Jason Coburn and Alison Cohen discuss the need for urban health equity indicators, which can capture the social determinants of health, track policy decisions, and promote greater urban health equity.

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed what educators, policymakers, and researchers have long known—namely, that learning opportunities and outcomes are intimately intertwined with other aspects of children’s and families’ lives. The list of social forces outside the education sector that can affect learning is endless and includes economic experiences that are inequitably distributed, such as housing security (Gallagher et al., 2020), income (Hoynes & Rothstein, 2019), and wealth (Pfeffer, 2018), as well as social experiences, such as interpersonal and structural racism, (dis)ability, and xenophobia (Anderson-Nathe, 2020; DeMatthews, 2020). Now, it is time to lock in this learning among policymakers, practitioners, and researchers. We posit that the concept of “social determinants of learning” can serve as a powerful reframing tool for promoting educational equity, similar to the conceptual shift and policy impact we have seen in public health as “social determinants of health” has become an accepted and eventually essential concept.

The literature on social capital and civic engagement as they relate to health and health services outcomes is nuanced and sometimes conflicting, and has been a topic of much investigation in the pages of Social Science and Medicine. Ko et al. (2014) add to this research by considering two health services outcomes: the closure and privatization of public hospitals. We draw from education research on the role of community/civic engagement in public school closures to identify areas for future research to better understand these nuances. Qualitative research on school closures suggest that there are both well-managed and poorly managed closure decisions, and there are diverse community groups with interests in the decision who can interact with each other in nuanced ways. Furthermore, across stakeholder groups, there is not always agreement as to if closure would help or harm their students' education. We encourage health and health services researchers to glean insights from education research and other disciplines disparate but related and relevant to public health when developing research questions and considering alternative methodologies.

In collaboration with the Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council and the Department of Environmental Management, the Brown University Superfund Research Program's Community Engagement Core piloted an environmental health justice program with middle school students in Rhode Island. Our curriculum introduces students to environmental justice and the nearby Superfund site, with the goal of building environmental health justice literacy and encouraging civic engagement in local environmental remediation. Although little research has been done on teaching middle school students about environmental justice, popular education approaches rooted in community-based participatory research methods are regularly used in community outreach activities to organize and engage local residents in community issues. With this particular program, we present a place-based, student-centered, standards-aligned model for teaching environmental health justice. © Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.

A long-standing objective of American public education is fostering civically engaged youth. Identifying characteristics associated with likelihood of future voting, a measure of democratic participation that predicts future voting behavior, might yield targets for education programs to increase civic participation. Survey data from urban adolescents were analyzed to elucidate how civic knowledge, civic attitudes, and civic behaviors are associated with self-reported likelihood of future voting. In a multivariable ordered logistic regression model with latent constructs for civic knowledge, attitudes, and behavior, two civic knowledge constructs and two civic attitude constructs maintained a positive, statistically significant independent association with future voting likelihood after adjusting for race/ethnicity and advanced coursework: knowledge of American governance, current events knowledge, general self-efficacy, and skill-specific self-efficacy. Further research is necessary to determine whether education programs can intervene upon these civic knowledge and civic attitude factors to increase voting participation later in life.

Since online media can be key in the widespread, symmetrical dissemination of science, we performed a media content analysis of 44 online articles to assess coverage of a French community-based participatory research (CBPR) epidemiologic study. Most articles highlighted methodological rigor and the research topic’s salience to residents. Approximately half of the articles reported findings, with the remaining focusing on action steps. To our knowledge, this study is the first to explore how online media communicate CBPR, a novel approach in the French context, to the public. Though there were some gaps in the media’s portrayal, CBPR may facilitate online media uptake of findings. We provide recommendations for future research on this topic.

Purpose

This is one of the first surveys of a USA-wide sample of full-time college students about their COVID-19-related experiences in spring 2020.

Methods

We surveyed 725 full-time college students aged 18-22 years recruited via Instagram promotions on April 25-30, 2020. We inquired about their COVID-19-related experiences and perspectives, documented opportunities for transmission, and assessed COVID-19's perceived impacts to date.

Results

Thirty-five percent of participants experienced any COVID-19-related symptoms from February to April 2020, but less than 5% of them got tested, and only 46% stayed home exclusively while experiencing symptoms. Almost all (95%) had sheltered in place/stayed primarily at home by late April 2020; 53% started sheltering in place before any state had an official stay-at-home order, and more than one-third started sheltering before any metropolitan area had an order. Participants were more stressed about COVID-19's health implications for their family and for American society than for themselves. Participants were open to continuing the restrictions in place in late April 2020 for an extended period of time to reduce pandemic spread.

Conclusions

There is substantial opportunity for improved public health responses to COVID-19 among college students, including for testing and contact tracing. In addition, because most participants restricted their behaviors before official stay-at-home orders went into effect, they may continue to restrict movement after stay-at-home orders are lifted, including when colleges reopen for in-person activities, if they decide it is not yet prudent to circulate freely. The public health, economic, and educational implications of COVID-19 are continuing to unfold; future studies must continue to monitor college student experiences and perspectives.

Meaningfully engaging and supporting youth in their communities can promote their sense of efficacy and potentially their health and wellbeing. The objective of this study was to test whether a school-based youth civic empowerment program, Generation Citizen (GC), was associated with self-reported mental and physical health among participants, and whether these associations differed by two potential modifiers: civic self-efficacy and a sense of meaningful contributions to one's community. Participants were middle and high school students (N = 364) who participated in GC in the fall semester of 2014 and completed surveys at the beginning and end of the semester. Analyses revealed a small but statistically significant increase in self-reported physical health after GC and no statistically significant change in self-reported mental health. There was evidence of effect measure modification by civic self-efficacy such that the difference in physical health as civic self-efficacy increased was smaller post-intervention compared to pre-intervention. This could suggest that GC participation is particularly beneficial for those with lower civic self-efficacy. While our findings suggest that public health interventions may benefit from centering empowerment opportunities for youth, future research is warranted to better understand the particular role of civic self-efficacy in that process.

Using a student-centered approach, Generation Citizen’s (GC) action civics model helps students gain civic knowledge and skills as they work together to take action on a local issue in their community. This paper draws upon reflections from GC’s decade-plus of teaching action civics at scale in middle and high schools across the United States, highlighting drivers for nonpartisan civics education efforts in Texas, Oklahoma, California, Alabama, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New York. Reflections on GC’s work also point to the opportunities and challenges that GC encountered as it scaled We suggest future directions for research and practice for nonpartisan action civics work into the next decade.