Climate change and health: rethinking public health messaging for wildfire smoke and extreme heat co-exposures.

With the growing climate change crisis, public health agencies and practitioners must increasingly develop guidance documents addressing the public health risks and protective measures associated with multi-hazard events. Our Policy and Practice Review aims to assess current public health guidance and related messaging about co-exposure to wildfire smoke and extreme heat and recommend strengthened messaging to better protect people from these climate-sensitive hazards. We reviewed public health messaging published by governmental agencies between January 2013 and May 2023 in Canada and the United States. Publicly available resources were eligible if they discussed the co-occurrence of wildfire smoke and extreme heat and mentioned personal interventions (protective measures) to prevent exposure to either hazard. We reviewed local, regional, and national governmental agency messaging resources, such as online fact sheets and guidance documents. We assessed these resources according to four public health messaging themes, including (1) discussions around vulnerable groups and risk factors, (2) symptoms associated with these exposures, (3) health risks of each exposure individually, and (4) health risks from combined exposure. Additionally, we conducted a detailed assessment of current messaging about measures to mitigate exposure. We found 15 online public-facing resources that provided health messaging about co-exposure; however, only one discussed all four themes. We identified 21 distinct protective measures mentioned across the 15 resources. There is considerable variability and inconsistency regarding the types and level of detail across described protective measures. Of the identified 21 protective measures, nine may protect against both hazards simultaneously, suggesting opportunities to emphasize these particular messages to address both hazards together. More precise, complete, and coordinated public health messaging would protect against climate-sensitive health outcomes attributable to wildfire smoke and extreme heat co-exposures.

Assessing Writing Motivation: a Systematic Review of K-5 Students' Self-Reports.

For attaining success in writing, motivation is essential. Crucially, instruction is dependent on knowing the student's capabilities and inner drives. To date, research on writing has yet to establish a consistent framework for assessing writing motivation, and often fails to acknowledge students' self-reports, rather favoring evaluations of students' writing motivation made by others, such as teachers and researchers. This limbo state originates partly from a general skepticism towards the trustworthiness of elementary students' self-reports. Nonetheless, the validity of such self-reports has been acknowledged in adjacent fields, such as reading. Aiming to establish a knowledge base from studies addressing students' voices, the present study adopts the method of a systematic review and investigates how writing motivation has been assessed in empirical studies (1996-2020) through K-5 students' self-reports. Of the 7047 studies identified through database search, 56 met the inclusion criteria and are examined in this review. Results indicate that (a) storytelling is the genre most used to operationalize writing in the investigations, (b) surveys and interview questions measuring students' attitude towards writing are the most common type of self-report used, and (c) students' voices are weighted differently across the studies. Findings suggest that future research should (1) work to counteract existing biases in writing tasks, (2) provide a rationale for their choice/design of measure of motivation, and (3) report clearly whose voices are being heard (e.g., students', teachers', or researchers') and the appropriateness of this choice regarding study purpose, design, and findings. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10648-023-09732-6.

Managing Alaska's Road-Dust Problem: A Model for Road Dust-Impacted Regions.

Poor air quality in Alaska's remote communities due to road dust is one of the top environmental concerns of residents in these communities. Most communities are disconnected from the road network, with community roads that are predominantly unpaved. In Alaska, high costs limit widespread paving of roads, leaving communities to rely on alternative dust control strategies. The goals for this study were to assess the magnitude and impact of the dust problem in rural Alaska and use a diversity of experience, including regulatory, research, engineering, and cultural, to develop a road-dust management approach for rural Alaska. The plan incorporates different levels of dust management: institutional controls, road watering, chemical dust suppressants, and road surface stabilization. Geographical zones where use of each different dust management level will be most appropriate are identified based on rainfall frequency. Approximately 50% of Alaska's communities can manage road dust with institutional controls and road watering. Many of the road-dust management ideas presented are transferable to other global regions that experience similar economic and community access challenges as Alaska.

Adaptive and Effortful Control and Academic Self-efficacy Beliefs on Achievement: A Longitudinal Study of 1 through 3 Graders.

The linkages between self-regulatory processes and achievement were examined across three years in 733 children beginning at 1(st) grade (M = 6.57 years, SD = .39 at 1(st) grade) who were identified as lower achieving in literacy. Accounting for consistencies in measures (from one year prior) and for influences of child's age, gender, IQ, ethnicity and economic adversity on achievement, results indicate that adaptive/effortful control at 1(st) grade contributed to both academic self-efficacy beliefs at 2(nd) grade, and reading (but not math) achievement at 3(rd) grade. Although academic self-efficacy did not partially mediate the linkage between adaptive/effortful control and achievement, academic self-efficacy beliefs were positively correlated with reading and math. Results support the notion that early efforts to promote children's self-regulatory skills would enhance future academic self-beliefs and achievement, particularly in literacy.