Papers by Jacquelyn Meshelemiah
University of Arizona Press eBooks, Jun 7, 2022
Lynne Rienner Publishers eBooks, May 31, 2023
Journal of African American Studies, Sep 1, 2022
Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics
BackgroundThe period from 6 to 24 months in an infant's life presents a critical window for u... more BackgroundThe period from 6 to 24 months in an infant's life presents a critical window for understanding feeding practices and for designing culturally appropriate interventions. However, little is known about the complementary feeding practices of Black mothers and how this period can be used to optimise the long‐term health of their children. The present study aimed to identify factors that influence the complementary feeding practices of low‐income Black mothers with children aged 6–24 months.MethodsParticipants were recruited through Research Match, Facebook advertising, flyers, and snowballing techniques. Low‐income, Black mothers, with a 6–24‐month‐old infant, and who lived in Franklin County, Ohio, USA, were eligible for the study. A cross‐sectional design using in‐depth interviews was used. Reflexive thematic analysis was utilised to analyse and interpret the feeding practices of Black mothers.ResultsMothers (n = 8) were aged between 18 and 30 years old and most complet...
Journal of African American Studies
A Love Letter to This Bridge Called My Back
The Ohio State University Pressbook, 2019
The Ohio State University Pressbook, 2019
The Ohio State University Pressbook, 2019
The Ohio State University Pressbook, 2019
The Prison Journal, 2010
In 2009, two Idaho prisoners with gender identity disorders (GIDs) settled lawsuits against the D... more In 2009, two Idaho prisoners with gender identity disorders (GIDs) settled lawsuits against the Department of Corrections for failing to treat properly their conditions. Prisoners in other states have also sued prison officials for failing to treat their GIDs. Initially, the courts held that prisoners with GIDs did not have a serious mental disorder and thus were not entitled to treatment. However, later courts have held that a GID is a serious medical problem, which implicates the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that requires treatment for prisoners’ serious medical problems. No court, however, has ordered sex-reassignment surgery for any transsexual prisoner, despite holding that GID is a serious medical problem. This issue presents an interesting dilemma for the law and has implications for prison mental health professionals and prison administrators. The authors elaborate on these issues and discuss policy implications.
Social Work Education, 2011
The purpose of this study was to examine college students' perceptions of transformative and ... more The purpose of this study was to examine college students' perceptions of transformative and culturally competent educators. Using data collected from a cross-section of 194 undergraduate (associate and bachelor level students) and graduate students in social work and other majors from four colleges or universities in the Midwest region of the USA, the findings indicate that transformative and culturally competent educators are important to college students. Using the Students' Perceptions of Transformative Educators Scale (SPTES), the data revealed that the overall mean for the SPTES was high, with a score of 198.24. The range was 131–233. The standard deviation [SD] was 21.55. This mean suggests that students place a high level of importance on attributes of transformative educators. When examining the culturally competent subscale of the SPTES, the data also revealed that students want educators who personify culturally competent attributes. The data illustrated a mean for cultural competence of 63.27. The range was 36–70. The standard deviation was 7.89. This mean suggests that students also place a high level of importance on this attribute in educators. ANOVA results indicate that respondents do not significantly differ along the lines of age or race on the SPTES. Student rank (associate, bachelor and graduate), however, did reveal significant differences on the cultural competence [F(2, 174) = 3.280, p < 0.040] and socialization [F(2, 187) = 4.172, p < 0.017] subscales of the SPTES. Social work students also demonstrated statistically significant differences in their slightly higher scores related to the perceptions of the overall SPTES (mean = 202.17, SD: 22.88, p < 0.01); the cultural competence subscale (mean = 65.03, SD: 6.64, p < 0.00) of the SPTES; and the socialization subscale (mean = 26.21, SD: 3.06, p < 0.02) of the SPTES.
Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews, 2011
In The New Jim Crow, civil rights lawyer and Ohio State University law professor Michelle Alexand... more In The New Jim Crow, civil rights lawyer and Ohio State University law professor Michelle Alexander examines the legal and social framework that supports the regime of mass incarceration of black men in the United States. As Alexander carefully recounts, beginning in the early 1980s with President Reagan’s declaration of a ‘‘War on Drugs,’’ a number of policy initiatives, Supreme Court decisions, and vested interests, aided and abetted by political divisiveness and public apathy, coalesced to create the social, legal, and political environment that has supported mass incarceration ever since. Alexander’s analysis reveals disturbing parallels between the racial caste systems of slavery, Jim Crow, and today’s mass incarceration of black men in our country. In the end, however, Alexander shies away from proposing a potentially successful strategy for redressing the dilemma she so carefully depicts. Rather, she ‘‘punts,’’ or ‘‘cops out,’’ as we would have said in earlier eras. Alexander begins her analysis with a brief history of the several hundred years of variously oppressive race relations between whites and blacks in the United States. Quite correctly, Alexander observes that this history may be fruitfully understood as a sequence of renascent forms of social control refashioned to the new tenor of the times. Thus, Alexander traces the history of American political rhetoric in the latter half of the twentieth century where ‘‘law and order’’ comes to constitute code for ‘‘the race problem’’ and a policy of malign neglect toward African Americans is transmuted into an active political strategy devised to develop Republican political dominance in the southern states. Ultimately, as we know, the twin themes of crime and welfare propelled Ronald Reagan into the presidency. Searching for a follow-up initiative to define his early presidency, Reagan settled on increased attention to street crime, especially drug law enforcement. In short, the War on Drugs was not some disembodied social agenda, nor was it driven by public demand, as only two percent of Americans believed crime was an important issue at the time. Rather, as Alexander shows, the War on Drugs was a direct outgrowth of race-based politics and therefore the fact that it has had a disproportionate impact on young black men should come as no surprise. Alexander next turns her attention to the interwoven details of the social, legal, and political fabric that wrap the War on Drugs in supportive garb. As Alexander recites, the War on Drugs is the cornerstone on which the current regime of race-based mass incarceration rests because: (a) convictions for drug offenses are the single most important cause of the explosion in incarceration rates since 1980, and (b) black Americans are disproportionately arrested, convicted, and subjected to lengthy sentences for drug offenses when compared to white Americans, even though drug use rates among white Americans have been consistently shown to be higher than for black Americans. Thus, any practices or policies that support the execution of the War on Drugs support the continuation of our movement toward mass incarceration of an entire category of Americans. Among the many developments Alexander reviews, one may note: changes in Supreme Court doctrine with respect to police stops, warrantless searches, consent searches, and suspicionless police sweeps for drug activity; federal initiatives to offer grants to support narcotics task forces; the development and expansion of modern drug forfeiture laws which permitted state and local law enforcement agencies to keep the vast majority of seized cash and assets in drug raids; and the legislative enactment of mandatory minimum and ‘‘three strikes’’ sentencing schemes, and their ready
Research, Society and Development
The purpose of this study was to identify and analyze physical activity, sedentary activity, and ... more The purpose of this study was to identify and analyze physical activity, sedentary activity, and dietary behaviors of preadolescents in Puerto Rico. A secondary purpose was to examine perceived stress and the weight status of the Puerto Rican preadolescents. Participants were 107 pre-teenagers (ages 6 to 11 years old) attending public elementary schools in Puerto Rico. Using a descriptive cross-sectional survey study design, we collected data on participants’ physical activity, sedentary activity, dietary behaviors, and perceived stress. We also measured participants’ height and weight, and calculated body mass indices. MINITAB descriptive and inferential statistical tests were used in analyzing the data. Results indicate that, on average, the participants partook in physical activities for less than 10 minutes each day, but regularly participated in sedentary activities. Their food behaviors varied. ANOVA tests revealed they were not significantly different in height and weight as ...
Gun-related violence exposure is a significant public health problem for urban youth. Few studies... more Gun-related violence exposure is a significant public health problem for urban youth. Few studies have implemented methods to estimate the spatial influence of activity spaces on gun violence exposure constrained by the physical configuration of walkable street networks. The present research uses computational network and local indicators of spatial autocorrelation methods to explore gun violence exposure along the walkable streets near schools in Compton, California. Findings demonstrated strong evidence that gun violence is clustered at all distances along the pedestrian network and in proximity to Compton Unified School District K-12 schools reaching a maximum between 1.2-1.8 miles after which the attractiveness of schools to gun violence was inhibiting. Almost all schools had at least one shooting within a 5-minute walk (i.e., about 400 m); 37.8% of schools had an average shooting distance less than 400 meters; about 250 incidents occurred within 5-minutes of schools, and about ...
Affilia
The outbreak of an ethnically and politically motivated armed warfare in Tigray in 2020, spread t... more The outbreak of an ethnically and politically motivated armed warfare in Tigray in 2020, spread to the Amhara and Afar regions in Ethiopia, wreaking havoc on civilians. This armed conflict has had a significant impact on the lives of women who have been uprooted from their homes and are now living in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps. The purpose of this study was to examine the challenges faced by women living in two IDP camps in Dabat and Debark, Ethiopia. In-depth interviews were used to gather data from 13 participants. Challenges emerged that relate to three major themes: systemic (gender-based violence, family separation/disintegration, human trafficking, and genocide); psychological (trauma and stress; loss of home/personal belongings); and social (lack of social security and stability, reintegration and resettlement problems, unmet basic needs [physiological and physical health], and maladministration of supplies. The results of the study suggest that internally displ...
College Student Affairs Journal
The Ohio State University Pressbook, 2019
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Papers by Jacquelyn Meshelemiah