Guest Editors' Preface

In moments of crisis that test the stability of US nationalism—the civil war, the expansion of American empire, World Wars I & II, the civil rights era, the post-industrial era, 9/11, COVID—a pattern of violence against Asian Americans seems to make an appearance. Nearly a third of the nurses who have died of coronavirus in the United States are Filipino, even though Filipino nurses make up just 4% of the nursing population nationwide.2 Over 1.2 million Asian Americans labor in food-related industries nationwide—at farms, food processing factories, grocery stores, and restaurants—and are placed at higher risk of infection and mortality.3 In the spring of 2021, in the span of two months, lone white gunmen murdered Asian Americans in Atlanta, Indianapolis, and San Jose (all of the victims were essential service workers). In presenting the data, Wong and Liu invite us to consider how anti-Black tropes and invocations of a persistent "Black-Asian conflict" diverted attention away from the role of white supremacy in fomenting an anti-Asian climate. The new White House immediately promised to "Build Back Better" with a sweeping plan to restore domestic stability and the nation's reputation abroad;implied was the beating back of Trumpian revanchism.

When viruses and misinformation spread: How young Singaporeans navigated uncertainty in the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak

Guided by the frameworks of uncertainty management and sensemaking during crises, this study examined how young adults in Singapore managed uncertainty around the COVID-19 outbreak. Through a series of eight focus group discussions involving 89 young adults, we found that participants experienced uncertainty about the outbreak, especially when it comes to how they should protect themselves. They managed this uncertainty in two ways: while some engaged in information seeking, others engaged in information scanning. Those who did not actively seek information did not avoid it either, with some of them finding it impossible to avoid information about COVID-19, as it comes up in their routine social media use and offline conversations. Understanding COVID-19 as an illness that does not threaten young people, our participants noted only minimal disruptions to them. Instead, they were more concerned about their parents and older family members, whom they considered as more vulnerable. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Increasing the Representation of Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour as Students in Psychology Doctoral Programmes

Additionally, emerging research regarding the COVID-19 pandemic suggests that racial inequities caused by racism (e.g., overrepresentation within frontline employment) cause BIPOC communities to be more exposed to and less protected from the virus, placing them at a higher risk of infection and death, a devastating phenomenon coupled with the already present health disparities caused by racism in the Canadian health care system (Amoako & MacEachen, 2021;Cénat, Kogan, et al., 2021;Denice et al., 2021). In this article, we will discuss, as others have noted, how Canadian graduate programmes must assume responsibility and become directly involved in understanding, offsetting, and preventing the harm of systemic racism, oppression, and discrimination, as demanded by the ethics and principles of psychology itself (APA Division 45 Warrior's Path Presidential Task Force, 2020;APA Council of Representatives, 2021;Canadian Psychological Association [CPA], 2018;Ritchie & Sinacore, 2020). Racialization is about social perceptions-how people perceive others based on their presumed race or ancestry (Pendakur, 2005). [...]race is a socially constructed concept-not a fixed or scientific identity, despite mainstream North American society operating as if it is an accepted truth (Gonzalez-Sobrino & Goss, 2019;Haeny et al., 2021). [...]we use the term BIPOC to encompass the following groups: BIPOC (i.e., South Asian, Chinese, Black, Filipino, Latin American, Arab, Southeast Asian

A nutrition programme using positive deviance approach to reduce undernutrition among urban poor children under-five in Malaysia: A cluster randomised controlled trial protocol

Background: Childhood undernutrition remains a public health issue that can lead to unfavourable effects in later life. These effects tend to be more devastating among urban poor young children, especially in light of the recent COVID-19 pandemic. There is an immediate need to introduce interventions to reduce childhood undernutrition. This paper described the study protocol of a nutrition programme that was developed based on the positive deviance approach and the evaluation of the effectiveness of the programme among urban poor children aged 3 to 5 years old. Methods: This mixed-method study will be conducted in two phases at low-cost flats in Kuala Lumpur. Phase one will involve a focus group discussion with semi-structured interviews to explore maternal feeding practices and the types of food fed to the children. Phase two will involve a two-armed cluster randomised controlled trial to evaluate the effectiveness of a programme developed based on the positive deviance approach. The programme will consist of educational lessons with peer-led cooking demonstrations, rehabilitation, and growth monitoring sessions. Intervention group will participate in the programme conducted by the researcher for three months whereas the comparison group will only receive all the education materials and menus used in the programme after data collection has been completed. For both groups, data including height, weight, and dietary intake of children as well as the nutritional knowledge and food security status of mothers will be collected at baseline, immediate post-intervention, and 3-month post-intervention. Expected results: The positive deviance approach helps to recognise the common feeding practices and the local wisdom unique to the urban poor population. Through this programme, mothers may learn from and be empowered by their peers to adopt new feeding behaviours so that their children can achieve healthy weight gain. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)