I used to cry every day: a model of the family process of managing displacement.

Community displacing events, natural or human made, are increasing in frequency. By the end of 2009, over 36 million people were known to be displaced worldwide. Displacement is a traumatic experience with significant short- and long-term health consequences. The losses and costs associated with displacement-social connections, employment, property, and economic capital-are felt not only by the displaced individuals but also the communities they have left behind, and the communities that receive displaced individuals. Many researchers have explored the link between health and reduced social, cultural, and economic capital. Most of the displacement literature focuses on the effect of displacement on the displaced individual; however, many families move as a group. In this study, we examined the family process of managing displacement and its associated capital losses by conducting interviews with 20 families. We found that families undergo a four-phase process of displacement: antecedent, uprooting, transition, and resettlement. The losses families experience impact the health and well-being of individuals, families, and communities. The degree to which the displacement process ends successfully, or ends at all, can be affected by efforts to both create connections within the new communities and rebuild economic and social capital.

Fresh Start: a multilevel community mobilization plan to promote youth development and prevent violence.

While much has been written about community mobilization for health, few detailed expositions of the formation of community mobilization, especially focused on youth violence prevention exist. The Columbia Center for Youth Violence Prevention, in collaboration with the UNIDOS Inwood Coalition, developed a Community mobilization plan to guide youth violence prevention in Inwood. The plan was developed within the context of an evidence-based organizing framework-Communities that Care (CTC) and takes a multi-level approach to service coordination that includes activities at the Individual, Family, Block, Organizational and Built Environment levels. This article describes how the Community mobilization plan was created, illustrates the use of evidence-based practices to lead to the development of the plan, outlines the plan's community/organizational activities, and summarizes the principles and processes that can be replicated in other communities seeking to start their own community mobilization efforts to reduce youth violence.

Constructing peace: helping youth cope in the aftermath of 9/11.

The 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York City represented a new strain on already fractured communities with low collective efficacy. Like the majority of citizens in the greater metropolitan area, researchers at the Community Research Group of Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health wanted to "do" something to help in the aftermath of the attacks. The group proposed to promote collective recovery, that is, rebuilding social connections in the city as the foundation for individual and group recovery. After several months of organizing, New York City RECOVERS (NYCR)--a network of organizations formed to promote trauma recovery post 9/11--in conjunction with the New York University's International Trauma Studies Program, persuaded the New York City Department of Health and Mental Health and the FEMA-funded Project Liberty to sponsor a conference on collective recovery, with a focus on the first anniversary of the tragedy. Utilizing participant observation, the research team documented the outreach and dissemination efforts of NYCR, the partners' organizational engagement in collective recovery, and the recovery activities they pursued. This paper describes the work of the conference and the specific efforts for youth violence prevention that followed. In this circumstance, engaging community partners helped shift the research agenda from one driven by funders and researchers to one co-driven by the organizations and populations they aimed to influence.

Obvious and not-so-obvious strategies to disseminate research.

The findings of health disparities research will have to be disseminated to a broad public in order to influence health outcomes. Some strategies for dissemination are obvious, and these generally work for ideas that are within the mainstream of current paradigms. However, ideas that challenge existing theories and assumptions may require different, and not-so-obvious, strategies. This article discusses the use of movies and site visits as two novel strategies for research dissemination.