Delivering Medicaid Mental Health Services and Supports in Schools: Current Landscape and Opportunities to Expand.

BACKGROUND: Medicaid is a key policy lever for expanding access to mental health services and supports for children in schools, especially low-income and minority children. This study examines how Medicaid finances mental health promotion and prevention (tier 1), screening and selected interventions (tier 2), and treatment (tier 3) in schools, informing policy recommendations to expand school mental health. METHODS: Seventeen key informant interviews were conducted virtually from March to October 2022 with research, practice, and policy leaders in school mental health and Medicaid. Interview transcripts were thematically coded to inform recommendations. RESULTS: Interview themes included that Medicaid is a key funder of mental health services, primarily in tier 3, and that braiding and blending funds is necessary to support services across all tiers in schools. Interviewees underscored the need to expand tier 2 in schools, to expand and diversify the behavioral health workforce (including via non-licensed providers, aligning school-employed provider licensure and billing requirements and building school-community referral relationships), strengthen teaming structures (including state children's cabinets, student case management, and education/Medicaid agency coordination), and leverage technical assistance and training to speed up adoption of new policies (including via guidance and templates that facilitate billing for school health services). CONCLUSIONS: Policymakers, practitioners, and advocates can use these findings to identify policies and strategies to expand school mental health and reduce inequities.

Family-Focused Universal Substance Use Prevention in Primary Care: Advancing a Pragmatic National Healthcare Agenda.

This article advances ideas presented at a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine workshop in 2022 that highlighted clinical practice and policy recommendations for delivering universal, family-focused substance use preventive interventions in pediatric primary care. Pediatric primary care is a natural setting in which to offer families universal anticipatory guidance and links to systematic prevention programming; also, several studies have shown that offering effective parenting programs in primary care is feasible. The article describes a blueprint for designing a pragmatic national agenda for universal substance use prevention in primary care that builds on prior work. Blueprint practice schematics leverage efficacious family-focused prevention programs, identify key program implementation challenges and resources, and emphasize adopting a core element approach and utilizing digital interventions. Blueprint policy schematics specify avenues for improving cross-sector policy and resource alignment and collaboration; expanding, diversifying, and strengthening the prevention workforce; and enhancing financing for family-focused prevention approaches. The article then draws from these schematics to assemble a candidate universal prevention toolkit tailored for adolescent patients that contains four interlocking components: education in positive parenting practices, parent and youth education in substance use risks, a parent-youth structured interaction task, and parent and youth linkage to in-person and web-based prevention resources.

Determinants of Breastfeeding Initiation and Duration Among African American DC WIC Recipients: Perspectives of Recent Mothers.

BACKGROUND: In Washington, DC, African American women receiving the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) benefits have the lowest breastfeeding rates compared with other WIC-eligible populations. OBJECTIVES: The purpose of this research was to use the social cognitive theory and elements of social support as a guiding framework to better understand the factors affecting breastfeeding initiation and duration among African American WIC recipients in low-income areas of Washington, DC. METHODS: Semistructured interviews were conducted with 24 women receiving WIC services in DC to learn about their infant feeding practices and decisions. Using a pragmatic approach, an integrated inductive and deductive coding strategy was used. RESULTS: Breastfeeding experiences were influenced by barriers at multiple levels: community (i.e., perceptions of breastfeeding in one's network), interpersonal (i.e., few supportive providers), and individual constraints (i.e., pain, supply, and latching issues) as well as environmental difficulties of finding resources to help overcome these challenges. Social support from a close family member, friend, or partner often helped to minimize many of these barriers and facilitated breastfeeding. CONCLUSIONS: Social support seems to bolster efficacy and help women to overcome various barriers to breastfeeding in their immediate environment; however, social support from providers was limited. WIC offers recipients in DC many helpful breastfeeding resources. Although several respondents were aware of these resources, overall use in the sample was low. Continued outreach may help further facilitate breastfeeding in African American mothers by providing additional sources of social support.

Reassessing health literacy best practices to improve medication adherence among patients with dyslexia.

BACKGROUND: Dyslexia is characterized as unexpected and persistent difficulty in reading. In addition to language-based deficits, evidence indicates that people with dyslexia may struggle with tasks related to memory and executive function. This discussion paper explores how these non-linguistic deficits could plausibly affect medication adherence among patients with dyslexia. DISCUSSION: There is a dearth of original research literature exploring the intersection of dyslexia and health behaviors in the United States. The authors examine selected best practices from the field of health literacy with potential to improve medication adherence among patients with dyslexia and suggest areas for further research on the intersection of dyslexia, health literacy and medication adherence. CONCLUSION: Dyslexia is a high-prevalence condition. Patients with dyslexia may be more likely to experience challenges when learning and implementing complex, multi-step health behaviors, such as the tasks associated with medication adherence. However, there has been no research to assess the specific needs of patients with dyslexia, or design interventions to meet those needs. Foundational research is necessary to develop a health communications framework that meets the needs of these neurodiverse patients.

Harm Perceptions of Menthol and Nonmenthol Cigarettes Differ by Brand, Race/Ethnicity, and Gender in US Adult Smokers: Results from PATH Wave 1.

INTRODUCTION: Harm perceptions of menthol cigarettes may contribute to their appeal and use. African-Americans, women, and younger smokers disproportionately use menthol cigarettes, and may misperceive harm of menthol cigarettes. METHODS: Data were from Wave 1 of the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) Study. Weighted analyses of current adult smokers (18 and older) were used to estimate the correlates of menthol smoking among all cigarette brands and separately for the top three cigarette brands (Newport, Camel, and Marlboro). Adjusted models examined the main effect of menthol smoking on harm perceptions of one's own brand of cigarette and interactions with race/ethnicity, age, and gender. RESULTS: Menthol cigarettes were used by nearly 40% of current smokers, although the prevalence of menthol smoking differed across the top three brands (94% Newport, 46% Camel, and 18% Marlboro). Among menthol smokers, 80% perceived their cigarette as equally harmful, 14% perceived their brand as more harmful, and 7% perceived their brand as less harmful. In adjusted models, menthol smokers were more likely than nonmenthol smokers to misperceive their own brand as more harmful than other brands (compared to no difference in harm). Race and gender emerged as moderators of the association between menthol brand preference and harm perceptions. CONCLUSIONS: In adjusted analyses, menthol smokers were more likely than nonmenthol smokers to perceive their brand as more harmful than other brands, with differences by sub-groups who disproportionately use menthol. IMPLICATIONS: Menthol cigarettes have been historically marketed with messages conveying lower harm than other cigarettes. Little is known about how contemporary adult menthol smokers perceive the harm of their usual brand, and potential differences by race, gender, and young adult versus older adult age group. After adjusting for other factors, menthol smokers were more likely than nonmenthol smokers to perceive their cigarette brand as more harmful than other brands. Further, the association between menthol smoking and harm perceptions differed by race and gender, but not by age group (young adult vs. older adult). This type of large-scale study identifies critical links between menthol smoking and harm perceptions among vulnerable smokers that will inform regulatory actions designed to decrease smoking-related harm.

Patterns of Social Media Use and Their Relationship to Health Risks Among Young Adults.

PURPOSE: Social media use is pervasive among young adults, and different sites have different purposes, features, and audiences. This study identified classes of young adults based on what combination of sites they use and how frequently, and compared their health risk factors and behaviors. METHODS: Latent profile models were developed based on frequency of using 10 sites from a national sample of young adults aged 18-24 years (n = 1,062). Bivariate analyses and multivariable regressions examined the relationship between class membership and alcohol, tobacco, and other drug (ATOD) use, and symptoms of depression and anxiety. RESULTS: The optimal model identified five classes: Low Users (7.9%), High Users (63.1%), Professional Users - high use of LinkedIn (10.1%), Creative Users - high use of Vine and Tumblr (11.5%), and Mainstream Users - high use of Facebook and YouTube (7.4%). Classes differed significantly on ATOD use and depressive symptoms. Compared to High Users, Creative Users had higher odds of using most substances and lower odds of depressive symptoms, Mainstream Users had higher odds of substances used socially (alcohol and hookah), Professional Users had higher odds of using alcohol, cigarettes, and cigars, and Low Users had higher odds of using other drugs (e.g., cocaine and heroin). CONCLUSIONS: A young adult's social media site use profile is associated with ATOD use and depressive symptoms. Use and co-use of certain sites may influence the volume and nature of ATOD-related content and norms young adults experience in social media. Targeting interventions to sites selected based on use patterns associated with each health risk may be effective.

Social Media Use and Access to Digital Technology in US Young Adults in 2016.

BACKGROUND: In 2015, 90% of US young adults with Internet access used social media. Digital and social media are highly prevalent modalities through which young adults explore identity formation, and by extension, learn and transmit norms about health and risk behaviors during this developmental life stage. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to provide updated estimates of social media use from 2014 to 2016 and correlates of social media use and access to digital technology in data collected from a national sample of US young adults in 2016. METHODS: Young adult participants aged 18-24 years in Wave 7 (October 2014, N=1259) and Wave 9 (February 2016, N=989) of the Truth Initiative Young Adult Cohort Study were asked about use frequency for 11 social media sites and access to digital devices, in addition to sociodemographic characteristics. Regular use was defined as using a given social media site at least weekly. Weighted analyses estimated the prevalence of use of each social media site, overlap between regular use of specific sites, and correlates of using a greater number of social media sites regularly. Bivariate analyses identified sociodemographic correlates of access to specific digital devices. RESULTS: In 2014, 89.42% (weighted n, 1126/1298) of young adults reported regular use of at least one social media site. This increased to 97.5% (weighted n, 965/989) of young adults in 2016. Among regular users of social media sites in 2016, the top five sites were Tumblr (85.5%), Vine (84.7%), Snapchat (81.7%), Instagram (80.7%), and LinkedIn (78.9%). Respondents reported regularly using an average of 7.6 social media sites, with 85% using 6 or more sites regularly. Overall, 87% of young adults reported access or use of a smartphone with Internet access, 74% a desktop or laptop computer with Internet access, 41% a tablet with Internet access, 29% a smart TV or video game console with Internet access, 11% a cell phone without Internet access, and 3% none of these. Access to all digital devices with Internet was lower in those reporting a lower subjective financial situation; there were also significant differences in access to specific digital devices with Internet by race, ethnicity, and education. CONCLUSIONS: The high mean number of social media sites used regularly and the substantial overlap in use of multiple social media sites reflect the rapidly changing social media environment. Mobile devices are a primary channel for social media, and our study highlights disparities in access to digital technologies with Internet access among US young adults by race/ethnicity, education, and subjective financial status. Findings from this study may guide the development and implementation of future health interventions for young adults delivered via the Internet or social media sites.

The Relationship Between Advertising-Induced Anger and Self-efficacy on Persuasive Outcomes: A Test of the Anger Activism Model Using the Truth Campaign.

Turner's Anger Activism Model (AAM) contends anger and efficacy interact in a unique way to determine message responses to campaign materials. This study tested the AAM using responses to 2 truth antismoking advertisements collected in August-October 2014 via an online, cross-sectional survey of 15- to 21-year-olds. Those aware of each of the truth advertisements (n = 319 for each) were organized into 4 anger/efficacy groups. Analysis of variance and regressions were conducted to understand group differences in message-related cognitions (persuasiveness, receptivity, conversation). Message cognitions were highest among the high anger/high efficacy group and lowest among the low anger/low efficacy group.

What Does Having Your Pack in Your Pocket Say About You? Characteristics and Attitude Differences of Youth Carrying Tobacco at a Music Festival.

The purpose of this study is to understand differences in demographics, frequency of tobacco use, and tobacco-related attitudes between youth/young adults who carry tobacco products and those who do not. Carrying tobacco is hypothesized to affect individuals' smoker identity and thereby their tobacco-related attitudes. Carriers are an influential peer group, often serving as social sources of tobacco for others, setting tobacco-related social norms, and advertising tobacco via the packs they carry. Thus, understanding their characteristics and attitudes can aid in the targeting and tailoring of cessation messaging. In this study, 3,927 attendees ages 13 to 24 years at the Vans Warped Tour were surveyed using iPads and asked to photograph any tobacco products they were currently carrying. Current tobacco users were classified as proven carriers ( n = 363), unproven carriers ( n = 182), or noncarriers ( n = 1,426). Carriers ( N = 545) were older, were more often White, and used tobacco over twice as often as noncarriers. Results indicated carriers and noncarriers differed significantly on most antitobacco attitudes, with carriers feeling less strongly antitobacco.

Young Adult Utilization of a Smoking Cessation Website: An Observational Study Comparing Young and Older Adult Patterns of Use.

BACKGROUND: There is little research on how young adults or young adult subgroups utilize and engage with Web-based cessation interventions when trying to quit smoking. Addressing this knowledge gap is important to identify opportunities to optimize the effectiveness of online cessation programs across diverse young adult users. OBJECTIVE: This study examines utilization of the BecomeAnEX.org smoking cessation website among young adults and young adult subgroups compared with older adults to identify patterns of use by age, gender, and race/ethnicity. METHODS: Study participants were 5983 new registered users on a free smoking cessation website who were aged 18 to 70 years. Website utilization was tracked for 6 months; metrics of use included website visits, pages per visit, length of visit, and interaction with specific website features. Differences in website use by age were examined via bivariate analyses and multivariate logistic regression adjusted for age, gender, and race/ethnicity. Interactions were examined to determine differences by gender and race/ethnicity within young (18- to 24-year-olds and 25- to 34-year-olds) and older (35 years and older) adult segments. RESULTS: A greater percentage of young adults aged 18 to 34 years visited the site only once compared with older adults aged 35 years and older (72.05% vs 56.59%, respectively; P<.001). Young adults also spent less time on the site and viewed fewer pages than older adults. In adjusted analyses, young adults were significantly less likely than older adults to visit the site more than once (18-24 years: adjusted odds ratio [AOR] 0.58, 95% CI 0.49-0.68, P<.001; 25-34 years: AOR 0.56, 95% CI 0.50-0.64, P<.001), spend more than 3 minutes on the site (18-24 years: AOR 0.67, 95% CI 0.57-0.79, P<.001; 25-34 years: AOR 0.56, 95% CI 0.49-0.64, P<.001), view 12 or more pages (18-24 years: AOR 0.72, 95% CI 0.61-0.83; P<.001; 25-34 years: AOR 0.67, 95% CI 0.59-0.76, P<.001), utilize the BecomeAnEX.org community (18-24 years: AOR 0.61, 95% CI 0.48-0.79, P<.001; 25-34 years: AOR 0.73, 95% CI 0.60-0.88, P<.001), or utilize Separation Exercises (18-24 years: AOR 0.68, 95% CI 0.51-0.89, P<.01; 25-34 years: AOR 0.77, 95% CI 0.63-0.94, P<.01). Gender differences in utilization were more pronounced among young adults compared with older adults, with lower levels of utilization among young men than young women. For all age groups, utilization was higher among whites and African Americans than among Hispanics and other racial minorities, with one exception-BecomeAnEX.org community utilization was significantly higher among Hispanic young adults compared with white and African American young adults. CONCLUSIONS: Results point to important areas of inquiry for future research and development efforts. Research should focus on enhancing demand and increasing engagement among younger adults and men, examining strategies for capitalizing on young adult developmental needs, and increasing utilization of effective site features among diverse young adult users.

Contextual Influences and Campaign Awareness Among Young Adults: Evidence from the National truth® Campaign.

Mass media campaigns have been found to shape the public's knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and behavior around tobacco. This study examines the influence of contextual factors with respect to awareness of the national truth® campaign, a mass media, branded tobacco use prevention campaign, among a sample of young adults (n = 2,804) aged 24-34 years old; these respondents were within the age range for both the primary and secondary targets of the campaign during the period (2000-2007) when the campaign was airing television advertising at consistently high levels. Mulitvariable models reveal lower educational attainment and Hispanic ethnicity as significant contextual factors predictive of lower campaign awareness, controlling for media use. In contrast, gender, state tobacco control policy, sensation-seeking, current smoking status, and community-level SES variables were not significantly associated with campaign awareness. Further research is needed to identify the mechanisms through which public education campaigns operate, particularly among disadvantaged communities.

Implementation of a Multimodal Mobile System for Point-of-Sale Surveillance: Lessons Learned From Case Studies in Washington, DC, and New York City.

BACKGROUND: In tobacco control and other fields, point-of-sale surveillance of the retail environment is critical for understanding industry marketing of products and informing public health practice. Innovations in mobile technology can improve existing, paper-based surveillance methods, yet few studies describe in detail how to operationalize the use of technology in public health surveillance. OBJECTIVE: The aims of this paper are to share implementation strategies and lessons learned from 2 tobacco, point-of-sale surveillance projects to inform and prepare public health researchers and practitioners to implement new mobile technologies in retail point-of-sale surveillance systems. METHODS: From 2011 to 2013, 2 point-of-sale surveillance pilot projects were conducted in Washington, DC, and New York, New York, to capture information about the tobacco retail environment and test the feasibility of a multimodal mobile data collection system, which included capabilities for audio or video recording data, electronic photographs, electronic location data, and a centralized back-end server and dashboard. We established a preimplementation field testing process for both projects, which involved a series of rapid and iterative tests to inform decisions and establish protocols around key components of the project. RESULTS: Important components of field testing included choosing a mobile phone that met project criteria, establishing an efficient workflow and accessible user interfaces for each component of the system, training and providing technical support to fieldworkers, and developing processes to integrate data from multiple sources into back-end systems that can be utilized in real-time. CONCLUSIONS: A well-planned implementation process is critical for successful use and performance of multimodal mobile surveillance systems. Guidelines for implementation include (1) the need to establish and allow time for an iterative testing framework for resolving technical and logistical challenges; (2) developing a streamlined workflow and user-friendly interfaces for data collection; (3) allowing for ongoing communication, feedback, and technology-related skill-building among all staff; and (4) supporting infrastructure for back-end data systems. Although mobile technologies are evolving rapidly, lessons learned from these case studies are essential for ensuring that the many benefits of new mobile systems for rapid point-of-sale surveillance are fully realized.

Cameras for Public Health Surveillance: A Methods Protocol for Crowdsourced Annotation of Point-of-Sale Photographs.

BACKGROUND: Photographs are an effective way to collect detailed and objective information about the environment, particularly for public health surveillance. However, accurately and reliably annotating (ie, extracting information from) photographs remains difficult, a critical bottleneck inhibiting the use of photographs for systematic surveillance. The advent of distributed human computation (ie, crowdsourcing) platforms represents a veritable breakthrough, making it possible for the first time to accurately, quickly, and repeatedly annotate photos at relatively low cost. OBJECTIVE: This paper describes a methods protocol, using photographs from point-of-sale surveillance studies in the field of tobacco control to demonstrate the development and testing of custom-built tools that can greatly enhance the quality of crowdsourced annotation. METHODS: Enhancing the quality of crowdsourced photo annotation requires a number of approaches and tools. The crowdsourced photo annotation process is greatly simplified by decomposing the overall process into smaller tasks, which improves accuracy and speed and enables adaptive processing, in which irrelevant data is filtered out and more difficult targets receive increased scrutiny. Additionally, zoom tools enable users to see details within photographs and crop tools highlight where within an image a specific object of interest is found, generating a set of photographs that answer specific questions. Beyond such tools, optimizing the number of raters (ie, crowd size) for accuracy and reliability is an important facet of crowdsourced photo annotation. This can be determined in a systematic manner based on the difficulty of the task and the desired level of accuracy, using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analyses. Usability tests of the zoom and crop tool suggest that these tools significantly improve annotation accuracy. The tests asked raters to extract data from photographs, not for the purposes of assessing the quality of that data, but rather to assess the usefulness of the tool. The proportion of individuals accurately identifying the presence of a specific advertisement was higher when provided with pictures of the product's logo and an example of the ad, and even higher when also provided the zoom tool (χ(2) 2=155.7, P<.001). Similarly, when provided cropped images, a significantly greater proportion of respondents accurately identified the presence of cigarette product ads (χ(2) 1=75.14, P<.001), as well as reported being able to read prices (χ(2) 2=227.6, P<.001). Comparing the results of crowdsourced photo-only assessments to traditional field survey data, an excellent level of correspondence was found, with area under the ROC curves produced by sensitivity analyses averaging over 0.95, requiring on average 10 to 15 crowdsourced raters to achieve values of over 0.90. RESULTS: Further testing and improvement of these tools and processes is currently underway. This includes conducting systematic evaluations that crowdsource photograph annotation and methodically assess the quality of raters' work. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, the combination of crowdsourcing technologies with tiered data flow and tools that enhance annotation quality represents a breakthrough solution to the problem of photograph annotation, vastly expanding opportunities for the use of photographs rich in public health and other data on a scale previously unimaginable.