The importance of supportive relationships for new parents has been the focus of both research and parenting interventions. Attachment style, typically viewed as a relatively stable trait reflecting one's comfort in social relationships, as well as social support, or one's perception of the social context, have both been found to be important for fostering engaged, involved parenting. Less is known, however, about how these variables work together to influence parenting behavior, especially in families at higher risk for negative child outcomes. Data were collected from 152 urban, predominantly African American, low-income parents when their children were 14 and 36 months of age. Results suggest that parents with more social support show greater increases in the frequency of positive parent-child activities over time, but that this effect is mediated by mothers' attachment style, specifically, their level of anxious/ambivalent attachment. Mothers with more social support tended to be less anxious/ambivalent about close relationships, and this in turn led to increases over time in the frequency of parent-child interactions. Mothers' tendency to avoid close relationships, however, while correlated with social support, was unrelated to changes in parenting behavior. Implications of these findings for program development, parenting, and the malleability of attachment style based on social context are discussed.

Based on an ethnographic study in a residential Alzheimer's facility and a traditional nursing home, this article discusses the process of community formation and the maintenance of community roles among individuals suffering from dementia in institutional settings. These include: therapeutic programming that promotes resident independence and choice; flexible and person-centered staff roles; and a physical environment that facilitates social interaction, autonomy, and participation in the activities of daily living. In contrast, institutional programs that are regimented, that follow a medical rather than a social model of care, and that take place in physical environments that have limited options may discourage resident interaction and social bonding, thus inhibiting community formation. Although Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia may create difficulties for the realization of community and community roles among institutionalized people, more significant are the environmental conditions in which such individuals live and the programs designed for their care.

We explored the perspectives and experiences of low-income, predominantly African American families regarding children's school-readiness. Our research, which involved qualitative interviews, ethnographic case studies, and "photovoice" methods, focused on families participating in the national evaluation of Early Head Start. While valuing academic skills, study parents emphasized the importance of social and emotional health in regard to both children's and parents' readiness to begin school. These developments are especially critical given the challenges parents perceive in local school environments. On the basis of a social ecology framework, we argue that psychological and environmental dimensions of school-readiness are public health matters and that understanding the perspectives of low-income and minority parents on such issues is a critical aspect of health communication dedicated to eliminating health disparities.

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is an approach to research and evaluation that is receiving increased attention in the field of public health. Our report discusses the application of this approach to research and evaluation with an Early Head Start (EHS) program in Pittsburgh, Pa. Our primary purpose is to illustrate the key elements that contributed to effective collaboration among researchers, EHS practitioners, and parents of EHS children in the conduct of the study. The focus is not on research findings but on research process. Our goal is to make the practices of CBPR visible and explicit so they can be analyzed, further developed, and effectively applied to a range of public health issues in a diversity of community contexts.

In 2001, the nation experienced its first bioterrorism attack, in the form of anthrax sent through the U.S. Postal Service, and public health professionals were challenged to communicate with a critical audience, U.S. postal workers. Postal workers, the first cohort to receive public health messages during a bioterrorist crisis, offer a crucial viewpoint that can be used in the development of best practices in crisis and emergency risk communication. This article reports results of qualitative interviews and focus groups with 65 postal workers employed at three facilities: Trenton, New Jersey; New York City; and Washington, DC. The social context and changing messages were among the factors that damaged trust between postal workers and public health professionals. Lessons learned from this attack contribute to the growing body of knowledge available to guide communications experts and public health professionals charged with crisis and emergency risk communication with the public.

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Understanding the association between attachment style and social support is important for informing programs that seek to improve outcomes for families by intervening with either or both of these systems. The present study examines whether increasing levels of social support among 181 low-income, primarily African American mothers leads to changes in their self-reported attachment style, or whether attachment style influences the extent to which they perceive others as supportive. Results suggest that whereas scores on the avoidant attachment dimension were relatively stable and led to decreasing perceptions of social support over time, scores on the anxious dimension were more malleable, at least under conditions of low stress. For mothers who experienced fewer stressful life events, increasing social support led to decreased attachment anxiety over time. However, when life stress was high, social support had no such positive influence. Implications for the need to attend to mothers' attachment styles in providing appropriate and effective intervention are discussed.

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