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Browsing Graduate Student Works by Subject "African American Studies"
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Item AFROCENTRIC CAPACITY BUILDING: BUILDING AGENCY IN THE AFRICAN AMERICAN COMMUNITY(2022-08) Jackson, CoreyAfrican Americans face multiple inequalities in nearly every category tracked in society (Katz et al., 2005). Although many legal and formal barriers were dismantled by rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court and various acts of Congress, profound inequities continue to persist in the African American community due to systemic racism and racist social attitudes (DeGruy, 2017). In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, this researcher has sought intentional, explicit, and effective ways to address these historic inequities in the inland region of Southern California, also known as the Inland Empire. As a social worker, this researcher has utilized the community-based participatory research (CBPR) model as a foundational research design due to its promising uses throughout the nation when addressing the needs of the African American community. Although CBPR is often seen as a tool to address health disparities, it is also a social change model that empowers communities to build political power and the capacity to address community needs (D’Alonzo, 2010). Therefore, this research project sought to empower African American organization executives by building their program or organizational capacity to build agency in the community through Afrocentric practices.Item Cultural Humility Training for Medical Professionals Serving African American Women with Lupus(2022-08) Robinson, TanishaBackground: African American women with lupus experience poor health outcomes, including organ damage, depression, and higher mortality rates. Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) or lupus is a chronic, inflammatory, autoimmune disease described by a multitude of unpredictable symptoms in timing and severity (Martz et al., 2019). As culture informs many aspects of life, including how health and illness are perceived and understood, cultural humility training for medical professionals may improve these outcomes. African American women face further challenges in gaps in care between themselves, their providers, and the healthcare system. Thus, there is a need for cultural humility training aimed at understanding African American women with lupus. Community Engagement: To help health outcomes for lupus patients, Mrs. Kimberly Howse of the Lupus Howse Foundation and Dr. Long Pham of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Department of Rheumatology, have offered their knowledge and time to contribute to the process of developing the cultural humility training. Both community members were interviewed and shared valuable information to assist in creating the innovation, a cultural humility training specifically for medical professionals who treat African American lupus patients. Conceptual Model: Cultural humility training is driven by a clear conceptual framework and is informed by three theories: Historical particularism, learning theory, and the socialization model. All three approaches support the need for an understanding and openness among health care providers to improve health outcomes for African American women in the lupus community. Social Innovation: Cultural humility training explores and deconstructs personal biases toward different ethnic or cultural groups that will allow medical students, doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals to expand their knowledge of various cultures, influencing them to be more sensitive when serving their patients. Evaluation and Implications: Students studying to be health care professionals were evaluated by completing a pre-and post-measure during the soft roll-out presentation of the cultural humility training. This assessment was utilized to inform and create the modules and explore areas where students may lack knowledge of lupus, cultural humility, and the tools to address healthcare disparities. Implications for this include improved health outcomes, early diagnosis, decreased mortality rates, lessened organ damage, and enhanced patient and provider relationships. Conclusion: The cultural humility training aims to improve health outcomes, decrease health disparities, and bridge the gap between healthcare providers and African American women with lupus.Item Examining Provider Comfortability to Improve Healthcare Outcomes Among Black Indigenous People of Color: A Comprehensive Project(2022-08) McIntosh, EricaBackground: Disparities in healthcare exist because of discord between provider bias, beliefs, cultural humility, and attitudes regarding physician-patient communication interaction. This paper seeks to promote closing the health gap and eradicating racism, two of the 12 Grand Challenges endorsed by the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare, by meeting the community's social, physical, and economic health needs by enhancing provider- BIPOC client communication to reduce health inequity. Community Engagement: A community-based task force, JEDIS HEAL (Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Systems, Humility, Engagement, Advocacy, and Liberation ), consisting of researcher/scholars, mental and physical healthcare students, providers, multiple discipline educators was created to promote implicit bias awareness, critical thought, and discussion to build on culturally competent education influenced by cross-cultural experiential learning to produce the Comfortability, Awareness, Reflexivity for Equity Tool (CARET). The task force employed the Community-Based Participatory Research approach by fostering a partnership with the task force as key stakeholders in improving the quality of the proposed care intervention through development, feedback, and future dissemination. Conceptual Model: The researcher designed the framework Cultural Humility and Critical Race-Centered Design (CH-CRCD), informed the development of the Comfortability, Awareness, Reflexivity for Equity Tool (CARET) assessment tool by extrapolating tenets of critical race theory and cultural humility with the conceptualization, creativity, and implementation of human-centered design to inform the research delivery. Social Innovation: The Comfortability, Awareness, Reflexivity for Equity Tool (CARET) addresses implicit bias in provider interaction. CARET is a paper-based, web-based online screening tool that identifies provider communication biases while interacting with BIPOC customers. A comfortability and reflexivity score will identify areas for quality improvement. This innovation fills a significant gap in literature exploring the impact of provider comfortability and reflexivity with Black Indigenous People of Color clients for future diversity education. Evaluation Plan: The projected evaluation plan will address the questions: (1)Does the social innovation show a relationship between clinician comfortability, cultural reflexivity, and Black Indigenous People of Color engagement attempts? (a) To what extent do the quantitative findings generalize the qualitative results? (2) How do clinician comfortability and cultural reflexivity compare across the education levels and healthcare disciplines? (3) Did the intervention lead to an increase in clinician comfortability and reflexivity when engaging BIPOC clients? Through exploratory factor analysis, this projected cross-sectional mixed methods study will examine baseline data collected related to clinician comfortability and cultural reflexivity of provider engagement with Black Indigenous People of Color clients. The projected outcome of this study is to guide the quality improvement of cultural competency programs. Future Directions: Additional research is crucial to improving cultural competency curricula for improved provider-BIPOC client communication to impact BIPOC health disparity outcomes directly.Item MENTAL HEALTH DISPARITIES AMONG AFRICAN AMERICAN WOMEN AND MOTIVATING FACTORS THAT ENCOURAGE ENGAGEMENT IN MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES(2022-08) Roach, MoniqueBackground: Historically, African American women have been underserved, misdiagnosed, and underdiagnosed, and in many instances, this leads to numerous health and health care disparities that contribute to severe mental health illnesses and chronic health conditions (Nelson et al., 2022). African American women continue to experience substandard health outcomes compared to other ethnicities. African American women endure mental health inequities due to varying risk factors contributing to their underutilization of mental health services (Watson-Singleton et al., 2017). Regardless of the benefits associated with mental health services, African American women still resist engagement in mental health services. Research indicates that “African American women do not seek professional psychological services,” causing their mental health needs to be unaddressed and heightening their risk of psychological disorders (Watson & Hunter, 2015, p. 604). Their decreased engagement emphasizes the necessity of developing individualized support and a deeper evaluation of the intersection of their knowledge set, belief systems, strong Black woman ideology, religion, and cultural, socioeconomic, and environmental factors that contribute to their poor mental health outcomes. Community Engagement Efforts: The researcher conducted stakeholder interviews and partnered with Mt. Zion Baptist Church’s women’s ministry to engage participants in a questionnaire that explored varying factors that negatively and positively affect engagement in mental health service, thus providing insight into barriers to care. The study evaluated the effectiveness of a mental health video campaign focusing on increasing mental health literacy and awareness of mental illness. The mental health videos will assist African American women during different phases of the change process. Ambivalence is frequently a roadblock to overcoming psychological problems. The mental health videos are an additional tool that could assist African American women in further exploring their ambivalence as a critical step in the change process, especially in the precontemplation and contemplation stages (Miller, 2012). Utilizing the videos will assist with clarifying discrepancies between the contradiction of their perceived mental health status and their actual mental health needs. Most importantly, they will develop distinctions to elicit “change talk.” Conceptual Model: The conceptual framework in this innovation incorporates social exchange theory and the Black feminist thought perspective to form the development of the innovative Sister Exchange Connection Model. This model includes cultural identity, belief systems, biblical principles, socioeconomic and environmental factors, and the spirit of sisterhood and empowerment. Evaluation: This mixed-methods study will involve African American women aged 18 or older attending church-based women’s Bible study and participating in an innovative mental health video campaign to increase mental health literacy and help-seeking behaviors. The researcher will conduct pretest and post-test assessments and complete a 6-month follow-up to evaluate the effectiveness of the videos. Conclusion: This research will expand the development efforts regarding traditional and nontraditional therapeutic services and activities that assist African American women through the change processItem The National Fatherhood League: Increasing Father Involvement in the Black American Community(2022-08) King, Autumn P.Background: Father absence is a worldwide phenomenon associated with poor academic performance, negative social skills, poor mental health, delinquency behavior, incarceration, and substance abuse in children. In America, 46.3% of Black American children live without their fathers and are at greater risk for social problems and developmental difficulties. On the contrary, actively involved Black American fathers who discipline their children by setting limits and boundaries have socially and emotionally stable children who can form meaningful relationships with others and remain steadfast in challenging situations. Furthermore, the Bible calls for individuals to take up the fatherless cause. Thus, it is essential to increase father involvement in the Black American community to ensure children's positive growth and development. Researchers have developed effective interventions and fatherhood programs that increase a father's involvement with his children. However, Black American men's participation in these effective programs is significantly low. Therefore, it is imperative to discover practical ways to increase the participation of Black American men in effective fatherhood programs to increase father involvement in the Black American community. Community Engagement Efforts: A qualitative thematic analysis examined the research question of what mission, elements, and outcomes an effective fatherhood program encompasses for Black American men's increased participation. This project engaged the Black American male community by utilizing focus group meetings and transcribed and analyzed the focus groups using the latest Nvivo software, where the respondents' views emerged four major themes leading to sub-themes followed by initial codes. The study's results informed a social innovation to increase father involvement in the Black American community. Conceptual Model: Albert Bandura's (1977) Social Learning Theory guided and informed this study in creating a fatherhood coalition culturally tailored to Black men that aids in increasing a father's involvement with their children. Social Innovation: Theoretically, this research has led to the proposal of a social innovation called The National Fatherhood League (TNFL), a non-profit fraternity organization geared toward increasing father involvement in families and the community and promoting the development of men individually. A critical component of TNFL is its structured nine-month mentoring program that initiates members into the fraternity. During the nine-month mentoring program, mentees develop two fatherhood goals and one personal goal to ensure the mission and vision of TNFL are met. Evaluation: To evaluate the effectiveness of The National Fatherhood League, a quantitative study using surveys will investigate the impact The National Fatherhood League has on its members and analyze if TNFL services increase father involvement. Conclusion: The researcher summarizes the data collection results and discusses the implications and future research of TNFL.Item THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MICROAGGRESSIONS, RACE-BASED TRAUMATIC STRESS, AND POSTTRAUMATIC GROWTH: ASSESSING THE MODERATING ROLE OF CHRISTIAN GRATITUDE FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN CHRISTIANS(2023) Zivanovic, Stephanie GregoriusIn the current study, the author sought to understand the relationships between Christian gratitude (CG) and posttraumatic growth (PTG) following racial and ethnic microaggressions (REM) and race-based traumatic stress (RBTS) in a sample of self- identified Black American Christians living in the United States (N = 157). More specifically, using a moderated mediation analysis, the researcher explored the mediating role of RBTS in explaining the link between REM and PTG, using CG as a moderator between RBTS and PTG. The findings showed a positive association between REM and PTG (a medium effect). Further, a positive association appeared between REM and RBTS and RBTS and PTG (both medium effects). Finally, inconsistent with the proposed hypothesis, the index of moderated mediation was not significant. In other words, CG did not moderate the relationship between RBTS and PTG. Post-hoc mediation-only analysis revealed that RBTS was a significant mediator of the association between REM and PTG. The author examines the therapeutic implications of the findings as well as potential directions for future research.Item Underrepresentation of African American Women in Senior Leadership: A Qualitative Study(2023-08) Williams, TameecaThe purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate the phenomenon of underrepresentation of African American women in senior leadership. The researcher incorporated three theories: intersectionality, fair representation, and cognitive diversity to research a possible symbiotic relationship toward African American women’s low representation. The use of these theories assisted the researcher in being able to take a comprehensive look into the lived experiences in various forms to address perceived barriers confronted by African American women when attempting to obtain senior leadership positions. Furthermore, these theories afforded the researcher opportunities to explore how race and gender factored into the trajectory of African American women’s career paths. The study focused on the experiences of 11 African American women ages 35-59 who were interviewed using Zoom videoconferencing and telephone conferences. The researcher utilized 16 open-ended questions that were recorded with permission and transcribed into NVivo10 to capture coded themes to aggregate data for possible congruency with the selected theories. The researcher discovered six significant themes: professional growth, validation, sponsorship/mentorship, credibility, authenticity, and networking. Additionally, the researcher discovered two unexpected themes,’ tokenism’ or a ‘oneness’ aspect., which are described in the paper. The study displayed a theoretical construct that allowed participants to discuss personal accounts, including attributes that contributed to biases, stereotypes, and assumptions within organizational attitudes and behaviors impacting African American women’s advancement to senior leadership positions. The researcher recommends further investigation into the underrepresentation of African American women in senior leadership in professional settings.