Behavioral and relational contexts of adolescent desire, wanting, and pleasure: Undergraduate women's retrospective accounts.

Studies of adolescent female sexuality often focus on coitus to the exclusion of noncoital behaviors, the relational context of sexual interactions, and adolescent women's subjective perceptions of their experiences. In this study, 38 undergraduate women's retrospective accounts of their adolescent heterosexual experiences were examined. Generalized estimating equation models were used to test the relation of diverse heterosexual behaviors and relationship types to participants' subjective perceptions of desire, wanting, and pleasure. Of the sexual behaviors, coitus was the strongest predictor of participants' subjective perceptions. Compared to coitus, erotic touching, manual stimulation, and fellatio were significantly less predictive; there were no differences between coitus and cunnilingus or coitus and kissing. Of the relationships (serious, dating, "friends with benefits" [FWBs], and "hookups"), FWBs was the strongest predictor of participants' desire, wanting, and pleasure; in comparison, hookups were significantly less predictive. These findings offer insight into the sexual behaviors and preferences of young women, as well as distinctions between types of non-romantic sexual relationships.

Studying family participation in system-of-care evaluations: using qualitative methods to examine a national mandate in local contexts.

With the rapid pace of policy and practice changes in children's mental health, there is a need for research to examine, describe, and disseminate information about the translation of policy directives into practice innovations at the local level. National policy mandates for children's mental health have placed expectations on local communities to involve families as partners in the development, implementation, and evaluation of systems of care with little guidance about how to implement program requirements locally. Consequently, there is a gap in the knowledge base regarding how innovations are actually implemented in local community contexts. This article reports on a qualitative study to gain understanding of family participation in evaluations of systems of care from the perspectives of evaluators and family members working together. Findings provided rich examples of the experiences and perceptions of evaluators and family members working on evaluation teams, the challenges they encountered, and effective strategies to meet those challenges.

Cultural relevancy of a diabetes prevention nutrition program for African American women.

Diabetes among African American women is a pressing health concern, yet there are few evaluated culturally relevant prevention programs for this population. This article describes a case study of the Eat Well Live Well Nutrition Program, a community-based, culturally specific diabetes prevention nutrition program for African American women. The stages of change theory and principles from community organization guided the development of the program. Health education strategies, including participatory development and program delivery by peer educators, were applied to promote cultural relevance. Results indicated that overall participants (90%) believed the program to be culturally relevant and were very satisfied with the program (82%). Cultural relevancy was significantly associated with greater program satisfaction and changes in dietary patterns when controlling for the number of sessions attended. Conclusions suggest that participatory strategies can be effective in designing culturally specific prevention programs for African American women.

Preserving family bonds: examining parent perspectives in the light of practice standards for out-of-home treatment.

Family participation is a core system of care value that is supported by previous research in medical, child welfare, and mental health settings. However, many parents with children receiving out-of-home mental health treatment experience restrictions on contact. This cross-sectional study examines the experiences of families (N = 102) regarding parent-child contact in relation to examples of national accreditation standards. Results of the national survey found that most respondents (79.4%) reported restrictions on contact, including limits based on behavioral contingencies (65.7%) and point and level systems (52.5%).

Family caregivers' perceptions of barriers to and supports of participation in their children's out-of-home treatment.

OBJECTIVE: Although the importance of family caregivers' involvement in their children's mental health treatment is increasingly recognized, factors that influence caregivers' participation are not clearly understood. This study examined the views of family caregivers whose children received out-of-home treatment to determine the amount and types of family caregivers' participation in their children's treatment, the caregivers' perceptions of barriers and supports to participation, and the relationship of barriers and supports to caregivers' participation and satisfaction with care. METHODS: As part of a national survey, a subsample of 102 family caregivers from 31 states whose children were in a residential treatment center, psychiatric unit, or group home answered a questionnaire that included questions about their participation in their children's treatment and about barriers and supports to their participation. RESULTS: Family caregivers identified as barriers concrete factors such as cost of transportation and distance from service providers as well as more intangible factors such as lack of communication between staff members of different programs and negative attitudes of staff members. CONCLUSIONS: Programs seeking to create a more supportive environment for family caregivers' involvement in out-of-home care will need to seek out family members' perceptions of their experience with their children's treatment and their views about factors that would help increase their participation.