This chapter provides an overview of the nonprofit organization in the United States, the main characteristics of nonprofit organizations, and the reality of the nonprofit sector today. It describes the differences between a nonprofit and a for-profit corporation. Nonprofit organizations have existed for many centuries, especially through religious groups or religious-based activities. The nongovernmental sector is growing throughout the world. Increasingly, these organizations are playing key roles in the economic and social contexts of their countries. Unlike private-sector organizations concerned primarily with making a profit, nonprofit organizations are focused on carrying out a specific public-service mission. Successful nonprofit organizations require substantial capability in key areas of management: developing strong boards of directors, recruiting and motivating talented staff and volunteers, creating plans to focus resources on relevant goals and innovative programs, winning the support of diverse stakeholders, raising funds, and wisely managing fiscal and human resources.

This chapter discusses the term “service delivery” and describes a service delivery system in the context of a nonprofit organization. Servitization is the process whereby an organization develops creative and innovative ways to create a product-service system that integrates value-based products and service offerings. The chapter discusses the roles of client-centeredness, decision making, scheduling, priority setting, effective and efficient flow of services or activities, quality assurance, and continuing quality improvement, and how these factors contribute in their own context to influence positively or negatively the financial sustainability of a nonprofit organization. A customer-centric service design is a service delivery system that focuses on providing the best quality service possible to customers or clients or the service target, based on a service concept, a service decision path, service sustainability, and service quality. The chapter explains the relationship between service delivery and financial sustainability.

This chapter defines the concept of social marketing and provides some of the common areas for the use of social marketing by nonprofit organizations. The term “social marketing” has been used for several decades to refer to a systematic process of using marketing strategy to influence current behaviors of a target population into a desired behavior in order to positively change a social or community issue. The chapter describes the contents of a social marketing plan. A social marketing plan is a document that justifies the needs for a social marketing campaign, as well as the process of implementation by outlining a SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunity, threat) analysis, a description of the target population, the goals and objectives, an impact statement, the marketing mix strategies, an implementation plan, an evaluation plan, and a budget. The chapter establishes the relationship between social marketing and financial sustainability.

This chapter demonstrates how social work ethics apply to ethical and legal decision making in forensic social work practice. It discusses the context of social work practice in legal systems. The chapter also details the basic structures of the United States (U.S.) civil and criminal legal systems. It lays the foundation for the criminal and civil court processes in the United States and introduces basic terminology and a description of associated activities and progression through these systems. The chapter focuses on providing an introductory, and overarching, picture of both civil and criminal law in the U.S. and introduces the roles social workers play in these systems. It focuses on the ETHICA model of ethical decision making as a resource and tool that can be used to help forensic social workers process difficult and complex situations across multiple systems.

This chapter explains the theoretical basis for motivational interviewing (MI). It reviews the empirical evidence for the use of MI with diverse populations in forensic settings. MI involves attention to the language of change, and is designed to strengthen personal motivation and commitment to a specific goal by eliciting and exploring the person’s own reasons for change within an atmosphere of acceptance and compassion. It is now internationally recognized as an evidence-based practice intervention for alcohol and drug problems. MI involves an underlying spirit made up of partnership, acceptance, compassion, and evocation. The chapter discusses four key processes involved in MI: engaging, focusing, evoking, and planning. It also describes five key communication microskills used throughout MI: asking open-ended questions, providing affirmations, offering summarizing statements, providing information and advice with permission, and reflective statements.

The concept of risk behaviors became a model for public health interventions in the late 1970s and 1980s. This chapter describes contemporary knowledge on the risk behaviors of gender and sexual minority (GSM) persons. It highlights research findings, with particular attention paid to studies of different GSM subgroups, and evaluates interventions that have sought to modify behaviors in the pursuit of better health outcomes. The chapter then focuses on the potential contributions of other theoretical frameworks to the study of GSM risk behaviors, including opportunities to incorporate disclosure, resilience, intersectionality, and minority stress theories. It also presents recommendations for future directions for researching health risk behaviors among GSM persons, addressing the risk of harming GSM populations, and diverting attention and resources from addressing justice and social determinants of GSM health. The chapter concludes with suggestions for future research and interventions in support of more equitable health outcomes.

As in the non-lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community, gender and sexual minority (GSM) individuals who are also members of one or more racial/ethnic minority populations face unique sociocultural dynamics that impact the ability to achieve and maintain health. This chapter describes the literature that has examined racial/ethnic disparities in a variety of outcomes, and describes what is known regarding the actual impact of intersectionality whenever possible. Reflective of the current literature, the chapter centers on the African American and Hispanic sexual minority male population, HIV, substance use, and mental health as outcomes. It begins with an exploration of barriers to health that reach across outcomes and populations and discusses four specific outcomes with more developed bodies of literature (HIV/sexual health, substance use, mental health/suicide, and victimization). Finally the chapter summarizes the initial evidence from three emerging lines of inquiry (chronic conditions, incarceration, and women’s health).

Using Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory, this chapter highlights the unique strengths and challenges faced by gender and sexual minority (GSM) youth and highlights future directions for research that we believe hold promise in promoting the health and well-being of this special population. It presents a review of the research as applied to physical and mental health disparities that impact GSM youth and discusses the two dominant psychosocial models that explain the contributing factors to these disparities. Notably, public opinion has been shifting toward greater acceptance and inclusion of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community, and the 21st century has seen a large increase in the number of protections and rights afforded to GSM individuals. Future research should continue to examine and replicate the impact of minority stress in more recent cohorts of GSM adolescents to determine whether improvements in the social environment result in decreases in health disparities.

Research on the health and health care needs of gender and sexual minority (GSM) people is burgeoning, in part due to increased awareness of the importance of identifying the health care needs of these long-neglected populations. This increase in knowledge related to GSM health is a critical part of improving the quality of GSM people’s health and health care. This chapter considers how practitioners might integrate existing knowledge about GSM health into their clinical work to establish an affirmative context for GSM patients. More contemporary approaches take a more process-oriented view, focused on the appreciation of cultural differences at personal, professional, organizational, and societal levels. These approaches place greater emphasis on training clinicians to think critically about how patients’ cultural backgrounds and identities impact their life experiences. The authors draw on these approaches to provide practical recommendations for providers to deliver competent care to GSM individuals.

This concluding chapter summarizes the major points regarding elder abuse (EA) presented in the preceding chapters. It concludes the chapter by taking one last opportunity to encourage exploration and initiation of system-level efforts to solve a major public health problem. The socioecological framework for violence prevention utilized within domestic and global public health work is applicable and extendable to EA. Throughout this book, the authors have argued that EA is a public health problem and that EA may well be among the most under-recognized and under-resourced population health problems of the early 21st century. Public health has frameworks, tools, approaches, relationships, structures, systems, and a variety of agents and organizations poised to address the problem of EA. The imprimatur of the growing population of older adults and the character of demographic transitions occurring globally provide the perfect rationale for action—now.

The obesity epidemic is even more pronounced in rural America, and is a growing concern as rural adults and children are now more likely to be obese than urban adults and children. People who are overweight or obese are at increased risk for chronic disease and conditions such as hypertension, coronary heart disease, stroke, gallbladder disease, osteoarthritis, and some types of cancers. For women, obesity also is associated with complications of pregnancy, menstrual irregularities, hirsutism, and psychological disorders such as depression. Stress has been linked to obesity in adults and in children, and rural residents are continually subject to the stresses of poverty, limited access to health care, and geographical and social isolation. In rural communities, community organizations and families need to come together to identify common goals related to obesity prevention and identify and mobilize human and community assets to implement strategies they believe will work for their community.

Concurrent with the release of Education and Identity in 1969, the United States was at the nexus of social unrest and expanding funding and support for educational initiatives. The decades of the 1950s and 1960s saw a great increase in research and practice focused on developmental theorists working in the area of higher education. At the forefront of this work was theorist Arthur Chickering. The primary construct of Chickering’s (1969) work is the Seven Vectors of Development. The vectors are: (a) developing competence, (b) managing emotions, (c) moving through autonomy toward interdependence, (d) developing mature interpersonal relationships, (e) establishing identity, (f) developing purpose, and (g) developing integrity. This vector addresses competence across three domains: intellectual, physical and manual, and interpersonal. This chapter briefly outlines Chickering’s life work, and ways in which practitioners can apply his theory to their daily interactions with college students.

This chapter provides new data and a critical look at the comparative assessment of different ethnic groups’ overall levels of savings given their different experiences in the labor market. It focuses on how employers differentially treat minorities to their disadvantage with a multiple regression analysis that identifies the independent negative impact of being a minority on retirement sponsorship and pension plan participation. Minorities have lesser access to employer-sponsored retirement plans because they are particularly affected by the substitution of defined benefit (DB) plan coverage for less secure and less comprehensive defined contribution (DC) plans. Social Security is an important source of retirement income for all Americans. Minorities are disproportionately employed in lower-paid industries and occupations, which have lower rates of retirement account coverage. Qualitative research and interdisciplinary collaborative studies of minority retirement behavior have emerged.

Migrant farmworkers are a distinct population within rural public health. This chapter considers the demographics, health behaviors, health conditions, access barriers, and programs and resources for the mobile poor population. Migrant and seasonal farmworker health issues that warrant special consideration include those related to occupational and environmental health, infectious diseases, mental and behavioral health, food insecurity, housing, and oral health. Present programs in health and education available to migrant farmworkers reach only a minority of farmworker families and need expansion as well as enhancement. Primary care services will be most effective when patient-centered care is coupled with outreach efforts and preventive health coverage. Cancer care, palliative care, and end-of-life care are areas in need of thoughtful program implementation. Public health practitioners and planners will be assisted by understanding the agricultural labor force in their region of concern, and the available resources for social and health services.

This chapter discusses the identification of individual differences in health behaviors and health status among minorities. Sickle cell disease (SCD), a genetic disorder, may serve as an optimal model for understanding issues of aging in minority populations. SCD is an important model of multifactorial conceptualization of genetic-based chronic disease among aging populations. Generally, molecular genetic methodologies are called to mind when people consider the role of genetic factors in health and disease. Behavioral genetic methods will be particularly useful if one begins studying minorities from the perspective that there is significant heterogeneity within populations of minorities. Conceptual and methodological discussions of heterogeneity within minority populations are particularly timely given the changing sociodemographic features of ethnic/racial populations related to health disparities. Socioeconomic status and education have been found to be important variables associated with the development of chronic illness.

Traditionally, there has been a division of labor in higher education between academics and student affairs. This chapter is designed to focus on the plausibility of using theory to facilitate communication across the many departments and divisions of higher education. It is important to remember that the student affairs profession “grew from the campus up, not from theory down”. Early institutions of higher education followed the Oxbridge model with historically based residential living systems in which educators resided in residence halls with the students. This concept of faculty–student integration remains a valuable component in student success today, and is discussed in greater detail in this chapter. One useful “language” for student affairs practitioners is found in Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development. Erik Erikson pioneered a theoretical framework and proposes an eight-staged life-span model through which developing individuals permeate starting at birth and eventually ending with death.

This chapter focuses on the following topics: demography, gender, age at diagnosis/onset of cardiovascular disease (CVD), Medicare usage, work and retirement, social support, social context and neighborhoods, ethnography of families, qualitative research, and social policy. These topics constitute some of the key areas that should be the focus of future research on the sociology of minority aging. The chapter provides a rich description of trends in the ethnic and racial composition of older cohorts to illustrate the dramatic changes that have taken place in the United States in the past century. The rising costs of health care and the increasing older minority population, additional reform will be needed to maintain the sus-tainability of the program. Additional work examining within-race group differences is key to understanding minority aging issues given the large amount of cultural diversity in the United States.

Rural America may seem an unlikely setting for new trends in substance abuse. This chapter compares rural and urban areas and the rural continuum for prevalence of substance use and abuse, efforts to prevent substance abuse, treatment availability and accessibility, and continuing care and long-term support for abstinence. It also presents models of service delivery that address resource limitations common to rural areas. Van Gundy also found that substance abuse rates vary across racial and ethnic groups, though rates differ when socioeconomic status and other factors are considered. Nonmedical use of prescription drugs is a growing national problem and one that heavily impacts rural areas. Societal effects include the strain and economic costs absorbed by emergency rooms, treatment agencies, social service agencies, and the legal and criminal justice systems in coping with the consequences of meth abuse. Treatment models with relevance for rural providers address the shortcomings of existing services.

This chapter presents an illustration of the complexities involved in studying ethnic and racial influences on psychosocial processes and how they are intimately tied to physical outcomes in later life. It focuses on psychology as a discipline, minority aging research during the last several decades has revealed the need for multidisciplinary and intersectional conceptual and research approaches. The chapter also focuses on the age, gender, socioeconomic, cultural, and racial and ethnic graded influences on life course development that eventuate in unequal burdens of psychological and physical health morbidity and mortality for certain groups in late life. No section on psychology could be complete without a discussion of religion and spirituality among racial and ethnic minorities. Generational processes are clearly implicated in ideas about the cyclical nature of poverty and health behaviors that are intricately linked with environmental factors and social influence.

This chapter examines the Older Americans Act (OAA) through the prism of the coming nexus of aging and ethnic/racial diversity. It explains that the OAA can serve as a foundation for building a home- and community-based set of services for all older adults and persons with disabilities and for addressing aging in the 2lst century. The OAA is the primary federal program providing a host of services that enable older persons and their families to live in their homes and communities with a measure of dignity and independence. The OAA, Administration on Aging (AOA), and aging network today provide five major categories of services: access to social and legal services, nutrition, home- and community-based long-term social and supportive services, disease prevention and health promotion, and vulnerable elder rights protections. The OAA and the AOA remain secondary players in national agenda setting for an aging population.

This chapter focuses on informal caregiving among minority groups. It also focuses on context of caregiving and discuss the various specific challenges caregivers of minority older adults face. The chapter examines some of the specific caregiving interventions tailored for families of color and discuss the implications for practice, policy, and research. Medical advances and greater longevity point to healthier and longer lives for many, but both formal and informal caregiving remain a concern as individuals age and develop conditions that require care. Caregivers are often able to realize the positive aspects of caregiving when they are not struggling with financial or social support challenges. Despite the vast literature on caregiving in general, research pertaining to the needs and experiences of racial/ethnic minority older adults and their caregivers is limited, particularly for American Indians, Pacific Islanders, specific Asian American and Latino subgroups, and religious minorities groups such as Muslim Americans.

This chapter presents an integrative approach to the psychological study of minority populations and the reduction of health disparities through positive nonmaterial resources. It provides a brief introduction to positive psychology and to the concept of early life origins of disease, highlighting the value of integrating these seemingly disparate literatures as a lens for studying health and broader aging processes among minority populations. Minority status whether based on ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status (SES), citizenship, religion, or other factors is a robust determinant of health, well-being, and success across the life span and intergenerationally. Positive psychology is relevant to health and development particularly physiological and psychological adaptation to stress across the life span, and even across multiple generations among humans in general and among minority populations in particular. Health inequalities are the result of unique challenges to successful psychological and physiological adaptation faced by minority group members.

This chapter discusses current thinking in the field of social support and social relationships, and physical and mental health among older racial and ethnic minorities. Social relationships are an important predictor of health and psychological well-being across the life course. Many minority older adults will face the continued challenges of declining functional status due to physical and mental health conditions over the course of their lives. Most empirical studies on social support among older racial and ethnic minority adults explore the association between social support and both physical and mental health. The wealth of studies on social support among minority older adults has much to offer with respect to understanding the correlates of emotional support and patterns of assistance. The biological mechanisms explaining the link between social support and physical health outcomes have been largely unexplored among older racial and ethnic minority groups.

This chapter presents reasons for why many individuals prefer receiving mental health care in a primary care setting. In fact, more persons with a mental health problem or illness are treated by a primary care provider than by a specialty mental health care provider. The chapter also presents the background for integration, including definitions, models, barriers, and evidence from the general integration literature. It describes the history of integration in rural areas and best practices of integrating care in rural areas. The chapter presents practical strategies for integrating care in rural areas. It provides case studies of integrated care in rural communities. The chapter reviews the experience and lessons learned by four rural primary care providers who have successfully integrated care. A number of national trends and policy initiatives are likely to influence access to rural mental health care in the years ahead.

This chapter examines racial and ethnic differences in disability in the United States with a focus on their patterns, trends, and determinants. Disability is responsible for massive social and economic costs to individuals, families, and health care systems. Racial and ethnic differences in health are one of the most widely studied topics in U.S. health disparities research. The risk of disability among older Asians is an understudied area, despite the growth of this population subgroup in recent years due to increased volume of immigration from Asia to the United States. There is an ongoing interest in measuring and understanding the patterns and causes of racial/ethnic differences in disability in the United States. Rising obesity may play an important role in the findings for Hispanic women and for the trend in disability for all race/ethnic groups.

This chapter describes the role of supplementary education–typically, a form of additional structured education that takes place outside of the school classroom–and how it can prepare learners for high academic achievement and effective engagement in the process of learning that is key to academic success. The idea of supplementary education is based on the premise that beyond exposure to the school’s formal academic curriculum, high academic achievement is closely associated with exposure to family and community-based activities and learning experiences that occur outside of school. The chapter presents the rationale and need for supplementary education. Related types of supplementary education include those that are implicit parenting, nutrition, family talk, parental employment, decision making, reading along with the children, socialization and acculturation, social networks, travel, and environmental supports, and those that are explicit (academic development, tutorials, advocacy, remediation, one-on-one tutoring SAT preparation, Saturday academies, specialized services, socio-cultural and child-centered social groups).

This chapter examines the history of long-term services and supports (LTSS) programs to document their racially and ethnically disparate impact, and explain the current research on the access and quality of LTSS used by older adults in communities of color. LTSS are a set of health and social services delivered over a sustained period to people who have lost or never acquired some capacity for personal care. The high costs of LTSS have led a smaller number of low-income older adults to consume a large share of Medicaid expenditures. Cultural beliefs about family responsibility to care for older adults as well as attitudes toward the use of formal and/or public health and long-term care services can shape older adults’ use of LTSS. The coming sociodemographic shift of older minority adults calls attention to other structural and cultural issues that facilitate or inhibit the appropriate use of LTSS.

A growing body of research documents racial and ethnic disparities in physical and mental health among older Americans. This chapter discusses larger stress process literature and reviews research on discrimination as a source of stress that is an influential determinant of racial and ethnic differences in the health status of older Americans. It provides a brief overview of disparities in health among older Americans. The chapter discusses the biology of stress, elaborates on key elements of the general stress process framework, and highlights findings pertinent to the health of older minorities. It reviews the research on personally mediated discrimination and health that includes findings from both age-diverse samples and those specific to older adults. The chapter also reviews the literature on coping with discrimination and the contribution of institutionalized discrimination to health inequalities. Lacking are investigations on the joint impact of perceived discrimination and residential segregation.

Lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals are more likely than their heterosexual peers to experience a variety of mental health and health-related problem behaviors, including emotional distress, suicidality, substance use, and sexual risk behaviors. This chapter investigates potential ethnic/racial differences in gay-related and non-gay-related stress among a sample of Black, Latino, and White LGB youths in New York City. It further examines whether ethnic/racial disparities exist in various mental health and health-related behaviors of LGB youths. The chapter then examine whether gay-related stress may account for the potential ethnic/racial disparities among LGB youths. The chapter reviews the research on sexual orientation disparities in health among LGB youths, followed by a review of what is currently known about potential ethnic/racial disparities in stress and health among LGB youths.

This chapter provides new insights, direction, and applicability of qualitative research methods in social network analysis, with special emphasis on the minority elder population. It describes how specific qualitative approaches may be applied and contribute to increased understanding in social network analysis. The chapter provides a list of suggested future directions to address issues that are void in the literature on social networks and minority elders. The social networks of older adults provide them with the greatest amount of care and support. Any definition of social networks needs to be grounded in both microstructural and macro-structural perspectives. The social networks of minority elders are uniquely shaped by the cultural norms and values associated with the diverse racial and ethnic groups with which they identify. The conceptual guidance from the life course perspective can also inform understanding the structure and function of social networks among minority elders.

Informal and loosely generated models of White identity development began to emerge in the late 1970s and early 1980s; however, the first formal White identity development model, or typology, was proposed by Helms in 1984. This chapter describes her model, followed by an application of the model to the opening vignette. It identifies strategies for educators and student affairs practitioners to work with students like Craig to begin to more fully understand his Whiteness, the sociopolitical realities of race on campus and, in general, increase his multicultural competence, and engage in healthy interracial interactions. The chapter also discusses the summary of the literature examining the steps educators and student affairs practitioners can take to promote their own cross-cultural interactions and multicultural knowledge in order to more effectively work with students struggling with their own racial identity, followed by the strategies to promote healthy interracial interactions among students.

This chapter describes four specific minority groups within rural areas namely African American; Hispanic; lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT); and American Indian/Alaskan Native. It also describes leading health issues such as diabetes, heart disease, stroke, hypertension, and cancer among rural Hispanics, contributing factors to health disparities among rural Hispanics. The chapter offers recommendations to improve health and eliminate disparities among rural Hispanic populations. For rural African American communities, community-based settings like churches have been found to engender higher participation and retention rates for health promotion programs. Factors such as poverty, health insurance, and having a health care provider contribute to the health disparities among rural Hispanics. Innovations such as telehealth and community-based participatory research hold much promise for advancing health within rural minority groups such initiatives should be encouraged, supported, and appropriately funded to begin to address health inequity in the doubly underserved populations.

Holland theorized six distinct worker personalities (Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional). This is often referred to as RIASEC. The theory includes six work environments that correspond to the same personality types (Realistic, Investigative, Artistic, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional). Although people possess aspects of each type, the general thesis of the theory is that salient types (work personalities) will emerge in each individual. Holland’s work represents a significant contribution to career development and counseling. Understanding Holland’s focus on interests as expressions of personality aids career counselors and student development specialists in helping students gain critical self-understanding. Exploring the match between personalities and work environments is a fundamental aspect of applying this theory to student development. Helping students to explore and learn about different careers that may be of interest to them is congruent with the goals of higher education institutions and student development theories.

This chapter presents new paradigms for inclusive health care, articulating the need for both individual patient and population health approaches, while highlighting the role of home-based interactive computer technology in having a wide impact. It describes the high costs of health and mental health behaviors. The chapter explains science’s and health care practices low impact on health and mental health behaviors. It describes higher impact paradigms that can complement current paradigms of research and practice. Integrated health care paradigm is an innovative approach to population health, which would integrate services across biological and behavioral disciplines. The chapter discusses in detail clinician and computer paradigms, clinician and computer-based clinical trials, from single to multiple behavior change paradigms, high specificity vs. high generality, and higher impact science and service.

Integral to theories of moral development is the matter of not only what individuals think but also how they think. Across the life span, moral development is shaped by challenging events that prompt individuals to question the frameworks they have created for finding ways to determine what is good and what is bad. College students encounter new ideas and values that differ from those of their families, in the classroom, in the residence hall, in the dining facility, in the student union, and sometimes on the athletic field or court. In order to illustrate how moral development unfolds within a college student population, this chapter introduces a fictitious character who displays each stage of moral development for two theories–Lawrence Kohlberg’s (1963, 1984) and Carol Gilligan’s (1982) models of moral development. The chapter discusses the underpinnings of two specific moral development theories.

This chapter focuses on more integrated approach or process for developing a health intervention for ethnic minority groups that incorporates accepted principles of medicine and scientific methodology. The changing demographic has led to complex challenges in the U.S. health care system. The delivery of effective health care services hinges on health care professionals’ ability to recognize varied understandings of and approaches to health care across cultures. Health care providers may employ different strategies to increase participation of service users by bridging barriers to communication and understanding that stem from these racial, ethnic, cultural, and linguistic differences. In the context of health or health care improvement, little debate exists concerning the recognized need to help ethnic minority patients maintain and restore health. There are two general approaches for developing culturally appropriate health interventions. The first approach is from science to practice and the second approach is from practice to science.

This chapter discusses the history, organization, development, and the future of Medicare and applies Andersen’s Behavioral Model of Health Services Use to understand utilization among the elderly and conduct a systematic literature review. It analyzes racial/ethnic disparities in health care utilization among the elderly using Andersen’s model and discuss the implications of the current proposals for changes in Medicare for health care utilization especially among minority aging. Racial/ethnic differences in seniors’ use of medical care were sizable before the Medicare program. The focus on deficits and controlling the cost of government has in turn increased the focus on health care and entitlement programs like Medicare. Medicare is important to ensure access to health care for the elderly, particularly the poor and minorities. However, with the rising health care costs and changing demographics, it is clear that Medicare needs some type of reform to ensure its continuing viability.

Many adults understand the pressures of having multiple responsibilities that require attention in a variety of life circumstances. Whether giving attention to work, friends, school, religious activities, romantic relationships, family, or even recreation, adulthood requires the ongoing ability to multitask a variety of expectations and responsibilities. Before reaching adulthood, each person has experienced influences that affect how we think, feel, and react to life’s circumstances. This chapter offers professionals and educators one model for understanding these influences and their impact on college students who oftentimes are transitioning to a new world of adult responsibilities for the first time. Ecological theory originally developed out of the work of Urie Bronfenbrenner (1977) within the field of developmental psychology. The concepts described in Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory offer a number of important implications for supporting students in a college setting.

This chapter provides selective review of research on religion and spirituality across three groups of racial and ethnic minority older adults African American, Asian American, and Hispanic/Latino. It discusses major denomination and faith traditions, as well as information about types and patterns of participation and their sociodemographic correlates. The chapter examines informal social support provisions within faith communities and the types of assistance exchanged. It also examines associations between religion, spirituality and physical/mental health, and psychological well-being. Religion and spirituality, through a variety of psychosocial mechanisms and pathways are thought to have largely beneficial impacts on physical and mental hea.

Twenty-five years into the epidemic, AIDS remains a significant public health issue that highlights the persistence of health disparities in the United States. This chapter provides an example of the best case scenario outcome: a new emergent evidence-based model for reducing HIV/AIDS risk with serodiscordant couples worthy of dissemination, and adaptation to new culturally distinct populations. It reviews current research on HIV prevention for couples and highlight the rationale for conducting couple-based intervention research. The chapter describes the process of designing Project Connect, a cultural- and gender-specific HIV/STI prevention intervention. It presents theories that guided the study. The chapter describes the content of the intervention and finally discusses the implications of the efficacy of Project Connect for the design and dissemination of culturally-congruent interventions to address the AIDS epidemic among ethnically diverse women and their male partners.

This chapter focuses on aging and health issues in all of America’s major minority populations including African Americans, Hispanics/Latinos, Asian Americans, as well as Native Americans. It addresses the issues of health inequality and health advantage/disadvantage. The chapter introduces relatively new areas of inquiry including long-term care, genetics, nutrition, health interventions, and health policy issues. In addition to possible genetic factors, the literature has emphasized the influence of poverty and socioeconomic status as well as stressors associated with minority group status. The system of long-term care services will need to be restructured to take into account issues affecting minority populations such as health care coverage, housing and income supports, as well as cultural issues as filial piety and trust. The field of minorities, aging, and health has been dominated by a health inequality perspective that has been illustrated by the application of cumulative disadvantage/cumulative inequality theory.

The general racial/ethnic identity theories offer some insight into possible ways to approach diversity education within all aspects of student affairs. Student affairs professionals and faculty could facilitate educational programs, seminars, and workshops that challenge students to confront issues of prejudice and racism as well as to cultivate racial or ethnic pride. These programs should address the external conditions in which students explore their identity and how to make meaning of shifting thoughts as they progress in their racial or ethnic identity development. By looking at diversity through the lens of racial or ethnic orientation, professionals can meet students where they are and help them not only understand other cultures, but also how they fit into their own race/ethnicity. Practitioners might also use these models as a way to gain insight as to where students might be in their racial/ethnic identity development.

This chapter introduces the scope of this volume by reviewing thirteen guiding principles for a new field of equity in health. The thirteen guiding principles are: The drive for a major paradigm shift, the drive for new models of health care and training, the drive for new theories, perspectives, and identities, the drive for evidence-based approaches, the drive for transdisciplinary teams and community-based participatory research, the drive for globalization and global collaboration, the drive for cultural competence and cultural appropriateness, the drive for health literacy and linguistic appropriateness, the drive to ensure the right to health, the drive for social justice and acknowledgment of forces in the social context, the drive to protect and support the most vulnerable, the drive to repair damage, restore trust, and take responsibility, and the drive to redistribute wealth and access to opportunity. These principles provide hope for a future global transformation in health.

At its core, Kolb’s construct of experiential learning is more than simply a theory. Experiential learning theory (ELT) holds that learning is “the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience”. Although ELT is often used in formal classroom settings, there are many out-of-classroom environments in student affairs that use and benefit from it as well. One way in which colleges and universities use experiential learning is through service-learning courses and projects. Several scholars have reported that using service learning in conjunction with ELT provides students with meaningful ways to engage not only with the community, but also to come to know more about diversity and social justice. Because out-of-classroom learning is such a key component in higher education and in the holistic development of students, using Kolb’s experiential learning model can aid students in meaning making as it facilitates personal growth.

This chapter describes the use of new media designed by education technologists to improve learning. It illustrates the potential of such media to disseminate an evidence-based model for HIV/AIDS risk reduction, enrich the training experience, and expand the possibilities for disseminating content arising from various fields. The chapter describes the Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning (CCNMTL) an organization devoted to providing service to University faculty, who aspire to use digital media as part of their educational efforts. It shows how in conjunction with the Social Intervention Group (SIG) at the Columbia University School of Social Work. CCNMTL developed a multimedia version of Project Connect that may improve its efficacy, exponentially extend its dissemination, and also enhance classroom practice in related fields by repurposing Connect’s assets for classroom use. Lastly, the chapter explains how CCNMTL’s work with SIG led to the development of the Triangle Initiative.

This chapter provides a selective review of research on social support among older African American, Hispanic, Asian American, and Native American adults. It focuses on social support as a dependent variable in relation to different sources and types of aid provided to older African American, Hispanic, Asian American, and Native American adults. The chapter highlights the findings in three specific areas: marriage and romantic relationships, extended family and non-kin as sources of informal social support, and black-white differences in informal social support. Informal social support networks are critical for individuals of all ages but especially for older adults who are dealing with difficult life circumstances. Older African Americans depend on informal social support networks of family and friends for assistance in emergency situations, as well as for help with various tasks of daily life. Elderly Asians often utilize kin and social support networks for a variety of reasons.

The Social Education and Health Advocacy Training (SEHAT) project is a peer-led client-centered participatory program that aims at increasing health awareness and preventive behaviors among the prisoners, with an emphasis on HIV prevention. This chapter discusses the value of peer-led prison-based interventions. It explains the theoretical rationale for the SEHAT intervention, the process of designing SEHAT and developing strategic partnerships. The SEHAT intervention drew upon various theories of health behavior change such as the Health Belief model, Transtheoretical Model, Social Learning Theory, social support, as well as elements of relapse prevention in its skills training sessions. The chapter presents the planning, funding, implementation, and time-lines for the SEHAT program. It also describes the accomplishments and evolution of SEHAT to date, and finally, SEHAT’s future directions and needs.

This chapter focuses on the factors that intersect with race and ethnicity in shaping the experiences of families from racial and ethnic minority communities. It presents a conceptual framework using a Venn diagram that shows the intersection between aging and having a serious mental illness (SMI) or developmental disabilities (DD), limited services for these aging populations, and being a person of color with SMI or DD. People with DD and SMI are now experiencing increased life expectancy due to improved medical and technological advances. However, understanding the needs of aging adults with DD and SMI from diverse communities in the United States and their caregiving families is particularly challenging, because historically, there have been racial and ethnic disparities in the use of specialty health care services. Older adults with DD and SMI from racial minority groups are disadvantaged on multiple domains.

This chapter frames the behavior of patients within a psychosocial model of resilience, underscoring the role of adaptive coping strategies. It presents the results of a study exploring the utility of resilience theory in guiding understanding of the beliefs and practices of African Americans toward colon cancer screening. The chapter proposes that resilience theory will provide a framework for understanding where health-prevention and related behaviors fit in the overall life schemas of persons at risk. The chapter also uses resilience theory to understand the processes that would lead to better access to and actual use of colorectal cancer screening in minority populations. These research findings have potential to guide the development of a targeted intervention to encourage colorectal cancer screening among minority individuals. This study is a first step to explore personal views of key representatives of the African American community, female elders, with regard to colorectal cancer screening.

Mental health professionals play a critical role in enforcing social justice in mental health care service. This chapter discusses various characteristics of and attitudes about mental health services that may serve as barriers to parity in mental health service delivery and services among African Americans. It describes strategies for mental health providers and systems in addressing these service delivery disparities. These strategies improve the quality of mental health services for African American clients, minimize structural barriers in the receipt of mental health care among African Americans, and decreases the stigma associated with counseling use among African Americans and promote more favorable help-seeking attitudes among African Americans. Mental health professionals should work at the individual, community, and institutional levels to address external barriers, differential quality of care, and beliefs that African Americans may bring into their interactions with mental health systems.