels of peer and academic stress, they also reported more negative moods. However, only poverty-related stress predicted mood the following day. Engagement coping buffered the effect of poverty-related stress on next-day negative and positive mood, while disengagement exacerbated the effects of academic and peer stress. The need for interventions promoting balanced coping repertoires is discussed.

A longitudinal examination of health-related quality of life in children and adolescents with spina bifida.

OBJECTIVE: The current study examined (1) spina bifida (SB) youths' health-related quality of life (HRQOL) compared with nonclinical and chronic health condition (CHC) samples, (2) parent-child agreement regarding HRQOL, and (3) prospective changes in HRQOL. METHODS: Child and parent-proxy reports of Pediatric Quality of Life were collected at two time waves (Time 1: N = 134, ages 8-15 years; Time 2: N = 109, ages 10-17 years) as part of a larger longitudinal study. RESULTS: SB youth had statistically and clinically reduced physical HRQOL compared with the nonclinical and CHC samples at both time points. There were significant discrepancies between youth and parent-proxy reports of HRQOL; youth reported higher levels of physical and social HRQOL than parents. The majority of parent- and child-reported HRQOL domains remained stable, yet youth-reported social HRQOL increased over time. CONCLUSIONS: Youth with SB are at risk for poor HRQOL. Examining modifiable condition and social-environmental predictors of youth HRQOL will be important in informing future interventions.