American Journal of Community Psychology

In this commentary, I suggest that our work with women of color should be held together by three primary threads: (a) appreciation for history as we decipher and interpret the adaptive strategies of women of color; (b) recognition of the intersections of race, gender, and class as central to our work; and (c) self-critical examination of the meanings we attach to “difference.” The papers in the current special issue provide good examples regarding the importance of each thread. I argue that attention to these three themes should help us to keep our focus on contextually driven questions and to move forward our appreciation for the lives of women of color.

Community engagement is a process often used in developing effective health communication interventions, especially in traditionally underserved cultural contexts. While the potentially positive outcomes of community engagement are well established, the communication processes that result in engagement with cultural groups are less apparent. The focus on the outcomes of engagement at the expense of describing how engagement occurs makes it difficult for methods to be improved upon and replicated by future studies. The purpose of the current manuscript is to illustrate the process of achieving community engagement through the development of a culturally grounded health communication intervention. We offer practical suggestions for implementing community engagement principles, as well as the benefits and challenges inherent in this approach to research. Key points are illustrated using examples from the DECIDE Project, a culturally grounded intervention for improving communication about clinical trials in the medically underserved Appalachian region.

This investigation examines typologies of congregations based on patterns of congregational political and social service activities and collaborative partners. Based on a latent class analysis of a national random sample of 2,153 congregations, results indicated four distinct types of congregations with unique patterns of political, social service, and collaborative partnerships labeled: (a) Active, (b) Not Active, (c) Social Service Not Political, and (d) Political Not Social Service. Moreover, congregational characteristics such as religious tradition and clergy characteristics predicted membership in certain types. A latent transition analysis using an additional 262 congregations revealed distinct patterns of how congregations changed types across a nine year period. Results showed both congregational continuity (e.g., Not Active congregations remained Not Active) and change (e.g., Active congregations were likely to change type membership). This study advances congregational research by examining congregational types, what predicts certain types, and how congregations change types across time. Implications for future research and partnership with religious congregations also are discussed.