Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Annual meeting objectives were to: a) Review progress toward meeting defined project aims; b) Identify scope of work and goals for 2017-18 year; c) Provide relevant updates to membership; d) Provide time for workgroups to move forward on work in progress.

The group made several decisions related to project objectives as follows:

Objective 1: Individuals will work with overlapping variables in 1011 and 1171 to pursue potential manuscripts that can help to advance understanding of stability and change in these associations over time. All agreed that there are opportunities to continue to pursue work that will lead to publications toward this objective.

Objective 2: An overview of the existing data was given to the group and the data made available via the group share site; Data collection deadline for family case studies was extended to March 2018; Data collection process was outlined and updated requirements for sharing transcribed data with Kansas State was shared; Group decided to not move forward with stakeholder case studies due to timeline and perceived limitations of potential benefit at this time.

The group will continue to work on data collection efforts, with the first round of data to be made available to the data collecting states once 50% of the transcripts have been coded. Given the timely nature of the data relating to health insurance coverage, the team agreed that quick turnaround of the results to key stakeholders in each state will be key. Kentucky offered an example of a fact booklet put together and released based on their data collection, which was done a year ago as a pilot.

In lieu of conducting stakeholder interviews, the group decided to use existing datasets to collect community-level data of interest to the objective (e.g. employment rates, health indicators, etc.). County Health Rankings and Census data were identified as two likely sources that could be utilized. A subcommittee was identified to work on locating and extracting this data related to the counties where data were collected for the NC1171-ACA (Affordable Care Act) project.

Objective 3: A review of objective 3 was given and the group was encouraged to take on projects that will contribute to the progress toward this objective.

An additional major topic of discussion and decision making concerned the Governance Document which had not been updated in three years. Given the evolution of the group due to retirements and new states joining the project, bringing with it a number of assistant level faculty in need of publications, the group voted to approve a provision to allow a pathway for securing access to the existing data generated for NC1171. The change will require an application that documents how the individual has contributed to the collaborative work of the project. Applications will be reviewed by the Board at their regularly occurring monthly meetings. Additionally, sections documenting agreements for the ACA portion of the project (NC1171-ACA) were added and approved by vote of the membership.

Time was also spent on general updates to the group. A presentation was done by the group to the NC1011 Alumni to share what we have done since their work, and to seek input and guidance in how to operate effectively to move the work forward based on their experiences working collaboratively on the original project. Alishia Shipley from NIFA gave an update on topics of relevance related to NIFA and National efforts. An affiliate was nominated and voted in by the group. The 2017-18 Board members were nominated and the slate was voted to be approved. A working group was identified to begin work outlining a potential proposal to continue the work of the group after the end of the current project period. 

The proposed objectives of this project are: 1) To conduct extensive higher order analyses in all waves of quantitative and qualitative data to further explore factors that create barriers or enhance the physical and mental health of diverse rural low-income families. 2) To understand the impact of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on rural low-income families. 3) To disseminate findings, based on the proposed analyses, in order to further the empirical knowledge base and increase understanding among family serving professionals and policy makers regarding factors that contribute to or create barriers to the physical and mental health of diverse rural low-income families.

To achieve these objectives, we set yearly milestones to achieve. The 2017 milestones and the related activities, outputs, and short-term outcomes are describe for each objective below.

Obj 1 milestone: Analyze results of family & contextual data. Update contextual data for counties so that it coincides with data from families selected for case studies.

Outputs: In the past year, NC1171 team members have collaborated on multiple manuscripts for peer review in scholarly journals and professional society presentations that represent a range of scholarly disciplines.

Kentucky Policies & Participants booklet containing contextual county data, was produced by Kentucky to distribute to key stakeholders to educate them about rural, low-income mothers’ experiences with the ACA.

Piloting of the family case study in Kentucky and Massachusetts generated qualitative data indicating diversity in the accessibility and perceived utility of the ACA among low-income, rural mothers’. Findings from Kentucky revealed confusion exists between federal (ACA/Obamacare) and state policies. These findings suggest the need to move beyond distributing enrollment information by including informing about where benefits are coming from and how they can be accessed.  

Activities: Team members continue to analyze the family and contextual data for publications. Work continues on adding the county-level contextual data for inclusion in analyses.

Obj2 milestone: Collect, code and clean data from selected case study families. Collect, code, and clean data from community stakeholders. Seek additional funding to further examine changes that result from the ACA over time in low-income, rural families.

Outputs: The team developed a common set of data collection tools that will be used across the multi-state project. The use of a common set of tools will allow the project to aggregate the data for identification of themes, issues, and conditions with a pervasive pattern. Washington received funding through a grant from the Washington State University, Vancouver.

Activities:  Eight participating states (CA, FL, KS, KY, NC, OR, TN, WA) are in the process of collecting data for the family case studies.  To date, 28 transcripts have been generated. The group decided to move the collection of community level data across all states to the 2018 year.

Obj 3 milestones: Write and distribute selected policy briefs. Peer-reviewed publications and presentations representing multiple disciplines targeting diverse audiences (practitioners, researchers, policy makers). Development of educational materials for elected officials, program administrators, students, consumers.

Outputs: Yoshie Sano (WA) and Sheila Mammen (MA) served as co-editors of a Special Issue for the Family Science Review Journal, for which team members from across the participating states (AZ, CA, FL, HI, IA, KS, KY, MA, MS, NC, OR, TN, WA) contributed to one of five reviews communicating the findings across the last 20 years of the project. The issue has been peer reviewed and the resubmission is currently under consideration for final publication.  

A team of project team members led by Lori Yancura (HI), including Yoshie Sano (WA), Lenna Ontai (CA), Melissa Barnett (AZ), Kelly Davis (OR), & Brittney Oliver (MS), developed a successful grant proposal to utilize case studies generated from the NC1171 data to develop lesson plans to be used in undergraduate family science-related courses.

Kentucky distributed the Kentucky Policies & Participants booklet to educate stakeholders them about rural, low-income mothers’ experiences with the ACA.

Activities: Team members continue to work toward publications and presentations to professional groups and key stakeholder groups. The group shared ideas for reaching policy makers with the informaiton generated from the family case study data in a timely manner.

Grants.

Sano, Y. (PI) - Understanding rural low-income families through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Vancouver mini-grant, Washington State University Vancouver, 2016-20017. $4,000. (Co-PI: Smith, S.)

Yancura, L. (PI) - Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. “Rural Families in Real Life:Case Study Lessons from Interviews with Low-Income Rural Mothers”  Association of Public and Land-grant Universities. $3,000.00 (+ 2,000 match fro UH Manoa) (Co-I: Sano, Y., Ontai, L., Barnett, M., Davis, K., Oliver, B.)

Publications

Refereed Journal Articles

Radunovich, H.L., Smith, S., Ontai, L., Hunter, R., & Cannella, R. (in press). The role of partner support in the physical and mental health of poor, rural mothers. Journal of Rural Mental Health.

Sano, Y., Greder, K., & Mammen, S. (2017). Relationship between Rural, Low-Income Mothers’ Health Literacy and Depressive Symptoms in the Family Context. Medical Research Archives, 5(1). doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18103/mra.v5i1.948

Barnett, M. A., Yancura, L., Wilmoth, J., & Sano, Y. (2016). Wellbeing among Rural Grandfamilies in Two Multigenerational Household Structures. GrandFamilies: The Contemporary Journal of Research, Practice and Policy, 3 (1). Available at: http://scholarworks.wmich.edu/grandfamilies/vol3/iss1/4

Scientific and Outreach Oral Presentations.

Symposium Proceedings

Berry, A.A., Bird, C. L., Mammen, S., & Burney, J. 2016.  Rural families and health security.  Family Economics and Resource Management Association, New Orleans, LA.

 Dyk, P. H. & Lovely, S. 2017. Navigating the Uncertain Healthcare Terrain: Voices of Kentucky Low-Income Rural Women.  Southern Rural Sociological Society annual meeting, Mobile, AL.

Greder, K., Routh, B., Mammen, S., & Sano, Y. 2016. The effects of rural low-income mothers’ understanding of health information on obesogenic behaviors and mothers’ body weight. National Council on Family Relations, Minneapolis, MN.

Poster Presentations

Sano, Y., Mammen, S., & Greder, K. 2016. Degree of privation among rural Hispanic families. National Council on Family Relations, Minneapolis, MN.
 

Other Creative Works

The NC1171 project proposal was used as an exemplar in a graduate Research Design course.  Not only were the mechanics of the proposal discussed, but the importance of exploring the topics of RFSH.

Kentucky Policies & Participants booklet was produced and distributed at the NC1171 annual meeting in Tucson as a template for summarizing data and providing policy comparisons for the participating states.