ABSTRACT
When the pandemic closed schools in Denver, an enterprising parent with community connections stepped in to meet immediate needs--and paved a new path to supporting students and families in the future. Joanna Rosa-Saenz determined to "turn negatives into positives" by using whatever means she had to ensure her children and others in the community had a safe space to continue learning. That meant stepping up and creating such a space herself. She converted her basement into a classroom, used her car like a school bus, and devoted her time and energy to support a pod that served up to 14 students at a given time. She welcomed them for as long as they needed to stay and charged no tuition. Older students mostly followed their school's remote instruction, with Rosa-Saenz serving in a supervisory role rather than providing direct academic instruction. True to Montessori-style teaching, Rosa-Saenz involved the older students as mentors for younger students. This article provides details on how Rosa-Saenz operated a pod in her community, which led to strong relationships with students and between students.
ABSTRACT
The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic disrupted education, peer interactions, and social access for a large percentage of learners and created increased stress and workloads for parents, particularly in families of autistic children, who lost access to specialized services. Providing parents with resources to support their children at home became a necessity. This exploratory study investigated the feasibility of a parent coaching model of music interventions through virtual sessions in a low-resource country. Eight families participated in six 1-hr weekly sessions where the music therapist shared music interventions for young autistic children through videoconferencing. Results show that parent coaching in a virtual setting is feasible, useful, and acceptable for parents. All parents improved in their ability to modify the environment to address child's needs, adequately respond to their child's communication attempts, and provide opportunities for engagement and natural reinforcement. Parents found the coaching important, useful, and supportive. Initial recommendations for practice include providing guidelines for safe sessions;adapting to family needs, strengths, and culture;relaying information quickly and concisely;and ensuring that parents can access local services to continue their parenting journey.
ABSTRACT
As part of long-term comparative research into the Gauteng City-Region, this article presents mixed-methods studies in the informal settlement of Denver, located in the industrial belt southeast of Johannesburg's city center. It unpacks the results of focus groups, ethnographic and expert interviews, as well as mapping with an innovative smartphone tracking application, comparing everyday life for several households in this area before the pandemic in 2019 and during the pandemic in 2020. Findings show that the pandemic exacerbated the disproportionate burdens related to gendered roles of household management, childcare, and mobility, both on the macro- as well as the micro-scale. The article thus defines the "gender-poverty-mobility nexus" that shapes space and everyday life in the Gauteng City-Region, precluding places like Denver from overcoming their marginality. Post-pandemic planning policy could be transformative for such spaces if it can build on this knowledge to better identify the needs of these vulnerable social groups and connect them to opportunities. It concludes with suggestions on how these empirically revealed dynamics could be translated into responses on the urban and regional scales, in the name of more equitable, resilient planning futures for Johannesburg and beyond.
ABSTRACT
he 2021 Denver Gem I and Mineral Showcase (herein meaning the collection of gem, mineral, and fossil shows and events happening in Denver, Colorado, in the first half of September) saw a lot of changes this year, and speculation about the show proved to be an enduring topic of conversation in the mineral community during the past year. Thankfully, we can say now that, COVID-19 pandemic-related challenges aside, the show turned out to be an excellent constellation of events that were well received and well attended. This year, the biggest change to the Denver Gem and Mineral Showcase was the birth of a new show called the "HardRock Summit" (16-19 September), which combined both the former Denver Fine Mineral Show (run by Dave Waisman of Fine Mineral Shows, LLC) and the traditional Denver Gem & Mineral Show, the nonprofit show organized by a group of Denver-area gem and mineral clubs and currently in its fifty-fifth year (started in 1967).
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has had profound and differential impacts on metropolitan areas across the United States and around the world. Within the United States, metropolitan areas that were hit earliest with the pandemic and reacted with scientifically based health policy were able to contain the virus by late spring. For other areas that kept businesses open, the first wave in the United States hit in mid-summer. As the weather turns colder, universities resume classes, and people tire of lockdowns, a second wave is ascending in both metropolitan and rural areas. It becomes more obvious that additional SARS-CoV-2 surveillance is needed at the local level to track recent shifts in the pandemic, rates of increase, and persistence. OBJECTIVE: The goal of this study is to provide advanced surveillance metrics for COVID-19 transmission that account for speed, acceleration, jerk and persistence, and weekly shifts, to better understand and manage risk in metropolitan areas. Existing surveillance measures coupled with our dynamic metrics of transmission will inform health policy to control the COVID-19 pandemic until, and after, an effective vaccine is developed. Here, we provide values for novel indicators to measure COVID-19 transmission at the metropolitan area level. METHODS: Using a longitudinal trend analysis study design, we extracted 260 days of COVID-19 data from public health registries. We used an empirical difference equation to measure the daily number of cases in the 25 largest US metropolitan areas as a function of the prior number of cases and weekly shift variables based on a dynamic panel data model that was estimated using the generalized method of moments approach by implementing the Arellano-Bond estimator in R. RESULTS: Minneapolis and Chicago have the greatest average number of daily new positive results per standardized 100,000 population (which we refer to as speed). Extreme behavior in Minneapolis showed an increase in speed from 17 to 30 (67%) in 1 week. The jerk and acceleration calculated for these areas also showed extreme behavior. The dynamic panel data model shows that Minneapolis, Chicago, and Detroit have the largest persistence effects, meaning that new cases pertaining to a specific week are statistically attributable to new cases from the prior week. CONCLUSIONS: Three of the metropolitan areas with historically early and harsh winters have the highest persistence effects out of the top 25 most populous metropolitan areas in the United States at the beginning of their cold weather season. With these persistence effects, and with indoor activities becoming more popular as the weather gets colder, stringent COVID-19 regulations will be more important than ever to flatten the second wave of the pandemic. As colder weather grips more of the nation, southern metropolitan areas may also see large spikes in the number of cases.
Subject(s)
COVID-19/epidemiology , Communicable Disease Control , COVID-19/prevention & control , COVID-19/transmission , Health Policy , Humans , Longitudinal Studies , Models, Statistical , Pandemics , Public Health , Public Health Surveillance , Registries , SARS-CoV-2 , United States/epidemiologyABSTRACT
The Early Start Denver Model (ESDM) is an evidence-based early intervention model for young children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). It is crucial to investigate the feasibility of the ESDM in community settings in contexts that are culturally different from American universities in which the model was originally developed. The aim was to further evaluate the effectiveness of the ESDM delivered within the Italian community setting at low intensity. We compared a group aged 19 to 43 months receiving the ESDM for 2 h per week over the course of 1 year with a concurrent, comparable, non-randomized control group receiving treatment as usual (TAU). Children were evaluated at baseline (T0) and after 6 months (T1) and 12 months (T2) of intervention. Feasibility was evaluated by parent and therapist questionnaires, retention rate, and therapist treatment fidelity. Both groups made similar gains in cognition and language abilities. The ESDM group made larger improvement in domains measured by the ESDM Curriculum Checklist, including communication, social skills, and maladaptive behaviors. Feasibility seemed well supported by retentions, therapists and parent satisfaction, and treatment fidelity. Our study further supports the feasibility of the ESDM implemented within the Italian public health system and suggests a better response in the ESDM-treated group than in the control group.