Interdisciplinary – Page 50 – UROP Spring Symposium 2021

Interdisciplinary

You’ve Got Mail: Assessing the Usefulness of Mail-Based Suicide Prevention and Wellness Tools within Alaskan Native Communities

Suicide is a leading cause of death among young people (10-14, 14-24, and 25-34-year olds) and disproportionately affects Indigenous communities. Promoting Community Conversations About Research to End Suicide (PC CARES) is a community-based participatory research project that is committed to developing relationships within Alaskan Native (AN) communities that supports using “upstream” prevention methods of suicide. This study aims to evaluate the usefulness of PC CARES At Home, which involves direct mailings and social media interactions to maintain a connection with community members who started with the first cohort (N=140) that was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and to establish new connections with school staff who were nominated as influential people in students’ lives. To continue building local capacity to support youth wellness and suicide prevention throughout a remote setting, we will send information and material resources that introduce and reinforce the PC CARES curriculum for AN families at home. This involves PC CARES Care Package mailings every couple of months, along with the option for a consistent exchanging of ideas and support through a private Facebook page. We estimate that 100 people will “opt-in” to receive more packages after receiving their first 1-2 packages. Our research will examine satisfaction, perceived benefits, and feasibility of this approach. Our analysis will assess recipient reactions to each package via feedback surveys, opt-in rates for future deliveries, and phone interview transcript summaries. In addition, we will track social media engagement in response to posts themed on the package contents and information. In conducting this study, we expect to gain a better understanding of the usefulness, appeal, and recipient satisfaction with mail and social media-based suicide prevention and wellness tools. These results will be especially beneficial for understanding socially-distanced suicide prevention and wellness education during the COVID-19 pandemic. This will also act as a guide for practitioners to understand mail and social media-based suicide prevention programs.

Alaska Native Health Research

Compared to the lower 48 states, Alaska faces unproportional rates of suicide related death and injuries, especially among the Alaskan Native (AN) youth. From the effects of colonialism to social changes, there are numerous issues plaguing Native youth today, putting them at higher risk of suicide compared to their White counterparts. Another aspect of life that puts youth at higher risk is access to firearms, which are commonly found within rural Alaskan homes. Research is being done to learn about safe firearm storage practices within people’s homes in order to increase safety and reduce the risk of firearm related accidents and suicide. The short intervention we are developing uses motivational interviewing to increase adult family members’ safe firearm storage practices in their households. Building on information generated through local household surveys about home firearm storage practices, communications, responsibilities and preferences, we will develop motivational Interviewing guides. This project will identify key motivations and ways of engaging adults in a universal intervention to improve safety practices related to firearm storage. This project integrates previous motivational interviewing research and guides to be used to adapt our brief intervention–the family safety net–to the local priorities, motivations, values and local language use and norms.

Factors Affecting Asian American Students’ STEM Career Choice

Asian Americans are one of the smallest minority subpopulations in the United States, yet they comprise the second-highest, first being white Americans, percentage of persons employed in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) workforce (Martínez & Gayfield, 2019). Although a vast variety of articles examine the reasons why other racial/ethnic groups are underrepresented in STEM fields, fewer authors have examined the reasons why Asian Americans are overrepresented in STEM fields.

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