Statement on the effects of law enforcement in school settings.

School-based law enforcement (SBLE) have become increasingly common in U.S. schools over recent decades despite the controversy surrounding their presence and lack of consensus around their associated benefits and harms. Drawing on the history and evidence base regarding SBLE, we advocate for an end to SBLE programs. Grounding our argument in principles of Community Psychology and positive youth development, we outline how the presence and actions of SBLE negatively affect individual students as well as school systems, with particularly harmful outcomes for students with minoritized and marginalized identities. Research on SBLE and school crime does not provide consistent evidence of positive impacts, and many studies find null effects for the relationship between SBLE and school crime or increases in crime and violence in schools. Though funding for SBLE is often prompted by high-profile acts of gun violence in schools, evidence suggests that SBLE neither prevents these incidents, nor lessens the severity when they do occur. Thus, we advocate for removing law enforcement from school settings and redirecting resources into inclusive, evidence-informed responses that are generally safer and more effective than SBLE. We close by outlining the policy landscape governing SBLE programs and ways communities can lobby for change.

Student and Teacher Perspectives of Service Utilization at Their School-based Health Center.

School-based health centers (SBHCs) positively influence student health. However, the extent to which these benefits are actualized varies across sites. We conducted focus groups with high school students and teachers at an underperforming SBHC to identify facilitators and barriers to student access to SBHC services. Our qualitative analysis revealed four main emergent categories: (1) students' knowledge of SBHC services; (2) teachers' perceptions of, and experiences with, the SBHC; (3) accessing and utilizing SBHC services; and (4) student and teacher suggestions to improve the school-SBHC relationship. Our findings suggest that the relationships between health center staff and teachers are crucial and can be damaged with poor implementation. Additionally, there was a general lack of knowledge about the procedures for accessing services at the SBHC. Participants provided recommendations, including strategies for better outreach and engagement with teachers and students, as well as operational strategies to enhance communication systems and the physical environment.

Organizational strategies to address posttraumatic stress injuries among Canadian paramedics.

BACKGROUND: Paramedics are a high-risk occupational group for posttraumatic stress injuries (PTSI), and increasingly, evidence suggests that organizational factors play a significant role. While several resources for paramedic services to address PTSI exist, there is limited knowledge as to which PTSI-related programs and practices are implemented and how they are perceived in the workplace. OBJECTIVES: This research aimed to explore key informants' perspectives on existing and desired organizational-wide initiatives for, as well as the challenges and potential solutions to, the primary prevention, early detection and intervention, and disability management of PTSI in Canadian paramedic services. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 key informants from jurisdictions across Canada who have over five years of work experience in prehospital care. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using thematic analysis. RESULTS: Eight recurrent organizational elements (themes) for addressing PTSI emerged: psychologically safe and healthy work culture; consistent supervisor support, mental health training and awareness, opportunities for recovery and maintaining resiliency, recognition of PTSI and its diverse risk factors, access to a variety of support initiatives for PTSI, communication during medical leave, and meaningful work accommodations. CONCLUSIONS: While organizational-wide initiatives were in place for the primary prevention, early detection and intervention, and disability management of PTSI, systemic challenges with coordination, resource allocation, and worker engagement were also identified. These challenges prevented paramedic services from optimally addressing PTSI in their workplace. Integrating considerations from the eight organizational elements to address PTSI into broader existing management systems may have merit in overcoming the systemic challenges.

Mesopredator suppression by an apex predator alleviates the risk of predation perceived by small prey.

Predators can impact their prey via consumptive effects that occur through direct killing, and via non-consumptive effects that arise when the behaviour and phenotypes of prey shift in response to the risk of predation. Although predators' consumptive effects can have cascading population-level effects on species at lower trophic levels there is less evidence that predators' non-consumptive effects propagate through ecosystems. Here we provide evidence that suppression of abundance and activity of a mesopredator (the feral cat) by an apex predator (the dingo) has positive effects on both abundance and foraging efficiency of a desert rodent. Then by manipulating predators' access to food patches we further the idea that apex predators provide small prey with refuge from predation by showing that rodents increased their habitat breadth and use of 'risky' food patches where an apex predator was common but mesopredators rare. Our study suggests that apex predators' suppressive effects on mesopredators extend to alleviate both mesopredators' consumptive and non-consumptive effects on prey.