Research & Innovation

“Navigating the broken road: A call to strengthen access, equity, and inclusivity in the care of children with developmental disabilities and neurobehavioral disorders” was published in Health Promotion Perspectives.

There is a significant scarcity of resources to achieve behavioral stabilization among children and adolescents with moderate to severe developmental disabilities and neurobehavioral disorders. In total, there are currently 76 inpatient pediatric neurobehavioral programs to support these patients across the United States. Many states do not currently have programs of this nature. Across existing programs, there are substantial waiting lists. In addition, non-public school, intensive day program, in-home and additional outpatient services are not reaching these patients fast enough which further exacerbate the sequalae of suboptimal outcomes and future quality of life implications for these patients. In addition, disparities remain in how the chronicity of developmental disabilities and neurobehavioral disorders are addressed within our healthcare system. It is crucial to categorize this constellation of specialized conditions as chronic illnesses which warrant continued care and treatment, similar in nature to lifelong medical conditions. Further time and priority are warranted in increasing accessibility, equity, and inclusivity in our U.S. healthcare system to optimize a range of health and developmental outcomes for these patients. Future work in this domain could also contribute towards the larger goal of the World Health Organization, Healthy People 2030, and the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations in securing delivery of healthcare services that are inclusive, equitable and accessible for individuals with disabilities.

“Homeless in the hospital: A call to strengthen multidisciplinary care for children awaiting out-of-home and psychiatric placements” was published in Frontiers in Pediatrics.

Increasingly more school-age and adolescent children continue to await psychiatric or out-of-home placements across pediatric healthcare systems. These children comprise the growing overstay pediatric population. The medical, developmental, socioemotional, behavioral and academic needs of these patients are complex and diverse. The uncertainty of waiting times for placement further continues. This growing pediatric issue emphasizes the importance of mobilizing a myriad of resources across healthcare and community contexts to support these patients during this precarious time. The reality is that there is a significant scarcity of placement resources which contributes to extended waiting times for placement. This contemporary issue brings child development, ethical and moral considerations, and healthcare operations to the forefront. We discuss a myriad of dimensions surrounding this growing issue from our clinical practice. We present a wealth of recommendations in working through each of these dimensions through a multi-systems approach that include development of individualized care plan, access to consistent psychiatric services, and implementing short-term and long-term goals pertaining to treatment and placement. We also review our clinical practices that have supported these patients on a continuum at our healthcare institution which integrate our recommendations and also involve an open line of communication with established community partners involved in the care of these children. Furthermore, we propose suggestions from an operational perspective on developing a comprehensive, multidisciplinary care model for this fragile and oftentimes neglected patient population across the healthcare system as the basis to achieve equity and translational impact in the quality and delivery of healthcare care services across pediatric healthcare systems.

“When there is no air, the cradle will fall: A narrative review of tobacco-related content across infant safe sleep interventions” was published in Frontiers in Pediatrics.

Sudden Unexpected Infant Death (SUID) from sleep-related causes is a leading cause of infant mortality worldwide. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) is one of the primary causes of SUID attributed to one or more environmental or behavioral determinants surrounding safe sleep practices among infants. The focus of many interventions on mitigating sleep-related infant deaths have addressed visible determinants pertaining to bed sharing, safe sleep surfaces, and removal of blankets, toys and other choking or strangulation hazards. Tobacco reduction and cessation have not been at the heart of any infant safe sleep interventions although addressing tobacco exposure is one of the primary safe sleep recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics. To date, there has not been a comprehensive review published on tobacco-related components across safe sleep interventions to reduce the risk of SIDS and SUID as the basis to contribute towards decreasing the rate of infant mortality. This review synthesizes the best practices, strategies, education, and additional interventions centered on addressing tobacco exposure as a risk factor for sleep-related infant deaths. Ten peer-reviewed studies were identified between 1995 and 2021 and integrated into this narrative review. There were three cross-sectional studies, three campaigns, one multi-center case control study, two randomized controlled trials, and two group comparison studies. Strengths and limitations of each approach are delineated followed by recommendations for future campaign, research, program, and practice endeavors to account for the totality of pertinent modifiable risk factors that contribute towards heightened infant mortality from sleep-related causes.

Beginning with the premise that consent serves as a lever of entitlement, Amanda Bailey introduces a Shakespeare well aware that liberal selfhood has never been universally available. Bailey brings Shakespeare’s work into conversation with the Penn State Sandusky scandal, the Bill Clinton–Monica Lewinsky affair, the rise of "somnophilia," Jordan Peele’s documentary on Lorena Bobbitt, Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Harvey Weinstein’s Shakespeare in Love, amongst others. Bailey considers who is denied access to the apparatus of consent, under what circumstances, and how consent is vitiated by race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, disability, and gender. Shakespeare on Consent is a wake-up call for all implicated in the injurious outcomes of consent and will inspire those wanting to mobilize choice in the service of social and political transformation.

Choice is the defining issue of the twenty-first century. As the #MeToo movement extends its legal, social, and political reach around the world, the topic of consent has come under particular scrutiny. Shakespeare on Consent examines crises of consent on the early modern stage and argues that these dramatizations provide a framework for understanding the intersections of coercion, complicity, resistance, and agency.

Beginning with the premise that consent serves as a lever of entitlement, Amanda Bailey introduces a Shakespeare well aware that liberal selfhood has never been universally available. Bailey brings Shakespeare’s work into conversation with the Penn State Sandusky scandal, the Bill Clinton–Monica Lewinsky affair, the rise of "somnophilia," Jordan Peele’s documentary on Lorena Bobbitt, Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Harvey Weinstein’s Shakespeare in Love, amongst others. Bailey considers who is denied access to the apparatus of consent, under what circumstances, and how consent is vitiated by race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, disability, and gender.

Shakespeare on Consent is a wake-up call for all implicated in the injurious outcomes of consent and will inspire those wanting to mobilize choice in the service of social and political transformation.

Contributions by Georgiana Banita, Colin Beineke, Harriet Earle, Ariela Freedman, Liza Futerman, Shawn Gilmore, Sarah Hamblin, Cara Koehler, Lee Konstantinou, Patrick Lawrence, Philip Smith, and Kent Worcester.

A carefully curated, wide-ranging edited volume tracing Art Spiegelman’s exceptional trajectory from underground rebellion to mainstream success, Artful Breakdowns: The Comics of Art Spiegelman reveals his key role in the rise of comics as an art form and of the cartoonist as artist. The collection grapples with Spiegelman’s astonishing versatility, from his irreverent underground strips, influential avant-garde magazine RAW, the expressionist style of the comics classic Maus, the illustrations to the Jazz Age poem “The Wild Party,” and his response to the September 11 terrorist attacks to his iconic cover art for the New Yorker, his children’s books, and various cross-media collaborations.

The twelve chapters cut across Spiegelman’s career to document continuities and ruptures that the intense focus on Maus has obscured, yielding an array of original readings. Spiegelman’s predilection for collage, improvisation, and the potent protest of silence shows his allegiance to modernist art. His cultural critique and anticapitalist, antimilitary positions shed light on his vocal public persona, while his deft intertextual strategies of mixing media archives, from comics to photography and film, amplify the poignance of his works.

Developing new approaches to Spiegelman’s comics—such as the publication history of Maus, the history of immigration and xenophobia, and the cartoonist’s elevation of children’s comics—the collection leaves no doubt that despite the accolades his accessible comics have garnered, we have yet to grasp the full range of Spiegelman’s achievements in the realm of comics and beyond.

Abstract:

Drawing from a qualitative study, we share findings that demonstrate how students articulate and express emotion in reflection. As they reflect on their writing identities, processes and products, peer and instructor feedback, and assess their work, the students in our study routinely discuss their emotions. Our essay closes with pedagogical strategies for helping students reflect on their thinking and feeling about writing.

This anthology chapter will debut in 2023.

Set in the postwar South, Albion Tourgée’s most popular novels, A Fool’s Errand (1879) and Bricks without Straw (1880), depict the fraught racial politics of the reuniting nation. Tourgée intended his provocative novel Figs and Thistles: A Romance of the Western Reserve (1879) to be read alongside A Fool’s Errand and Bricks without Straw and three other historical novels as a series. Set in the area of Ohio known as the Western Reserve, Figs and Thistles reveals Tourgée’s geographically expansive intervention into Reconstruction politics and depicts the tensions of a country whose “Star of Ambition as well as Empire takes its course to the Westward.” A critical look at this rarely studied novel offers an opportunity to consider the role of the West in Reconstruction politics. Reconstruction did not just attempt to reunite the nation or rebuild the South. Instead, as the historian Heather Cox Richardson argues, Reconstruction also solidified national identity and positioned the United States as an empire. The national identity emerging during Reconstruction rooted itself in mythologies of the American West and was closely linked to both the emerging definition of citizenship and to government’s changing relationship to its citizens. Attending to the West, therefore, elucidates the paradox of “nineteenth-century Americans justify[ing] expansion of government activism and still retain[ing] their wholehearted belief in individualism.” During Reconstruction, this paradoxical ideology was deployed to exclude some from the rights of full citizenship while aiding others, including corporations, who then falsely appeared to succeed on the basis of merit alone. To better illuminate the potency of this emerging ideology, we might consider another novel with a purpose set in the West, María Amparo Ruiz de Burton’s The Squatter and the Don (1885), which similarly revolves around depictions of the railroad’s construction and expansion. Set a decade after Figs and Thistles, Squatter portrays the longer-term consequences of the corporate and governmental corruption that Tourgée exposes. Tourgée’s and Ruiz de Burton’s novels powerfully delineate the role of the West in Reconstruction politics and its lasting effects on national identity and citizenship. These novels critique both the commonplace of the West as a land of self-made opportunity and the railroad as a symbol of American progress and prosperity. Instead, they frame the railroad’s construction and westward expansion as the government’s capitulation to the seductive power of imperialism and corporate greed. Moreover, these novels depict citizenship’s emerging ideological definition in this period as one located in congressional politics related to westward expansion, and they are both deeply concerned with reparative justice. Written after the injustices they identify, they invite readers to picture the moment of error, imagine an alternate future, and subsequently envision redress. By looking closely at several key moments in these novels, I show that Tourgée and Ruiz de Burton trace plotlines that begin with misdeeds and resolve in regret, confession, and reparative action. In so doing, they allegorize a call for national repair related to the injustices they expose. 

In progress.