On the Job in Brief

Rural mental health workers needed

Rural communities in the U.S. continue to experience critical mental health provider shortages, finds a new study.

Presented in April at the Annual Society for Public Health Education conference, the new data come from researchers at Ball State University in Indiana. Their study, which surveyed 100 mental health practitioners in rural Indiana, found that the main reasons rural counties were not able to attract qualified mental health providers was an inability to pay competitive wages and provide professional development opportunities. The majority of mental health providers surveyed said the mental health needs of their communities had not been well researched or assessed.

In addition, 63 percent of survey respondents said the federal government should play a major role in recruiting and retaining mental health providers. More than one-third said the cost of mental health services is high, while access is low. And more than one-third identified opioids and drug problems as the top concerns in their communities. Nearly all the respondents, 95 percent, said local health departments were not adequately involved in providing mental health services.

For more information, visit www.bsu.edu.

Gender gap persists in research journals

Given the current rate at which women researchers are published, a new study finds that many research specialties will not likely reach gender parity in this century.

Published in April in Plos Biology, the study is based on publishing data from countries around the world and from thousands of scientific journals. Researchers found that the gender gap is particularly large in regard to authorship positions associated with seniority and that prestigious journals have fewer women authors.

Overall, 87 of the 115 disciplines examined have significantly fewer than 45 percent women authors, five have significantly more than 55 percent and 23 were within 5 percent of gender parity. Topics such as physics, computer science, mathematics, surgery and chemistry had the fewest women authors, while health-related disciplines such as nursing, midwifery and speech-language pathology had more than 50 percent women authors. Public health was one of the few fields in which women and men were published at about the same rate.

“These results suggest that mostly male fields might attract fewer women graduates, lose women researchers to other careers at a faster rate and have stronger gender biases that affect the relative publication rates of men and women,” the study stated.

Alliance to address Hispanic health

A new partnership is aimed at advancing equity and diversity in heath care, with a special focus on better serving Hispanic communities.

In May, the American Hospital Association and UnidosUS, formerly known as the National Council of La Raza, announced an alliance to connect Hispanic leaders with leadership opportunities at hospitals and health systems, promote grant work and programs that improve opportunities for Hispanic communities and foster collaboration on key health issues. More specifically over the next year, the new alliance will focus on increasing diversity within health system governance, fostering a culture of health among Hispanics via the hospital association’s participation in a UnidosUS advisory committee and identify existing hospital programs that can be leveraged to address youth violence prevention.

Hispanic health leaders could have more opportunities, thanks to work from the American Hospital Association and UnidosUS.

Photo by Monkeybusinessimages, courtesy iStockphoto

“It is critical that the leadership of hospitals and major health systems reflect the growing diversity of the people they serve and our country,” said Janet Murguía, president and CEO of UnidosUS, in a news release. “By highlighting leading voices and programs related to trauma within our communities, we can work together to best prepare the next generation of change makers and promote a healthy future.”

For more information, visit www.unidosus.org.

Institutionalized racism rarely named

Few public health studies call out institutionalized racism by name, finds new research.

Published in April in Public Health Reports, the study is based on a systematic literature review of the top 50 highest-impact journals in six categories that most closely represent the public health field. Between 2002 and 2015, researchers found just 25 articles focused on issues within the U.S. that name institutionalized racism in the title or abstract, with institutionalized racism a core concept in 16 of the 25 articles.

“Words have power, and being explicit about naming this critical construct may move the field forward in important ways,” the study stated.