Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Brief Summary: The Annual Meeting had three major foci. The first was for working groups to report on this past years productivity and plan their work for the coming year. The second focus was to update the team on efforts to secure additional funding, i.e., the NIH grant proposal submitted in September and the prospect of submitting a proposal to NRI. The third was to facilitate the transition from NC223 to NC1011 and welcome the new states to the team. Work Towards Objectives: Data collection and analyses: The thirteen states that have pursed data collection have substantially completed the three waves of interviews. Several states report difficulty with Wave 3 due to reduced funding, however. The Oregon State University team is processing the Wave 3 data and hopes to have the quantitative SPSS data and the qualitative WinMax data back to each state for cleaning by the end of the calendar year. The Working Groups reported on their activities, publications, and presentations over the past year. A summary of productivity is given at the end of this report. NRI Report: NRI grant, administered through the University of Minnesota by Jean Bauer, started November 1, 2001 and runs through December 2003. The focus of the second year was on subcoding and the creation of a base book. New York was the subcontractor for the food security work and Louisiana for economic well-being work. Minnesota was responsible, working with Oregon State, for producing the base book of Wave 1 and Wave 2 data. A printed draft was distributed to the states, along with a CD containing the data, data book, and syntax for creation of variables. Funding: NC 1011 was approved in spring of 2003, commencing on October 1, 2003 and running through September 30, 2008. Two new states, Iowa and South Dakota, joined the team, and two states, Colorado and Wyoming, dropped out. Two team members spearheaded the submission of a grant proposal to NIH on intergenerational issues. The team discussed submitting a new grant proposal to NRI. A small group will be working on this over the coming weeks. Future Work: Working Groups: The majority of time at the meeting was devoted to Working Groups meetings. Each of the eight Working Groups met at least once to plan their activities for the coming year. Each Working Group reported their primary research questions and the members who are involved in the analyses. A number of the proposed analyses revolved around policy questions. Dissemination Plan: A number of ideas were presented as ways to disseminate the findings of this study, in addition to the traditional scholarly papers and presentations, and the project website. Spearheaded by the Extension Working Group, the team will be working toward presenting a series of web-based in-service trainings, especially for extension educators, but open to others also. Furthermore, to let our participants know more about what we are finding, the team planned a series of short newsletter articles for each state team to use in its participant newsletter.

Accomplishments and Impacts: New officers were elected: Sharon Seiling  Chair; Leslie Richards - Vice Chair for data management; Josephine Swanson  vice Chair for outreach; Susan Churchill  Secretary/Treasurer. This year was very productive. Five proposals were submitted for funding. The NRI grant has enabled us to produce a base book for Wave 1 and Wave 2 data, in addition to developing subcoding schemes for food security and two different economic well-being issues. The Child Care Working Group produced a research brief on child care use.

Bauer, J.W., Braun, B., & Dyk, P. H., (2003, April). Health and the economic well-being of rural families. A public policy fact sheet. National Council on Family Relations. Available at http://www.ncfr.org/pdf/Rural_Families_Fact_Sheet.pdf Bauer, J.W. & Dolan, E. (2003). The impact of financial life skills and knowledge of community resources on food security. Abstracts--Fifth Conference of the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies. July 24, 2003. Frankfurt, Germany. p.151 Bauer, J.W., Imig, D.R., Dyk, P. H., & Seiling, S.B. (2003). The well-being of rural low-income families in the context of welfare reform. Spatial Inequality: Continuity and Change in Territorial Stratification. A joint meeting with the Rural Sociological Society, American Agricultural Economics Society and the Canadian Agricultural Economics Society. July 27-30, 2003. Montreal, Quebec. Available at: http://www.ruralsociology.org/annual-meeting/2003/Bauer,etal.pdf Braun, B., & Dyk, P. (2003) Rural families speak about quality of life issues: The Impact of health conditions on food security. AbstractsFifth Conference of International Society for Quality of Life Studies, Frankfurt, Germany. July 24. p.152. Braun, B., Lawrence, F. C., Dyk, P. H., & Vandergriff-Avery, M. (2002). Southern rural family economic well-being in the context of public assistance. Southern Rural Sociology Research Journal, 18 (1), 259-295. Braun, B., Rudd, M., & Anderson, E.A. (2003). Social support: Key to educational outcomes for rural, teenage mothers. Policy research brief available for citizens and policy makers. Available at: http://www.hhp.umd.edu/FMST/fis/TeenMoms.pdf and http://www.ruralfamilies.umn.edu/publications/SocialSupportTeenMothers.pdf. Braun, B., & Vandergriff-Avery, M. (2003). Facing the facts of the well-being of rural low-income women in the context of welfare reform. In, Sixth Women's Policy Research Conference Proceedings. Institute for Women's Policy Research, USA, 6, 276-279. Dolan, E.M., Bauer, J.W., Knight, S.E., Seiling, S., Lawrence, F.C., & Mammen, S. (2003, March) Rural low-income families face employment obstacles. NCFR Report, 48 (1), F7-F8. Dolan, E.M., Braun, B., & Murphy, J.C. (2003, June). A dollar short: Financial challenges of working-poor rural families. NCFR Report, 48 (2), F13  F15. Dyk, P.H. & Braun, B. (2003). Rural families speak: The impact of family health conditions of food security. Procceedings of Rural Sociological Meeting, Montreal, Canada. Available at: http://www.ruralsociology.org/annual-meeting/2003/abstracts.pdf Kim, E., & Geistfeld, L. V. (2003). Is she working enough? Rural poor women's unemployment and depression. Proceedings of 2003 Rural Sociological Society annual meeting. Available at: http://www.ruralsociology.org/annual-meeting/2003/abstracts.pdf Kim, E-J, Geistfeld, L.V., & Seiling, S.B. (2003). Factors affecting health care decisions of rural poor women. Asian Women, 16, 73-85. Kim, E., Geistfeld, L. V., & Seiling, S. B. (2003). The disenfranchised poor: Rural low-income women's health care decisions. Consumer Interests Annual, 49 Available at: http://consumerinterests.org/public/articles/DisenfranchisedPoor_03.pdf Reschke, K. & Walker, S. (2003, June). Difficult choices: Low-income mothers struggle to balance caregiving and employment. NCFR Report 48(2), F8-F9. Varcoe, K. P., Bauer, J., & Mammen, S. (2003). Rural families speak about quality of life issuesAn overview of the study. AbstractsFifth Conference of the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, 150. Varcoe, K. P., Lees, N. & Lopez, M. (2003). Rural families speakThe impact of family relationships on food security. AbstractsFifth Conference of the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies, July 24, 153. Varcoe, K.P., Lees, N.B., Lopez, M.L., Seiling, S.B., Lawrence, F. C. & Knight, S.E. (2003). The earned income tax credit and rural families. In J. L. Cunningham (Ed.). Family Relations & Human Development/Family Economics & Resource Management Biennial. The Journal of the FRHD and FERM Division of the American Association of the Family and Consumer Sciences, 5, 144-153. Walker, S. & Reschke, K. (2003, March). Child care issues facing contemporary rural families. NCFR Report, 48(1), F5-F6. Walker. S. & Reschke, K. (2003, Winter-Spring). Low income rural families use of child care. NC223 Research Briefing. Available at http://www.hhp.umd.edu/FMST/fis/