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Since COVID-19, the public workplace has shifted toward a hybrid and telecommute culture. Maintaining equitable and fair performance evaluations for employees across different working modalities is among the top concerns of leaders in public organizations. Using data from the Employee Viewpoint Survey 2023, this paper compares the experiences of telecommuting and non-telecommuting federal employees regarding fair performance evaluations. The findings reveal that younger employees and telecommuting employees tend to perceive lower fairness in performance evaluations. However, leadership support helps reduce employees’ experiences of unfair performance evaluations. This study suggests that communication support from supervisors is essential to upholding an inclusive and fair workplace as public organizations shift to virtual and hybrid work cultures. © 2025 SPAEF

Background: There is a need to develop comprehensive guidelines to encourage the promotion of oral hygiene care among older adults and to assist caregivers in this endeavor, taking into consideration the specific challenges that arise from aging, comorbidities and caregiving. Methods: This review was conducted by searching across relevant literature from meta-databases including Academic Google, PubMed, Scielo and Scopus for studies published from 2020 to 2024. PRISMA guidelines were followed. We included articles that described oral hygiene methods, caregiver education and mechanization status of older adults. Common themes, best practices, and gaps in current guidelines were tracked using extracted and analyzed data. Results: The review revealed multiple factors affecting the oral hygiene of older adults, with themes relating to physical impairment, cognitive dysfunction, and caregiver involvement. Highlighted between the approaches are individualized therapy for oral hygiene, caregiver education, and the use of technology to improve adherence to oral hygiene. Barriers like dental care access, underlying medical conditions complicating dental treatments, and cost considerations were identified. Conclusions: The findings emphasize the necessity of clear recommendations that can help caregivers and advance dental care for older adults. © 2025 by the authors.

Period poverty refers to the lack of access to or affordability of menstrual hygiene supplies such as sanitary products and the inaccessibility of washing facilities, waste disposal and educational materials. Period poverty can significantly affect menstruating individuals’ physical, mental, and reproductive health and emotional wellbeing; negatively impact educational outcomes; cause financial strain; result in absenteeism from work and school; create barriers to healthcare access; and perpetuate poor health outcomes for generations. Barriers to menstrual equity include lack of access to period support, cost, poor sanitary facilities, lack of education, social and cultural stigma, and legal restrictions. Therefore, it is crucial to actively advocate for initiatives to increase access to menstrual hygiene products, raise public awareness, and educate individuals on safe menstrual practices. Approximately 500 million girls and women worldwide and an estimated 16.9 million people in the United States experience period poverty, with the issue being particularly common among marginalized groups such as Black or Hispanic menstruating individuals and those who are homeless, living in poverty, of low income, or attending college. This article investigates the physical, psychological, educational and social impacts of inequitable access to menstrual products, menstrual education, and sanitation facilities among menstruating individuals who are Black, Hispanic or of low income within the United States. We examine the threat this poses to health equity and propose recommendations to address this pervasive issue. © 2025 by the authors.

Background: Mothers and pregnant women who use opioids are particularly vulnerable. Mothers often fear surveillance, stigma, and loss of custody of their children when seeking treatment. Although opioid agonist therapy (OAT) has been shown to be effective, access varies regionally, and not all mothers can cease using opioids. This study compares outcomes of mothers who use opioids in the UK with universal healthcare and OAT access, and mothers in the U.S. with restricted healthcare and OAT access, focusing on their interactions with services. Methods: This is a secondary data analysis of two studies on mothers who use opioids. Data were collected from nine mothers in Scotland (UK) and 20 mothers in New Jersey (US) through ethnographic, longitudinal studies spanning one year. The UK study used a “Learning Alliance” engagement approach, a patient/public engagement model that involves stakeholders in developing objectives and the dissemination of findings. The US study engaged “community-based consultants,” who are paid individuals with lived experience from the study field communities to assist researchers in recruitment and ethnographic fieldwork. Ethical approval was received from review boards. Data were anonymized before analysis, and people with lived experience provided feedback on findings. Grounded theory methods were used for analysis. Results: Findings reveal both convergent and divergent experiences. Mothers in Scotland had more access to healthcare and social housing but faced increased surveillance, while New Jersey mothers often experienced housing insecurity and difficulty obtaining healthcare. Shared challenges included trust issues, stigmatization, inconsistent practitioner engagement, responsibilization, and unclear expectations from child protection services. While Scottish mothers had better access to OAT, both groups faced child custody loss due to unregulated drug use. Mothers in both studies were struggling to meet reunification requirements of abstinence (with or without OAT) within the required time frame. Conclusions: Differing governance structures create persistent challenges across national boundaries. While health practitioners generally support harm reduction strategies, it does not go beyond OAT for mothers. Our findings indicate the need for radical harm reduction approaches with social justice for mothers who use drugs, including safer parental drug use strategies. © The Author(s) 2025.

Though President Richard Nixon’s health care proposals remained relevant to policy developments even decades later, we know little about their origins and impact on public debate. The Nixon team was highly motivated by Senator Ted Kennedy’s health care moves, a rivalry that shaped policy development and narratives surrounding reform. This article uses archival research of White House documents and a content analysis of major newspapers to shed light on Nixon’s health care plans and how they influenced media coverage in the early 1970s. The analysis shows the Nixon administration’s fear of being upstaged by Kennedy was warranted given the amount of news discussing presidential plans alongside those of the senator. Still, Nixon was able to obtain a substantial amount of exclusive attention to his preferred take on health care reform. Though Nixon’s proposed reforms were not enacted at the time, they helped shape policy conversations in lasting ways, warranting greater scholarly attention. ©, Copyright © American University, Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies.

For more than a decade, since the US Supreme Court ruled in Citizen’s United (2010), individuals and groups interested in the outcome of elections have increasingly donated to outside groups that avoid the restrictions imposed on candidates and traditional political action committees (PACs). As a result, total election spending more than doubled in the first five years and has continued to increase since then. Although American political advocacy groups refrain from formal electioneering, much of the increase in spending since Citizen’s United has been directed toward election campaigns under the guise of issue-advocacy ads. This raises the question of whether voters perceive a difference between candidate-sponsored ads and campaign-focused issue-advocacy ads. Unexamined is the impact that advertising by outside groups has on voters and whether voters are even aware of the sponsors of the ads they view. This study addresses whether voters can differentiate between ads sponsored by candidates or outside groups. Using an experimental design, we find that viewers cannot determine the sponsor of campaign ads, despite federal requirements for sponsor disclaimers. © 2024 Common Ground Research Networks. All rights reserved.

Traditional crisis management approaches have often overlooked the role of community and nonprofit organizations. In this study, we investigated how nonprofits and communities contributed to problem-solving during crises through self-organization on social media. We applied social network analysis to 17,732 interactions using #TwitterFoodBank, a self-organized network emerged during the early stage of COVID-19 to address food insecurity. Our results highlighted the significant role of nonprofits in coordinating the community’s self-organized network. However, they also revealed a lack of coordination among these organizations in maintaining a viable network. These findings have valuable implications for nonprofits seeking to leverage the potential of online self-organized communities in crisis management.

This study explores the social media engagement of human service nonprofits during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. We analyzed 2,726 tweets from 15 food banks in Texas to understand their communication and audience engagement on social media. During the early outbreak, food banks were more active on social media, and these organizations primarily shared community-building and informational content. Before the pandemic, community-building content led to the highest engagement level. However, action and informational content saw greater engagement during the crisis. Our findings reveal that online audiences perceive the importance of each content type differently in varying circumstances. By understanding preferences and needs of online audiences, human service nonprofits can harness the power of social media to amplify their impact while operating during times of crisis.

This chapter explores the case of President Bill Clinton and the Lewinsky scandal as a pivotal moment in the convergence of political, technological, and cultural changes that elevated the presence of gossip and rumor in mainstream news sources, with major, lasting consequences. Throughout the unfolding of the scandal, unconfirmed and often salacious information about what had happened was transmitted among individuals and amplified through the media. The chapter takes a close look at some key elements contributing to such trends, including use of anonymous sourcing, heightened competition between media outlets, and the emergence of new media actors covering American politics and the presidency. An analysis of two specific incidents, involving coverage of allegations there were eyewitnesses to the president’s affair with Monica Lewinsky and that Lewinsky had a dress stained with the president’s DNA in her possession, demonstrates how prominent national news outlets publicized information reflecting weaker reporting standards and conveyed unsubstantiated rumors as news. As the news media devalued itself in cases such as this one, abandoning professional conventions and prioritizing sensational, entertaining content, the public began to no longer trust or rely on such sources to help it interpret events. We continue to see the ramifications of those developments in the present, with widespread belief in fake news, little consensus on what constitute facts or reality, and stark partisan divides about who can be relied upon to transmit the truth of political events. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

This article focuses on the complex interaction between trade and the environment. The first section reviews the debate among scholars on the environmental effects of trade. Next the article examines the role of the World Trade Organization and how its decisions have impacted the environment. This is followed by a discussion of climate change and its connection to trade. Finally, the article examines multilateral efforts to govern trade and control its environmental consequences as well as to encourage sustainable development. © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The mayoral archive includes both official and personal documents that can be used for research on various aspects of New Haven's history. Much of the DeStefano collection, for example, has various reports and studies on economic development and school construction projects, which were key to his administration.The Hilton C. Buley Library hosts a growing collection of mayoral papers from four New Haven mayors: Biagio “Ben” DiLieto (1980–90), John Daniels (1990–94), John DeStefano Jr. (1994–2014) and Toni Harp (2014–20). The materials are available to the public by appointment. Many items—including the full DeStefano papers—are available in a digital archive through the Buley Library website or the Connecticut Digital Archive portal. Jackie Toce, librarian and head of technical services at Buley Library, has spent the last seven years leading the digitization efforts for the archive, one of the reasons DeStefano donated the materials to Southern.4 Buley Library will host an exhibition and formal unveiling of the archive in late October 2021, which will run through the end of the year.