Trauma has been shown to cause poor academic performance, high drop-out rates, lack of confidence, lack of connection to peers, difficulty regulating emotions, and more (Bishop et al., 2019; Duncan, 2000; Gaywish & Murdoch, 2018; Hallett & Crutchfield, 2017; Hallett et al., 2018; Redford, 2015; Warnecke & Lewine, 2019). The student…

Objective: To describe provider experiences with implementation of the GIFTSS (Giving Information for Trauma Support and Safety) intervention. Participants: Health and counseling center staff from participating campuses attended trainings between August 2015 and August 2016. Interviews were conducted between May and August 2017. Methods: Providers…

Background: Project Connect is a national program to build partnerships among public health agencies and domestic violence services to improve the health care sector response to partner and sexual violence. Pennsylvania piloted the first school nurse-delivered adolescent relationship abuse intervention in the certified school nurses' office…

A review of the literature on corporate governance serves to demonstrate the applicability of many governance solutions to the university setting. Based on a review of university scandals, most of which are recent but some of which took place decades ago, it is possible to categorize them as follows: sex scandals, drugs, cheating, hazing,…

Recent momentum to develop a trauma-informed education system provides an important opportunity for Pennsylvania schools. About two out of every three school-age children are likely to experience at least one traumatic event, such as abuse, neglect, or exposure to violence, by age 17. The effects of traumatic stress can include negative impacts on…

Alternatives for Families: A Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (AF-CBT) is an evidence-based treatment for families with children aged 5 to 15 years who have been affected by verbal and physical aggression in the family. AF-CBT was designed to address risks for exposure to emotional and physical aggression as well as common clinical consequences of…

The mental health of today's college students continues to be a top-level concern for institutions of higher education, whether it is viewed from the perspective of staffing mental health services on campus, responding to after-hours crises in residence halls, providing accessible treatment with limited budgets, managing behavioral threats, or…

Communities face powerful challenges--a high-school dropout epidemic, youth unemployment, teen pregnancy--that require powerful solutions. In a climate of increasingly constrained resources, those solutions must help communities to achieve more with less. A new kind of community collaborative--an approach that aspires to significant,…

Battered women's stages of change (SOCs) are examined in this study. First, confirmatory factor analysis and latent profile analysis were conducted on 754 battered women's responses on the Problems in Relationship Scale (Brown, 1998). Factor loadings were strong, and latent variable mixture modeling produces a two-class solution. Second,…

In order to gauge youth perceptions of school violence, this study links two perceptual bias literatures: third-person perception and optimistic bias. The intersection of the two literatures may be especially beneficial in understanding how adolescents process and interpret public health messages and subsequently engage in risk behaviors or…

In 2006, more than 6 million individuals were victimized by violent crimes. Although violence is below levels of the early 1990s, it remains high. The extent of violence and its impact highlight a critical need to develop and implement effective programs to reduce violence and victimization. Communities have initiated a wide range of such…

In 1999, seeking to reduce Philadelphia's homicide rate and put youthful offenders on the path to a productive adulthood, various Philadelphia agencies and organizations, including Public/Private Ventures, partnered to form the Youth Violence Reduction Partnership (YVRP). The project's goal is to steer youth, ages 14 to 24 and at greatest risk of…

This monograph presents excerpts from discussions with participants in the Pennsylvania Developmental Disabilities Planning Council 1990 retreat, which focused on the creation of effective safeguards for people with developmental disabilities. The discussions note: the increased vulnerability of such people to neglect, abuse, and mistreatment; the…