Trust in the Police during the Pro-Democracy Movement in Hong Kong: Psychosocial Factors of Perceived Procedural and Distributive Justice.

Hong Kong has experienced social unrest in response to the proposed anti-extradition bill since early June 2019. Demonstrations and rallies have often ended in violent clashes between protestors and the police. Based on a sample of 1024 Hong Kong adults, this study explored the psychosocial factors underlying public perceptions of police procedural and distributive justice among Hong Kongers. Testing the propositions of several criminological theories (i.e., neutralization theory, the general aggression model, general strain theory, and self-control theory), the findings indicated that men reported significantly more positive general perceptions of police procedural and distributive justice, better general mental health, and more negative attitudes toward violence than women did. Young adults perceived significantly higher levels of police general, procedural, and distributive justice than did their middle-aged and older counterparts, who reported significantly better general mental health and greater self-control. Multivariate analyses indicated that across all age groups, better general mental health, greater self-control, and more negative attitudes toward violence were significantly associated with positive perceptions of police general, procedural, and distributive justice. This study concludes with practical guidance for enhancing public perceptions of police procedural and distributive fairness.

Editorial.

It is impossible to write this editorial without recognizing that we are living in challenging times. Unprecedented changes in how, when, where, and with whom we work have occurred in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to the threat to human life, the pandemic is expected to increase poverty and deepen preexisting inequalities for vulnerable groups such as women (United Nations, 2020) and individuals living in poorer countries (United Nations Development Programme, 2020). In the United States, the pandemic has disproportionately negatively affected racial and ethnic minority group members (https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/health-equity/race-ethnicity.html). For example, in the United States infection and mortality rates are especially high among African Americans (Yancy, 2020). These sobering realities, along with the recent deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor, and so many others, are vivid and wrenching reminders of longstanding social injustice and systematic racism, both in the United States and around the globe. When preparing my candidate statement and vision for the journal, a global pandemic and widespread social protest were the furthest thing from my mind. However, several aspects of my vision for JAP are highly relevant to the current context. This includes increasing representation and supporting diversity, as well as improving the translation of our science for the public good. Other elements of my vision for the journal include enhancing the review process and promoting open science. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

A 10-Year Social Media Analysis Exploring Hospital Online Support of Black Lives Matter and the Black Community.

Importance: Tensions around COVID-19 and systemic racism have raised the question: are hospitals advocating for equity for their Black patients? It is imperative for hospitals to be supportive of the Black community and acknowledge themselves as safe spaces, run by clinicians and staff who care about social justice issues that impact the health of the Black community; without the expression of support, Black patients may perceive hospitals as uncaring and unsafe, potentially delaying or avoiding treatment, which can result in serious complications and death for those with COVID-19. Objective: To explore how hospitals showed public-facing support for the Black community as measured through tweets about social equity or the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. Design, Setting, and Participants: Using a retrospective longitudinal cohort study design, tweets from the top 100 ranked hospitals were collected, starting with the most recent over a 10-year span, from May 3, 2009, to June 26, 2020. The date of the George Floyd killing, May 25, 2020, was investigated as a point of interest. Data were analyzed from June 11 to December 4, 2020. Main Outcomes and Measures: Tweets were manually identified based on 4 categories: BLM, associated with the BLM movement; Black support, expressed support for Black population within the hospital's community; Black health, pertained to health concerns specific to and the creation of health care for the Black community; or social justice, associated with general social justice terms that were too general to label as Black. If a tweet did not contain any hashtags from these categories, it remained unlabeled. Results: A total of 281 850 tweets from 90 unique social media accounts were collected. Each handle returned at least 1279 tweets, with 85 handles (94.4%) returning at least 3000 tweets. Tweet publication dates ranged from 2009 to 2020. A total of 274 tweets (0.097%) from 67 handles (74.4%) used a hashtag to support the BLM movement. Among the tweets labeled BLM, the first tweet was published in 2018 and only 4 tweets (1.5%) predated the killing of George Floyd. A similar trend of low signal observed was detected for the other categories (Black support: 244 tweets [0.086%] from 42 handles [46.7%] starting in 2013; Black health: 28 tweets [0.0099%] from 15 handles [16.7%] starting in 2018; social justice: 40 tweets [0.014%] from 21 handles [23.3%] starting in 2015). Conclusions and Relevance: These findings reflect the low signal of tweets regarding the Black community and social justice in a generalized way across approximately 10 years of tweets for all the hospital handles within the data set. From 2009 to 2020, hospitals rarely engaged in issues pertaining to the Black community and if so, only within the last half of this time period. These later entrances into these discussions indicate that these discussions are relatively recent.

How Should Health Professional Education Respond to Widespread Racial and Ethnic Health Inequity and Police Brutality?

Health professions educators continuously adapt curricular content in response to new scientific knowledge but can struggle to incorporate content about current social issues that profoundly affect students and learning environments. This article offers recommendations to support innovation and action as students and faculty grapple with ongoing unrest in the United States, including racism, murders of Black people by police, and COVID-19.