Reviews in Advance of Public Health

Posted by on November 18, 2005

The Annual Review of Public Health has posted three “Reviews In Advance” on its website that you may be interested in. (AR Reviews in Advance are full-length reviews published online immediately after full editing and revision. Minor changes may still occur before they are assembled as an Annual Review volume online and in print)

(1) Process Evaluation for Community Participation
(2) Effective Recruitment and Retention of Minority Research Participants
(3) Environmental Justice: Human Health and Environmental Inequalities

Please see below for abstracts. These are available at http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/toc/publhealth/0/0 Your organization may need to be a subscriber to access the full-text versions of these articles.

(1) Process Evaluation for Community Participation

Frances Dunn Butterfoss
Center for Pediatric Research, Norfolk, VA 23510 ButterFD@evms.edu

This review provides a synthesis of published public health and social science literature to determine how process evaluation has been used to examine community participation and its intermediary role in health and social change outcomes. Community participation is defined, and its relationship to other community development principles and evaluation and research methods is described. Then, case studies and research initiatives help answer questions such as who participates and why? What are the benefits and challenges of community participation? What qualitative and quantitative methods are used in process evaluations to measure community participation? What measures are used to help define the influence of community participation in community-based interventions? A better understanding of these issues is needed to ensure that community participation is valued and used effectively to plan and implement health-promotion initiatives and evaluate their processes and outcomes.

Expected online publication date for the Annual Review of Public Health Volume 27 is March 17, 2006. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/catalog/pub_dates.asp for revised estimates.

(2) Effective Recruitment and Retention of Minority Research Participants

Antronette K. Yancey
Department of Health Services and Center to Eliminate Health Disparities, School of Public Health, Division of Cancer Prevention and Control Research, Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center. and Center for Health Policy Research, School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095 ayancey@ucla.edu

Alexander N. Ortega
Department of Health Services and Center to Eliminate Health Disparities, and Center for Healthier Children, Families and Communities, School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095
aortega@ucla.edu

Shiriki K. Kumanyika
Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-6021
skumanyi@cceb.med.upenn.edu

Our ability, as leaders in public health scholarship and practice, to achieve and measure progress in addressing racial/ethnic disparities in health status and health care is severely constrained by low levels of participation of racial/ethnic minority populations in health-related research. Confining our review to those minority groups federally defined as underrepresented (African Americans/blacks, Latinos/ Hispanics, and Native Americans/American Indians), we identified 95 studies published between January1999 and April 2005 describing methods of increasing minority enrollment and retention in research studies, more than three times the average annual output of scholarly work in this area during the prior 15-year period. Ten themes emerged from the 75 studies that were primarily descriptive. The remaining 20 studies, which directly analyzed the efficacy or effectiveness of recruitment/retention strategies, were examined in detail and provided useful insights related to four of the ten factors: sampling approach/identification of targeted participants, community involvement/ nature and timing of contact with prospective participants, incentives and logistical issues, and cultural adaptations. We then characterized the current state of this literature, providing implications for future research needs and directions.

Expected online publication date for the Annual Review of Public Health Volume 27 is March 17, 2006. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/catalog/pub_dates.asp for revised estimates.

(3) Environmental Justice: Human Health and Environmental Inequalities
Robert J. Brulle
Department of Culture and Communication, School of Public Health, Drexel
University, Philadelphia, PA 19104 brullerj@drexel.edu

David N. Pellow
Ethnic Studies Department, California Cultures in Comparative Perspective,
University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093 dpellow@ucsd.edu

In this review, we provide an introduction to the topics of environmental justice and environmental inequality. We provide an overview of the dimensions of unequal exposures to environmental pollution (environmental inequality), followed by a discussion of the theoretical literature that seeks to explain the origins of this phenomenon. We also consider the impact of the environmental justice movement in the United States and the role that federal and state governments have developed to address environmental inequalities. We conclude that more research is needed that links environmental inequalities with public health outcomes.

Expected online publication date for the Annual Review of Public Health Volume 27 is March 17, 2006. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/catalog/pub_dates.asp for revised estimates.